Which Of Your Tsubas Best Embodies The Wabi-Sabi Aesthetic?

[kissakai]

I think the earlier items in this post are wabi sabi

Members added them because they complied with the post

May not be a literal translation but good enough for me and I'm happy to say I have a couple of examples

[Stephen]

The ones i have sold.

[Henry Wilson]

Thank you for the stimulating conversation gentlemen.

 

I was a bit puzzled at first to think that wabi and sabi as a collocation was strange. Realising I never thought or have read about it, l did some digging and found these links (attached for others who might also be puzzled).

 

Tadao Ando at http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm states:

“The words wabi and sabi were not always linked, although they've been together for such a long time that many people (including D. T. Suzuki) use them interchangeably. One tea teacher I talked with begged me not to use the phrase wabi-sabi because she believes the marriage dilutes their separate identities; a tea master in Kyoto laughed and said they're thrown together because it sounds catchy, kind of like Ping-Pong.”

 

This was a small revelation to me. I assumed that they were always together however as Ford, Steve and others point out above, in older literature they never seem to appear as wabi-sabi as one, and wabi seems to be predominate. I get the impression, as I can’t find a direct scholarly reference, that wabi-sabi (the phrase) started to emerge when attitudes towards the inherent meaning of wabi and sabi (the words) began to shift from negative to positive.

 

“Originally, wabi's main feeling was of loneliness. What distinguishes wabi from standard loneliness is this feeling comes from living in nature, far away from society. Imagine a sad, solitary hermit, and you're on the right track. A hermit's life even used to be called wabizumai 侘住まい. Sabi 寂 on the other hand, is a bit simpler, It has been described as "chill," "lean," or "withered." It shares a pronunciation with 錆 (to rust), and this connection with degradation is not coincidental. In the 14th Century, these connotations began to change. The hermit was no longer a sad outcast, but a wise man freed from the trappings of an increasingly decorated and artificial Japanese society. The words drifted closer together until they became interchangeable or, more commonly, combined. Wabi-sabi began to imply rustic simplicity in a positive light, or the grace that comes with age and use.”

The above is paraphrased from https://www.tofugu.com/Japan/wabi-sabi/

 

Ford wrote an interesting summary

My feeling is that wabi (astringency, austerity, melancholy) is far older, more philosophical and initially more concerned with literature. Whereas sabi (rust, literal....patina, literal and metaphorical) has a sense of a more material expression, a bit like the surface appearance of the abstract wabi austerity, sabi is the skin to wabi, to make it more apparent perhaps.

 

Generally speaking, as I understand it, in the medieval times, tea was being consumed in two different ways by the dominate social groups; by Zen monks during meditation (astringency, austerity), and, by the ruling elite in a comparatively frivolous way at Heian period style events such as moon viewing parties, based on the ancient Chinese ideal (material expression).

 

This video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QmHLYhxYVjA reveals that Murata Juko, the early pioneer of tea ceremony noticed this and wrote Kokoro no fumi (心の手文, "Letter of the heart") in the late 1400s. It indicated he wanted to harmonise the Japanese and the Chinese tea styles to bring people together. Reason being, for Juko, excessive concern with the imperfections and rustic aesthetic of Japanese utensils was as bad as a preoccupation with the regular forms and perfect glazes of Chinese ceramics, so a merging of the two different attitudes was necessary to keep a balance. Reference: https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=aWxN1Fq_ueoC&pg=PA395&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=true

 

Do these observations suggest that the wabi-sabi collocation came about at the time to temper both sides of the tea extreme and unify them, so it’s first usage or at least conceptualisation could be possibly accredited to Murata Juko in the late 1400s?

 

What do others think?

[Steve Waszak]

I honestly think (and have thought for some time), that the linked term "wabi-sabi" was a post-Edo creation, perhaps even of far more recent vintage than that (i.e. Post-WW2).  One of the reasons I believe so, as my initial post in this thread nearly a year ago states, is that wabi and sabi are but two of many terms conveying particular aesthetic principles.  As such, and since wabi may combine with one or more of any number of these others, as could sabi, there would be no specific reason to tie wabi and sabi together in some some fixed way.  Not, at any rate, at the time they were in fluid use with regard to Tea (Momoyama and early-Edo Japan).  I would be quite intrigued (and frankly, surprised) were there to be uncovered some written work from the period that actually used these terms in this joined manner.

 

Henry, you observe in your post that, "...for Juko, excessive concern with the imperfections and rustic aesthetic of Japanese utensils was as bad as a preoccupation with the regular forms and perfect glazes of Chinese ceramics, so a merging of the two different attitudes was necessary to keep a balance."  I'm not sure what your source is for this idea (the youtube video doesn't say this, does it?), but it seems quite dubious to me.  The reason is that in Juko's time, the rustic aesthetic you speak of hadn't yet become established in Tea, at least not among the Buke.  That doesn't occur for nearly another one hundred years, in the latter 30 years (plus or minus) of the 16th Century.  I would be very interested to know the deeper source for the idea that Juko expressed such an opinion (unless he was speaking of himself in saying this... ).

