A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

Japan presented during its integrated periods the still surprising spectacle of a people who in the most natural way made art a way of life.
In the Edo period, aestheticization reached extraordinary heights It was now that bushido, the way of the warrior, was first rationalized and codified. Specific mention of bushido as a readiness to die a beautifully noble death (an aesthetic decision) first came at a time when there was no longer a military need for any samurai to die by the sword

Kato Shuichi. His thesis is that during the long years of its seclusion Japan became so internalized that the artistic impulse, aesthetics, quite took the place accorded religion in other countries. “Japanese culture became structured with its aesthetic values at the center. Aesthetic concerns often prevailed even over religious beliefs and duties.” In the later Buddhist sculpture of the Heian period, writes Kato, “the art was not illustrating a religion, but a religion becoming an art.” Later, under the influence of Zen, there was “a process of gradual dissolution of this originally mystic discipline into poetry, theater, painting, the aesthetics of tea, . . . in one word, into art.

The three-part formula is referred to as shin-gyo-so. The first term, shin, indicates things formal, slow, symmetrical, imposing. The third is so and is applied to things informal, fast, asymmetrical, relaxed. The second is gyo and it describes everything in between the extremes of the other two