The western world often prefers perfection, traditional Japanese culture celebrates the beauty of impermanence and lack
Perfection - this spirit is expressed in the term known as wabi-sabi. This expression is closely related to Buddhism (especially Zen) and stems from the three signs of existence - the Buddhist teaching that all things have impermanence, suffering or damage, and the negation of the self. I'm not very concise in these terms, so I won't elaborate. But based on these three elements, items presented as wabi-sabi are characterized by becoming more and more appreciated as time passes. And the more modest, fragile, broken or unique the object, the more it is valued.
In order to translate and understand the term, it is easiest to separate wabi-sabi into two words. While "Wabi" Refers to the beauty found in asymmetrical and unbalanced items, "sabi" Depicts the beauty of aging and celebrates the constancy of life over time. While the philosophy can be appreciated in many aspects of life, few things capture the essence of wabi-sabi better than Japanese pottery, where the most precious pieces are often cracked, rust-stained, or even incomplete. A classic example of wabi-sabi is the art of kintsugi, in which cracked pottery is repaired with gold lacquer as a way to showcase the beauty of the damage instead of hiding it.
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