From this golden era of art the wheels were now set in motion for the transference of ideals of beauty to all aspects of Japanese life. The core philosophy that beauty was to be found in detail was now incorporated into the Japanese mind, where it remained relatively unchallenged until Japan again opened her borders to the West.
The Japanese, consummate artists of observation, were very quick to learn from the West, and within a few decades Japan established herself as a force to be reckoned with. As she assimilated knowledge of the West, Japan was able to pass new ideas through the filter of its own culture and then take the best that each had to offer. This trend has continued down through the ages, and one of Japan’s greatest abilities today is to take a foreign idea, refine it, and then sell it back to the West.
The changes that the West brought to Japan were explosive and altered modes of dress and activities almost beyond recognition. In her desire to catch up with and participate more fully in the hedonism of the West, Japan was prepared to sacrifice much of its culture.
There was even, at one point, a narrowly defeated vote on whether the Japanese should keep their own language or switch to English. Fortunately, the language was kept, and it has continued to function as a link between the past and the present. Without it, much of Japan’s culture would surely have been lost. With the help of the language and a great personal pride in their cultural heritage, the people of Japan have managed to retain a small nugget of Japanese-ness knitted into the fabric of their words and deeds. They may have been greatly affected by the West, yet they are still first and foremost Japanese, and this can be seen in the different way they still approach work and design.
The Japanese attention to detail and their desire to keep all aspects of design as simple and well balanced as possible are evident even in today’s modern designs. The cultural norms that have bound the Japanese through their remarkable history remain entrenched in the national psyche and the way they see themselves, and the objects they design and make are still strongly influenced by their Zen roots.
There is an expression in Japanese that says that someone who makes things of poor quality is in fact worse than a thief, because he doesn’t make things that will last or provide true satisfaction. A thief at least redistributes the wealth of a society.
The link between modern-day designs and the ancient designs of wabi sabi may seem a little tenuous, but there exists, in the spirit with which both are approached and the reverence given for the process of creativity, a little changed perception of values.
And it is these values, which have given Japan an incredible foundation for her interaction with the modern world, that find their roots in the ideals of Zen and wabi sabi.
WABI SABI IN THE ART OF ZEN
AS ZEN HAS BEEN the guiding light for Japanese thought and philosophy for over one thousand years, it has also provided the moral and aesthetic underpinnings for all Japanese arts as they have evolved over the centuries. Through its influence on the nobility and the leading artistic figures through the centuries, it has become ingrained in the Japanese aesthetic sensibility. Therefore, a detailed look at Zen and its development in Japan may throw some further illumination on the aesthetic ideology of wabi sabi.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ZEN
Buddhism was founded in northeastern India and was based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who is now known as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One.
Born into a life of luxury around 563 B.C. he was so struck by the suffering of those living outside the palace that he was spurred to renounce the material world and to seek answers to the mysteries of life. After passing through a stage of extreme asceticism, the Buddha took the middle path, which avoided the pitfalls of both overindulgence and self-denial, and after a great struggle he is said to have attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree.
Realizing the nature of reality, he started to preach and formed an ideology based on the Four Noble truths,
1. Life is suffering.
2. All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the resultant craving, attachment, and grasping that stem from such ignorance.
3. Suffering can be stopped by overcoming ignorance and one’s attachment to the material world.
4. The path that leads away from suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation.
These ideas were passed down from one disciple to another through the ages, but Zen Buddhism was to receive its inspiration from China, where the Buddhist ideas were to undergo radical changes as they passed through a culture that already had strong religious and cultural ideas of its own.
The Taoist movement in China fused with the new ideas coming from India to form the Ch’an school of Buddhism, and this later became known as Zen in Japan. The essential Taoist philosophical and mystical beliefs are to be found in the Tao-te Ching ( Classic of the Way and Its Power), a text dating from around the third century b.c. and attributed to the historical figure Lao-tzu, and also in the Chuang-tzu, which was written in the same era and was accredited to a philosopher called Chuang-tzu.
Taoism has been described as “the art of being in the world,” and the main thrust of its teaching was opposed to the Confucian ideas of social order. Instead, it stressed that the individual should seek to flow with the watercourse way, the Tao. Lao-tzu described this mystical concept, which like Zen defies objective analysis, in the following way:
The Tao is something vague and indefinable
How indefinable! How Vague!
Yet in it there is a form.
How vague, how indefinable
Yet in it there is a thing.
How obscure! How deep!
Yet in it there is a substance.
The substance is genuine
And in it sincerity.
From of old until now
Its name never departs,
Whereby it inspects all things.
How do I know all things in their suchness?
It is because of this.
—Daisetz Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture
To be at one with the Tao, one must practice wu-wei and refrain from forcing anything to happen that does not happen of its own accord.
To be at one with the Tao is to accept that we must yield to a power much greater than ourselves. Through this acceptance of the natural flow of life, and by discarding all learned doctrines and knowledge, a person is able to achieve real unity with the Tao. This harmony brings with it a mystical power known as To–, which enables those who have harnessed it to peer beyond the horizons of everyday perception into a world where there are no mundane distinctions between all the opposing ideas of the dualistic world.
During the time prior to the influx of Buddhist ideas from the Indian subcontinent, the Taoists sought to extend their lives through alchemy, physical regimes, rigorous hygiene, and breathing exercises, but under the influence of Buddhism, Taoist religious groups turned more toward an institutional monasticism. There was also a shift from the focus on bodily immortality to the