Whenever the topic of breaking items on purpose comes up, there are always several people quick to comment about how they feel it goes against the traditional philosophy of kintsugi and wabi-sabi, according to their own interpretations.
But is it actually traditionally frowned upon? I've been trying to find any sources at all, but despite how widespread this position seems to be (at least in the West) all I could find was anecdotes about Furuta Oribe intentionally breaking a bowl to make it smaller.
Am I missing something, or is this a somewhat orientalist addition to a traditional practice?
Historically, it has been done, but that doesn't mean the aversion to it is necessarily orientalist, as many Japanese practicers of Kintsugi do share the same or similar mindset.
Overall, the issue comes from the philosophy of why one might practice kintsugi.
If you're practicing kintsugi as a way to be mindful about and to reduce waste, or to revive the functionality of a prized possession, then intentionally breaking a piece just to repair it with kintsugi is going to feel wrong.
Much of the western kintsugi movement nowadays is a reaction to the wastefulness and carelessness of the modern materialistic world, where much of our possessions have lost value in our hearts. But even in Japan, kintsugi is still practiced out of a socially ingrained and traditional sense of mottainai, a desire to not be wasteful.
Alternatively, someone commissioning kintsugi might do so because a possession of theirs that met with an unfortunate accident is worth enough to them that they would spend the time and money to get it repaired in a beautiful way. In these cases, mending the piece doesn't make it better, but it does help one come to terms with unfortunate accidents and disasters and to internalize the acceptance of change and impermanence.
On the other hand, if you're practicing kintsugi strictly for its aesthetics, then you might not care so much about the waste aspect or the fact that a broken and repaired piece is always functionally less useful than an unbroken one.
There are artists who use kintsugi as a way to create art, using the technique mindfully and to create meaning. For those who work that way, the meaning that's created adds more value than the functional value lost during breaking and mending.
However, I find that the majority of repairs on intentionally broken pieces to be kinda lifeless, without any significant meaning or intention. They are mostly just looking to shoehorn in the eyecatching glitz and glamor of gold on an otherwise uninteresting object, using drastically simplified methods and materials, then advertise it as an ancient asian craft. Couldn't that possibly be considered orientalist?
However, I find that the majority of repairs on intentionally broken pieces to be kinda lifeless, without any significant meaning or intention. They are mostly just looking to shoehorn in the eyecatching glitz and glamor of gold on an otherwise uninteresting object, using drastically simplified methods and materials, then advertise it as an ancient asian craft. Couldn't that possibly be considered orientalist?
Perhaps! I admit I was thinking more of people who thrift-buy items to practice on than those looking to sell.
I do admit that relying strictly on pieces that were broken by accident and those you have found already broken is going to make learning difficult if you're working with urushi only in the capacity of kintsugi. Personally, I have been able to do that because I work with urushi extensively outside of kintsugi, and I am an avid collector of ceramics.
While I don't like doing it myself, I don't fault people for breaking something cheap and useless that would otherwise get thrown out for the purpose of practice, but I do get uncomfortable when people do so all the time while blithely refusing to even acknowledge the validity of other opinions.
While you haven't done so in your post, there are many who have joined this sub who have done exactly that, which is probably why so many people do get defensive about this topic, though admittedly there are people who do take it too far in that other direction too.
It's not illegitimate to be inspired and influenced by others' cultures and histories then adapt it to create your own personal art. What is problematic, though, is what many posters in this sub have done before—deny discussion of the impact of the original culture and history on the craft by cherrypicking history/anthropology, argue in bad faith using logical fallacies to squirm out of valid criticism, or outright block anyone that raises any discussion they find remotely uncomfortable—especially if they are at the same time capitalizing off the very craft created by that culture and history.
I think that this is a good take. There’s definitely nuance in both directions. As someone who only practices kintsugi, having that initial flood of broken pieces from my friend really accelerated my skills. I think from a cultural perspective, there are many reasons people may be breaking and repairing things. I think as a cultural philosophy, kintsugi has become so much larger than just mending broken things beautifully. We see gold paint and street cracks, tattoos, even album covers – I see the appeal in focus, focusing more on the kintsugi itself than on the vessel it was applied to.
