Hanami

'What is wabi-sabi?' I once asked some Japanese friends.
'Wabi-sabi? It is very Japanese…'
A long pause.
'It is like Japanese tea ceremony. Or hanami (sakura viewing), or koyo (autumn leaves). These are very wabi-sabi.'

Wabi-sabi is a quintessentially Japanese aesthetic consciousness, derived from an appreciation of the impermanence of things. Wabi (侘) stands for simplicity and restraint, while sabi (寂) connotes age and desolation. Wabi-sabi is therefore an understated beauty, often found in nature, with all its imperfection and decay: fading flowers, turning leaves…

At its profoundest level, wabi-sabi is ineffable: an emotional response to transience, a sensibility to change that can only be experienced, not explained. Drawn from Zen Buddhism, it is what the Japanese call mono no aware (物の哀れ), a pathos for the passing of all things.

Naka-Meguro in Tokyo is a good place to catch the cherry blossoms. On a Sunday evening at the height of sakura season, however, the crowds are out in force, and the festive – almost boisterous – atmosphere does not lend itself to an appreciation of wabi-sabi. So I retire instead with two Japanese verses in translation, which encapsulate wabi-sabi and hanami for me:

'If cherry blossoms in their pride
Covered the far-flung mountainside
Day after day the summer through
Should we praise them as we do?'
-  Man’yoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves)
   (eighth century anthology) 

'The Spring has come and once again
The sun shines in the sky;
So gently smile the Heavens that
It almost makes me cry
When blossoms droop and die.'
-  Tomonori Ki
   Hyakunin-Isshiu (A Hundred Verses from A Hundred Poets)
   (thirteenth century anthology)