100 books like Wabi, Sabi, Suki

By Teiji Itoh (editor), Ikko Tanaka (editor), Tsune Sesoko (editor)

Here are 100 books that Wabi, Sabi, Suki fans have personally recommended if you like Wabi, Sabi, Suki. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Book of Tea

Kevin Nute Author Of This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual

From my list on Japanese aesthetics.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Kevin's book list on Japanese aesthetics

Kevin Nute Why did Kevin love this book?

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.

By Kakuzo Okakura,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Book of Tea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now available in a gorgeous hardcover slipcase edition, this "object d'art" will be sure to add grace and elegance to tea shelves, coffee tables and bookshelves. A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.

In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art…


Book cover of The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight Into Beauty

Strother Purdy Author Of Doormaking: Materials, Techniques, and Projects for Building Your First Door

From my list on on working with your hands.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I worked on cars and motorcycles in my spare time while apprenticing in an architectural millwork shop, paneling the homes of the rich and famous. Thus I discovered the great joys and satisfactions of working with my hands. After a long stint in graduate school, then four years as an editor at Fine Woodworking magazine and for Taunton Press books, I opened a custom design furniture business in 2000. Travel, writing, and reading are aligned passions, and I’ve lived, taught English, and woodworking here and abroad in France, Slovakia, India, and Japan.

Strother's book list on on working with your hands

Strother Purdy Why did Strother love this book?

They say that travel opens the mind in ways that staying home doesn’t. Books can take you places you can’t otherwise go. So with Yanagi, I got to visit the mind of an early 20th-century Japanese craft connoisseur who looked at thousand-year-old (plain and unassuming) tea bowls and wondered why they’re utterly beautiful and treasured (the best fetch huge sums at auctions–$25million recently for one). Yanagi’s exploration of how the hands of craftsmen can unknowingly and unintentionally create objects of great beauty was both fascinating as it was challenging. It made my shop work a hundred times more enjoyable.

By Soetsu Yanagi,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Unknown Craftsman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for objects born, not made.' Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical. Soetsu Yanagi is often'


Book cover of In Praise of Shadows

Erik Mortenson Author Of Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture

From my list on staring into the shadows.

Why am I passionate about this?

Who hasn’t caught themselves staring at a shadow? I certainly have. I have always found shadows fascinating. They are both there and not there, present and absent, and this in-between, fleeting nature keeps me staring. Shadows open a space for contemplation, and the list presented here traces a range of responses to the enigma they represent. Transitory images that exist on a fleeting border between light and darkness, shadows seem to invite me to make sense of their vague and shifting outlines, leading to both the joy of imagination as well as to that unsettling but pleasurable feeling of the uncanny as I struggle to fill in their outlines.

Erik's book list on staring into the shadows

Erik Mortenson Why did Erik love this book?

I find this book's range amazing. This slim but engrossing volume reveals new and invigorating ways of “reading” shadow images as the author discusses topics as diverse as food, cosmetics, architecture, jade, and even toilets.

Tanizaki also tackles the sociological differences in shadow interpretation across cultural divides, lamenting the loss of a more traditional interest in the ambiguous shadow as darkness gives way to a Westernization of Japanese culture that brings illumination in its wake.

While I didn’t always agree with his conclusions, they were always interesting, and got me thinking about why I look at shadows the way I do.

By Junichirō Tanizaki,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In Praise of Shadows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.


Book cover of Space and Illusion in the Japanese Garden

Kevin Nute Author Of This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual

From my list on Japanese aesthetics.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Kevin's book list on Japanese aesthetics

Kevin Nute Why did Kevin love this book?

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.

By Teiji Itoh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Space and Illusion in the Japanese Garden as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Photographs highlight this study of the history and creation of the Japanese courtyard borrowed-landscape gardens


Book cover of Nudes and Victims

S.J. Lomas Author Of In Between: Poems of Midlife

From my list on poetry for people who don’t think they like poetry.

Why am I passionate about this?

I never thought I’d be a poetry lover. I got my Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature. During that time, I took quite a few poetry classes, even though I didn’t consider myself a huge poetry fan. Over the course of those classes, I learned that poetry isn’t all about abstract, obscure themes, and academic language. It’s also a way for humans to communicate the feelings and experiences in one heart to another. Once I learned that poetry doesn’t have to be difficult and confusing, I found that I really enjoyed it, and I’d like to help other people discover that poetry can be more accessible and satisfying than what they may have studied in school. 