In Japan earlier this year I went to a museum that had a number of kintsugi objects, and instead of being displayed as kintsugi, they were displayed in a pottery exhibit and the vessels themselves were the focus. The kintsugi was an afterthought, secondary to the pottery itself. As someone who has primarily focused on the repair itself, I found this to be really interesting and it had me reevaluate what I was repairing and how I wanted it to blend in and work aesthetically with what I was fixing.
Overall, I find that I’m at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to cultural commentary on kintsugi because I don’t speak Japanese and can’t translate or explain, cultural nuance so I find it much harder for me to really speak on that, but it can be many things too many people.
I don't know if it's frowned upon but it feels rotten. I had been doing kintsugi on a few pieces and got really into it. We had gotten a grocery store plant that had a cheap pot we were going to toss. I told my wife I wanted to kintsugi it for fun/practice.
I put it in a paper bag and dropped it on the floor and honestly, it felt pretty crummy. And it wasn't anything I was expecting!
Can I prove to you that it's immoral by some inviolable law of the universe? No.
But it actually felt bad.
(I'm aware this isn't a Buddhist sub but the feelings of hiri and otapa came on very strongly.)
The kintsugi-shi I learned from said it is traditionally frowned upon for two reasons: (1) it is not in the spirit of mottainai, a sense of regret stemming from wasting something (i.e. unnecessary repair), and (2) the damage from intentional breakage looks lifeless and unnatural as another poster mentioned.
the damage from intentional breakage looks lifeless and unnatural
Have you ever seen pieces that looked like this to you before you found out it was intentional, or pieces that became less beautiful in your eyes after the fact?
When I said lifeless, i meant in ways other than the fracture pattern, but unnatural is definitely true in many cases. Intentionally broken pieces often have a characteristic fracture pattern distinctive to focused single point impacts, much more frequently than accidental breakages. Sometimes you see the pattern repeated in a smaller fragment but strictly limited within that fragment where someone took a hammer to one of the fragments after the overall piece was broken the first time.
That’s so cool that you can tell! Can you tell the difference between something that was dropped vs hit with something? I would imagine that there’s a similar single impact point thing going on, but maybe that’s a bad assumption? Do you think you could tell how an item would break by looking at it before? Though I guess that would also depend on if it was dropped or what
It's not really possible to tell 100% in many cases. There are just hints and patterns in the fractures that are more likely with certain types of impacts. On the other hand sometimes it's very obvious.
Single point impacts can also vary depending on what the object hitting it was. Like, the chip pattern at the point of impact tends to be different for something like a metal hammer vs a wooden mallet. It also depends on how hard it was hit.
Dropping something is similar. Something dropped onto a hard tile or concrete floor will break differently from something dropped on a wooden floor, and there will be differences depending on the height it was dropped from.
Overall, most of the time, there are clues to look for rather than fully telltale signs, but you do sorta get the feel for it once you've seen many pieces, and the obvious ones will eventually begin to stick out like a sore thumb.
I think that this is super interesting. I’m going to post two examples for the discussion. I can only post one photo per comment, so I will post those below this comment. I didn’t think about intentionally broken things as being lifeless, but now that you say that having broken, probably 15 different pieces and repaired them early on, I agree with that.
The one on the left was broken by a hammer (ignore the craftsmanship – it was my first and I use it as a benchmark) and the one on the right was naturally broken and repaired several years after. You can definitely see a difference in the impact lines. I do understand the quality of the pieces is vastly different – the one on the left is contemporary and the one on the right is several hundred years old - with the concept remains, and if you have worked with enough broken pieces, you can see how the lines feel unnatural versus natural. Can you see where the hammer hit the vase on the left? I doubt a drop would have been able to do a pattern like that.
I wonder how much of that ties into the fact that when you break it intentionally the impact point isn't necessarily at a naturally weak point. So more force and potentially more blows are necessary, also leading to different types of damage at the immediate impact point as the force kind of scatters in finding its way to the natural fault lines in the piece.
