The Art of Imperfection: Wabi-Sabi in Haiku Poetry

For Misako Yoke, wabi-sabi, like ikigai, is not something to chase or achieve but something to feel and cherish. Instead of looking for perfection and conventional beauty, wabi-sabi helps you see beauty in imperfections and the realness of things, which is something people may encounter when writing haiku poetry.

A more mindful way of experiencing life through wabi-sabi

Nick: Another fascinating word and concept, and you write: ‘In Haiku poetry, we often encounter the quiet yet stirring presence of wabi sabi.’

Like ikigai, wabi-sabi has become popular and appreciated outside of Japan. But I think that the West's understanding, or the interpretation of wabi-sabi is quite narrow. And it's often defined as the beauty of imperfection. But that is probably not enough.

Misako: It is part of it, but it's not the whole idea of wabi-sabi. Just like ikigai, you said it before: it's not you chase and get it—it's more of you feel it and cherish the emotion around it. And wabi-sabi is very similar.

Because of imperfection and fleeting moment, you naturally have this moment of reflection, like you stop and pause. And that's the moment you wear a kind of wabi-sabi lens to see something beyond—the imperfection is the little window to go beyond the element in front of you.

And we are so trained and almost conditioned to see something beautiful, we have to tick off these boxes; something colorful or something with a good contrast and good layout, has to be good this way and that way.

But wabi-sabi frees us, the imperfection frees us to feel a sense of something behind it, something around it. It's more real. In this digital era, we are just craving for the immediate answer: yes or no, black or white, zero or one? You have to go check and do the next thing.

But it's the moment you free yourself to see. Just like your father-in-law, you and your father-in-law's conversation was very fascinating. I would like to hear more. It just you asked and he said it's not something to be explained, it's something you feel.

Nick: He didn’t even say that, actually. It was actually from you that I learned, it's something you sense: So wabi-sabi, it's not just the aesthetic of something, it's something you sense. But yeah, from my father-in-law, who's a potter, he makes traditional tea ceremony cups, shino-yaki, he actually introduced me to the word, and it was kind of strange because he wanted to make traditional Japanese pottery in a mountain kiln.

That's a long story. But he purchased land and hand-built kiln, and it was sort of a passion project. And it was very difficult because the first two firings failed, and they lost hundreds of pieces of pottery. Once he finally had, I think on the third fire, they produced some pretty good pieces. And I was in the factory one day and he was busy wrapping things.

And he has two pieces up on the desk and he speaks tono-ben, he's a man of few words, but I think he was like, he said something like ‘ureru domo’, or something like ‘Which one do you think would sell for more?’ And one had that perfect kind of catalogue look, it was symmetrical, lovely looking. And then the other one was kind of off and wonky. And I'm thinking well, I should say the opposite to what I think.

So I was thinking I should say, it should be the wonky one. So I wasn't even really listening to my heart, I was thinking very objectively. But then I thought, it has to be this one that looks like a catalogue, like perfect. So I kind of chose the symmetrical perfect one. And he's gone like no, and he just pointed to the wonky one. And then he just said ‘wabi-sabi’, and then he left.

And I'm like, okay, he said something very significant here. Because he's never taught me anything. And then I'm like, I don’t know what it means. I asked my wife what's wabi-sabi, and she kind of stopped and just said that it’s too hard.

And then I remember going online, this is a long time ago, this was like, almost 18 years ago, and looking it up, and the only things in English were like these interior design or books on pottery. So it took me a while after that to, you know, kind of having conversations with you and getting a feel for it.

Traditionally, it's related to the aesthetic of pottery, and the feeling pottery generates. But it also obviously ties in nature, and I guess other traditional crafts. But it's this fleeting moment where it seems to cut through your consciousness and you have this moment of pause and reflect.

And it's sort of just you and the world connected for a moment; or you in this reflection on nature or beauty. So it's almost like a little epiphany when you have this sense of wabi-sabi.

>