My Thoughts on What is Japanese (3) Yukimi / When I Shine, I Become Invisible

This article is the sequel and conclusion to the following two articles.

※This is a revised version of my student report and is not a commentary on the M-1 comedy routine by Don de Colte.

※Since my goal for this year is to "cherish the season," I wrote this two days after the snow fell.

Photo/Nagoya Lucent Tower light-up (center) and illumination (right). It is rare to see them used together.

Yukimi (Snow Viewing)

Snow strips away visual information.

Unlike flower viewing or moon viewing, the object of appreciation in snow viewing disappears. In a world of wabi where everything is dyed white, not only is the "imagination" of the viewer required, but also the "creativity" of the designer, whose work remains visible even when covered in snow. For example, a Japanese garden. In contrast to the autumn foliage, in the winter season, the leaves of broad-leaved trees fall, leaving only the trunks and branches. When the garden paths are covered in snow, the ground becomes entirely white, and only the branching of the trees stands out clearly as a figure.

In flower viewing, the trunks and branches that were the ground become the figure in snow viewing.

Gardeners plant trees with an eye not only for the beauty of the peak strolling season from spring to autumn, but also for the branching in winter. In fact, one could say that if the proportions are beautiful in winter, beauty is guaranteed in all other seasons. Pines, stone arrangements, stone lanterns, and the structure of the garden plan are all determined solely by their proportions. Winter turns the garden into a sculpture stripped of all its finery.

Furthermore, snow also strips away auditory information.

It is not that people do not go out because of the snow. It is due to the laws of physics. Thickly piled snow exerts the same level of sound-absorbing capability as porous sound-absorbing materials. Therefore, on snowy days, a silence drifts around more than usual. Snow strips away visual information and also strips away auditory information.

With this, the vision and hearing that are important to humans have been stripped away by the snow.

A state where vision and hearing are stripped away compared to normal times is close to a state of zazen or meditation. If you do not intentionally turn on the TV, play music, or call friends, it can be said that snow viewing is a time of meditation to remove distracting thoughts. While I am aware that it is not so simple in snowy regions, I think there are some among us Tokyoites who feel their hearts are cleansed when it snows.

I have stated that vision, hearing, and distracting thoughts are removed by snow. The commercialized city, which promotes consumption by inciting desire, does not approve of this. They wrap street trees in electric lights, play Christmas songs from November, and are not satisfied with Christmas, so they create Black Friday. This is the figure of modern Japanese people who have forgotten snow viewing.

They cannot find beauty or business opportunities in the sturdiness of the reclining pine tree stretching over the pond, nor in the form of the stone arrangements and snow-viewing lanterns that emerge as the color disappears.

Illuminations and Light-ups

There is a passage like this in the manzai routine by Don de Colte at the M-1 Grand Prix 2025.

This passage has been discussed in various Note articles, sometimes citing philosophers, but as someone who has studied architecture, I would like to speak about it from the perspective of the relationship between trees, illuminations, human vision, and space. (My goal this year is to jump on current trends, so I will do so proudly.)

Self-illuminating Christmas lights blur the lines of trees with their glare. If the space and the linear form of the trees are beautiful, surface-lighting (light-up) as seen in Japanese gardens is sufficient. Even if a bodybuilder were wrapped in illuminations, the definition of their muscles would not be visible. A space that chooses illuminations rather than light-ups is a reflection of the fact that the space cannot compete with its raw aesthetic beauty.

As I mentioned earlier, the magnificent trees that live vigorously in Japanese gardens possess the same aesthetic beauty as a bodybuilder. On the other hand, trees wrapped in illuminations are those found on roads, in parks, or at commercial facilities. Especially on roads, priority is given to maintainability, road alignment (not winding up, down, left, or right), and ensuring visibility (branches not growing downward). Therefore, road trees are better the more mediocre and faithful to standards they are; they must not have individuality.

This is particularly noticeable in Tokyo. Due to the speed of post-war reconstruction and economic considerations, excluding large-scale gardens like Meiji Jingu or the Imperial Palace, new parks and roads follow the same road standards (compliant with the Road Act) and park planning (compliant with the Urban Parks Act), leading to a situation where every town looks the same. (They cannot be compared to street trees and public parks around Kyoto).

In a private garden, gardeners and owners select trees at a nursery to match the garden, but for roads and parks, they simply have products that meet the planning standards delivered. In a private garden, there are no legal standards, so non-standard, unplanned, or off-budget items are permitted as individuality, leading to attachment. However, this is not the case for roads and parks. This difference affects the individuality of the tree shape and the quality of the space, determining whether it becomes a light-up (attachment) or an illumination (lack of individuality).

Since the main text is a citation from a student report, it compared magnificent trees to bodybuilders and focused on their individuality and strength. The same applies to how the trunk and branches change from ground to figure in Yukimi (snow viewing).

On the other hand, if we overlay street trees onto the Don de Colte routine, the street trees are deviated from the meaning of being a tree by the illuminations, and their perception changes into an existence that is even more non-existent. Modern people barely look at trees to begin with, so they become many times more invisible than an old man claiming “I become invisible” while wrapped in illuminations. (The old man is a human, so he is a figure, but trees are ground except in winter).

I want to change this situation. Paradoxically speaking, I want to convey that trees not wrapped in illuminations are magnificent trees.

If I were to talk about illuminations, it would only reach a handful of people, so I am genuinely happy about this. The same can be said for Uno-san's “Garden Stories.” I think many people re-evaluated what a garden is through that book. Similarly, I hope that the Don de Colte routine will create an opportunity for people to think about illuminations and light-ups. I would like everyone who read this article to visit a Japanese garden during the winter and see the way the trees live.

Conclusion

In class, we covered many expressive techniques such as 'kekkai' (boundaries) and 'mitate' (metaphorical representation) as examples of 'what is Japanese,' but I believe the essence rooted in these methods is the relative relationship between the subject and the environment. Like the wind that sets the cherry blossoms, the sake that sets the moon, or the snow that sets the tree shape, the flickering natural directors (mediating devices) constantly change the distance between the subject and the environment, and it is this that has sublimated things found all over the world—snow, moon, and flowers—into 'what is Japanese.'

Reference: Kazuyoshi Miyoshi, 'Katsura Imperial Villa'