  Although the Japanese have been producing great art and writing about it for many centuries, including a rich tradition of poetics going back a millennium, the philosophical discipline in Japan corresponding to Western “aesthetics” did not get underway until the nineteenth century. A good way to survey the broader field is to examine the most important aesthetic ideas that have arisen in the course of the tradition, all of them before aesthetics was formally established as a discipline: namely, mono no aware (the pathos of things), wabi (subdued, austere beauty), sabi (rustic patina), yūgen (mysterious profundity), iki (refined style), and kire (cutting). (This last term is pronounced as two evenly accented syllables, kee-reh. The macrons over some vowels signify a vowel sound of double length. When a person name is used, the order is the conventional Japanese one: family name, then given name.)