I've spent the last three decades thinking about Japanese aesthetics, and in particular if and how they can be meaningfully used beyond Japan. I'm the author of several books on the subject: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Place Time and Being in Japanese Architecture, This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual, and most recently, The Constructed Other: Japanese Architecture in the Western Mind. I teach about Asian Pacific architecture at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa.
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Okakura links Taoist and Zen philosophy to the tangible world by way of the aesthetics of tea, which are actually the aesthetics of life itself. The title of this slim volume is disarmingly understated, then. It is the most approachable book on aesthetics I know.
Like The Book of Tea, In Praise appears to be a straightforward lament over the rapid loss of traditional values in modernizing Japan, but it repays multiple re-reading. On closer reading it is found to reflect the "both and" sentiment common in early 20th century Japan and summed up in the term wakon yosai, "Japanese spirit Western learning."
This book was far ahead of its time in explaining the active manipulation of space and time in traditional Japanese gardens, from the diminutive tsuboniwa courtyard gardens that transported the city dweller to the heart of the wilderness, to the temple gardens that procured remote features of the natural landscape.
This beautifully illustrated book is difficult to find now. The images effectively speak for themselves, however, and make up for the inevitable shortcomings of even the most informed attempts to sum up these concepts verbally.
5,215 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about aesthetics, Japan, and tea.
We think you will like The Art of Looking Sideways, The Process: A New Foundation in Art and Design, and Sakuteiki: Visions of the Japanese Garden: A Modern Translation of Japan's Gardening Classic if you like this list.
From David's list on The best books on visual branding.
A seminal classic for any graphic designer. “A primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain, and the imagination.”
From David's list on The best books on visual branding.
If any book can explain why there’s always more than one way to solve a visual problem, this is it. The book shares a compendium of 13 experimental projects, each designed to teach conceptual thinking and problem solving to art and design students.
From Mira's list on The best books for digging into Japanese gardens.
Not only does this book provide a translation of a nearly 1,000-year-old text on garden design – the oldest such text existing in the world, but it also includes extensive annotation and a carefully researched introduction to the cultural and historic influences on the development of Japanese gardens. This is a delightful combination of the technical detail and practical advice of the classic text with the author-translators’ descriptive explanation.
