Cultural Concepts

You walk into a Japanese stationery shop in early January and notice a row of round, red, scowling dolls on a shelf — squat, eyebrow-heavy, with white circles where eyes should be. The shop owner picks…

You walk into a small Japanese restaurant and miss it for a moment. There, on a shelf near the entrance, a small ceramic cat with one paw raised, looking faintly cheerful. You’ve seen these before —…

An American at a tech conference introduces himself by mentioning, casually and proudly, that he’s “an anime otaku.” A Japanese counterpart at the same conference, who also happens to watch a lot of anime, would not…

A wooden tea house on the edge of a temple compound. A tea bowl glazed in a deep iron-grey. A kimono in a navy so dark it almost reads as black. An older man in a…

You’re walking on a soft path through a forest in Nagano. The pace is slow, slower than a hike. You aren’t trying to reach anywhere. The instructor — a certified one, in this case — has…

A small ceramic tea bowl sits on a wooden tray. It was broken once, badly — the seams of the break still trace its surface. But the cracks have been filled with gold lacquer, deliberately visible,…

You walk into a small sushi counter in Tokyo. There are eight seats and one chef. There is no menu. The chef glances up, asks if it’s your first time, and then begins to prepare food…

Most of what English-speakers know about bushido comes from one book. It was written in 1900, in English, by a Japanese Christian convert living abroad, addressing a Western readership that had asked him to explain Japanese…

Late afternoon in a Kyoto garden. A path turns. The mountain that was framing the view a moment ago disappears behind a stand of cedars. The mist that was wrapping the mountain dissolves into the gray…

If you read English-language writing about Japanese minimalism, the word that keeps coming up is wabi sabi. Cracked teacups. Faded wood. The aesthetic of imperfection. It is a beautiful concept and a useful one, and it…