A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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mono no aware
The bittersweet awareness of impermanence — the gentle sadness evoked by passing things. Cherry blossoms falling, the last light leaving a meadow, the final notes of a bird’s song at dusk. Not grief but tenderness toward the fact that everything passes.
Etymology
Japanese: mono (物, things) + no (の, of) + aware (哀れ, pathos, sensitivity). The pathos of things. The term was articulated by the 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga.