Miyabi is one of the traditional Japanese aesthetic ideals, though not as prevalent as Iki

Iki (aesthetic ideal)

Iki is a traditional aesthetic ideal of human behavior or volition in Japan, roughly "chic, stylish". The basis of iki is thought to have formed among urbane commoners in Edo in the Tokugawa period...

 or Wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi

represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"...

. In modern Japanese, the word is usually translated as "elegance," "refinement," or "courtliness" and sometimes refers to a "heart-breaker".

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

Heian period

The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

 era. Miyabi is often closely connected to the notion of Mono no aware

Mono no aware

, literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of , or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.-Origins:...

, 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 oldest extant collection of Japanese poetry

Japanese poetry

Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...

. The Man'yōshū 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 courtesans, 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 courtesans from expressing real feelings in their works. In later years, miyabi and its aesthetic were replaced by ideals inspired by Zen Buddhism

Zen

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

, such as Wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi

represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"...

, Yuugen and Iki

Iki (aesthetic ideal)

Iki is a traditional aesthetic ideal of human behavior or volition in Japan, roughly "chic, stylish". The basis of iki is thought to have formed among urbane commoners in Edo in the Tokugawa period...

.

The characters of the classic eleventh century Japanese novel "The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji

is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...

" by Lady Murasaki provide many excellent examples of the true nature of miyabi.<ref>Japanese Aesthetics and Culture by Nancy G. Hume</ref>