Space in Art : The Japanese Aesthetic on "Ma"Space in Art , or Ma in Japanese, is the empty space between either what is painted or the notes played in a song. This area left intentionally empty is just as important, if not more, to the space that was filled. It is an underlying principle among a variety of traditional Japanese arts.
In Shakuhachi music, it is often an absorbed concept via the teacher-student relationship. Ma is not merely a pause or rest, but rather silence as an equivalent value of sound. Various other Japanese traditions value ma just as much, if not more than the intended sound or brushstrokes. A good work incorporates a powerful balance between the two. There is so much to be said by not saying it. The Japanese noh specialist, Shozo Masuda, explains the concept of ma in his book, Noh no Hyogen: The famous Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu (b. 1930), successfully blended Japanese and Western music into his orchestra pieces. He was a master at blending space in art between different cultural genres of art. He is said to create music and space in art that is:
Each note is carefully articulated and accompanied by painstakingly indicated dynamic changes reflecting the aesthetics of rock placement in the Japanese garden. (Watanabe 2006) Airi Yoshioka, in her doctoral dissertation entitled “Resonating Culture: Sound of Japan in the Music of Maki Ishii, Karen Tanaka, and Toshio Hosokawa” (2002), investigated modern Japanese composers and their use of space in art. She created a list of ways to understand Ma in music: • Many Japanese performers consider ma as the underlying force that determines phrasing. For them, how one places each note is the ma itself. • in Shomyo (声明 a Buddhist ceremony) continues to influence the works of contemporary Japanese composers. Maki Ishii (1936-) finds the idea of “vocal multiplicity,” in which the unison-like flow and refinement in the chanting of the shomyo sutra create a sense of diversity within unity, particularly applicable to how the Japanese perceive a sense of space. • Ishii also talks about how ma can be created by successive climactic peaks. He deliberately juxtaposes strings of build-ups with no end in sight, so that one experiences prolonged time. • Repetitions and echoes lead to an awareness of two separate spatial concepts and therefore highlight ma. • Karen Tanaka (1961-) defines ma as “...sense of silence. Sense of space. The best timing and the best measuring the sound comes in.” • Ma can be also the distance between the composer and the performer. It is the process by which the music written by a composer comes to life through a performer(s).” (Yoshioka 2005) Notions of space in art, or the Ma, may have originally been influenced or developed via in Buddhist Music. In the shakuhachi world this space in art is an “underlying force that determines phrasing” especially in the traditional shakuhachi honkyoku pieces. Even in recordings you can often hear the breathing of the performer, which is not seen as a distraction, but as part of the musical process. Many of the shakuhachi’s vibrato techniques and ma are said to be rooted in Shomyo Chants. In a painting by the famous Sesshu, for example, stark contractions between the whites and black leave the imagination wide open for interpretation. The eyes are drawn into the unpainted area and lead you on a journey only the observer can experience. This concept of Japanese space in art is a vague notion that doesn’t always translate clearly among the various arts or to other cultures. Of course in western music there is also the concept of a musical interval and the occasional exceptional experimental artist or musician like John Cage has taken Ma to the extremes as well. However, the degree of importance space in art has played on arts such as film, painting, and music seems to be different as well as the wide acceptance of it by the general public. It has permeated Japanese culture and the space in art has become an underlying theme in various traditional Japanese arts.
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