Beauty is not so easily measured

While love is fewthing that can be stard as be palatable and felt directly within ones self, smasher is not so easily measu rosy-cheekedan artistic that is judged by each person according to his or her knowledge ilks or dislikes. Kawabata Yasunaris classic sententiousstop stories The while Who Did non smiling and Immorality both look at love and smasher and how they are measured, each in a poetic and colorful way.The Man Who Did Not Smile is a 1929 short base, or palm of the hand story, as Yasunari c everyed them (Ljukkonen, online), about a shoot down writer and his relationship to dish antenna via his movie that is existence filmed, and via his relationship with his married wo existence and children. It is a story about beauty and this military mans relationship to beauty, and the psychological relationship he has to the idea of beauty and what is keister the idea of beauty.Yasunari wrote The Man Who Did Not Smile as a first-person account from the film writers standpoint. The man is on spatial relation for a film he has written about patients in a mental hospital, and is in the edge of discovering a final painting for his film. He finds it one morning while gazing out on the Kamo River, (Yasunari, 1929/1990, p. 128) upon waking, determination himself amid the memories of a previous day and recalling a mask that he had seen in a display window. It is that cooking stove that gives him the idea for his final scene of the movie, a daydreaming (p. 129) filled with masks of smiling faces.The search for the masks to be utilise in the film becomes the central drama of the storyand the protagonists relationship to those masks once he takes them to his wife and children after the filming of the movie is complete. The masks are delicate and the actors must handle them carefully. Yet, in that respect is some power within those masks. The film writer decides to buy them so they can be handled without fear of them being destroyed, and it is in the power of those masks that the protagonist realizes his own relationship with beauty.Well then, Ill buy them. I did very want them. I daydreamed as if awaiting the future when the world would be in harmony and people would all wear the same gentle face as these masks. (p. 131)His children love the masks, but he refuses to wear them. His wife agrees to put one on, and it is in that outcome that he discovers his full-strength relationship to his wifes beauty. The moment she removed the mask, my wifes face somehow appeared pathetic (p. 131). It is as though he is comprehend her face for the first timeand his own idea of her beauty, or, in this case, the ugliness of her own countenance (p. 131). As his wife lay in the hospital bed, he is faced not except with a bleak idea of beauty, but his own sense of selfone that might appear as an ugly demon (p. 132) to his wife. He would be exposed to his real self, his true nature.Psychologist C. G. Jung writes that the mask can be seen as the outer persona we show to the world, the way we want to be seen (Jung, 1929/1983, p. 96). The mask is the ad hoc adopted attitude, I have called the persona, which was the name for the masks worn by actors in antiquity (Jung, 1921/1983, p. 98). The teller is forced to confront not only what lies behind his wifes beauty/ugliness, but in any case his idea of his own beauty/ugliness. The beautiful mask (p. 132) reveals another question, too whether or not the face he sees on his wife could be artificial, too, just like the mask (p. 132). Its a perplexing question, but one that reveals, like the mask, much about the filmmakers relationship to himself and his world.While the idea of beauty colors Yasunaris 1963 palm-of-the-hand story Immortality, the concept of consummate(a) love is the central theme. In this short story, two lovers have reunited after being apart for at least five decadesbut their reunion comes in the hereafter, as they are at one time each dead. Yasunari pr esents a portrait of an eighteen-year- honest-to-goodness miss and a man sixty years her senior walking by means of some woods in a reason theyd both known unitedly while alive. The scene is haunting as the girl is not aware the man has passed on into the future until the end, when, upon that realization, the two go into the tree and stay (Yasunari, 1963/2005, p. 326).The love between the two has been eternal, in a sensethe girl killed herself because of her love for the man when they had to separate, and he wound up sp end point much of his life on the land overlooking that spot in the ocean where she died. The man has re off-key to the land where she died to reclaim her. He wants to be with her forever. However, he doesnt know he is dead, and neither does she. Once she realizes he, too, is dead, they are able to reunite into timeless existence in nature, merging themselves into an doddering tree where they will live forever.Like The Man Who Did Not Smile, Yasunari uses the idea of beauty and the mask that we wearJungs personaas an aspect of Immortality. The girl tells the old man, Shintaro, that she has lived in the afterlife with the image of him as a young man. You are eternally young to me, (p. 325) she says, even though the man is now old.If I hadnt drowned myself and you came to the village now to see me, Id be an old char. How disgusting. I wouldnt want you to see me like that. (p. 325)For the girl, memories are important. Her spirit carries them as she lives in the afterlife. apprentice James Hillman says that memories are important for the soul, carrying with them energy that thrives for the departed person. The girl realizes this, too, in a way If you were to die, there wouldnt be anyone on earth who would remember me, she says (p. 325).The soul, they say, needs models