“Wabi Sabi” is a small and lovely book that feels good in the hand – and the heart.

Beth Kempton, an Englishwoman, has spent much of her life enchanted with Japanese culture. In this 2018 book, she tries to explain the elusive and pervasive concept of “wabi sabi”, rarely analyzed in methodical fashion in Japan. “Wabi sabi” isn’t even a written word you can find in a Japanese dictionary, though it is part of the spoken language. It brings together deep currents of thought and aesthetics with a long history in the country.

Wabi, Kempton says, is “about finding beauty in simplicity, and a spiritual richness and serenity in detaching from the material world.” It “implies a stillness, with an air of rising above the mundane. It is an acceptance of reality and the insight that comes with that. It allows us to realize that whatever our situation, there is beauty hiding somewhere.”

Sabi is generally recognized “as the patina of age, weathering, tarnishing, and signs of antiquity… It is a representation of the way all things evolve and perish and can evoke an emotional response in us, often tinged with sadness, as we reflect on the evanescence of life.”

Kempton explores in ways both poetic and practical how these concepts, separately and together, can help us appreciate and live our lives more fully. And also – more gently.

***

Fundamentally, I suppose, it is a book about paying attention. You only have this moment once.

It is a book about putting down your cell phone and stepping outside.

It’s a book about Japanese culture, but – just as pointedly, and specifically – about how we Westerners make ourselves unhappy.

***

In one chapter, focused on nature, Kempton notes that:

According to the Classical Japanese calendar, there are in fact twenty-four small seasons known as sekki, each lasting around fifteen days, and seventy-two micro seasons known as ko, each lasting around five days. The calendar was originally adopted from China in AD 862 and eventually reformed to suit the local climate (particularly around Kyoto) by court astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai in 1684. Each of these subseasons and microseasons has a name, which paints an evocative picture of what is going on in the natural world at that particular time.

A quick tour of the year with some of my favorite micro season names would include: “East wind melts the ice,” “Nightingales sing,” “Mist starts to hover,” “Cherry blossoms open,” “Silkworms hatch,” “Grain ripens,” “Hot winds arrive,” “Earth is steaming wet,” “Blanket fog descends,” “Rice ripens,” “Swallows leave,” “First frost,” and “North wind rattles the leaves.”

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In my yard right now, the microseasons are…

White blossoms appear on blackberry vine ~

Small peaches grow ~

Midges find roses ~

Water drops rest on dianthus petals ~

While peonies dream of heaven.

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