S.J.'s book list on poetry for people who don’t think they like poetry

S.J. Lomas Why did S.J. love this book?

I love this book because it’s like a collection of very short stories, in poem form. It reads like slices of real life, captured in verbal snapshots. 

Again, one of my favorite things is poetry which uses everyday language and captures the beauty, sorrow, struggle, and joy of normal life. This book is excellent to dip in and out of for a quick little glimpse of life to enjoy and inspire. There’s something in this book for everyone.

By Michael Lawrence,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Nudes and Victims as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

I have published a great many novels and stories and been translated into more than 20 languages, but long before I began to publish fiction I wrote poems, a number of which were published in poetry magazines, newspapers and suchlike – until the day I decided that, while continuing to write poems, I no longer wanted to see them in print. NUDES & VICTIMS contains a hundred of the poems written from 1967 to 2001, plus 30 song lyrics written between 1975 and 2012.

I can be contacted at [email protected]


Book cover of Schoolgirl

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a philosopher with a voracious appetite for literature. I inhabit a world of abstract ideas but always return to fiction because it vividly portrays the real-world consequences of our beliefs and reminds us that ideas also move us irrationally: they’re comforting or disturbing, audacious or dull, seductive or repellant. I prefer world literature because it plants us in new times and places, helping us, like philosophy, see beyond our blinders. Deprived of the assumptions that prop up our everyday arrogance, we can clear a mental and emotional path to what we’ve ignored or covered up, as well as rediscover and reaffirm shared values, arrived at from new directions. 

Donovan's book list on Japanese novels that illuminate Nietzsche’s philosophy (or distort it in illuminating ways!)

Donovan Miyasaki Why did Donovan love this book?

The most charming and subtly Nietzschean of Dazai’s usually bleak novels, this book plants readers directly inside the mind of a young girl over the course of a day. Some compare her to Catcher in the Rye’s Holden, a child pretending to be a grown-up. But schoolgirl’s a true contradiction: too childish and too mature, naive and wise, Holden’s little sister mixed with Mrs. Dalloway. 

Holden is a “bad Nietzsche,” overcoming internal strife with protective cynicism, but schoolgirl’s a bundle of possibilities: Nietzsche’s “undersouls” battle to control her identity, veering between “becoming what she is” or expected to be and “decadence.” 

She’s confusing, endearing, and heartbreaking because everything’s still possible. She could as easily become Holden, a dutiful daughter, or a Dazai double-suicide, and any passing experience might decide that fate. 

By Osamu Dazai, Allison Markin Powell (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Schoolgirl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them–a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally. This new translation preserves the playful language of the original and offers the reader a new window into the mind of one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century.


Book cover of Music and the Mind

Yiannis Gabriel Author Of Music and Story: A Two-Part Invention

From my list on falling in love with classical music.

Why am I passionate about this?

Classical music has been one of the great passions of my life, ever since at the age of 6 my father introduced me to the magic of Chopin’s Polonaise héroïque, by improvising the story that the music was telling, creating a magical mosaic of notes and words. I then realized that music tells stories and that musical stories do not only offer pleasure, excitement, and consolation, but also act as sources of insight into the world we inhabit, in all its complexity and drama. I have since made classical music a regular part of my life, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Beethoven being intimate friends and acquaintances, not distant historical figures. 

Yiannis' book list on falling in love with classical music

Yiannis Gabriel Why did Yiannis love this book?

If you want to delve into how music functions in the human mind and how it helps support communities and groups, then Anthony Storr’s is the book for you. Eminent psychiatrist, Oxford professor, and proficient pianist and violist, Storr (author of Churchill's Black Dog) uses his deep knowledge of philosophy, psychology, and religion to address questions like “Where does music come from?”, “Is music a common language for all humanity?” “How does music trigger emotions?” “Are our encounters with music in any way comparable with encountering persons?” Drawing on the work of Jung, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, Storr argues that music, like religion, is a feature of all human cultures. Like religion, it offers solace and comfort from the hardships of life.

However, music is not universal—different cultures develop their own musical traditions and conventions, just as they develop different political systems and different languages. What is universal, and this…

By Anthony Storr,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Music and the Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Examines the psychological, emotional, historical and philosophical roles of the musical experience in a person's life. This text looks at music as both a social and a solitary experience and supports the contention that music is the most significant experience in life.


