Shibui: The Japanese Art of Finding Beauty in Aging

by Sanae Ishida

Discover "shibui" — the Japanese philosophy of finding the simple, subtle beauty that emerges with time. Through watercolor illustrations, personal stories, and mindfulness reflections, this book offers Eastern wisdom to help readers embrace healthy aging with joy and grace.

SHIBUI introduces readers to a transformative Japanese approach to aging that celebrates the subtle beauty, wisdom, and joy that emerge with time.

Through engaging personal essays, watercolor illustrations, and practical activities, Japanese-American author Sanae Ishida presents a refreshing alternative to Western anti-aging messages. Each chapter explores a different dimension of aging beauty (bi), health (kenkou), purpose (mokuteki), wealth (tomi), connection (tsunagari), and approaching life's end (owari).

Readers will
Personal anecdotes that bridge Eastern and Western perspectives on agingGentle watercolor illustrations that bring Japanese concepts to lifeCultural insights into Japanese traditions that honor agingPractical exercises and reflections to apply shibui principles to daily lifeSimple activities to cultivate appreciation for life's later chapters
This beautifully designed gift book offers both wisdom and actionable ideas for anyone seeking to age with grace, purpose, and joy. Perfect for readers who enjoyed Ikigai, The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly, and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Lifestyle

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 4, 2025

About the author

Sanae Ishida writes, draws, sews, and takes photos almost every day. In addition to writing and illustrating books for kids, she's written several books on sewing. She lives with her husband and daughter in Seattle, Washington. It's possible that she and her daughter have too many handmade clothes.

Reviews

[Bella Azam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shibui by Sanae Ishida compiled personal essays and reflections on on self, inner beauty & appreciation of imperfection and ageing. With beautiful watercolors illustration, the author incorporates anecdotes of her personal life & how her roots as Japanese American shaped her views on the beauty of ageing. Shibui, its a concept of learning to appreciate beauty as it grew over time. When we think about getting older, we think about our health declining, our appearance wrinkled and greying, the loss of youthfulness and the fear of death as we grew in age. But in this book, it let us ponder upon the theme of everydayness, the act of be in the present, to fully embraced our ageing as something that evolved in time, maturing to become maybe the best of ourselves.

The concept is simple yet I was reminded by how much we chase for perfection and wanting more when we could look around us and see the things we surround ourselves and how contented we can be by letting us feel what we have is more than enough. I love the illustrations scattered thoughout the book accompanied each chapter, giving the book a nice outlook. I also like how the author talked about the Japanese culture on which she relates to and incorporates into her daily life while also gave us an in depth understanding of the concept.

Thank you to TImes Reads for the review copy

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, personal essays on themes related to aging, blended with wisdom from Japanese culture. Beautiful, watercolour illustrations.

Mokuteki - doing small daily practices with deliberate, intentional and unconditional love.

Tantanto - going with the flow in a light, detached manner. It's the opposite of striving, but it's not giving up either. The Buddhist tenet of the middle way comes close to the definition. Sometimes the most beautiful and meaningful moments come not from pushing harder, but from allowing things to unfold naturally.

[Sue Oshin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanae Ishida is a mix writer from Japanese-American. Shibui is a compilation of her essay through beauty in aging, wisdom and Japanese culture and the term of beauty.

When i read Shibui, now i know what is mean by kintsugi, sashiko, tsugihagi etc. Before this, i heard this term when im translating a novel and didnt care about it all. So i just search this term to translate in Malay if there is choice of words to be replace. But, this term is remain in Japan so i stick to the wirda without made any changing.

Many of us thought beauty is an outer beauty that related to the physical of someone. For example, she is 50 years old, but she look young like 30’s something. Sanae Ishida perspective in beauty is really different and open-mind. Beauty is not about age and physical but including inner-beauty. This is the real aspect of beauty in life.

While others keep their health to maintain beautiful such as do exercise, diet and skin care routine… there is one thing that everyone should know. When ourselves do a good thing to others, animal and surrounding us, the inner beauty will spark and it is easy to read on our faces.

