Saturday 30 November 2019

Understanding Mono no Aware

Mono no Aware (物の哀れ) is one of those Japanese literary phrases that has no translation. Wikipedia offers its best with "the pathos of things" or "a sensitivity to ephemera", both are decent readings, but more is needed to understand what that actually entails.

In otaku media, Mono no Aware is a key idea, and is often applied to typically slow-paced, Slice-of-Life shows, but can examples can easily be found across the entire scope of anime/manga. It tries to express the transience of everything as a source of beauty, like how cherry blossom finds it's beauty in its impermanence, you wait the entire year and for just one week, the usually plain cherry trees turn Japan into a bright pink confetti storm. This may be an amazing experience, but you can bet that if this was a more permanent affair, the citizens of Japan might get fed up with the sakura slush covering their streets, clogging up their drains and making everywhere smell of a nu-age cosmetics store. The beauty comes from the excitement of the build-up, the grandiose of the event, and the nostalgic longing for it again once it is over.

Many stories that implement the idea take a very laid-back take on the idea, conveying the two sides of impermanence: the beauty of the moment and the sadness of the end. The seminal work of the genre is Hitoshi Ashinano's 90s manga "Yokohama Shopping Log", about the life of an Android girl in a post-climate change world, where, even though humanity has slowed down considerably, she is the only part of the world that is unchanging, as an android that never ages. It chronicles around 20 years of her life, and the lives of those around her; and while every chapter is under-spoken and quiet, the entire experience pulls you into a slow mindset where the passing of time is hard to comprehend. When I was reading it, a strange feeling of serenity took over me. I started viewing things from a perspective I'd never thought of before, viewing the world from above and watching everything move below me. A morose mindset being satisfied with the present, and understanding that since nothing lasts for an eternity, eternity is a meaningless concept. So instead of focusing only on the big events, the mundane, boring parts of life are more important, since they take up the vast majority of your time.

It's an incredibly hard idea to convey, but I'd describe my experience as: "an admiration of minutia, a respect of beauty, and a contentment with the present; all through an appreciation of transience."

The typical show one would ascribe "mono no aware" to is synonymous with an "iyashi-kei" tag like for Aria, Non Non Biyori, Girls' Last Tour or Hidamari Sketch. But I would say that the lense of mono no aware can also be placed over a huge plethora of shows, and even is the core of many genres. One example is high-school anime. A hugely popular setting for anime of all types, but the core archnarrative of a school experience is as follows: "new school: children arrive in a new scary environment; initiation: students find friends, interests and hobbies; daily life: now happy at school, the students live their youth and grow; graduation: all so quickly, the end arrives and the everyday life is changed forever. This has obvious bearings in mono no oware, with there being many a SoL school comedy anime covering all these points and the relatable idea that the seemingly endless school days will some day reach a finale, and the nostalgia that people have toward that time. Examples of shows that follow the narrative explicitly and to completion are Azumanga Daioh, Manabi Straight, K-On and Genshiken, or less directly by shows like Haibane Renmei or Mahoromatic, where the "school" can be replaced with its components of "a new world", "everyday life" and "the foreseen ending".

I'm sure this story arc has reminded you of "the Hero's Journey", and of course it, as every story type, it fits into the pattern: with the unknown world being analogous to school. But the thing that makes this breed of storytelling different is the lack of a revelation or transformation, or even a climax whatsoever, replacing these with a gradual change in the characters as they have a slow and periodic revelations and transformations throughout the time we spend with them. This is a much more realistic view at the changes we as humans take throughout our lives, and also a very otaku way of telling the story, where vicarious engagement with a normal life through these "realistic" stories allows even the most hikki of NEETs to experience real life. I'm not saying this is a problem, I've learnt a lot about normal life and normal human behaviour through anime, and for many it is a good way to keep you grounded in a reality that we all deep-down wish to engage with, no matter how far our chuunibyou disease may have developed.

I enjoy attempted to categorise things, especially anime, so seeing how I can fit the shows I like into this idea of "mono no oware" is a fun exercise, and engaging with different storytelling paradigms is an experience that changed my life. Many of the stories I enjoy most are appreciative of the idea, along with others that I will also write about at some point. So look forward to my interpretations of more literary ideas through the lens of otaku media.

[Originally posted on the 24th of May 2019]