Word! The Language Column
Ma, Mu and the Silence of Noise

Jan Snela’s memories of his trip to Japan take him back to the ambient noise in Tokyo…. and the shrill cries of Japanese cicadas, as captured in a Bashō haiku. Tokyo is overwhelming, but he comes across a Japanese word that encapsulates the paradoxical emptiness and absence he feels in the teeming city.
By Jan Snela
Bear in mind that Japanese cicadas bear no relation to ours, which sound idyllic, like the air catching fire. Theirs sound more like a UFO landing. Like radioactivity, if we could hear it. Or like contemporary art music. At any case, you’ll find no more trace of quiet tranquillity in their strident stridulation than in the blaring of the giant video screens at the Shibuya crossing or in the frenzied cacophony of the hellish pachinko parlours. So Japanese cicadas fit right in with the local soundscapes, which are full of all sorts of different stridencies. And yet, whenever my thoughts turn to Japan, I feel a glistening tranquillity inside.
Memories of Tokyo

The clattering of pachinko balls. A bonsai reflected in the glass façade of a skyscraper, with a sparrow chirping shrilly inside the building. Like the screeching of the cicadas boring deep into the rock. When I think back on those days in Japan, I listen into the interstices of time. Where the seconds, hours and weeks fuse and separate. There’s a Japanese word for this: ma (間), which means something like distance, duration, the emptiness in-between, an interval. The syllable that practitioners of meditation have been chanting in Zen monasteries for centuries (when they’re not counting their breaths) sounds almost exactly the same: mu (無), which means something like “no” or “not”. Both refer to a moment of absence, rather than any postulated fullness of being, that is present in all Asian cultures.
A sense of silence

In Japan – as evidenced by another private poll I conducted – hardly anyone knows much about Zen anymore. Tell them you’re into Zen and they’ll be as disconcerted as we’d be if someone told us that they pray a rosary every day. But my impression is that the Japanese, much as they seem content with all that ambient noise, hold a deep sense of silence inside them. Silence not as something that follows after the shrill cries have died down, but as something listening from deep inside those cries.
Word! The Language Column
Our column “Word!” appears every two weeks. It is dedicated to language – as a cultural and social phenomenon. How does language develop, what attitude do authors have towards “their” language, how does language shape a society? – Changing columnists – people with a professional or other connection to language – follow their personal topics for six consecutive issues.