When you see nothing in a place you expect something to be present, your inspiration is unleashed to let it emerge in your mind. Absence triggers boundless imagination and creativity. Abundance in Zen rock garden (kare-sansui) is a product of elaborate absence.
Remember “sabi” of “wabi-sabi?” It means rust, or start decaying. In nature, everything keeps changing, and eventually dies. But since it is part of a natural cycle, it’s also the source of new life and re-generation. Old people play special roles in Japanese traditional theater “Nou,” because they are freer and much closer to nature than most of us.
Japanese traditional aesthetics are something woven into Japanese people’s genes, even though they are forgotten, most of the time. It’s that subtle something that vaguely occupies some part of their mind. But artists and creators with keen sense know how to present them in a modern context.
Movies by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki
If you want to re-discover the human-nature relationship more intuitively, movies produced by Studio Ghibli, led by director Hayao Miyazaki, are a great resource. For example, in “My neighbor Totoro,” Totoro represents the ambiguities between nature and humans. You can see how such existences used to function as a device to connect humans to nature, without altering nature’s face too much. I have to warn you that Studio Ghibli movies are typically rather quiet, and not action/event super-packed. They don’t seek a climax – well , because nature does not need, or doesn’t care about climax. Ghibli movies are honest with nature.
If you would like to experience more consciously designed ambiguities and other Japanese aesthetics in modern context, you should check out Japanese architecture – even if you are not an architectural person. Architecture is destined to deal with the nature-human relationship and is often a manifestation of humans’ answer to nature. Japanese architects including Kengo Kuma, Toyo Ito, Sou Fujimoto, Shigeru Ban, and Terunobu Fujimori have been embracing ambiguities of Japanese aesthetics in architecture, which has to be explicit and logical, not ambiguous.
If you want to design your life with simple but abundant items, embracing “less is more,” MUJI is indispensable. Kenya Hara, a prominent Japanese graphic designer, who played a pivotal role cementing MUJI‘s brand philosophy, has put “emptiness” in MUJI’s core believe. MUJI, meaning “no brand,” attempts to eliminate any excess frills from their products. Their products become empty vessels, through which users can unleash their ideas and creativity to design their own satisfaction and happiness.
Japanese Art of Repair
Yet another inspiration comes from “repair.” Ambiguities also emerge when products become “dead.” Dead people/things used to hold special status for ancient people, almost in every culture, as existences that connect humans’ world and “another” world – or mysteries of nature. Although we try to remove dead things immediately from our sphere of living in the modern world, there still remains the art of repair that tries to preserve those ambiguities. Kintsugi is a Japanese traditional technique to repair broken ceramics using urushi (poison oak tree sap) and gold powder. It gives new life to a product once dead, in a very unique way.