Book cover of Words & Wisdom

Jan Marsh Author Of The Collected Letters of Jane Morris

From my list on William Morris and his family.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had a lifelong admiration for William Morris’s eloquent writings on political optimism. And how these fit with the personal life of his wife Janey and daughter May. This began with my biography of the two women, published by the feminist Pandora Press and continuing through to editing Jane Morris’s Collected Letters. Admiration is also critical engagement rather than simple fandom. We need to think, act, and endeavor to promote how we might live better lives in the world. I love the task of relating individual lives in the context of their time. Biography involves historical imagination to fill the gaps in recorded information and conceive how those in the past thought, felt and behaved.   

Jan's book list on William Morris and his family

Jan Marsh Why did Jan love this book?

It’s a compact 100+ pages with 80 images, showcasing Morris’s passionately held view that beautiful, functional design should be accessible to all. All expressed through quotations from his own words and those of his friends, colleagues, and biographers.  

Fits in a pocket and is a perfect introduction for those who do not yet know of Morris’s ideas and influence. Also a handy source of quotations on the aesthetics of design.

By William Morris,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Words & Wisdom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Born in London in 1834, William Morris was a radical thinker whose democratic vision for society and art has continued to influence designers, artists and writersto this day, long after his death in 1896. He was a gifted poet, architect, painter, writer and textile designer, who also founded the Kelmscott Press, the most famous of the Arts and Crafts private presses. Morris's ideas later came to influence the Garden City movement, as well as numerous artists and craftspeople, who sought to negotiate a viable place within the modern world in the troubled years that followed the First World War. His…


Book cover of Rhetoric

Sam Leith Author Of Words Like Loaded Pistols: The Power of Rhetoric from the Iron Age to the Information Age

From my list on rhetoric and the art of persuasion.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a journalist and critic who fell in love with the ancient art of rhetoric through Shakespeare, Chaucer… and Barack Obama. It was when I watched Obama’s consciously and artfully classical oratory as he campaigned for the 2008 election that my undergraduate interest in tricolons, epistrophe, aposiopesis and all that jazz surged back to the front of my mind. I went on to write a 2011 book arguing that not only is this neglected area of study fascinating, but it is the most important tool imaginable to understand politics, language, and human nature itself. Where there is language, there is rhetoric.  

Sam's book list on rhetoric and the art of persuasion

Sam Leith Why did Sam love this book?

Aristotle is the OG: the first person to think seriously about how persuading other people with words might be a craft that can be practised, learned, and taught.

He was the first to identify the three ways you convince someone – ethos (the speaker’s connection with the audience), pathos (emotion), and logos (the argument itself) – and did so two and a half thousand years ago. I find that just thrilling. 

By Aristotle,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rhetoric as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

One of the seminal works of Western philosophy, Aristotle's Rhetoric vastly influenced all subsequent thought on the subject — philosophical, political, and literary. Focusing on the use of language as both a vehicle and a tool to shape persuasive argument, Aristotle delineates with remarkable insight both practical and aesthetic elements and their proper combination in an effective presentation, oral or written. He also emphasizes the role of language in achieving precision and clarity of thought.
The ancients regarded rhetoric as the crowning intellectual discipline — the synthesis of logical principles and other knowledge attained from years of schooling. Modern readers…


Book cover of Poetics

David Baboulene Author Of The Primary Colours of Story

From my list on how stories work and how to write your story.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was lucky enough not only to get published in my thirties, I also got a film deal for those first two books. I was flown to Hollywood and it was all very grand. However, what they did to my stories in translating them into film scripts horrified me. And ruined them. And the films never got made. I started to look deeper into what ‘experts’ did, and it was awful. I became obsessed with how stories work, developed my own ‘knowledge gap’ theory, proved it through my Ph.D. research, and became a story consultant in the industry. Story theory has completely taken over my life and I love it!

David's book list on how stories work and how to write your story

David Baboulene Why did David love this book?

Aristotle was the world’s first story expert.

As a story consultant myself, it was incredible to have a man from 2,300 years ago talk to me about story theory! And more than that… everything he says is spot on. 

The real meaning of much of what Aristotle said has been debated for millennia. However, when I used his principles as story dynamics in real stories, they became very clear to me; so, in my own work, I have distilled Aristotle’s principles into a modern three-part interpretation, and I give examples of them working in classical and popular modern stories.

Aristotle’s principles are not only applicable today, but they are still better than almost any other new thinking of the last 100 years. Aristotle is amazing. I love him! 

By Aristotle, Joe Sachs (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Poetics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history

In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals. The Poetics has…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in aesthetics, Japan, and language?

Aesthetics 64 books
Japan 513 books
Language 90 books