In the preface to this new, much-needed book on Japanese aesthetics, Donald Richie points out, "In writing about traditional Asian aesthetics, the conventions of Western discourse — order, logical progression, symmetry — impose upon the subject an aspect that does not belong to it." By doing so he underscores a suspicion that we must have all had — while wondering why so much attention can be given to a cracked tea-bowl, for example — that there must be a lot more to Japanese culture and how it is perceived than is immediately apparent.
Indeed there is, and Richie helps us more than anyone else has before in the English language, by explaining many of the essential aesthetic concepts needed for understanding and appreciation. For this he gleans from a variety of Western and Japanese sources, accumulating his pensees on the understanding of beauty into this thought-provoking treatise structured in the form of a zuihitsu — the traditional Japanese, free-ranging assortment of ideas that follows its own intuitive direction.
He quotes aesthetician Teiji Itoh — "The dilemma we face is that our grasp is intuitive and perceptual rather than rational and logical" — to clarify from the start the fundamental difference between Japanese and Western aesthetic values. Proceeding to apply his six decades of experience in Japan, Richie then games intelligently to clear the mist surrounding those indefinable perceptions of taste and beauty, and bring them into some sort of focus for those who are fascinated but often mystified by Japanese culture.