“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. . . .
“Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty. It occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West. Wabi-sabi can in its fullest expression be a way of life. At the very least, it is a particular type of beauty.
“The closest English word to wabi-sabi is probably ‘rustic.’ Webster’s defines ‘rustic’ as ‘simple, artless, or unsophisticated . . . [with] surfaces rough or irregular.’ While ‘rustic’ represents only a limited dimension of the wabi-sabi aesthetic, it is the initial impression may people have when they first see a wabi-sabi expression. Wabi-sabi does share some characteristics with what we commonly call ‘prinitive art,’ that is, objects that are earthy, simple, unpretentious, and fashioned out of natural materials. Unlike primitive art, though, wabi-sabi almost never is used representationally of symbolically. . . .”
