3 ideas
In Japanese aesthetics, ma is the interval between sounds, treated as a tense, living space rather than an empty rest. The silence after a sound holds that sound's resonance and gives it meaning, so the composer shapes the intervals as deliberately as the notes themselves. Sound and silence are equal materials, not figure and background.
Instruments like the biwa and shamisen are built with sawari, a deliberate buzzing noise within the tone, so that a single sound carries rich timbre and change. Takemitsu treats such complex individual sounds, which he also hears in the shakuhachi's breathy timbre, as meaningful units in themselves, in contrast to the Western emphasis on clean pitch organized into melody and harmony.
A stroll garden has no single correct viewpoint. Its meaning comes from the elements (stones, water, plants) being seen from shifting angles as the visitor moves, and from the garden changing with the seasons. Read this way, a musical piece becomes a space the listener moves through, not a narrative argument, and each part keeps its own identity while relating to the whole.