The Socrates Express

For every one thing Shōnagon likes there are three she finds unpleasant or disturbing or repulsive or, her ultimate smackdown, infuriating. Among these, she says: “A guest who arrives when you have something urgent to do. A very ordinary person who beams insanely as she prattles on and on. A dog that discovers a clandestine lover as he comes creeping in, and barks. Fleas. Someone who butts in when you’re talking and smugly provides the ending herself. (Indeed anyone who butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriating.) Flies. A mosquito that announces itself with that thin little wail just as you’ve settled sleepily into bed. Rain all day on New Year’s Eve.”

Shōnagon is opinionated, but flexibly so. Consider the blossoms of a pear tree. The Japanese considered them ugly, and deployed them in insults, such as “he had a face like a pear blossom.” Yet the Chinese adored them, she notes, so “there must be something to it after all.” Sure enough, upon further reflection, she concludes they do possess a certain beauty. If you take a “careful and sympathetic look at it, you may notice that just at the tips of the petals there is the barest hint of a rather lovely luster.”

Like Gandhi, Shōnagon was fussy. Consider this observation: “I cannot bear people who wear a white shirt that is slightly yellowed.” Normally this sort of fastidiousness irritates me no end, but I grow to appreciate Shōnagon. She’s not so much picky as she is sensitive.

Like Epicurus, Shōnagon invents a taxonomy of pleasure. She distinguishes the merely pleasurable from the truly okashii, or delightful. Delight, unlike pleasure, contains an element of surprise, an unexpected frisson. And delight, unlike pleasure, leaves no bitter aftertaste. You never saw the delight coming so you don’t miss it when it’s gone.

For Shōnagon, the smallest detail can tip the balance. She approves of a three-layer fan, but not a five-layer one (“too thick, and the base looks ugly”). It is delightful when there’s a feeling of snow in the air but “it ruins the mood of the occasion if the skies are instead heavy with the threat of rain.” Hers is the philosophy of just-so-ism. Something is either just right or it is not right at all. Miss by an inch and you might as well have missed by a mile. An ox should have a tiny splash of white on its forehead, while cats should be completely black, “except for its belly, which should be very white.” Musical performances are delightful but only at night, “when you can’t see people’s faces.”

Something need not be perfect for Shōnagon to declare it delightful, but it must be appropriate. It must fit the mood, or the season. It must align with its essence. Thus “summer is best when it is extremely hot, winter when it is excruciatingly cold.”

Shōnagon engages all her senses but especially the olfactory. She delights in the “sudden unfamiliar smell of the ox’s leather crupper” and “taking a midday nap snuggled up under a lightly padded kimono that gives off a faint whiff of perspiration.” She adored “scenting frames,” wooden contraptions designed to infuse an article of clothing with the smell of a certain incense, and she enjoyed a good “scent-off,” fierce competitions to see who could mix the most aromatic incense.

Most philosophers dismiss smell. Tomes have been written about the aesthetics of vision and the philosophy of music, yet hardly a word on scent. (Kant denied the sense any aesthetic status at all.) Yet smell is the most deeply rooted of senses. An infant as young as six weeks shows a strong preference for his mother’s scent over that of another woman. Smell triggers memory in ways the other senses do not. Sadly, smell is now the bastard sense. To say something “smells” is to imply it smells badly. If something is suspect, we say it “smells fishy.”

As Thoreau taught me, we only see what we’re prepared to see. Most of us are ill-prepared to see the small. Not Shōnagon. She knew our lives are nothing more, or less, than the sum of a million tiny joys. “Shaved ice with a sweet syrup, served in a shiny new metal bowl. A crystal rosary. Wisteria flowers. Snow on plum blossoms. An adorable little child eating strawberries. A tiny lotus leaf that’s been picked from a pond.”

Like many Japanese, then and now, Shōnagon was fond of sakura, cherry blossoms. The trees are famously fleeting. They bloom for two or three days, and then are gone. Other flowers—plum blossoms, for instance—last considerably longer. Why go to such great lengths to cultivate something so fragile?