The Imperfect is the Entry

There is perhaps no Japanese concept of which Americans have such a treasured misunderstanding as wabi-sabi. The term itself is more philosophical than physical, and so eludes a firm definition – which may explain its rather wholesale application to anything Americans perceive as aesthetically Japanese – but wabi-sabi could best be represented at the confluence of three qualities: simplicity, impermanence, and imperfection. A winding footpath, fringed with weeds, made bare by the trod of passing feet, this could be said to be wabi-sabi. A straight, paved and graded path could not, even if the landscape and destination were identical.

The concept of wabi-sabi is a compound, the intersection of the spiritual serenity of the austere (wabi) and the comeliness of the aged, the irregular, the deteriorated, and the asymmetrical (sabi). And so generally it is not something which is there from inception, but more often is achieved with time. A once stiff pair of blue jeans, now so comfortably soft they fit as though made for your body, the cuffs frayed to rags and rope. A café where the grain of the floorboards have worn thin over years of queues. That is, so long as the floorboards are made of wood, for wabi-sabi prioritizes the natural over the artificial. Though it is theoretically possible for a plastic item to have wabi-sabi – a vinyl record, for example – but this is less common.

However, and somewhat puzzlingly, having been achieved, the quality can later vanish. A chipped cup, chosen for the way it slips into the owner’s hand rather than for its gloss or monetary value has wabi-sabi, until that same cup is placed behind a glass display at a historical museum for having once belonged to Immanuel Kant. The presence of the secure – and presumably well-insured – display case has removed both the impermanence and understood simplicity of the item. It no longer has humility. (Though should some years after that, the same chipped cup find itself upon a window ledge, filled with garden soil and a potted succulent grown so long the stem now creeps along the sill, voila! Wabi-sabi once again)

Curiously, the tea ceremony, or chanoyu – which is regarded both within Japan and by its admirers abroad as the apotheosis of wabi-sabi – is a location where I found the quality entirely absent. Or rather, all wabi and no sabi. The precision, prescription – and proscription – of action denied the fundamental tenet of imperfection. “The ceremony is done in this way and only in this way because this is how it is done.” Such rigor makes stern antidote to comfort. The ritual did instill humility, in that one was made aware of their own inadequacies, and my experience was much the same as my memories of serving as an altar boy at Catholic mass – now we kneel, now we rise, now we bow, now we lift the cup. And I was even in a robe. One wrong motion and the rite is ruined. (which, the very possibility of a wrong means the impossibility of wabi-sabi) Or for a more secular example, like sitting for the S.A.T. A clear test of commitment to attention and rule following. It was tremendously awkward. I hope to never do it again.

Here, I think, is where we get to what Americans most misunderstand about wabi-sabi: that in Japan one encounters it simply everywhere. That it is foremost in the minds of every Japanese as they go about their day, from half past wabi in the morning until well past sabi in the night. From my own experience and conversations with friends, I would say the average Japanese thinks about wabi-sabi about as much as the average American thinks of such cherished concepts of our own as moxie and chutzpah. We know what they are, occasionally remember and deploy them, but generally they don’t govern how we eat our breakfast or choose a spouse.

I find that I actually encounter far more wabi-sabi outside Japan than I ever did within it. Though this may be owing to my limited time and travels in that country – I was primarily in cities and there is quite a lot of Japan I have never seen – as well as to my own cultural misunderstandings. Perhaps I too misapply the term. (I am no scholar, only a student) But I find wabi-sabi in the lace of footpaths tracing through the eucalyptus of the California hills. I find it in the lack of a single, unifying architectural tradition among the hundred year old residences of my neighborhood in Berkeley, and in the abundance of mature street trees, likewise of no single kind. It is in the bric-a-brac of the scrap shops where I source my fabrics and find all manner of humble treasures held by many prior hands before they came to mine. Probably the most wabi-sabi city I ever visited was Guanajuato, Mexico, the streets so steep, winding, and narrowed they transformed into steps, while above two lovers might lean from their respective balconies on opposite sides and still share in an embrace. This would be impossible in Tokyo.

That does not mean the concept is extinct within Japan. The temple markets and kissaten (old coffee shops) are excellent and readily found examples. On my last visit I was there during the cherry blossom season and the most exquisite tree I saw was sprouting in a vacant lot between a pachinko parlor and an adult movie shop, its trunk half broken in a wounded gape, the branches still in bloom. For a few days I stayed at a travelers’ inn in a small town outside of Okayama. The structure had sliding doors, tatami matts, and windows overlooking a century old garden. All business was done at floor level, and I slept on a futon. So far this had much in common with ryokan – the traditional inns, where staff and guests all wear kimono and meals and indeed all affairs are conducted with great poise – but unlike a ryokan the staff and guests of the inn wore whatever felt most comfortable to them. Tee shirts and blue jeans mostly. Business was rather slapdash. The manager’s desk was a mess of scribbled notes, and the manager himself a barefoot and unkempt surfer type. A Japanese Shaggy from Scooby Doo. On the wall a hand drawn map doodled on the back of a takeout menu displayed the very few local attractions. The kitchen was stocked with cups and bowls no two of which were a match. I adored it all, and drank many cups of tea in quiet admiration of the garden. Here, at last, I could exhale.

Since returning home I’ve thought quite a lot about a statement I’ve often heard asserted as true about Japan: that in Japan they prize an imperfection because the flaw reveals the beauty. I did not find this to be true at all. People dress beautiful but largely identically in crisp and lint-free garments. Streets are scrubbed to near sterility. Fruit which would be marked grade A in California would be declared blemished and discarded in Japan. Grocery stores want a produce aisle stocked with valedictorians, and not just the “good enough” riffraff suitable for snacking or sauce. This is the famous – and to my observation, quite true – Japanese obsession with detail, and goes some way towards explaining why fruit is priced as though it were a luxury item rather than dietary good sense.

The perfect discourages participation. This is a point which I have much considered since returning, in my life and in my work. So often in Japan I felt unable – indeed inadequate – to the task of joining in. Which is why I decided to continue my studies from my home country and withdrew my visa application. The imperfect is the entry, the handle one could grasp and then swing open the door. I found too few imperfections.

But then, on one of my last weeks in Osaka, while browsing the local antiques market, I found a treasure. I was looking for some way to redeem the bitter taste of the tea ceremony – I am still sure the fault lies within myself for my inability to enjoy it even a little – and was considering acquiring a chawan, a ceremonial tea bowl. All the chawan I saw were beautiful – glazed with designs of branches and flowers – and quite reasonably priced, but none felt right in my hand. They had no defect. I did not feel permission to do anything with them other than their intended purpose of the chanoyu, much less abduct them to my own country. I easily considered thirty before coming across one, black and without ornament, concave on one side where the palm of my right hand easily slipped and gripped the bowl. Simple. Imperfect. The only chawan I saw that day that was any shape but round. When I held it I could feel the potter’s touch as though they grasped my own hand through the clay. This was wabi-sabi.

I mean, I think.

I can’t ever be sure. The quality is ephemeral and I am American, afterall, and so famously bad at nuance that we scarcely could even explain our own culture. But as I held it the chawan felt the handle I had unknowingly been in search of during all my months within Japan. The imperfection I required. The means by which to open a door.