Ephemeral Beauty in Japan
There's something about Japan that makes you want to burn every goddamn photo you've ever taken anywhere else.
It’s not just the temples, all serene wood and meticulously raked gravel, looking like they were art-directed by some Zen master with an Ansel Adams fetish. Or the neon-drenched canyons of Shinjuku, where every sign, every epileptic screen, feels deliberately placed for maximum visual impact. No, it’s the people - this entire country is a masterclass in aesthetics.
The Japanese understand something fundamental about ephemeral beauty that we've forgotten in the West. It's not about perfection - it's about intention. Every morning, Japan rises and dresses itself with purpose.
Shibuya, an everyday fashion show where the sidewalk is the runway and everyone’s a headliner. Kids decked out in layers of… well, I don’t even know what half of it is, but it’s a look. Colours that shouldn't work together but somehow do. They've taken fashion and elevated it to performance art. And not one of them looks like they're trying too hard, which is the most impressive magic trick of all.
Calculated, curated, an incredible amount of expression of self in a society that values conformity?
In Tokyo, where 37 million souls press against each other daily, perhaps fashion becomes your most immediate form of self-expression. Here some obscure passion for pottery or German cinema doesn't cut it - doesn’t differentiate. Here you need a visual haiku in a city where space - physical and social - comes at a premium.
I can see an emphasis on a kind of polished bleached flawlessness. Skin like white porcelain, hair like spun silk, eyes like your favourite anime character. It’s not the sun-kissed, ‘I just rolled out of bed looking this good’ vibe. This is effort. This is discipline. There’s an artistry to it, a dedication that’s both fascinating and a little terrifying.
But it’s not just inner city fashion of the streets, this drive for the aesthetic extends to the architecture, the food, the design of everyday utensils. Heck, even the convenience stores themselves are poetry—the careful arrangement of onigiri under soft lighting that makes even a $2 rice ball look like it belongs in a museum.
Outside Kyoto temples I watch many locals in rented kimonos, spending half their Saturday posing beneath eaves of ancient templates. Easy to dismiss as Instagram fodder, but there was something more genuine happening. They weren't just collecting likes; they were collecting moments - connecting to something traditional in a hyper-modern world. Some cultural tourism, sure, but also reverence.
You see the price tags on those rental kimonos – it ain’t cheap. This isn't just a casual snapshot; this is a production. A pilgrimage for the ‘gram.
Maybe it’s the algorithms, ratcheting up the need for likes and validation. But it feels older than that, Japan has always understood ephemeral beauty - in its food, its art, even it’s gardens.
Part of me wants to scoff at how over the top it is. But then the light hits just right, catching the colours of the kimonos, or framing a perfectly painted smile against the ancient wood of a temple gate… and goddammit, it’s beautiful. It’s a performance, but it’s a bloody gorgeous one. They’re creating a memory, a perfectly curated image of themselves against a backdrop that’s already doing half the heavy lifting. Who am I to judge when the result is this visually arresting?
Perhaps this is what draws me to Japan again and again. Not just the food or the contradictions or the otherworldliness of it all, but the unspoken agreement that aesthetics matter. That ephemeral beauty - in a shop display, in the plating of a meal, in the turn of a kimono sleeve - is not frivolous but essential.