The Japanese are modest, less by individual character than by nature – by nature not in the sense of being born that way but rather the Japanese being conscious of superior beings within and above them that govern their own ways of being. I say beings, not being, with a clear intention of impressing on you that the Japanese are conscious of the multiplicity of the superior omnipresent in the world they inhabit – in deference to which they have grown humbly modest.

Modesty is to the Japanese what a hard-learned piece of wisdom of an obedient dog is to his master. It is a complex mentality of awesomeness, humility and helplessness with an undertone of the deepest of senses of adoration. The Japanese find godliness in almost everything on earth. They feel everything on earth has a world of its own and its own code of behavior.

Yao-yorozu
The number “800” means a sense of innumerableness – that of multiplicity in the Japanese vocabulary. Yaoya or literally “800-ers” are green grocers who sell a multiplicity of fruits and vegetables; yao-yorozu or “800-gods” denotes a multiplicity of images of godliness on earth – pebbles, twigs, handfuls of soil, and you name it. Travelers to rural areas in Japan will spot strange objects by the roadside often manually crafted to draw your attention. Ask not what they are; suffice it to merely acknowledge some one having identified in such objects his or her image of the superior.

So, the Japanese are born modest and keenly conscious of Nature – of what they see around them, regardless of organics or inorganics, the situations they find themselves in, etc. As a matter or course, their culture tends to manifest itself inwardly – contraction than expansion, understatement than overstatement, simplicity than complexity, etc. – fundamentally for fear of overriding the natural bounds of one’s inborn limits.

Now, where does all this lead us to? It leads us to a realm of how and why Japanese culture has culminated to be what it is: the less artificiality the higher the value.

Gardening
Take, or instance, the art of gardening. Japanese gardens feature Nature as she is; infinitely few vacant straight lines, less crude symmetries, and, above all, a way loftier sense of balance. Shakkei is an art rarely found in the western school of gardening. It is a method of employing Nature into designing a garden in such a way that that a segment or segments of Nature blend naturally into the garden itself e.g. a distant hill providing the background of garden being built nearer by.

Flower Arrangement
In the Japanese art flower arrangement, the concept of ten, chi, jin is the bottom line of the art in the sense that every piece of material is placed in a total balance of heaven, earth and man. Modest is not man alone; Heaven takes heed to earth; earth to man. The Japanese find a cosmos in flower arrangement, each of the three elements taking heed to one another.

Gardening and flower arrangement are a pair of images in which the Japanese portray Nature as they conceive her with deep respect. In both images Nature is transfigured and distilled into arts in such a way that Nature is tacitly lived and digested in daily life.

In either instance, respect for Nature abounds to the fullest – so does the sense of modesty on the part of man.

Rikyu and Way of Tea
The way of tea is a spinoff of gardening. It is an art of whiling amid Nature. The master Sen Rikyu has a son named Shinsho. He asked his son to clean up the garden.

Shinsho spent hours sweeping, picking up litters, watering the plants and dusting the stone lanterns.

Work done, Shinsho told his father he had done the cleaning. Rikyu took a glance at the “work done” and told his son to “do it all over”. Perplexed, Shinsho paid extra care picking every leaf off the ground, washing the lanterns twice each, and watering the plants on the double. He reported: “Father, no leave is left on the ground, the lanterns are dustless and the plants are fully watered”.

Rikyu walked straight to a nearby tree full of colored leaves ready to fall. He shook it; the ground below turned a carpet of fallen leaves. “Son, cleaning is not picking every leaf off the ground.”

The episode is suggestive – in that Nature must be respected for what she is and that man must be devout in altering what is natural.

Modesty is an expression of respect for Nature as what she is. The Japanese are brought up to be attentive to Nature – the nature of everything in sight: pebbles, twigs, a handful of soil – not to mention fellowmen.