Ma (negative space)

Shōrin-zu byōbu — left side of a diptych by Hasegawa Tōhaku

Ma (間) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause" or "the space between two structural parts." The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.

Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.

Usage in the West

Japanese ryakuji "abbreviated character" for 間.

In his 2001 book The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher discusses the importance of exemplifying "space" as a substance:

Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modelled space. Giacometti sculpted by "taking the fat off space". Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses... Isaac Stern described music as "that little bit between each note - silences which give the form"... The Japanese have a word (ma) for this interval which gives shape to the whole. In the West we have neither word nor term. A serious omission.

Thomas Pynchon's book The Crying of Lot 49 stresses the concept of waste in language, in terms of negative space determining outcomes of actual events.

See also

• Maai
• Mu (negative)
• Wu wei, a term in Chinese philosophy
• Negative space
• Liminality