Abstract

A melancholy feeling within traditional Japanese literary arts is described by the word “mono-no-aware もののあはれ.” Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長 (1730–1801) in the Edo period praised The Tales of Genji 源氏物語 in the Heian period as a complete depiction of “mono-no-aware,” which has facilitated the current debate. Norinaga himself, known as a Japanese classical scholar, defined “mono-no-aware” as a Japanese thought different from Confucianism and Buddhism and called this non-Japanese thought “Kara-gokoro 漢心.” Since the modern era, when Japanese thinkers came into contact with Western thought, they began to contrast “mono-no-aware” with Western thought. In this paper, if the regional peculiarity of this concept is emphasized, “mono-no-aware” will be regarded as a feeling peculiar to Japan. On the contrary, if the emphasis is on its generality, it will be regarded as a representation of the human nature common to the West. From this perspective, we analyze the claims of three Japanese thinkers since the Meiji era, namely, Ōnishi Yoshinori 大西克禮 (1888–1959), Watsuji Tetsurō和辻哲郎 (1889–1960), and Karaki Junzō唐木順三(1904–1980). In doing so, we will consider the universality and Japanese character of the aesthetic, ethical, and metaphysical asp In doing so, we will consider the ects of “mono-no-aware.”