 

For much more on this subject area, besides the book I recommended in my original post in this thread (A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, by Donald Richie), I would also highly recommend Japanese Tea Culture, edited by Morgan Pitelka.  

 

I remain convinced, incidentally, that any pursuit of a deeper understanding of and appreciation for higher-level Momoyama and early-Edo steel tsuba is nearly fatally hampered by the lack of an equal pursuit of understanding the Tea Culture (and all of its many aesthetic principles and terms) that was so ascendant in those times.  

[Henry Wilson]

Hi Steve

 

Thank you for your thoughts. The quote is from “Sources of Japanese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600” by Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck, Arthur Tiedemann. Columbia Uni Press 2013, p.395

 

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=aWxN1Fq_ueoC&pg=PA395&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=true

 

Wiki led me to it I think. It has been embedded in my post above. Sorry I didn’t include it.

[Steve Waszak]

Thanks, Henry, for this link.      Completely missed it in your earlier post.  I'll have to pick up a copy if I can find one!  I am very curious indeed to know more about this Juko quote. 

[Pete Klein]

I find it somewhat disconcerting that apparently no one paid the least bit of attention to what he wrote.

[Steve Waszak]

Could you elaborate, Pete?      I'm not quite following...

[Pete Klein]

[Steve Waszak]

Well, I will say that Juko's quote begs the question of what counts as "excessive concern."  One person's "excess" is another's "just right," and again we are brought around to matters of taste and judgment.  As to the matter of balance, the idea of harmony between the two "extremes" manifesting in particular objects is an interesting one to contemplate.  Balance needn't always be a 50-50 thing, especially in the Japanese sensibility of things.  I might see "balance" as better reflected via the term/idea of tempering, of taking the "excess" or extreme edge off of one aesthetic and/or the other.  Returning to the original topic of wabi and sabi in tsuba, some Nobuie guards might be seen as a good manifestation of this balance/harmony, with more weight, perhaps, given to the wabi side than the other.  

[Brian]

I find it somewhat disconcerting that apparently no one paid the least bit of attention to what he wrote.

I hardly think that enough people commented subsequently to form the opinion that no-one paid attention

I suspect that a few hundred may well be reading and re-reading, just not commenting on it. It is something that encourages thought which leads to more thought and more ponderings. Not typing them out doesn't mean they don't exist

But the reminder was prudent.

[Pete Klein]

Brian - I was speaking 'historically', not in reference to this thread.  I guess this is what happens when you dictate to a rabbit...

[Brian]

Yeah, I see it now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Rabbits don't like being dictated to btw...they are very headstrong.

[Steve Waszak]

You guys have lost me.  No idea what you're talking about...  

[Stephen]

many inside jokes

[Steve Waszak]

Guess so...

[Ford Hallam]

[Stephen]

That's Ford in background working on the drawing of his next tsuba.

[Henry Wilson]

And that's me on the left (striped-socks) wondering what's the point of leaving breadcrumbs???

[Japan2112]

Here is one that I like of a wabi sabi aesthetic. Organic, asymmetric, rough tsuchime ji...

Old Owari.  

 

 

[parfaitelumiere]

[masakatsu]

My offering...

 

[b.hennick]

You don't get to see many Ichijyo tsuba. Congrats!

[Kurikata]

I wish i could afford one of them!

[russbellon]

Not sure anyone else would agree but, to me, this one--with it's losses--seems to embody sabi at least.

A little used up and forlorn, but i think the zougan losses are fortuitously aesthetic. If i were designing a tsuba i might do one with similar "white space" intentionally.

[johnnyi]

Here is an early one...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best, Johni

[parfaitelumiere]

No idea about period, size is 84x84x3mm

[Kanenaga]

Nice that this thread has resurfaced.

 

Not sure I can put it into words, but I think I know wabi and sabi when I see them.

[Ganko]

I think this is in that category. 80mm x 78mm x 3mm. It also has some bones in the rim.

 

[Babu]

The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".

As an example wabi might be a rustic structure that will ultimately decay over time and Sabi an attempt at control of the cohesive elements around that Wabi like a manicured garden or similar.

But the key here is that impermenace is a part of the symbolic change in life which brings with it beauty, but a delicate beauty that cannot last.

So could a relatively long lasting piece of metalwork encapsulate Wabi Sabi?

It is beyond me.

(Cripes I hope I don't get moderated as perceived as being negative again)