What is love? HH

  

In moments of extreme curiosity and eagerness, I typed this into the Google search engine bar. Dozens of results come back: a K-pop song by TWICE about three years ago (I heard the song, it is pretty fun), some suggestions to a therapy course, some philosophy or psychological videos, etc. Not what I was looking for, I thought. But I don’t think this is Google’s fault, I don’t think that there’s anything or anyone can give me a satisfying answer. This is not their fault also because love itself is so complicated and hard to define.

I think that we do have a tendency to label things so that we can categorize (Aristotle is agreeing with me in his grave, I know that as a fact) and therefore, make sense of the world. It is easier to do so. Even Kant has categories for morality. When one of your annoying relative asks “what is that person to you?”, they expect to receive a definite answer. But the more that I see and experience love, the harder it is to think about what love is. I don’t even think that the Greek descriptions of love – philia and eros – are enough to describe human affection anymore. Noriko’s affection for each other seems to fall into one of those difficult cases in which you can’t define it.

Noriko does not seem to be interested in any man. Contrary to all of her friends, she does not express any desire to be with any person romantically. One can go as far to say that she is asexual, and I think they’re not wrong to think so. She’s definitely a family person and she cares a lot about her family as well as Kenichi’s. She’s also quite friendly with Kenichi, but that is so different from what Eros is usually portrayed I don’t know if I can call it passionate love. There is a connection between her and Kenichi however. They have been neighbors and they both love Noriko’s dead brother. I think she has compassion towards him and his circumstances (a dead wife and a child left behind), and vice versa. Kenichi can see the pain that she must have endured when her brother dies. The trust of their relationship is built upon this compassion and understanding, and therefore Noriko can say that she could trust Kenichi. This touches me, because a lot of people can say they love someone, not many people can say they trust someone else. This is why I think we should not think that they want to get married just because they know that the other person is gay. This assumption will undermine the beauty in their relationship.

It seems difficult to label their relationship because that will strip off the nuances, but I wonder what is it about labelling and categorizing that appeal to us so much? Sometimes labelling is necessary in relationship, and when we don’t label something, are we missing something?

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshNovember 28, 2021 at 9:31 AM

    Those last questions are resonant. We label out of fear of the unknown or unresolved, or fear of losing control and losing ourselves? Shakespeare's sonnets imply that what we call "love" is elusive precisely because it's created by poets-- who turn these complex attachments into memorable images which then inform cultures, and blind us to our real emotions.

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    1. HHNovember 28, 2021 at 8:27 PM

      How does having a label blind us to our real emotions? Don't people label their relationships to feel grounded and see clearly what the other person mean to them? Is marriage the most popular and sought-after label of history?

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  2. Mr. DightDecember 16, 2021 at 2:08 PM

    I once again struggled to be able to post myself so I choose to leave it here as a comment: Over and Over, Mr. Venkatesh has began our preceptorial calling upon us to describe the emotions presented upon Noriko's face. Each time it proved to be incredibly difficult and I found myself without the words to describe what Ozu and Noriko intended. This makes me wonder about the cultural and linguistic difference in the experience of these films as an American or as Japanese. Its my understanding that the Japanese language is far more expansive when it comes to emotions. When we have our limited word "love" they have it broken down into far more categories. So, when presented with Norikos face, Im tempted to recognize it as happy or sad and this may be a disservice to the intricate expression presented. It may be the case that my vocabulary limits my interpretation and because of a strong urge to categorize the emotions I see, I may not get the chance to experience the intricacies of expression that Ozu intends. So, this is all just to say, that I encourage that we all try to avoid such categorization and instead try to have an immediate experience with the film without initially using our language to interpret.

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