Beauty and Perfection: Wabi Sabi

Voice 1:
Hello and welcome to Spotlight. I'm Ruby Jones.

Voice 2:
And I'm Marina Santee. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.

Voice 1:
Tokyo's National Museum. It is the oldest and largest museum in Japan. Walk inside this huge building. You will see many wonderful works of art. There are more than 100,000 objects in the museum. These include some Japanese national treasures! The museum holds objects of great beauty and worth. But the objects in one part of a room are very different from the others. In a large glass case stand some dark green and brown objects. They look like containers gone wrong! Some are a funny shape. Some of them look like their creator made a mistake! Others look broken. They look like they could have been dug up directly from the earth! They do not look very costly - or very beautiful! They do not really seem to fit in this museum with the other wonderful objects. So what are they doing here? This is not a mistake! These objects are here for a reason. They represent an ancient Japanese idea that we will discuss in today's programme. The objects represent ‘wabi-sabi.'

Voice 3:
‘What is wabi sabi? It is difficult to explain. You cannot just find it.'

Voice 4:
‘It is a way of life.'

Voice 5:
‘Wabi sabi? It is the Japanese heart.'

Voice 4:
Wabi Sabi is to enjoy a quiet and peaceful life.

Voice 3:
‘It cannot be described. If it could, it would not be wabi sabi.'

Voice 1:
Wabi sabi sounds like a simple term but it has a complex meaning. This is because it relates to a whole way of looking at life! Some people describe it as a beauty that is not complete, or not perfect. One way to define ‘wabi' is ‘to make things simple.' And a way to define ‘sabi' is ‘change', or the passing of time. Wabi sabi is now becoming known in the West. But its origins are in Japan. It is a way of looking at life in all its forms - especially nature, art and culture.

Voice 2:
The idea of wabi sabi entered art in the sixteenth century. It came from the Japanese tea ceremony! You may remember an earlier Spotlight programme about Japanese tea ceremonies. It described how in Japan, making tea is a great form of art and skill. The people who lead tea ceremonies are called tea masters. It was the tea masters that helped to bring the idea of wabi sabi to art. The tea masters looked for beauty in simple forms. At that time, this was unusual. People had more traditional ideas of beauty. They saw beauty in great designs, in costly objects. However, wabi sabi brought in the opposite idea. It said that beautiful art did not have to be perfect, costly, or even complex. Art could be simple, even broken, and be beautiful. And that is why you can see the unusual, imperfect containers in the Tokyo museum.

An employee of the museum described the process of wabi sabi in art:

Voice 6:
‘A new art form developed that found beauty in stillness. The tea masters began to look for beauty in these simple forms. I am not sure if the makers of these objects found them beautiful! But the people who did the tea ceremony loved these objects - even if the objects were technically failures.'

Voice 1:
So what does wabi sabi have to do with everyday life - and is it only for Japanese people? Richard Powell does not think so. He is an Canadian writer. He says that wabi sabi is becoming increasingly popular in the West.