Ukiyo-e "pictures of the floating world".
No other nation in the world has managed to depict the impermanence and ephemeral nature of the world around us as well as the Japanese.
Maybe since I am a Buddhist at heart, Japanese art and culture have always touched me so deeply. Many times before, especially during my stay in Japan, I had been bewildered by the picturesque landscapes and astonishing beauty of Japanese nature, but at the same time felt a certain degree of melancholy over everything that was in front of my eyes, as if the air itself was saturated with it.
I always wondered, what is this feeling exactly? How can I translate it into my language? Since Russians are accustomed to get nostalgic and melancholic quite easily, yet that doesn't necessarily mean depressed, and since we enjoy being in this state, normally looking out of the window on the world outside; the closest interpretation of this earnest somber yet pleasant sentiment that I have found, as a Slavic soul, is 'svetlaya grustj' or literally 'light sorrow' ('light' as in bright).