The jargon of Japanese art criticism has always had an abundance of unique terms, categories, and concepts. This is not only true when discussing traditional Japan, since there are just as many new ...

Aesthetic: a particular theory or conception of beauty or art;a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight. (Merriam–Webster) What’s so special about a ...

On a recent visit to New York I stopped at a Japanese bookstore in Manhattan. Among the English-language books about Japan, I encountered a section of a shelf marked “WABI-SABI” and stocked with ...

Designers are rebelling against the notion of pristine objects. This year at Milan’s Furniture Fair, that trend is on full display. But it’s actually an ancient idea. For hundreds of years, Japan’s ...

Books that try to "explain" Japanese culture to others tend to fall into one of two camps. Either they try to cash in on the latest zeitgeist, a quick fix for stressed Westerners looking for self-help ...

Japanese-style gardens first caught the public imagination in the U.S. at an 1893 world exposition in Chicago, became a sought-after feature in Gilded Age estates and were later adapted to open-plan ...

In the last article, we discussed some of the basic tenets of Japanese philosophy. These traditions, along with many others, converged to create a unique set of visual identifiers and artistic tenets ...

You rarely hear religion and beauty together in a conversation. Yet, when it comes to Japanese architecture, one cannot seem to exist without the other. The Japanese way of building takes into ...

It’s no secret that so-called PoMo revival — a rebound in taste for the audaciously Postmodern — is raging in the world of Western design. You might find these pieces dotting the trendy boutiques of ...