haikaiTALKS: Japanese aesthetics - sabi - a saturday gathering_under the banyan tree
host: Kala Ramesh
7th October 2023
Japanese aesthetics: sabi: rustic patina.
Repeating sabi for the second week.
Another exciting week ahead!!
Beginning with the pointers Keiko Izawa had given us last week.
Since some poets here seem to have trouble with differentiation between wabi and sabi, I’d like to add a little more summarized information that might be of some help to you, as the only Japanese poet here…
Wabi:
As discussed in the preceding haikaiTALKS, wabi has the elements:
Austere, simple, modest, quiet, lonely, and most importantly, the beauty of inadequacy(as we see in the chipped moon rather than the bright full moon). Wabi literary means loneliness in Japanese.
Sabi:
Aged, quiet, simple, rusted, deformed, solitary…
Concrete images are karesansui, mossy garden, moor, antique wares, etc. which are composed of natural ingredients. The Japanese people perceive beauties underneath the deteriorated simple surfaces.
This aesthetic is usually sensed from the sight of such objects, not from humans’ physical states like aging, illness, etc.
Compared with wabi, I would say in sabi generally the feel of loneliness or solitude is less than wabi in its ratio. A bit more of a focused artistic sense of beauty is also included in sabi, although there might be an objection to it…
A quote:
"Wabi-sabi" is a word that describes the beauty that can be found in a simple and quiet setting. Wabi-sabi is also used to describe the awareness of trying to fill one's heart in the midst of poverty and loneliness. In other words, wabi-sabi expresses beauty that exists only in situations that we would normally want to avoid or keep away from.
Both wabi and sabi share a certain underlying sense of desolation, simplicity, and an aversion to showy beauty.
And Keiko says in a post today:
Sabi is a word about the beauty of appearance. Things in this world rust, stain, and chip over time. Generally, this is regarded as deterioration, but on the contrary, the various and unique beauties woven from these changes are called sabi. If sabi is a superficial beauty, wabi is an inner richness.
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The term sabi occurs often in the Manyōshū, where it has a connotation of desolateness (sabireru means “to become desolate”), and later on it seems to acquire the meaning of something that has aged well, grown rusty (another word pronounced sabi means “rust”), or has acquired a patina that makes it beautiful.
The importance of sabi for the way of tea was affirmed by the great fifteenth-century tea master Shukō, founder of one of the first schools of tea ceremony. As a distinguished commentator puts it: “The concept sabi carries not only the meaning ‘aged’—in the sense of ‘ripe with experience and insight’ as well as ‘infused with the patina that lends old things their beauty’—but also that of tranquility, aloneness, deep solitude” (Hammitzsch, 46).
The feeling of sabi is also evoked in the haiku of the famous seventeenth-century poet Matsuo Bashō, where its connection with the word sabishi (solitary, lonely) is emphasized. The following haiku typifies sabi(shi) in conveying an atmosphere of solitude or loneliness that undercuts, as Japanese poetry usually does, the distinction between subjective and objective:
Solitary now —
Standing amidst the blossoms
Is a cypress tree.
Contrasting with the colourful beauty of the blossoms, the more subdued gracefulness of the cypress—no doubt older than the person seeing it but no less solitary—typifies the poetic mood of sabi.
Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows” frequently celebrates sabi. By contrast with Western taste, he writes of the Japanese sensibility:
We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive lustre to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity. . . We love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them. (Tanizaki, 11–12)
This is a significant existential consideration: the sheen of older things connects us with the past in ways that shiny products of modern technology simply cannot. And since older things tend to be made from natural materials, dealing with them helps us to realize our closest connections with the natural environment.
Sabi figures prominently, for Tanizaki, in the aesthetics of the traditional Japanese toilet, which “stands apart from the main building at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss.” He wrestles with the vexations that modern technology imposes on the question of fixtures, as the traditional ones are superseded by “white porcelain and handles of sparkling metal” (Tanizaki, 3, 6).
Notes taken from Britannica and other sources. Sample:
patina
on dancing Shiva
the guardian
of a ruined temple
-- Kala Ramesh
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First post: Optional You search and find a haiku that has sabi.
You'll give your reason/s why you think it has this aesthetic nuance. Second post: This will be your first haiku with sabi
Third post:
This will be your second haiku with sabi
Please give your feedback on others' commentary and poems too. _()_
Have fun! Keep writing and commenting!