What Japanese Aesthetics Taught Me About Communication

What Translation Taught Me About Japanese Aesthetics

I used to believe that good communication meant making everything as clear as possible.

The more clearly you explained something, the better people would understand it.

At least, that was what I believed in my twenties.

Back then, I worked at a university in Japan. Every year, we hosted an international seminar on Japanese martial arts and culture, bringing together practitioners from around the world. The program included demonstrations, lectures by martial arts masters, Zen teachers, and scholars, and a great deal of translation and interpretation.

I wasn’t one of the interpreters. I worked behind the scenes, helping prepare materials and supporting the event. That role gave me the opportunity to read an extraordinary amount of translated writing about Japanese culture, Zen, and traditional arts.

One day, I overheard one of the senior translators say something that completely puzzled me.

“When translating Zen or Japanese culture, I sometimes think it’s better not to explain everything. Leave it just a little difficult to understand.”

I remember thinking to myself,

Isn’t that the opposite of what a translator is supposed to do?

Surely the purpose of translation was to remove ambiguity.

To explain more.

To make everything clearer.

At the time, his comment sounded almost irresponsible.

Reading Roland Barthes Changed How I Heard an Old Conversation

Thirty years have passed since then.

Recently, I’ve been reading Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes.

I’m only halfway through the book, so I’m not trying to explain his ideas here.

What surprised me was something else.

As I read, I suddenly found myself thinking about that translator I had overheard all those years ago.

His words had stayed somewhere in the back of my mind for decades.

Only now did they begin to make sense.

I smiled when I remembered him.

Thirty years ago, I thought he was taking a shortcut.

Now I wonder if he was showing me a different way to communicate.

Not a way that avoids explanation, but one that recognizes that explanation has its limits.

Perhaps some experiences aren’t diminished because we fail to explain them.

Perhaps they’re diminished because we explain them too completely.

Can Communication Be Too Clear?

That realization has stayed with me.

Perhaps there are ideas that become smaller the moment we explain them completely.

Not because they are mysterious.

Not because they are beyond language.

But because they are experiences before they are definitions.

Maybe explanation doesn’t always reveal meaning.

Sometimes it replaces experience.

I’ve often felt this tension when trying to explain Japanese concepts in English.

Words such as ikigai, ma, yohaku—the practice of intentionally leaving space—or even aspects of Zen are often translated into neat English definitions.

Sometimes those translations are genuinely helpful.

But sometimes I read them and quietly think,

“Yes… but that’s not quite it.”

The explanation isn’t necessarily wrong.

It may even be technically accurate.

Yet somehow, the lived experience has disappeared.

The more precisely we define it, the further away it seems to become.

Perhaps this isn’t unique to Japanese aesthetics.

Perhaps it’s simply a human tendency.

We assume that understanding grows by adding more words.

More explanation.

More context.

More clarification.

But what if explanation itself can sometimes become another layer between us and direct experience?

Japanese Aesthetics and the Limits of Language

As a calligrapher, I think about this often.

People sometimes ask what one of my works means.

Of course, I can explain the character.

I can describe its historical background.

I can talk about why I chose a particular composition or brush movement.

But none of those explanations are the artwork itself.

Standing in front of the piece is different.

The movement of the brush.

The tension of the empty space.

The silence surrounding the ink.

Those things cannot truly be translated into words.

Words can point.

But they cannot replace seeing.

The same may be true far beyond art.

Leaders often feel they must explain every decision.

Teachers feel they must answer every question.

Brands feel they must tell customers exactly what to think.

Even in everyday conversation, we rush to fill every silence, as if leaving something unsaid were a failure.

Perhaps we’ve confused clarity with completeness.

They are not the same thing.

Clarity helps people understand.

Completeness sometimes leaves nothing for them to discover.

Why Yohaku Matters in Communication

One of the ideas I’ve been exploring through Denoise is that more isn’t always better.

More information doesn’t always lead to better decisions.

More choices don’t always create greater freedom.

More content doesn’t always produce deeper understanding.

Perhaps the same is true of language.

This doesn’t mean we should become vague.

Or mystical.

Or deliberately obscure.

There is an important difference between leaving space and withholding meaning.

Good communication still requires clarity.

But perhaps clarity isn’t about saying everything.

Perhaps it’s about saying enough.

Enough for someone else to continue the journey on their own.

I’ve always thought of yohaku as the intentional space that allows a composition to breathe.

The intentionally unfilled space that allows a composition to breathe.

Lately, I’ve begun to wonder whether language has its own version of yohaku.

Not every thought needs to be fully unpacked.

Not every silence needs to be filled.

Sometimes what remains unsaid isn’t missing.

It’s an invitation.

An invitation for someone else to notice, reflect, and discover something for themselves.

Perhaps that is where the deepest understanding begins.