Wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi is a component of Japanese aesthetics. This combination of words, whose conception was given its decisive form hundreds of years ago by Zen priests and tea masters, is used in Japan to describe a very specific kind of beauty. This is characterized by simplicity and self-sufficiency and renounces external splendor in favor of inner values. Author Leonhard Koren fears that this ideal of beauty, which for a long time was fundamental and formative for Japanese aesthetics, is in danger of disappearing in today’s Japan. His work is therefore a plea for the preservation of wabi-sabi, in whose conception he sees an enrichment for all those who are creatively active in the artistic or intellectual field, and whose value structure he would like to convey to a broad public.
Wabi-sabi represents a natural antithesis to the digitalized, infinitely reproducible glossy aesthetics of today – defined by commerce and computer technology; Wabi-sabi assigns a higher aesthetic value to things the older they are and the longer they have been in use.