“In America linear perspective is still the most popular art style for the general public. Chinese and Japanese artists, on the other hand, symbolize depth in quite a different way. Oriental art shifts the viewing point while maintaining the scene as constant. Much of Western art does just the opposite. In fact, a most significant difference between the East and the West . . . [is that] space itself is perceived entirely differently. In the West, man perceives the objects but not the spaces between. In Japan, the spaces are perceived, named, and revered as the ma, or intervening interval.”

—Edward T. Hall, from The Hidden Dimension, 1966.