Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), a literary and linguistic scholar, invented the crucial concept of mono no aware to define the essential of Japanese and Japanese culture. The phrase, derived from aware, which, in Heian Japan meant something like "sensitivity" or "sadness", means "a sensitivity to things." Motoori wanted to show that the unique character of Japanese culture (and he considered Japanese culture to be the "head" of the world; other nations were the "body") was the capacity to experience the objective world in a direct and unmediated fashion, to understand sympathetically the objects and the natural world around one without resorting to language or other mediators. The Japanese could understand the world directly in identifying themselves with that world; in addition, the Japanese could use language to directly express that connection to the world. This, for Motoori, is the aesthetic which lies behind the poetry of the Manyoshu. The poetic and historical texts present the "whole of life", which has meaning because all of nature and life is animated by the "intentions" of the gods. People experienced this wholeness of life by encountering things (mono); these encounters "moved" or "touched" them ("aware")—hence the unique Japanese character: "sensitivity to things" (mono no aware). This concept became the central aesthetic concept in Japan even into the modern period. more...