My good friend Leonard Koren introduced the Japanese esthetic term wabi sabi to the English cultures. Leonard made a great contribution to all our lives. Wabi sabi is the appreciation of the ordinary in our world...the unpolished, the rustic, the used but useful.
A friend, visiting us in Tokyo asked why sophisticated china is associated with China while the Japanese had no problem matching and surpassing the Chinese ceramic techniques.
The question gave me the answer to a different question: why the Japanese created wabi sabi. Historically, wabi sabi became institutionalized in the 1600’s in Kyoto tea ceremony. The goal in Tea, of that era, was to eliminate ostentation for Zen reasons. Wabi sabi had been a deeply embedded esthetic, but Tea institutionalized it.
Why did the Japanese create wabi sabi? Because the Japanese are the cleanest people on the planet (anyone who doubts it hasn’t seen much of the world). For the rest of the world, refined came to mean clean. Clean white delicate dishes, delicate clean fabrics; refined … meaning clean.
For the Japanese everything has always been clean in their homes, Temples, shrines and public places. Therefore it is uniquely the Japanese who can appreciate rustic, used, worn, and unpolished objects. They are automatically clean if they are in Japan.
Example: the most popular clothing item in Japan are worn out jeans and jeans with shredded sections. The Japanese know that the jeans on everyone wearing them are very clean….. they are just worn-out.
The punk kids in Seattle who started the shabby jeans trend and the skateboarders, wore them as evidence that the kids were defiant, disrespectful and dirty.
None of those words could describe the elegant Japanese who wear worn-out jeans.
Wabi sabi could only arise in the cleanest society.