''Miyabi'' (雅) is one of the traditional Japanese aesthetic ideals, though not as prevalent as

Iki IKI may refer to: * Internationales Kulturinstitut, in Vienna * Iodine potassium-iodide, a chemical compound * Russian Space Research Institute, originally known as IKI RAN * Iki Airport, IATA code Iki or iki may refer to: * Iki Island, a Japane ...

Wabi-sabi In traditional Japanese aesthetics, centers on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It is often described as the appreciation of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese ...

. In modern Japanese, the word is usually translated as "elegance," "refinement," or "courtliness" and sometimes to a "sweet loved one". The ideal posed by the word demanded the elimination of anything that was absurd or vulgar and the "polishing of manners, diction, and feelings to eliminate all roughness and crudity so as to achieve the highest grace." It expressed that sensitivity to beauty which was the hallmark of the

Heian The Japanese word Heian (平安, lit. "peace") may refer to: * Heian period, an era of Japanese history * Heian-kyō, the Heian-period capital of Japan that has become the present-day city of Kyoto * Heian series, a group of karate kata (forms) * ...

era. Miyabi is often closely connected to the notion of

Mono no aware , , and also translated as , or , is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of , or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the re ...

, a bittersweet awareness of the transience of things, and thus it was thought that things in decline showed a great sense of miyabi. An example of this would be one of a lone cherry tree. The tree would soon lose its flowers and would be stripped of everything that made it beautiful and so it showed not only mono no aware, but also miyabi in the process. Adherents to the ideals of miyabi strove to rid the world of crude forms or aesthetics and emotions that were common in artworks of the period, such as those contained in the

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

, the oldest extant collection of

Japanese poetry Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in th ...

. The

contained poems by people of every walk of life, many of which stood in stark contrast to the sensibilities of miyabi. For example, one poem in the collection likened a woman's hair to snail innards. The ideals of miyabi stood firmly against the use of metaphors such as this. Furthermore, appreciation of miyabi and its ideal was used as a marker of class differences. It was believed that only members of the upper class, the courtiers, could truly appreciate the workings of miyabi. Miyabi in fact limited how art and poems could be created. Miyabi tried to stay away from the rustic and crude, and in doing so, prevented the traditionally trained courtiers from expressing real feelings in their works. In later years, miyabi and its aesthetic were replaced by the ideals of

Higashiyama culture The Higashiyama culture (東山文化 ''Higashiyama bunka'') is a segment of Japanese culture that includes innovations in architecture, the visual arts and theatre during the late Muromachi period. It originated and was promoted in the 15th cen ...

, such as

, Yuugen,

and so on. The characters of the classic eleventh-century Japanese novel "

The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman, poet, and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu around the peak of the Heian period, in the early 11th century. It is one of history's first novels, the first by a woman to have wo ...

" by

Lady Murasaki was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of ''The Tale of Genji'', widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...

provide examples of miyabi.''Japanese Aesthetics and Culture'' Nancy G. Hume,

References

Concepts in Japanese aesthetics {{aesthetics-stub