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Articles
Wabi-sabi
The concept of Wabi-Sabi is derived from the
tea ceremony developed by Sen-no Rikyu more than 400 years ago.
Briefly said, Wabi
is the kind of beauty that is caused by the right kind of
imperfection, and Sabi is the kind of beauty that comes
only with age.
In Shohin-bonsai and larger bonsai, Wabi-sabi is a key Japanese
aesthetic concept. It is also an important aesthetic feature of
Japanese gardening, as well as other Japanese art forms.
Bonsai is the result of an artistic and
technical discipline that ultimately demonstrates Wabi-sabi.
Bonsai that contains the spirit of Wabi-sabi allows our hearts
to find peace, but no matter how excellent the bonsai is, we
cannot feel Wabi-sabi if there isn’t enough history.
I find Westerners must understand the
concept of Wabi-sabi in order to fully succeed with bonsai.
This does not mean we should neglect our own heritage, cultural
values, personal expressions, or our ways of thinking about
bonsai; but having an understanding of Wabi-sabi, and bringing
that to the art of Western bonsai, will certainly improve the
art.
Bonsai is poetry. It is also an aesthetic
expression that tells a story and evokes emotion. This is all
related to the human behind the tree, or the people who see the
tree, because all art relates to human expression. In bonsai,
this expression is always closely related to nature.
Many of the arts in China and Japan derive
their aesthetic principles from Taoism and Zen Buddhism. These
two philosophical traditions proved compatible with the
culture, as well as the psychology of Japan.
The hallmark of Chinese or Japanese
masterpieces that are free of modern influence is the natural
and unconstrained, almost "accidental" appearance of the work.
The artist works with Wabi-sabi as a guiding principle, and
harmonizes nature and its universal accidents.
Definitions of Wabi-sabi are never exact; it
can be described in a number of ways.
Sensing space
Wabi refers to a philosophical construct,
maybe best described as a sense of space, a direction, or path,
while Sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in a given object
and its features, and includes the occupation of time,
chronology, and objectivity.
Wabi
Wabi describes the feeling of things that
are fresh and simple. It denotes simplicity and silence, which
has its own rustic beauty. It includes both what is made by
nature, and what is made by man.
Wabi can also mean an accidental or
happenstance element, which gives elegance and uniqueness to
the whole, such as the pattern made by a flowing or crackled
glaze on a piece of ceramic.
Sabi
Sabi refers to items whose beauty stems from
age; the patina of age found in old weathered bark or stones,
for example.
Changes that occur in an object through use
also make that object more beautiful and valuable. This
incorporates the appreciation of the cycles of life and the
careful, artful mending of damage.
Imperfectness
Wabi-Sabi occupies in roughly the same position
in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as Greek ideals of
beauty and perfection do in the West. Imperfection is
artistically and aesthetically valuable in bonsai. This doesn’t
mean the bonsai artist can be sloppy. Imperfection must be
controlled by the artist, so the expression is natural; it
should not express laziness.
In Shohin-bonsai, this means that some branches
might be disordered slightly in order to achieve a sense of
imperfectness. A branch structure arranged like the spokes in a
wheel is not Wabi-sabi and should be avoided. This is also the
case with the arrangement of roots. A few crossing roots are
much better than straight “nicely” arranged roots.
Solitude and desolation are also components of
Wabi-sabi. The Zen view of the universe sees these as positive
characteristics, representing liberation from the material
world and transcendence to a simpler life. Zen philosophy warns
that genuine understanding can never be achieved through words
or language, so the nonverbal approach of Wabi-sabi is most
appropriate.
Wabi-sabi can also be called the intuitive appreciation of
transient beauty in the physical world. This beauty is
reflected in the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual
world. There is a melancholic beauty that exists in a modest,
rustic, imperfect, or even decayed item that communicates the
impermanence of all things. This beauty is what I personally
appreciate in Japanese bonsai, and I try to implement that
spirit in my Western approach to bonsai.
Aged pine in the Seikou-en
nursery of Tomio Yamada in Omiya, Japan.
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