You could spend your entire life in modern Japan without ever hearing the term wabi, though no overview of Japanese history or art is complete without it. It¡¯s a beautiful word, hard to define like most beautiful words. Poverty is the heart of it, which sounds dispiriting, but there¡¯s the Zen phrase ¡°To fill a monk¡¯s tattered robe with a cool refreshing breeze,¡± quoted by Zen master Daisetz T. Suzuki (1870-1966) as an invitation to see poverty through Zen eyes.
¡°A life of wabi,¡± he says, affords ¡°an inexpressible quiet joy deeply hidden beneath sheer poverty.¡±
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, many of whose political goals spring from a professed love of Japanese tradition, has little to say about this particular one. It¡¯s hard to blame him.
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