Hiesabi

Shinkei (1406－75) was a Buddhist cleric and master of linked verse at the temple Jūjūshin-in in the Higashiyama area of Kyoto.

Shinkei’s Hitorigoto (Solitary Ramblings, 1468) contains this startling observation: Nothing is more exquisite than ice. The stubbled fields of early morning, with needles of ice formed where sleet has glazed the cypress bark of the roof, or the dew and hoarfrost frozen upon the withered grasses and trees of the meadow─what is there to match this loveliness, this beauty.

This paean to the beauty of ice offers a unique perspective that would later come to be known as hiesabi (“chill and aged,” “chill melancholy”).