Saigyō

Saigyo has a song that makes us groan: “Tsuki wo ahare to omohitashi wa susabi ni narikeri ”(The moon in the capital is more than a number, it is a rustic rusticity). It is a song about seeing the moon on a journey and feeling that the moon was “aware” in the capital, but it is so sad that it does not even count as a thing, and this is what susabi is all about. As Saigyo sings, “Mono no aware” is sometimes the ultimate expression of people’s “monogokoro. Mabuchi and Nobunaga saw the source of this sentiment in Murasaki Shikibu’s “Genji” stories.