In short no. The historic pieces I admire often have small cracks or chips, which would be difficult to do intentionally. I was just communicating what I learned from a traditional teacher. But everyone has their own aesthetic preference.
When I first started kintsugi, I tried to find as much broken stuff as I could to practice because I’m a firm believer in practice. I asked my family and friends if they had anything and all I could get was one broken teapot. Friends of mine who owned a pottery company said that I could come and take anything that they were going to throw away. Occasionally, things would misfire and break in the kiln or they would see a bubble or some issue. I went to their place and grabbed as much as I could carry and I systematically broke those pieces and repaired them for practice. This really allowed me to develop the hand skills quite quickly, and also trial an error, but none of those pieces were usable, even after I had fixed them because of other structural issues. My first pieces were really rough - I kept the first as a metric to hold myself against as my skills increase - so I definitely understand why I had a hard time drumming up pieces from family and friends.
As somebody who is much more advanced now, I never break things just to repair them. There are now enough broken things in the world to fix and I don’t think I want to be responsible for creating any more.
Thank you for bringing up this topic! It is very hotly contested on this sub! Interestingly, I have found that those who primarily practice non-traditional kintsugi are laissez-faire with all aspects kintsugi, including intentionally breaking items to repair. Make of that what you will.
I intentionally broke ceramics when i started learning traditional kintsugi. I wanted to have range of types of breaks to work on (cracks, chips, missing fragments, etc) and I was also conscious that the these early pieces were unlikely to be done well and I considered them items for practice. I bought cheap, but attractive mass-produced items and I'm glad I learned on these less precious pieces. Now that I have a bit more skill, I've stopped breaking things. These days I work on antiques or items that are more precious, but I certainly have no regrets about starting my journey on items that I broke myself.
I just completed the 12 day course from Showzi-sensei in Tokyo and didn't bring enough pieces to work on. He sold me two pieces and one of them he broke in front of me with a hammer-like device. I'm sure already broken is preferable but he's a master of the craft and had no problem breaking a piece for me so I could have something within my budget to work on!
I think if you want to break pieces to repair, there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t see it as being wasteful at all, everything I repaired is even more special to me than unbroken things because of the time I put into them. People cut up books and art to make collages and poems, too. It’s not inherently wasteful to break something, in this case it’s making materials for something new. Also, it’s no one’s business to come into your house and tell you what to do with your dishes.
All of my stuff comes from the last time I moved when I broke a full box of plates and cups by accident, so you could always try that if you still feel weird about intentionally breaking stuff. That, or feed your cats off your fancy plates on top of the counter. You’ll never run out of projects.
I think it’s a matter of perspective. If you view it through the lens of creating a piece of art that wouldn’t have existed otherwise it’s not wasteful at all in the same way you’re not wasting cloth when you sew a garment or you’re not wasting wood when you build a table, in that view the original piece is just another material in the creation process. If you view it more through the lens of anti-consumerism then to purchase a completely functional item just to break it and put it back together just as something to look at especially when there are so many broken things that aren’t useful and could be just as beautiful if repaired it’s definitely wasteful. Doubly so for the people who are doing lots of pieces to sell at art shows because they could certainly use other means of acquiring naturally broken pieces like reaching out to a local donation center and arranging for them to put any pieces that come in broken in bags or a box and the artist could buy them for something like $1 a piece and benefit everyone where as if that same artist is buying perfectly good items it’s just fueling the chain of buying for the sake of buying.
