As Junichiro Tanizaki gazed into the depths of his steaming bowl, he observed the soup bumping silently against the lacquerware, heavy and thick. The vapor fogged his nostrils with sweet fish. He blew a cloud from the stew between his hands.

“A moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance,” wrote Tanizaki in In Praise of Shadows (1977). “With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly differing from that of the bowl itself.”

But more than anything, it was the varied texture of the vessel that mesmerized Tanizaki.

This idea is known as wabi sabi, a Japanese philosophy that embraces muted imperfection. Wabi sabi is an expression of beauty that exists between life and death, between joy and melancholy. It is totally freeing in its impermanence.

For 500 years the wabi sabi aesthetic has influenced Japanese poetry, theater, tea ceremonies, home decor, flower arranging, and more. Starting in as far back as the 1960s, the concept became a darling of design in the Western world, from moss jewelry to Etsy earthenware. We may be returning to it stronger than ever, as people burn out on fast fashion, pressed-board furniture, and the like.

Japanese ceramics embrace imperfections—in material and those wrought over time. (Getty Images)

Wabi sabi’s origins begin in the 1540s, with tea master Sen no Rikyū. One of Rikyū’s daily tasks was to clean house and tend the garden. He spent hours scrubbing the walls and raking the garden. When he stepped back and surveyed the grounds, he felt it was perfect. But before finishing his work, Rikyū walked over to a cherry tree and shook some blossoms from its branches onto the ground. Imperfection was more beautiful.

It’s unclear whether this exact story is true, but Rikyū was a real person, and he’s credited with transforming the wabi sabi aesthetic into a cultural movement. Drawing from ancient Chinese traditions of Taoism and Zen Buddhism, Rikyū’s tea ceremonies were humble. He rejected the ornate gold tea-serving instruments popular at the time, in favor of clay and wooden materials. They lacked decoration and, in fact, revealed imperfections like uneven varnish or air pockets. With use, they became stained or cracked. They were authentic in their imperfections.

No direct Western translation of wabi sabi design exists. However, wabi translates as “understated beauty,” the kind of muted stillness and sometimes profound loneliness found in nature (for Westerners, think Henry David Thoreau). Sabi means “rust,” transformation through age or impermanence.

Wabi sabi scholars avoid defining the idea in concrete terms, and often resort to Zen-like fables. If you ask people on a Tokyo street, says author Taro Gold, they will likely shrug and say wabi sabi is unexplainable.

It’s an idea at odds with most Western consumers, who frankly suck at abandoning the “perfect.”

In the United States, beauty may as well stand for spring and summer all year round — lush, young, fertile, abundant. It’s Botox, Hellenic architecture, genetically modified tomatoes, symmetry. “It’s new, it’s young, it’s Britney Spears,” wabi sabi gift store owner David Bates told The Austin American-Statesman in 2004. In other words, it’s perfection based on a narrow ideal. Boring.

The natural, wabi sabi imperfections of individual blackberries. (Getty Images)

“Wabi-sabi is not found in nature at moments of bloom and lushness, but at moments of inception or subsiding,” writes Leonard Koren in Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. “The beauty of wabi-sabi is, in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly.”

Where Western society avoids the cycle of decay, wabi sabi celebrates it. It’s a more deliberate and thoughtful way to appreciate and live with the objects that surround us. Rather than fast fashion stores like H&M, which hawks leggings that last three wash cycles before they either go out of style or simply fall apart, wabi sabi tends to be bespoke, antique, worn. Something becomes more wabi sabi with time. A cracked plate rebuilt with powdered gold; a creatively mended pair of jeans; an old mixing bowl for holding mail.

In much the same way Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo had her moment, we may soon be hearing about this ancient approach. Wabi sabi cookware is already in the Goop store. And Americans are slowly becoming more conscious of their conspicuous consumption habits. In fact, the beauty of wabi sabi is it’s already part of us.

“Even if you’ve never heard of wabi sabi…you and everyone you have ever known are living examples of it — as is everything in the universe,” writes Gold in Living Wabi Sabi (2010). It honors the quirky uniqueness of the individual. It allows for struggle, sadness, and pain, with the knowledge that it’s temporary and so very human.