Sunrise as seen from Mt. Fuji, September 2009.
The Asahi Shimbun recently published an article in which they spoke with Donald Keene, a U.S.-born scholar on Japanese literature and culture who now lives in Japan. Keene discusses a Japanese aesthetic toward beauty and nature, how he came to appreciate it through his studies and translation work, and how he has tried to portray Japanese culture in his 70+ years of writing. The article includes the following haiku by Matsuo Bashō, which I’m quite fond of:
A day of mist and drizzle–a day one can’t see Fuji is the most evocative.
Mt. Fuji evokes a certain sentimentality among Japanese, and among those who’ve visited or lived in Japan. Perhaps the article is a little sentimental as well, but I don’t mind ツ.
