"If I were to tell a Japanese that it is very beautiful, he would ask what is beautiful, and I would select the clouds or the far islands or else say that everything is beautiful. In Japanese it is always something that must be beautiful. Though the language has many abstract nouns, I have rarely heard the one for 'beauty.'
"Beauty is then not a state, but a quality. It is like strength or width or weight. It implies that there are many kinds of beauty--not just one ideal beauty. Everything is real; therefore everything has its own form of beauty, and beauty exists in it and not outside it.
"Beautiful islands, beautiful sea, beautiful sky--a whole world of varied beauty."
