Length of time depends upon our ideas
Size of space hangs upon our sentiments
For one whose mind is free from care
A day will outlast the millenium
For one whose heart is large
A tiny room is as the space between heaven and earth
The translation of "ma" as "place" is my own. The dictionaries say "space" but historically the notion of place precedes our contemporary understanding as a measurable area. I guess having a 'sense of place' does not negate an objective awareness of the static or homogeneous quality of topological space with an additional subjective awareness of lived, existential, non-homogeneous space.
There are a few dimensions to the concept of "Ma". The one-dimensional realm is something like 'hari-ma' ('Beam Span'). Here 'ma' denotes a line in space, a measure of length or distance. From ancient times, Japanese architecture was based on wooden post and beam construction. The distance between the centrelines of successive posts - the 'hashira-ma' - evolved into the basic structural unit of hte traditional Japanese wooden house. To signify this carpentry measure, the character 'ma' is also pronounced as 'ken'.
The 2-dimensional realm is used in something like 'roku jo no ma' ('six tatami area'). This denotes area. For a Japanese person, however, a reference to a room of a certain number of floor mats would also instantly call to mind a particular usage, interior makeup, decoration and height.
Then there's the 3-dimensional realm as in 'ku-kan' (empty place or room). The first character in this word ('ku') originally stood for a 'house in the ground' and later took on its present meaning of a 'hole in the universe', or 'the sky'. Legend has it that hte ancient JApanese people divded space vertically into two parts. One was Sora (sky) which was understood as absence of context, emptiness. The other was 'ame' or 'ama' (heaven) which was the opposite of Kuni (region, realm, government) and this meant an unearthly area of habitation and rule.Today, 'ku' is used for 'empty' in the simple physical space and for 'void' in Buddhist metaphysics. The compound 'ku-kan' is of recent origin. It was coined to express the concept of 3-dimensional objective space which was imported from the West, for which the Japanese language had no word of it own.
The 4-dimensional realm is more philosophical. 'Ji-kan' means time-place. This is abstrat time, with no indication of length, beginning or end. The 'ji' character, which incorporates the radical for 'sun', is said to have denoted 'forward moevement of the sun' in ancient China. In Japanese, the character is also pronounced 'toki', perhaps from the very old Japanese verb 'tokei', 'to melt' or 'dissolve'. Thus 'time' is expressed in Japanese as 'space in flow', making time a dimension of space.
This multi-dimensional role of 'ma' to space and time is not simply semantic. It reflects the fact that all experience of space is a time-structured process, and all experience of time is a space-structured process. When we look at a traditional Japanese scroll picture or 'emaki-mono' of hte 12th and 13th centuries, times is concretely present as our eyes follow a sequence of spatial events interrupted by writing. Our hands actually unroll the scroll, that is, 'move the space' as time passes.
During the Edo Period, tourist manuals of famous scenic routes was an additional technique used to represent space as a time-structured process. The spatial sights would be drawn above and below the continuous central road, to show how they would unfold themsleves concretely over time to the actual traveller.
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