Snow in a silver bowl 銀梳裏盛雪

Yūgen 幽玄

Yūgen 幽玄 is the term most oft-used in describing Noh theater.

It is a a word from Japanese aesthetics that appears from time to time in English advertising or as part of the growing terms borrowed from Japanese as part of the self-help industry, like wabi-sabi, “Zen,” kintsugi, ikigai, ichigo-ichie.

It is also one of the words the Japanese themselves use to advertise their culture. This below is from Shiseido:

Yūgen is a word that has no translation in English, but it is a feeling we will all have felt. It has been loosely summed up as “an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words”, but has also been called “mysterious grace”, “subtle profundity” and the “beauty of the unseen”.

Deep, profound and used to convey feelings that are inexpressible in words. I have felt myself thinking Yūgen when gazing at the nigh sky from the top of Mauna Kea—as thousands and thousands of stars were visible. It was so vast and profound to really look at the stars lighting up the Milky Way.

I have also felt this when looking into a bowl of tea served in a black raku bowl. The jade color whipped matcha appeared to be sizzling against the darkness. Mysterious and alive, as if there was a dragon in that teabowl.

Zeami said that Noh should be like snow in a silver bowl. For that is Yūgen.

Hiroaki Sato’s book Snow in a Silver Teabowl: A Quest for the Word Yūgen is a gem. Before trying to define Yūgen , Sato asks friends and experts how they would describe it. The answers range from “a bagel” to “an old man emerging from mist.”

Yūgen is dark, ambiguous, mysterious. It is “an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too powerful for words.”

From the opening of the dao de jing, '“the way that can be called the way…” the second kanji “gen” 玄 can be found to mean ineffable and mystery. (Here is Ursula le Guin)

In ancient Chinese, it mean distant and remote.

My favorite response was by the great Liza dalby, when she answered that Yūgen is the ku of shiki, soku, ze ku— From the Heart Sutra this is the emptiness in the line form is emptiness…

More about Noh on Monday at 3 Quarks Daily…