At the beginning of the 17th century, Japan, in an effort to stem the flow of Christianity, closed itself off to the world. And it was like that until the early 20th century. During this period, Japan – voluntarily isolated from the rest of the world – developed and perfected the typical local culture, such as the tea ceremony, haiku, ikebana, calligraphy and painting on parchment. But also martial arts and medicine.
When finally in the middle of the last century, Japanese culture became known to Western civilization, so its individual aspects, along with elements of other eastern teachings such as yoga, Tai Chi,
Judo, shiatsu or meditation, and later also wabi-sabi, became very popular. In fact, it is said that today there are more people practising it in Western countries than in Japan itself.
When a thin little book named Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, from the American designer, artist and writer Leonard Korena came out in 1994 in the Berkeley Publishing House, it gained immediate attention, especially among artists. Shortly after its first edition, it has been translated into many world languages, including Japanese.
Since then, countless books have been published in the Western world – especially in English – dealing with some angle of wabi-sabi. Yet Koren’s book is still considered as a fundamental and basic study on the topic of wabi-sabi.
It has inspired many designers, architects and artists. The wabi-sabi style has become very popular in the Western world since the end of the last century, mainly in interior and garden architecture.
The success of wabi-sabi in the Western world is also achieved by the fact that it is a counterpart to the consumer hectic and impersonal lifestyle, to the massive production, to the world of exaggerated perfection and exaggerated ornamentation. Actually, it is very similar to the success of wabi-sabi in 15th-16th century when it was a reaction to the aesthetics of exaggerated opulence and ornamentalism.
Sen no Rikyū was a young man who wanted to learn the art of the tea ceremony. So he went to the famous tea master Takeno Jōō, who instructed him to clean up and rake up a garden full of leaves as an entrance exam. After its thorough work, Rikyū checked the flawless and perfect appearance of the garden, but before he showed it to his master, he shook a tree – probably the Japanese Red Maple tree – and several beautifully coloured leaves fell on the ground.
According to another variant of the story, it was a blooming Sakura and Rikyū shook a tree to drop a couple of flowers. I don’t know, but we have a Japanese cherry tree in our garden. When it blooms, it’s really beautiful, but the flowers are falling in a big way by themselves without shaking the tree. However, this story to a certain extent essentially characterizes wabi-sabi – in the beauty of imperfection, transience and incompleteness.
Harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity are still the bases not only of the tea ceremony. Indeed, the Rikyū himself is even in these days revered by the Japanese and considered to be the first to understand the core of the cultural and philosophical direction of wabi-sabi – the art of finding beauty in imperfection, weighing every moment in its transience, honouring the authenticity. Wabi-sabi is interpreted as “the wisdom of natural simplicity“.
From the end of the 12th century, Zen Buddhism has begun to spread from China to Japan. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the art of the tea ceremony also developed in Japan, mainly thanks to Buddhist priests.
Already at the end of the 15th century, the Zen monk Murata Jukō began to rebel against the existing rules of the tea ceremony. By, for example, opening access to the tea ceremony even for ordinary people. He ended this period of tea ceremony as a certain extravagance for the chosen ones. He also began to use ordinary unruly ceramics made by local people. This is also why is Jukō mentioned as the first known tea master of wabi-sabi.
