The aim of this paper is to throw light on the Japanese aesthetic consciousness that is characterized by suggestive feeling [yojo] and the dynamic psychic structure of relation and re-verse. For this purpose, I examine the nexus of kokoro (mind, meaning, content, emotion), kotoba (word, phone, form, text) and sugata (figure, style, phenomenon, configuration) in Japanese poetry [waka]. In the first part of this paper, "The structure and function of language", referring to Roman Jakobson's structuralistic theory of language, I discuss the processes of selection and combination that construct a sentence; the functions of language, especially the poetic; and the general structure of consciousness, consisting of relation and reverse. The second part, "The poetics of mind and word", centers on the "reverse-relation" between mind and word, the modes and styles of Japanese short poetry [tanka], and the figurative catabolism and emotive anabolism involved in the aesthetic experience of poetry. In the third part, "The phenomenology of the figure", I deal with the figure as moving form and propose a "relative-reverse" link between figure and ground, drawing on the arguments of Gestalt psychology and phenomenology. I then discuss the configuration in which lyrical feeling and epical scenery intersect. Finally I conclude that the aesthetic consciousness of suggestive feeling operates in reverse between the meaning and the being of a poetic work, according to the associative and empathic structure of the aesthetic experience of the poetic figure.
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