I was given 20 minutes at our last suiseki club meeting to give a presentation.   My first thought was to give somewhat of a historical overview of stone collecting that started in China and progressed to Japan and then to the US.  However, there was a subject that was to me perhaps more important to discuss and that was the Japanese aesthetic and how it influences the Japanese view of suiseki and other art forms as well.

Often in the US I hear people talk about how the Japanese “see” suiseki.  That always puzzled me since often what I heard from collectors in Japan differed greatly from what I heard Americans convey about their view.  This set me on a quest to try and understand how do the Japanese people really see suiseki or any art for that matter. It lead to a few weeks of research in regards to…