'Beauty is not so easily measured\r'

' turn live is something that target be sensed as organism palatable and felt directly inside unity’s self, witness is not so easily measuredâ€an aesthetic that is judged by each(prenominal) person according to his or her have got likes or dislikes. Kawabata Yasunari’s classic short stories â€Å"The military personnel Who Did non smile” and â€Å"Immorality” both gestate at love and beauty and how they ar measured, each in a poetic and colorful focus.â€Å"The man Who Did non Smile” is a 1929 short bilgewater, or â€Å" decoration of the hand story,” as Yasunari called them (Ljukkonen, online), or so a choose author and his birth to beauty via his movie that is being necessitateed, and via his birth with his married woman and children.  It is a story intimately beauty and this man’s relationship to beauty, and the psychological relationship he has to the idea of beauty and what is stool the idea of beauty .Yasunari wrote â€Å"The patch Who Did non Smile” as a prime(prenominal)-person account from the word visualize writer’s standpoint.  The man is on location for a photograph he has written about patients in a mental infirmary, and is in the process of discovering a utmost exam guess for his film.  He finds it one morning period â€Å"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 pretend that he had seen in a disp move window.  It is that image that gives him the idea for his final scene of the movie, â€Å"a daydream” (p. 129) filled with hides of rapturous founts.The search for the fancy dresss to be used in the film becomes the central drama of the storyâ€and the protagonist’s relationship to those suppresss once he takes them to his wife and children after(prenominal) the filming of the movie is complete.  The masquera des are delicate and the actors must(prenominal) handle them carefully.  withal, there is some role at heart those masks.  The film writer decides to buy them so they whoremaster 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.â€Å"Well then, I’ll buy them.  I did actually want them.  I daydreamed as if awaiting the future when the world would be in harmony and people would all let out the uniform gentle face as these masks.  (p. 131)His children love the masks, fair now he refuses to stretch forth them.  His wife agrees to put one on, and it is in that moment that he discovers his true relationship to his wife’s beauty.  â€Å"The moment she removed the mask, my wife’s face somehow appeared unworthy” (p. 131).  It is as though he is seeing her face for the first timeâ€and his own idea of her beauty, or, in this case, the â€Å" sin of her own countenance” (p. 131).  As his wife lay in the hospital bed, he is faced not only with a new idea of beauty, nevertheless his own sense of selfâ€one that expertness appear as â€Å"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 office we show to the world, the way we want to be seen (Jung, 1929/1983, p. 96).  â€Å"The mask is the ad hoc adopted attitude, I have called the persona, which was the epithet for the masks worn by actors in antiquity” (Jung, 1921/1983, p. 98).  The cashier is forced to confront not only what lies can his wife’s beauty/ugliness, but as well as his idea of his own beauty/ugliness.  The â€Å" gorgeous mask” (p. 132) reveals another question, too:  whether or not the face he sees on his wife could be artificial, too, â€Å"just like the mask” (p. 132 ).  It’s a enigmatical question, but one that reveals, like the mask, more than about the filmmaker’s relationship to himself and his world.While the idea of beauty colors Yasunari’s 1963 â€Å"palm-of-the-hand” story â€Å"Immortality,” the concept of sodding(a) love is the central theme.  In this short story, 2 raw siennas have reunited after being apart for at least five decadesâ€but their reunion comes in the afterlife, as they are now each dead.  Yasunari presents a portrait of an eighteen-year- old lady friend and a man threescore years her senior walking with some woods in a refine they’d both known together while alive.  The scene is haunting as the fille is not informed the man has passed on into the afterlife until the end, when, upon that realization, the both â€Å"go into the tree and stay” (Yasunari, 1963/2005, p. 326).The love between the two has been eternal, in a senseâ€the girl killed he rself because of her love for the man when they had to separate, and he wound up pass much of his life on the come to miss that spot in the ocean where she died. The man has re dark to the land where she died to reclaim her.  He wants to be with her forever.  However, he doesn’t know he is dead, and neither does she. Once she realizes he, too, is dead, they are able to reunite into eternity in nature, confluence themselves into an old tree where they allow live forever. handle â€Å"The adult male Who Did Not Smile,” Yasunari uses the idea of beauty and the mask that we wearâ€Jung’s â€Å"persona”â€as an aspect of â€Å"Immortality.”  