Exploring Wabi-Sabi: The Aesthetic and Spiritual Essence of Japanese Civilization

1. Japan Fundamental Religio-Æsthetic Concepts Characterising the Japanese Civilisation

2. Shuichi Kato on Japan & Literature • No story to history; no plan; no plot of events. • “undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to avoid logic, the abstract, & systemization, in favour of emotion, the concrete, the unprogrammatic.” • Events are accumulative by addition • Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an external concept or item and then recontextualising it • In the West, there is an accommodation required: a reconfiguration of the addition or of the entire system around it. • No transcendental values: which means that when adding new not necessary to discard the old. No cultural crisis. • ‘Born Shinto, Married Christian; Buried Buddhist”

3. Mujokan: A sense of transience the impermanent quality of life, nature, and human artifacts. Buddhism: 4 Noble Truths Japanese Religious Æsthetic: Mujokan

4. Japanese Religious Æsthetic: Mujokan • Mujokan: A sense of transience • the impermanent quality of life, nature, and human artifacts. • First of Buddhist 4 Noble Truths: Dukkha • love of ambiguity and the abhorrence of clarity in literature and everyday language • tendency in design and architecture toward the asymmetrical and seasonal rather than the symmetrical and permanent: • click for current example: ‘yaeba’. • asymmetry is open to movement of observer’s eye or mind & therefore suggests transience.

5. mono no aware • Mono no aware: “awareness of the pathos of things” • Mono: things; aware: sadness. • Literary origin: • Lady Shikibu, c.985 Tale of Genji • Lady Shōnagon, c. 966 The Pillow Book • Contemplation of natural objects—trees & plants, weather, seasons, and human affairs—to reflect on the inevitable sadness of one’s own transient existence.

6. wabi-sabi • Wabi refers to a wordview -- a sense of space, direction, or path • Sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in a given object and its features, plus the occupation of time, chronology. • Wabi-sabi is a commonly unitary referral in modern times. • Now, alas, a pop æsthetic: “Honey, look at that darling wabisabi coffee table!”

7. wabi-sabi • Metaphysical Basis • Evolving toward or from nothingness: change. Love equals death • Spiritual Values • Truth comes from observing nature. • Greatness exists in the inconspicuous & overlooked details. • Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness • State of Mind • Acceptance of the inevitable, appreciation of cosmic order • Moral Precepts • Get rid of desire and all that is unnecessary. • Focus on the intrinsic & ignore material hierarchy • Local and cultural situation and order: no absolute principle • Material Qualities • Suggestion of natural process; irregularity, intimacies; unpretentious; earthy; simple above all.

8. wabi • The original connotation of wabi is based on the aloneness or separation from society experienced by the hermit, suggesting to the popular mind a misery and sad forlornness: i.e. mono no aware. • The life of the hermit came to be called wabizumai in Japan, essentially "the life of wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity. • Only by the fourteenth century in Japan were positive attributes ascribed to wabi and cultivated. • Wabi is literally – i.e. etymologically -- poverty, but it came to refer not to merely absence of material possessions but non-dependence on material possessions. 2nd & 3rd of the 4 Noble Truths (suffering caused by craving; divest of objects craved • simplicity that has shaken off the material in order to relate directly with nature and reality. • absence of dependence frees itself from indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity.

9. wabi, con’t • Wabi is quiet contentment with simple things. • In short, Wabi is a way of life or spiritual path. • Zen principles inform wabi : a native Japanese syncretism of Confucian, Taoist, Buddhism, and Shinto traditions. • Typical of Japanese addition over Logic • Wabi precedes the application of aesthetic. • principles applied to objects and arts, this latter is Sabi

10. sabi • Sabi is the outward expression of aesthetic values built upon the metaphysical and spiritual principles of Zen • translates these values into artistic and material qualities. • Sabi considers natural processes result in objects that are • Irregular (cf. the yaeba example above.) • Unpretentious (subtle) • ambiguous. • Sabi objects are: • irregular in being asymmetrical • unpretentious in being the holistic fruit of wabizumai • ambiguous in preferring insight and intuition, the engendering of refined spiritualized emotions rather than reason and logic. • Ambiguity allows each viewer to proceed to their capacity for nuance.

11. wabi-sabi: objects

12. ki-sho-ten-ketsu起承轉合 • Literary composition principle • Reader-centred, opposed to Western writer-centred: esp. Modernism, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, etc. • KI: opening, beginning • SHO: continuing • TEN: turning away (change) • KETSU: binding together.

13. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts • Shichi-Go-San: “7-5-3” Celebrate a child's 3rd, 5th & 7th birthdays, and a deceased’s 3rd, 5th & 7th anniversaries. • Haiku is 5-7-5 syllables; rock-gardens have odd-numbered# arrangements of stones

14. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts • Ten-Chi-Jin: ‘heaven-earth-man’ • a sense of something high, something low. and an intermediary: the axes are spacial, temporal and human. The middle concept is (explicit in the configuration of the Noh stage) a bridge.

15. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts • Shin-Gyo-So (true, moving & grass-like.) • In calligraphy, block-style, kana & cursive; in the cha-no-yu, of its implements, formal, semi-formal, informal. Shin-gyo-so is an effective schema for mapping the uniquely Japanese manner of reacting to any discrete new foreign encounter. Evident in literature in comparative representations, structural contrasts and developments in character

16. Japanese Religious-Æsthetic Concepts • Jo-Ha-Kyu (gathering, break, urgent action) • A concept exemplified by -- & likely originating in contemplation of -- the waterfall. In literature -- notably haiku -- it signifies introduction, development, action. In music, it has several compounding applications, essentially a triptych of increasing rapidity & climax. This is accepted as the natural rhythm -- gestation, birth, life is just one obvious universal triad/