
Wabi-sabi - wslh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
======
mturmon
This concept is useful, but I believe the wikipedia page is inaccurate in its
description. For instance, I don't think that Ryōan-ji (the famous rock
garden) illustrates wabi-sabi at all, and the teahouse is marginal. The
teacup, on the other hand, is excellent.

The long narrative history of older meanings of the two words is also not very
helpful. Here's a much better summary
([http://www.nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-
Sabi.htm](http://www.nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm)) that
reads in part:

"So now we have wabi, which is humble and simple, and sabi, which is rusty and
weathered. And we've thrown these terms together into a phrase that rolls off
the tongue like Ping-Pong. Does that mean, then, that the wabi-sabi house is
full of things that are humble, plain, rusty, and weathered? That's the easy
answer. The amalgamation of wabi and sabi in practice, however, takes on much
more depth."

And I don't think ikebana (floral arrangement) is generally a reflection of
wabi-sabi, much less haiku (section entitled "Wabi-sabi in Japanese arts").

Anyway, kind of a mess. Someone should fix that ;-)

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twelvechairs
"Wabi sabi" is a not a commonly used (or known) term in contemporary Japan,
although it has been popularised in western art circles to exemplify a
Japanese art. A more used term in Japan (as far as I have been told - I am not
Japanese myself) which has a related meaning is 'mono no aware' (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware)
).

[edit] to plug a book on Japanese culture (as it was, rather than as it is
now) to anyone with the time or interest, I highly recommend Bernard
Rudofsky's 1965 book 'The Kimono Mind'.

~~~
patio11
Mild disagree on your first sentence: It has featured prominently in several
TV profiles of local artists, including in self-aware commentary by artists
about the aesthetic values they are aiming for. It's entirely possible that a
Japanese person might not be familiar with it, in the same manner that baroque
might be a baroque reference to many Americans, but my impression is that it
is well within the realm of 常識. My wife (Japanese) was surprised when I asked
her to confirm that.

I do agree that it gets thrown about as The Essential Guide To The Monolithic
Japanese Art Tradition quite frequently on the other side of the Pacific,
though. (Those are sarcasm caps.)

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wozniacki
I just read this yesterday in the New Yorker piece about JD.[1]

    
    
      When he was a teen-ager, Dorsey told me, he read a book about tea
      ceremonies and was impressed by the Japanese precept of wabi-sabi,
      which holds that the greatest beauty comes from organization with a
      dash of disorder. “The monks rake up leaves, then they sprinkle a few
      leaves back,” he explained.
    

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/21/131021fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/21/131021fa_fact_max)

~~~
hboon
From the timestamp and the URL — Oct 21 — was it published too early?

~~~
elemeno
It's not abnormal to see time stamps like that with print publications - they
often publish to the web in advance of the print edition coming out, but it
makes sense to use the print edition as the 'reference' edition when it comes
to dating articles.

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alexdevkar
This is an excellent term to throw around carelessly with your designer
friends.

~~~
autodidakto
My wabi-sabi based startup just raised $100m.

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davesims
Reminds me of one of my favorite bits of rock criticism from the early oughts,
Farm Report Wabi Sabi:

[http://nypress.com/farm-report-wabi-sabi/](http://nypress.com/farm-report-
wabi-sabi/)

'Then my favorite fellow Bubba, Jesse Gutierrez, came by to swallow some
beers. He told me that he’s been studying Japanese esthetics, and that what I
was talking about was "wabi-sabi," the beauty of the humble and the imperfect.
Wabi-sabi, declaimed Jesse, his thumbs hooked into the straps of his overalls,
was developed to its height by 15th-century tea masters who found that the
finish of Chinese Ming porcelain began to cloy. They started buying and
exalting absolutely plain Korean peasant ware, stuff that was cracked,
distressed, flawed. It reminded them of the beauty of nature, autumn leaves on
a stone path.'

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dccoolgai
I love how the East codifies aesthetics like this. My favorite is _shibui_
which loosely translated (i'm told) means that every single detail of the
object is simultaneously both useful and beautiful.

~~~
zhemao
It's mostly a Japanese thing. In Chinese we don't have a lot of words for
particular aesthetic qualities. However, if you want profane homophonic puns
or pithy four-word idioms ...

~~~
derefr
Is "pithy four-word idiom," in Chinese, a pithy four-word idiom?

~~~
ttflee
Yes, if "四字成语" counts.

~~~
zhemao
So it's not an idiom and the word "pithy" isn't in there, so it isn't quite as
recursive as TLA.

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jmduke
See also, an Italian analogue: sprezzatura.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura)

~~~
kvnwng
Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding
beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural
cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it
reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse
stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and
crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave
behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that
our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of
returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to
embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they
represent.

-Tadao Ando

It's another way I guess about looking at fashion and what you wear without
care (or a little bit of care at least).

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swatkat
This reminds me of BMW's asymmetric design concept car X-Coupe [0]. I remember
reading something like _" a little bit of asymmetry is more beautiful than
perfect symmetry"_ in an auto mag back in 2001.

[0][http://www.netcarshow.com/bmw/2001-x_coupe_concept/](http://www.netcarshow.com/bmw/2001-x_coupe_concept/)

~~~
Theodores
er... no!

Said car is so not wabi-sabi on so many levels it is hard to begin. It has no
character, as in the character that an object develops over time. It is not
natural or made from materials that are on their way back to nature. Sure it
is asymmetrical but all cars are - the exhaust pipe, the petrol cap and the
steering wheel.

If you want an automotive analogy, I would look a lot further back, to those
cars you find in Cuba, to that Fordson tractor abandoned in a field or a
Soviet era truck somewhere in East Europe.

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skunkworks
When I first head of wabi-sabi, it was to describe the aesthetic appeal of raw
denim made on heirloom equipment -- the uneven weave caused by loom chatter,
how dye gets everywhere, the uneven fade patterns, the leg twist caused by the
skewed direction of the twill weave.

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Tichy
It sounds too much like Wasabi for my taste :-/

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easytiger
Anti-fragile?

~~~
qnm
Perhaps. An item gains wabi-sabi through stressors increasing imperfection?

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easytiger
Sound's like Taleb's Anti-fragile to me.

