Beauty is not so easily measured

While love is some(a)thing that can be perceived as be palat adequate to(p) and felt directly within whizs self, peach guide is non so easily measuredan esthetic that is judged by distributively person according to his or her avow desires or dis handles. Kawabata Yasunaris classic short stories The objet d dodge Who Did Not smile and wickedness both look at love and lulu and how they argon measured, each in a poetic and colorful way.The universe Who Did Not Smile is a 1929 short story, or palm of the hand story, as Yasunari c each(prenominal)ed them (Ljukkonen, online), about a plastic moving-picture show writer and his relationship to beauty via his movie that is creation considered, and via his relationship with his married woman and children. It is a story about beauty and this bits relationship to beauty, and the psychological relationship he has to the idea of beauty and what is fag end the idea of beauty.Yasunari wrote The Man Who Did Not Smile as a first-perso n account from the film writers standpoint. The man is on mess for a film he has written about patients in a mental hospital, and is in the process of dis cover version a final scene for his film. He finds it one morning while gazing out on the Kamo River, (Yasunari, 1929/1990, p. 128) upon waking, finding himself amid the memories of a previous day and recalling a mask that he had seen in a display window. It is that image that gives him the idea for his final scene of the movie, a moon on (p. 129) filled with masks of smiling faces.The search for the masks to be officed in the film becomes the key drama of the storyand the protagonists relationship to those masks erst he takes them to his wife and children after the filming of the movie is complete. The masks are pure and the actors must handle them carefully. Yet, there is some power within those masks. The film writer decides to buy them so they can be handled without fear of them organism destroyed, and it is in the power of those masks that the protagonist realizes his stimulate relationship with beauty.Well then, Ill buy them. I did actually want them. I daydreamed as if awaiting the futurity when the world would be in harmony and people would all apply the same gentle face as these masks. (p. 131)His children love the masks, but he ref ingestions to jade them. His wife agrees to put one on, and it is in that moment that he discovers his line up relationship to his wifes beauty. The moment she removed the mask, my wifes face somehow appeared ugly (p. 131). It is as though he is seeing 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 non only with a peeled idea of beauty, but his own sense impression of selfone that tycoon appear as an ugly demon (p. 132) to his wife. He would be clear to his real self, his true nature.Psychologist C. G. Jung writes that the mask can be seen as the outer(a) 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 narrator is forced to confront not only what lies behind his wifes beauty/ugliness, but withal his idea of his own beauty/ugliness. The pulchritudinous mask (p. 132) reveals an another(prenominal) 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, oftentimes 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 eternal love is the central theme. In this short story, two buffs have reunited after being apart for at least five decadesbut their reunion comes in the afterlife, as they are now each dead. Yasunari presents a portrait of an eighteen-year- overaged girl and a man sixty years her senior walking through some woods in a land theyd both cognize together while alive. The scene is haunting as the girl is not aware the man has passed on into the afterlife until the end, when, upon that realization, the two go into the tree and stay (Yasunari, 1963/2005, p. 326).The love mingled with 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 expending much of his life on the land overlooking that spot in the ocean where she died. The man has returned 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 white-haired tree where they ordain live forever.Like The Man Who Did Not Smile, Yasunar i 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 constantly 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 woman. How disgusting. I wouldnt want you to see me like that. (p. 325)For the girl, memories are important. Her tang carries them as she lives in the afterlife. Scholar James Hillman says that memories are important for the understanding, carrying with them faculty that thrives for the departed person. The girl realizes this, too, in a way If you were to die, there wouldnt be anyone on man who would remember me, she says (p. 325).The soulfulness, they say, needs models for its mimesis in state to recollect eternal verities and primordial images. If in its life on earth it does not meet these as mirrors of the sou ls core, mirrors in which the soul can recognize its truths, then its flame will die and its mind wither. (p. 159)The girl imagines ugliness representing old agethat ancient mask we all wear once we have passed from the prime 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 never experienced his lover as an old woman thus, her youth is indeed eternal for him.Yasunari uses a couple of(prenominal) 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 plentifully driven characterization in either story, as Yasunari essentially paints portraits of each actor through their thoughts and actions. Like a beautiful paint ing of a sunset or sunrise, we must use our tomography amidst the texture and colors of the painting to grasp 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 stick Immortality. He ends that story almost the same way he begins The Man Who Did Not Smilewith the picture of the sky.The color at evening began to throw off 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(prenominal) stories are magical. It is the magic of those trees (p. 325) that ca ptures the liking of Shintaro and his young lover. Those trees are part of land his family owned, and he later exchange to the men who turned the land into a golfers campaign range. The trees are on land overseeing the ocean where the girl jumped to her death. Trees are blessed and magical in many 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 reside 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 improve properties of the masks. It is through the image of the mask that the film writer is able to spend a penny an ending for his storya beautiful daydream (p. 128) to conclude the turned story (p. 129). The masks represent his own distrust of himself and the world around him, covering with an artificial beau ty 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 in spite of appearance 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 concealment behind the masksso much that his initial reaction to putting on the mask himself is fear. The mask is no good. Art is no good (p. 132). Masks and art each reveal the hidden 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. Each is an aspect of The Man Who Did Not Smile.Ya sunari gives much to think about regarding our relationship 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 living 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 whole shebang 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 unconsciou s. (R. F. C. Hull,Trans.). In A. Storr (Ed.). The essential Jung 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 doubting Thomas Nelson Publishers. 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