Abstract

The West was dominated for a long time – at least until the beginning of the twentieth century – by a disembodied and inhuman ideal of beauty, ignoring other possible aesthetic nuances of beauty experienced in the Far East both in everyday life and in the literary and cultural sphere. Now in a pandemic era that has revolutionized every sphere of our private and public existence it is time to go back to another, still fruitful conception of beauty, namely the Wabi Sabi Aesthetics as praise of imperfection and irregularity, in order to evaluate its potential for a new understanding of beauty in the twenty-first century, not only in Japanese culture, but also in the Western world.