lightly the night before. As I glanced up to see what was glistening I spotted a spider’s web masterfully
created, nestled delicately against the pink new petals of the crab apple tree. As the morning sun shined
down on the tree, it made the rain droplets that hung to the spider’s web and that laid on the petals sparkle
in an almost ethereal way. In that moment, everything in the world became beautiful to me because the
glistening spider’s web was everything. I felt as though nothing outside that single damp spider’s web
mattered and nothing existed outside of it, not even myself, because everything that existed was already
within that one spider’s web.

The moment was achingly brief, but it was real and even the memory of it, though I am sure the scene
I recall is faded in comparison, still has the power to make my heart clench at how insignificant humans are
when a common spider’s web can humble us. It was not until years later I understood what had happened in
that moment. Without knowledge of it or any training in Buddhism, I had somehow experienced the Zen
Buddhism mystery of becoming-being and being-becoming. This mystery exemplifies the Zen Buddhism
philosophy that all is one and one is all, wherein the universe is the all and a single entity is the one, and
whether that one was the sparkling spider’s web or whether it was me, does not matter at all, for the
spider’s web was me and I was the spider’s web in that one moment. This mystery is implied in several
places within haikus as well as other Japanese art forms. I don’t know if I will ever feel that sort of sincere
peace again, I can only hope that one day something seemingly insignificant will catch my attention once
more and become the universe in my eye.

22



The Coexistence of Order and Spontaneity
Lisa Kawamoto (Columbia University)
For as long as I can remember, I have reveled in the beauty in the small details that often go
unnoticed. From the insects scurrying beneath the rocks in my back yard with their flawlessly shiny backs
to a well-chosen word in poetry, the quiet splendor in details has irresistibly attracted me. The hyphen in
“Japanese-American,” the adjective that describes me most fundamentally, is the smallest element in this
phrase—yet because it binds my two halves together, it is crucial. This hyphen has been the source of both
difficulty and satisfaction in coming to terms with myself.

When I entered Kenkō’s world through his Essays in Idleness, I felt the yearnings of a man who
struggled with seemingly contradictory sentiments. Idealizing a life spent in isolated introspection in “A
Person Who Complains of Having Nothing to Do” while decrying the behavior of “rustic boors” in “Are
We to Look at Cherry Blossoms Only in Full Bloom?”, at times, Kenkō seemed to vacillate from valuing
individuality to clinging to conventional attitudes about propriety (835, 838). Perhaps my attention to detail
was what made me uneasy when Kenkō’s arguments seemed to be at odds with each other across his
essays. Yet after multiple readings, Kenkō began to provide me with an organized framework within which
he allowed his thoughts and my thoughts alike to wander. Rebelling against the conventionally negative
association with tsurezure, or idleness, Kenkō defended idleness (Shirane 820). For Kenkō, idleness was an
opportunity for one to muse without the delusions of society and without becoming “captured by the filth of
the outside world” (835).

I began to appreciate what had seemed like contradictions in Essays in Idleness as the reflections of a
thinker who embraced imperfection. In “A Proper Dwelling,” Kenkō argues that “A house which multitudes
of workmen have polished with every care…and even the grasses and trees of the garden have been trained
unnaturally, is ugly to look at and most depressing” (825). Kenkō is repulsed by the artificial air that results
when one devotes too much energy to “perfecting” a house. Instead, Kenkō’s ideal home is one in which
things are allowed to scatter and looks as though it is “lived in” (825). In my mind, Kenkō’s essays start to
become these ideal homes of their own—single essays are devoted to one broad topic, but within this
framework, Kenkō allows his thoughts to meander. As with writers before him, the anxiety surrounding the
impermanence of life can be glimpsed, but Kenkō also expresses his enjoyment of everyday life.

Though it is a medieval work, Essays in Idleness was surprisingly fresh and spoke deeply to me. To
me, Kenkō struggled to reconcile his conflicting desires to be accepted as a member of society and to be
true to his true desires, ultimately abandoning this human impulse to reconcile and organize. “In the U.S., I
feel Japanese. In Japan, I feel American,” I remember saying in my elementary and middle school years.

Every two or three years, I would spend the summer at my grandparents’ home in Iwate Prefecture and eye-
opening as the experience was, I would inevitably long for the “American freedom for individuality.” Once
I was back in my mostly white town, I was frustrated that no one understood how alienating it was to
immediately be viewed not as merely a girl but an Asian girl.

Quite simplistically, I grew to characterize the Japanese mindset as stiflingly focused on conformity.

Individuals were put into the Japanese education system and test-takers were churned out; for good
measure, the work atmosphere would stamp out the remaining traces of creative thought, I believed. In my
mind, the American mindset—parading the triumph of the individual—was no better alternative. How was
I supposed to trumpet my attributes in a crowd of everyone doing exactly the same?
Now, I define myself as an intermediary. I struggle to make sense of the world around me while
granting myself the room to unleash the world within me. I believe that there are fundamental human
characteristics that transcend nationality and other obvious descriptions such as race, gender, sexual
orientation, and creed. I also believe that in each individual lives a world of ideas that—try as he or she
might—cannot all be accepted or even transmitted to another. I believe in this struggle of truths, and I
imagine that I can act as an intermediary between my own desires to belong and to be individual.

I am an intermediary in the more literal sense as well. I began to translate texts in Japanese to English
as an intern at an information services company this summer, and my fascination with translation has only
grown. Translation seems at the same time to be an abstruse process and a transmittance of content. The
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