Essay #15: on wabi-sabi
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that appraises the beauty of imperfection. It says: a tarnished, withered thing is more valuable than a new one. Every flaw and scar add up, creating a personal story as time unveils the essence of a thing. Wabi-sabi is about embracing reality in all its manifestations: crumbling, cracking, fading, changing every single moment.
It is about the beauty of real, as opposed to imagined ideals. Wabi-sabi can relate not only to things but also to people. Our scars, bruises, cracks, and dents are the evidence of our existence. They feature our stories. This philosophy is a rebellion against the expectations of being perfect and appropriate, it restores the right to make mistakes. It says: flaws can be beautiful because beauty is not an intrinsic feature but a moment of poetry and grace.
Wabi-sabi celebrates mundane details and rejects conventional good taste, sometimes deliberately preferring the “wrong solutions”. It sees simplicity as a basis for the pure beauty, while nothingness embodies the ultimate beauty. Some call it “Zen of things”, and most of its founders were practicing Zen. Initially, there were two different words — wabi refers to spiritual, inward, spatial, philosophical; and sabi refers to material, outward, temporal, aesthetic. Nowadays, the difference between the two is blurred, and often they are used as synonyms.
Wabi-sabi emerged as a denial to Chinese aesthetic ideals of relentless pursuit of perfection. Its origin marks an important cultural milestone: the appearance of the authentic Japanese identity within six centuries of cultural influences of Chinese Taoism and Zen Buddhism. This philosophy extends beyond aesthetics and comprises a comprehensive paradigm with a core tenet “material poverty equals to spiritual richness.” Note: this poverty is self-imposed and calls to admit the evanescence of anything material and to appreciate overlooked details of everyday life.
This concept is elusive with no official definitions or textbooks. Wabi-sabi is rooted in material culture and passed on from generation to generation for nearly 500 years. Most of this time the philosophy was kept as an intellectual property of a limited circle. A comprehensive explanation has been deliberately avoided to stay faithful to the idea that reason subordinates to perception and inhibit purely rational approach to wabi-sabi. As if fully explained, it will diminish.
Wabi-sabi is all about imperfect, impermanent, incomplete. Yet it is somewhat optimistic: it claims that nothingness is full of possibilities.
Further reading:
- Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
- In Praise of Boredom by Joseph Brodsky
- Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
- Rei Kawakubo’s Creative Manifesto
- Kintsukuroi
- Raku
