“ah/un-no-kokyuu...”

“The lion-dogs were originally a lion and a dog, and were very different in appearance, but over the years stonecutters found it easier to carve them to the same proportions. The two figures grew more and more alike until their features blended. One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open-mouthed dog is named “Ah”, and the other is named “Un”, or more properly, “nn”. “Ah” is the first sound you make when you are born, “nn”, the last sound you make when you die. “Ah” is the breath inhaled that begins life, “nn” the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. “あ” is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, “ん” the last. And so, between the two lion-dogs, you also have the A and Z, the Alpha and Omega. In the original Sanskrit, “ah-un” means “the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed”.

In Japan, people who are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in duet, are called “ah/un-no-kokyuu”. “Kokyuu” means “breathing”, and phrase has the nuance of perfect, exquisite harmony: “ah/un-no-kokyuu”, two or more breathing as one.

If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, the common breath is the ideal to which Japan – and indeed, much of Asia – aspires. The word “harmony” in Japan has the same cachet that the word “freedom” has in the West. In Japan, the word for freedom, “jiyuu”, carries with it the nuance of selfish or irresponsible behavior. Group Harmony is a higher value. This does not make the Japanese a nicer people. There are thieves and cheats and nasty characters in Japan as there are anywhere. But the values that Japanese society subscribe to are starkly different from those of the West. If you had to embody the ideals of the West, it would be the Statue of Liberty, or the Goddess of Jiyuu as she is known in Japan, standing defiantly, the torch raised: a singular, powerful, one-of-a-kind presence. This is not the type of thing you would choose if you wished to give form to Japanese ideals. The ideals of Japan are captured in a thousand small stone guardians, in a thousand shrines, big and small, across Japan. A dog and lion so near in spirit that they have blended into one. “Ah/un-no-kokyuu”.”

-from Will Ferguson's "Hokkaido Highway Blues"