Phenomenology of Ma and Maai: An Interpretation of Zeami’s Body Cosmology from a Phenomenological Point of View

Abstract

In this paper, I shall try to clarify from the standpoint of phenomenology, the essential features of the phenomenon of ma (間) and maai (間合い). I shall delineate their cultural and philosophical implications by interpreting the treatises of Noh by Motokiyo Zeami. Zeami was the most important Noh performer, playwright, and esthetic theorist. Ma is the physical/mental distance that prepares the advent of the future. It is a phenomenon which cannot be grasped by a dualistic conceptualization of object and subject; it is a phenomenon of temporalization which brings a future event and makes the present in the process of having been. Ma is an intersubjective occasion that provides us with an empty and silent place to encounter the other. Ma is the empty time–space that produces an event and rhythms. But rhythm is never a repetition of the same, but a return of the similar in a renewed form. Nature never produces the same thing, but renews things from times past. In this paper, I shall conclude that ma is finally defined as indivisible movement of life that articulates itself as rhythms; maai is an encounter of a power of life with another life. In Noh performance and martial arts, ma and maai have been attached importance because they are necessary conditions for artistic creation to renew the past and produce a return of the similar.