Japanese Aesthetics, Wabi-sabi

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through contact with other cultures. The aesthetics of Japan developed in a unique fashion, partly because of its geographic location, a string of islands about 100 miles from Korea and 500 miles from China. Its isolation by the sea helped protect Japan from foreign invasion and allowed its rulers to control contact with other nations.
During long periods of self-imposed isolation, art forms and aesthetic ideas developed that were specifically Japanese. Over the centuries, when interactions with foreign cultures occurred, they influenced the traditional arts and aesthetics of Japan. For the purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on what remained essentially Japanese.
Traditional Japanese art and aesthetics were most affected by the Chinese and Buddhism, but influences from the West are also evident. For example, the Japanese made no distinction between fine arts and crafts before the introduction of such ideas by Europeans in the 1870s. The Japanese word that ...

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of wabi-sabi correlate with the concepts of Zen Buddhism, as the first Japanese involved with wabi-sabi were tea masters, priests, and monks who practiced Zen. Zen Buddhism originated in India, traveled to China in the sixth century, and was first introduced in Japan around the 12th century. Zen emphasizes "direct, intuitive insight into transcendental truth beyond all intellectual conception." At the core of wabi-sabi is the importance of transcending ways of looking and thinking about things/existence.
All things are impermanent
All things are imperfect
All things are incomplete
Material characteristics of wabi-sabi:
Suggestion of natural process
...

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