I am in Japan again and visiting more gardens. I saw the discussion of wabi-sabi and golf course construction and the expression that characterizes "the perfect being the enemy of the good." I have played three of Japan's highly regarded courses and was grateful for getting invitations to play them. Although I liked having these golf experiences, I am more drawn to this part of the world for getting ideas and inspiration for hobby landscape gardening back home.
There are a lot of aspects of Japanese culture that probably are useful in providing some context for appreciating and understanding wabi-sabi.
1. Having a long time horizon with a respect for tradition and view of the future contributes to a great deal of patience.
2. Acceptance of change is ingrained in light of centuries of typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and fires as well as cyclical changes with seasons that are celebrated with the Sakura season, Japanese maple color change, and winter festivals.
3. Temples over centuries have been destroyed by fire and rebuilt or restored on numerous occasions.
4. I visited Nikko and Koyasan this trip where Buddhism had origins here, going back 1200 years. The cemetary in Koyasan spans that length of time and has 200,000 monuments, including feudal lords from different eras and important Buddhist figures. The cemetary is located amidst cedar trees that are centuries old. Compare the span of less than 250 years for the U.S.as a sovereign nation with the span of the shogunate beginning around 1600. Americans have a hard time thinking beyond the immediate, so there is less tolerance for small flaws, from which character might emerge.
5. There is respect for nature and even a tendency to view matter such as rocks as having vitality. This means taking care of damaged trees, bracing trees to prevent ice damage in winter, anchoring them with cables to protect and stabilize them from typhoons, shaping trees through skilled hand pruning, meticulously removing grass and unwanted growth from moss areas to promote moss growth in moss gardens I saw a tree in a garden on my first trip here. It was severely damaged by wind over 150 years ago. It was pruned over time into a shape similar to a ship with mast and prow.
6. Japan started an innovative high speed rail system and fine tuned it over time. The Shinkansen has never had a passenger fatality involving an accident, departs on time, arrives on time, and runs on time. The train system here is a remarkable example of electrical, computer, systems, and human factors engineering which evolved over time, but began as well engineered.
7. Gardens here have beauty across seasons that aren't dependent on massive bursts of color and can be appreciated as materials, land forms, and shapes in the absence of color. I think this derives from acceptance of nature operating on the landscape in annual cycles and over time. This probably favors a willingness to tolerate shortcomings and work with an attitude of minimizing obvious flaws rather than absolutistically insisting on eliminating them.
Without claiming expertise in wabi-sabi, it seems like an outcome of numerous cultural values quite unlike those found in Western culture. Isolation probably allowed this island nation to evolve in distinct ways, although Buddhism originated in India and arrived through China over a millenium ago.
Charles Lund