It feels like once a week I’ll come across social media content that lists Japanese words or phrases as if they’re a source of ancient wisdom that can be extracted and imparted into their readership’s lives. Things like mottainai, the idea of not wasting. Or shōganai, the idea of letting go because it can’t be helped. These words perhaps have added gravitas simply for being a foreign language and not necessarily because they are revered terms among Japanese people. For example, a Japanese dude will say, “Ah, mottainai… shōganai yo!” to his friend whose corn dog slipped out of his hand onto the street outside a Lawson convenience store. At the top of many of these lists is wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi, as a term, has a connection to the Buddhist philosophy of appreciating impermanence and imperfection as a part of Japanese culture, but I would argue that the application isn’t as broad or part of the everyday as these content creators can make it seem.
These romantic portrayals often oversimplify and exoticise the true complexities of life in Japan. As much as I wish it were true, Japanese people are not uniquely inclined to take better care of their belongings or have a more profound understanding of impermanence – the country is one of the most advanced consumerist cultures, filled with the same Ikeas, fast fashion brands, and single-use plastics as the rest of the world. Beyond the romanticised depictions of wabi-sabi often found on social media, another lesser-known concept, heta-uma, offers a more contemporary and relatable lens to understand the Japanese appreciation of imperfection. This concept emphasises not just acceptance of flaws but also the playful defiance of established norms. Heta-uma is a slangy colloquial abbreviation of 一見ヘタのようだが実はウマい (ikken heta no yōdaga jitsuwa uma i), which means “Looks bad at first glance but is actually good” or “unskillfully good” as a more direct translation.
Heta-uma emerged as a counterpoint to the rigid perfectionism prevalent in mainstream manga, with publications like Seirindo’s Garo and illustrators like Sadao Shoji in the 1970s paving the way for a more diverse visual language that is attractive despite, or perhaps because of, its perceived lack of sophistication.
