Source — Nippon.com, "'Wabi,' 'Sabi,' 'Yūgen': The Surprising Changes in 'Traditional' Japanese Aesthetics"

Title: "Wabi," "Sabi," "Yūgen": The Surprising Changes in "Traditional" Japanese Aesthetics
Author: not individually bylined on the page as fetched (Nippon.com editorial/syndicated feature)
Publication: Nippon.com
URL: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/b02355/
Date: 2024-01-04
Accessed: 2026-08-30
Type: secondary — a general-audience cultural-affairs outlet (Nippon.com is a Japanese-government-adjacent, Nippon Communications Foundation-run publication aimed at English-language international readers); expository, mildly revisionist stance (its own framing explicitly questions how "traditional" these aesthetic terms' current popular meanings really are).

Extract

The article's central claim, stated in its own title and argument: the now-standard grouping and popular meanings of wabi, sabi, and yūgen as a set of quintessentially "traditional" Japanese aesthetic terms are a more recent development than their popular framing implies, not an unbroken ancient usage.
On timing: "Widespread international use of the terms wabi, sabi, and yūgen as a set coincided with the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and the Osaka Expo in 1970, as terms that were thought to describe the most characteristic aspects of Japanese traditional culture" — i.e., the terms' popular currency as a fixed trio is tied to specific mid-20th-century international-showcase events, not to time-immemorial usage.
On motive: "part of the popularity of the wabi-sabi-yūgen idea seems to come from its convenience as a catchphrase to promote Japanese culture overseas" — the article frames the terms' international popularity as substantially a function of their usefulness as promotional shorthand, rather than as evidence of their depth or antiquity within Japan itself.

Concerns wabi, sabi, and yūgen specifically, not komorebi — this project's use of it to draw a parallel with komorebi's own English-language popularization (genealogy still unestablished — see the komorebi page's Gaps) is the project's own extension, marked as such wherever cited.
No individual named author found on the page as fetched; treat as an outlet-level claim rather than one attributable to a specific named scholar.
This project has not cross-checked the 1964/1970 dating claim against an independent source.