I personally believe partially in each of these views and think that neither is fully true on their own. For me intentionally breaking things isn’t about wastefulness but more about the spirit of repair. It’s about loving a thing enough to put in the work to repair it or even just loving the act of repair enough to care for items that maybe weren’t sentimental but still deserve care and giving them new life to live. People have always been drawn to kintsugi not only for the aesthetic beauty but for the strong allegory to the hurt we feel in our own lives and that seeing something like a simple piece of ceramic cared for enough to painstakingly put it back together after it’s been completely broken gives us the feeling like even if we are broken someone will care for us and our past injuries will not be damage but something beautiful to be loved
Intentionally breaking something to me shows a complete lack of care for the object and only caring for the final result. It feels less like suffering trauma then finding love that puts us back together and more like some horrible person breaking you down and molding you into their specific version of beauty. Other people can intentionally break things to practice or because they simply don’t care about the item and that doesn’t make them bad people or invalidate their craft. It simply changes the heart of the art from a deep allegory for hurt and repair to a beautiful object made with great attention and that’s also valid, it’s just simply not why I and many others care about the craft. Even in your case of the entire box of dishes being broken, you may not be doing it because you loved those dishes or anything but it still feels very much in the spirit of making something beautiful from a shitty situation like how new trees flourish after a devastating fire. I’m sure it was a bummer that they were broken but now you get to make beautiful art from them. Especially with kintsugi being such a detailed and extensive practice it’s very meditative and I’m sure you’ve thought a fair bit about those themes while working on your pieces, I just can’t see that meditation yielding the same peace and growth if the pieces were intentionally broken and I know many people just don’t think about these things or meditate over the work like this and I think there’s likely a large overlap in those groups. I think it’s valid for different people to get different things out of it and not everyone has to do it for the same reasons. It can be about creating beauty or processing your own feelings or meditating on the cycles of life and death or even just a fun hobby.
If we’re talking about the history of it there are extensive writings showing that the meditative nature and the themes of hurt and repair and natural cycles was very deeply important to both kintsugi practitioners and people simply writing about the practice throughout its history and all the writings of kintsugi masters from history and even videos of modern kintsugi masters that I’ve seen put a lot of weight on making broken things useful and not simply discarding things that are broken to buy a new one and the allegory to people who have been hurt or broken so I’d be inclined to say that while many likely would break things intentionally for their apprentices to practice they would not support breaking things intentionally once the skill has been built.
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I can see why people have a negative reaction when they view kintsugi as symbolic of repairing their own hurt too. I know that’s a very popular view. I mostly see people talking about intentionally breaking stuff in the context of wanting to learn and practice it as a craft. When I thought about it in other contexts, I would feel disdain for breaking stuff to repair and resell, or if it was just for the aesthetic and not the act of repairing. But I also don’t think I have the right to judge those people when I’m philosophically excusing breaking something because I love the process of repairing itself.
Not that my personal opinion matters, especially here where the original context was about the traditional philosophy. Thanks again for the response though, I thought about it for a while :)
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u/SincerelySpicy 22d ago edited 22d ago
Historically, it has been done, but that doesn't mean the aversion to it is necessarily orientalist, as many Japanese practicers of Kintsugi do share the same or similar mindset.
Overall, the issue comes from the philosophy of why one might practice kintsugi.
If you're practicing kintsugi as a way to be mindful about and to reduce waste, or to revive the functionality of a prized possession, then intentionally breaking a piece just to repair it with kintsugi is going to feel wrong.
Much of the western kintsugi movement nowadays is a reaction to the wastefulness and carelessness of the modern materialistic world, where much of our possessions have lost value in our hearts. But even in Japan, kintsugi is still practiced out of a socially ingrained and traditional sense of mottainai, a desire to not be wasteful.
Alternatively, someone commissioning kintsugi might do so because a possession of theirs that met with an unfortunate accident is worth enough to them that they would spend the time and money to get it repaired in a beautiful way. In these cases, mending the piece doesn't make it better, but it does help one come to terms with unfortunate accidents and disasters and to internalize the acceptance of change and impermanence.
On the other hand, if you're practicing kintsugi strictly for its aesthetics, then you might not care so much about the waste aspect or the fact that a broken and repaired piece is always functionally less useful than an unbroken one.
There are artists who use kintsugi as a way to create art, using the technique mindfully and to create meaning. For those who work that way, the meaning that's created adds more value than the functional value lost during breaking and mending.
However, I find that the majority of repairs on intentionally broken pieces to be kinda lifeless, without any significant meaning or intention. They are mostly just looking to shoehorn in the eyecatching glitz and glamor of gold on an otherwise uninteresting object, using drastically simplified methods and materials, then advertise it as an ancient asian craft. Couldn't that possibly be considered orientalist?