for its mimesis in order to recollect eternal verities and primordial images. If in its life on earth it does not meet these as mirrors of the souls core, mirrors in which th e soul can recognize its truths, then its flame will die and its genius wither. (p. 159)The girl imagines ugliness representing old agethat ancient mask we all wear once we have passed from the height years of our life. Even though the old man is wearing that mask, she doesnt see it she has only her memories carried with her at the time of her death, so she sees him as an eighteen-year-old, also. For the man, he neer experienced his lover as an old woman thus, her youth is indeed eternal for him.Yasunari uses few characters in both stories, keeping each palm-of-the-hand short and simple. The narrator in The Man Who Did Not Smile is joined by the mask buyer, his wife, and his children in the tale, while it is only Shintaro and his young lover in Immortality. We do not see deeply driven characterization in either story, as Yasunari essentially paints portraits of each actor through their thoughts and actions. Like a beautiful video of a sunset or sunrise, we must use our imaginatio n amidst the texture and colors of the painting to kitchen stove its deeper meaning.Indeed, Yasunaris beautiful use of words shines in both stories in his colorful imagery. It is simple An old man and a young girl were walking together, he writes to begin Immortality. He ends that story approximately the same way he begins The Man Who Did Not Smilewith the picture of the sky.The color at change surface began to drift onto the small saplings behind the great trees. The sky beyond turned a faint red where the ocean sounded. (p. 326).The Man Who Did Not Smile, on the other hand, begins with the image of the sky as well. The sky had turned a deep shade it looked like the surface of a beautiful celadon porcelain piece (p. 128). It is a daydream of sorts, a beautiful portrait into which Yasunari takes the reader as he moves through the inner world of the film writer.Both stories are magical. It is the magic of those trees (p. 325) that captures the imagination of Shintaro and his young lover. Those trees are part of land his family owned, and he later change to the men who turned the land into a golfers driving range. The trees are on land overseeing the ocean where the girl jumped to her death. Trees are sacred and magical in numerous mythologies. Buddha gained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, and many myths use trees as the focus for rebirth (Anderson, 1990, p. 25). In the same regard, the ocean, too, is a mythical place from where gods and goddess absorb and in the Greek legend Odysseus sailed before being reuniting with his lover (Anderson, p. 25).The magic of The Man Who Did Not Smile comes in the healing properties of the masks. It is through the image of the mask that the film writer is able to create an ending for his storya beautiful daydream (p. 128) to conclude the dark story (p. 129). The masks represent his own discredit of himself and the world around him, covering with an artificial beauty the truth that lies behind them. The masks magically hide what is true and meant to be revealedwhether it is an ugly demon (p. 132) or an ever-smiling gentle face (p. 132).What is also interesting about The Man Who Did Not Smile is in how the film writers screenplay is based on a scene inside a mental hospital. We learn later that his wife is in a hospital of sortsand we never learn the exact nature of her illness. Could it be a mental hospital? And might her hospitalization also be a reflection of his gloomy personality (p. 129)? Hes afraid of what is hiding behind the masksso much that his initial reaction to putting on the mask himself is fear. The mask is no good. trick is no good (p. 132). Masks and art each reveal the surreptitious dimensions. The film writer himself uses his films to balance his own gloomy personality. Yet the shadows of life are revealed through film and art, and are experienced in hospitals. from each one is an aspect of The Man Who Did Not Smile.Yasunari gives much to think about regarding our relationsh ip to each other and ourselves in The Man Who Did Not Smile, and to our relationship with the magic of eternal love in Immortality. Both reveal the hidden aspects of our existence on earth, offering us a short look at the feeling of aliment in a world of melancholy and loneliness amid what we call beauty. Our own mortality rises from the depths of eternity through these stories, and it is in the hidden beauty of our daily lives that Yasunaris lends can be realized.BibliographyAnderson, William. (1990). Green man The archetype of our oneness with the earth.London HarperCollins.Hillman, James. (1996). The souls code. New York Warner Books.Jung, C. G. (1983). Definitions. (R. F. C. Hull,Trans.). In A. Storr (Ed.). The essentialJung Selected writings. (V. S. de Laszlo, Ed.) (Pp. 97-105). Princeton Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921).Jung, C. G. (1983). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. (R. F. C. Hull,Trans.). In A. Storr (Ed.). The essential Jun g Selected writings. (V. S. deLaszlo, Ed.) (Pp. 94-97). Princeton Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1929).Ljukkonen, Petri. (2005). Yasunari Yasunari. Retrieved November 19, 2005 fromhttp//www.kirjasto.sci.fi/Yasunari.htm.Yasunari, Yasunari. (1990). The man who did not smile. (L. Dunlop, Trans.). InPalm-of-the-hand Stories. (J. Martin Holman, Trans.). (Pp. 128-132). San Francisco North Point Press. (Original work published 1929).Yasunari, Yasunari. (2005). Immortality. In (G. Dasgupta, J. Mei, Ed). Stories aboutus. (Pp. 323-325). Nashville Thomas Nelson Publishers. (Original work published 1963).