Kintsugi: the art and philosophy, from broken to beautiful

Kin Tsugi, or ‘golden joinery’ is the ancient Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with tree sap dusted in luminous powdered gold. Through the art of kintsugi, broken objects are treated with respect, and by reassembling and repairing them with precious materials, are rendered beautiful and whole again. While the process of kintsugi may illuminate imperfections, these golden threads add further character and elegance and reveal an object’s history.

The art of repairing pottery originated in 15th century Japan under shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa. When Yoshimasa’s favourite vase shattered into many pieces, he instructed his team of craftspeople to explore ways to repair it and return it to its former glory. From this, the artistry of kinstugi was born.

But kintsugi is not just an art form but also an approach to life. It emerged out of the Japanese philosophy and aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which centers on the need to accept imperfection and embrace and make peace with a world that is intrinsically fluid and impermanent. Both kintsugi and wabi-sabi challenge the Western interpretation of beauty as rooted in perfection and symmetry, and instead encourages us to see beauty differently. Beauty comes from accepting and even cherishing the errors we may make, the flaws within ourselves and other people, and our visible or invisible scars. From these we learn to appreciate how all experiences, good and bad, shape and steer our paths. Just as moss grows unevenly over a stone in nature, so are we as people part of the natural world, experiencing the uneven ups and downs of life.

Kintsugi as a path through disaster  

Kinstugi was born out of a need to build resilience and strength to whole societies. Wabi-sabi and kintsugi likely emerged in Japan—one of the most disaster prone countries in the world—to help people cope with earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and other natural disasters over hundreds of years. It provided a guiding philosophical framework through which to view catastrophe and helped those affected to regain optimism for the future. Kintsugi enabled the Japanese people to come to terms with extreme events and learn to heal themselves and their communities.

The art and philosophy of Kintsugi has a powerful message to share with us, in particular during this moment of pandemic recovery. The effects of covid have led to tragedy and suffering but have also re-shaped the way we travel, socialise, work and assess risk, likely forever. Kintsugi invites us to view this change and rupture as an opportunity to expand our thinking about what is possible and embrace new ways of being. For instance, we broadly acknowledge how our ways of working were in many ways broken prior to the pandemic. In the wake of covid lockdowns, many of us now experience increased flexibility and better work-life balance, and for others covid has prompted important public debate about the pay, conditions and value of many roles within society. By applying the kintsugi lens to recent history, we are reminded of the ways in which society has been brought together again.

What kintsugi can teach us

Kintsugi is a useful philosophy to adopt and embody as we recover from the experience of covid and can guide our thinking not just at the macro, societal level, but also as individuals. Although things do fall apart, kintsugi teaches us to view these experiences as important moments through which we practice perseverance and strength and ultimately make us the richly layered people that we are. Similarly, the mistakes we make along the way exist to teach us how to grow into more compassionate and self-reflexive members of society. Kintsugi demonstrates that nothing is beyond repair.

It teaches us there is beauty in our imperfections. While we may see parts of ourselves as physically or emotionally broken, kintsugi invites us to reconsider this perspective and see all parts of ourselves, the good, bad, shattered and flawed as parts of our whole selves. This is why the analogy of kintsugi can be used in therapy, as it symbolises the process of healing emotional scars. The process of gilding a piece of Kintsugi ceramic takes time (the art of kintsugi can take up to three months to complete), dedication and patience to complete. We need to take the time to heal ourselves piece by piece and acknowledge and illuminate the progress towards repair.

Kintsugi and wabi-sabi demonstrate to us the importance of cultivating optimism, being kind to ourselves and others and sharing and embracing the full spectrum of our individual stories. It helps to bond us together through global disasters and emboldens us to find beauty in our imperfect experiences.