I'm not much of a
romantic, so I would like to provide a more grounded and
practical approach to understanding this
kotowaza, or
Japanese saying. I agree with
Wintersweet's
analysis that this saying refers to a sense of
ephemera, but I do not think it
literally means "awareness" (despite the similarity of the words'
appearances) or have any built in sense of
pity.
"mono no aware" - a deconstruction
- mono - thing, or person.
- no - possessive, marks that what precedes it is the owner of what follows it. or, that the following is a function of what precedes it.
- a(wu) - to meet, or gather, or match.
- ~are - marker of passivity for verbs, and in this form, a nominalizer
What this statement approximates, then, is the English phrase "
the way things come together", with the inflection of
passivity to imply that nothing can be done to help or hinder its progress.
Some colloquialisms expressing similar sentiment: (Thank you,
Shro0m and
mkb!)
This writeup is an exercise in demystifying Japanese as a foreign language: Yes, the words do have a concrete meaning and are not understandable only through 8 disparate English concepts. If you have any other colloquialisms to add, please msg me.