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Wabi Sabi gives children a new way of seeing the world
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nIt’s hard to walk past this book without opening it up – what is that cat with the lemon-yellow eyes staring at so intently?
The cat is Wabi Sabi. How’d she get such a name? She’d like to know, and therein lies the tale.
Wabi Sabi is a contemporary Kyoto cat who never gave her name much thought until visitors from another country ask her master is asked what it means.
At the outset, the reader is told that wabi sabi is a feeling for the beauty and harmony in what is simple, natural, modest, and, perhaps, imperfect. It can be a dark and mysterious feeling, but is usually warm and comfortable.
To the cat so-named is intrigued when her master tells the visitors: “It’s hard to explain.”
Well, not so hard to explain to adults. But this book takes on the task of explaining it to children. Will they get it?
The story follows Wabi Sabi on her journey of discovery. She asks friends, like Snowball the cat and Rascal the dog. They alternately tell her it’s a kind of beauty and something she is not smart enough to understand.
Haiku is used: “An old straw mat, rough on cats paws, pricks and tickles…hurts and feels good, too.”
Each new animal Wabi Sabi encounters demurs, stating it is a difficult concept, but contributes a haiku that sheds some light. Finally, the cat meets a wise monkey and partakes of tea in a plain and beautiful bowl. She begins to get it. Wabi sabi is the feeling you get when you find the imperfect beautiful and harmonious. On the way home, Wabi Sabi stops at a temple and creates poems in honor of the concept and truly understands her name by the time she gets home to her master.
At the end we are told wabi sabi dates back to ancient China and Zen Buddhism, “but it began to shape Japanese culture when the Zen Priest Murata Shuko of Nara (1423-1502) changed the tea ceremony.
“He discarded the fancy gold, jade, and porcelain of the popular Chinese tea service, and introduced simple, rough, wood and clay instruments, About a hundred years later the famous tea master Sen no Rokyu of Kyoto (1522-1591) brought wabi sabi into the homes of the powerful. He constructed a teahouse with a door so low that even the emperor would have to bow in order to enter, reminding everyone of the importance of humility …”
San Francisco English teacher Mark Reibstein wrote the text for Wabi Sabi. It’s his first picture book. Upstate New York artist Ed Young did the collages. Young is a Caldecott medalist for Lon Po Po and honoree for Seven Blind Mice and The Emperor and the Kite.
Wabi Sabi is unquestionably a beautiful book. Whether children will grasp its meaning and love it as well, time will tell.
This $17 hard cover edition includes translations of 14 Japanese haiku that appear in Japanese script throughout the story, and information on haiku as a literary form.
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