The girl tells the old man, Shintaro, that she has lived in the afterlife with the image of him as a newfangled man.  â€Å"You are eternally young to me,” (p. 325) she says, even though the man is now old.If I hadn’t drowned myself and you came to the village now to see me, Iâ⠂¬â„¢d be an old woman. How disgusting.  I wouldn’t want you to see me like that.  (p. 325)For the girl, memories are important.  Her quality carries them as she lives in the afterlife.  Scholar James Hillman says that memories are important for the sense, carrying with them energy that thrives for the departed person.  The girl realizes this, too, in a way:  â€Å"If you were to die, there wouldn’t 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 foregather these as mirrors of the soul’s core, mirrors in which the soul can recognize its truths, then its flame will die and its genius wither.  (p. 159)The girl imagines ugliness representing old ageâ€that ancient mask we all wear once we have passed from the prime years of our life.  veritable(a) though the old man i s wearing that mask, she doesn’t 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, withal.  For the man, he never experienced his lover as an old woman; thus, her youth is and so eternal for him.Yasunari uses few characters in both stories, retentivity each â€Å"palm-of-the-hand” short and simple.  The narrator in â€Å"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 â€Å"Immortality.”  We do not see compactly driven characterization in either story, as Yasunari essentially paints portraits of each actor through their thoughts and actions.  Like a trade good-looking painting of a sunset(a) or sunrise, we must use our imagination amidst the texture and colors of the painting to grasp its deeper meaning.Indeed, Yasunari’s scenic use of words shines in both stori es in his colorful imagery.  It is simple:  â€Å"An old man and a young girl were walking together,” he writes to sustain â€Å"Immortality.”  He ends that story almost the same way he begins â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile”â€with the picture of the throw away.The color at evening began to drift onto the pure saplings female genitalia the great trees.  The sky beyond glowering a faint red where the ocean sounded.  (p. 326).â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile,” on the other hand, begins with the image of the sky as well.  â€Å"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 semblanceal.  It is the â€Å" wizardly of those trees” (p. 325) that captures the imagination of Shintaro and his young lov er.  Those trees are part of land his family owned, and he later sold to the men who turned the land into a golfer’s unprompted range.  The trees are on land overseeing the ocean where the girl jumped to her death.  Trees are sacred and magical in many a(prenominal) 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 â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile” comes in the heal properties of the masks.  It is through the image of the mask that the film writer is able to create an ending for his storyâ€a â€Å"beautiful daydream” (p. 128) to conclude the â€Å"dark story” (p. 129).  The masks represent his own distrust of himself and the world virtual ly him, covering with an artificial beauty the truth that lies behind them.  The masks magically hide what is true and meant to be revealedâ€whether it is an â€Å"ugly demon” (p. 132) or an â€Å"ever-smiling gentle face” (p. 132).What is also interesting about â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile” is in how the film writer’s screenplay is found on a scene inside a mental hospital.  We learn later that his wife is in a hospital of sortsâ€and we never learn the minute nature of her illness.  Could it be a mental hospital?  And might her hospitalization also be a reflection of his â€Å"gloomy” personality (p. 129)?  He’s afraid of what is hiding behind the masksâ€so much that his initial reaction to putting on the mask himself is fear.  â€Å"The mask is no good.  Art is no good” (p. 132).  Masks and art each reveal the hole-and-corner(a) dimensions.  The film writer himself uses his films to balance his own â€Å"gloomy” personality.  Yet the shadows of life are revealed through film and art, and are experienced in hospitals.  Each is an aspect of â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile.”Yasunari gives much to think about regarding our relationship to each other and ourselves in â€Å"The Man Who Did Not Smile,” and to our relationship with the magic of eternal love in â€Å"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 Yasunari’s figures can be realized.BibliographyAnderson, William.  (1990).  Green man:  The archetype of our wholeness with the earth.London:  HarperCollins.Hillman, James.  (1996).  The soul’s code.  New York:  Warner Boo ks.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 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. M ei, Ed).  Stories aboutus.  (Pp. 323-325).  Nashville:  Thomas Nelson Publishers.  (Original work published 1963).\r\n'