Yugen is an emotional response to nature, art, and thus life. It represents an aesthetic that is not often “named” or even considered by Western artists, yet exists at times in all of us. Yugen is the appreciation of emotions arising from the observation of nature and art. It is akin to the appreciation of wabi-sabi, which is a better-known principle in the West. However, the aesthetics of Yugen is less concerned with physical attributes—as is wabi-sabi—and more about the personal emotional response to the interplay of shadows and light, form and function, and how they reflect the impermanence of beauty—and of life. Learn more here.