Concepts and Movements
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
A Japanese aesthetic and philosophical outlook centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection, prizing beauty that is incomplete, asymmetrical or worn over beauty that is polished and permanent. The word joins wabi, a subdued and austere beauty, with sabi, the rustic patina age leaves on a thing. It traces to Buddhist teaching on impermanence, and became a working craft discipline through the tea ceremony: Murata Juko replaced ornate Chinese vessels with plain wooden and clay ones, and Sen no Rikyu built teahouses low enough that even the powerful had to bow to enter. Japanese potters carried the same outlook into ceramics, favoring unpredictable ash glazes over uniform finishes, and the practice of kintsugi, mending a broken bowl with gold-dusted lacquer rather than hiding the crack, is wabi-sabi made into a repair technique.
Facts
OriginRooted in Buddhist teaching on impermanence and developed through the tea ceremony reforms of Murata Juko and Sen no Rikyu; no single dateable founding event exists, since the outlook accumulated across Japan's late medieval and early modern periods rather than being declared by one person at one time. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Japanese ceramics carried the wabi-sabi outlook into asymmetry and unpredictable ash glazes.
Sources
1. Wabi-sabi (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundationen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabiQuote, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
centers on the acceptance of transience and imperfection
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.