So much thing i want to describe here because this book is a worth reading!

[Natalie Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice overview of many Japanese philosophies of how to live a good life.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sanae Ishida is a Japanese-American writer and illustrator. Her 2025 book Shibui is a very brief (160 page/<2 hour audiobook) illustrated essay collection on Japanese wisdom about aging, with Ishida's own reflections as she's reached midlife. I listened to the audiobook, though I found out when writing this review that the author illustrated the physical edition with her watercolor art, which I'm sure would have been the preferable medium for this book. The essays were nice albeit brief; the author's insights were earned and clearly well-thought-out albeit not novel.

My statistics:
Book 355 for 2025
Book 2281 cumulatively

[alstroemeriaswan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meaningful short-personal essay about aging, reflections on self and the beauty of imperfections.

[Mary Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, inspirational. Worthy of frequent rereads. (It’s short, with a small trim size, and generously illustrated.)

[Jess Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely little book with a sweet message about finding the joy in aging. Couldn’t have run across it at a better time as I’m stuck on the couch resting a broken ankle and watching the leaves fall outside my window. Is there beauty here, too?

[M. Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beauty That Comes with The Passage of Time

Shibui by Sanae Ishida is literally a small treasure of a book. It is a petite 5x7-inch hardback, with a beautiful watercolour of persimmons on the cover. The title (English and Japanese), the authors name, and the painting are embossed or slightly raised, so that when you hold it in your hands, your fingers get a soothing tactile experience.

I received a review copy from the publisher in plain brown mailing packaging. When I opened it, looked at it and touched it, I thought, how fitting.

Shibui.

I learned this word in my Japanese class years ago and was struck by its beauty and truth. That the subtle changes that happen to things over time gives them a patina that often invites us to look closer.

The author invites us to view our aging selves from this same perspective. To look at ourself and see any lines as the beauty we have earned the privilege of wearing.

We all know that our modern western culture prizes the beauty of youth. It aggressively markets this to all of us, but most especially towards women. We are taught to avoid “looking our age” at all costs. Now even teenage girls are buying wrinkle creams.

Dolls come with pretend makeup and creams, even dolls that are supposed to depict children!

I am going to invite everyone reading this review to pause a moment.

Think about how you might have been a bit harsh on yourself for not remaining in a time capsule that kept you perpetually at age 25.

This book is like a lovingly made tonic to all the nonsense we have been sold about aging.

The essays blend a mix of Japanese concepts about the beauty in aging along with the author’s own life experiences. The stories and exercises are meant to help us look at our changing body with respect.

And throughout the book, beautiful, gentle watercolour paintings make the experience of reading like a restful journey. A spa in your hands, so to speak.

Although it is probably a “No brainer” to suggest this book would be a welcome gift to anyone who has started to grow more than a few grey hairs, I actually feel it could greatly benefit the younger generations.

I see myself giving this book to people in their 30s. So that before those grey hairs come, they hopefully will have developed an appreciation for the changes of life. To look at themselves and others with appreciative eyes.

Through the lens of SHIBUI.

[Lyana A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in quiet awe of this book especially the illustrations, all lovingly created by the author herself. They feel intimate and deliberate, mirroring the very philosophy the book explores.

Shibui is a Japanese concept that invites us to appreciate the natural changes that come with time, to find beauty in authenticity rather than artificial preservation. At its heart, it asks us to accept aging not as loss, but as something inevitable and deeply beautiful.

Shibui is a word rooted in acceptance. It is paradoxical, non-dualistic, and richly layered, with no direct equivalent in English. Throughout the book, Ishida explores Shibui through multiple lenses: beauty, health, purpose, wealth, connection, and ultimately, our relationship with mortality itself.

I particularly enjoyed the author’s personal essays. They read like gentle reflections and reminders to value maturity, simplicity, and subtlety in a world that often glorifies excess and youth. Familiar Japanese philosophies appear throughout, such as wabi-sabi (finding beauty in imperfection) and hara hachi bu (eating until you are just no longer hungry), and I appreciated how Ishida thoughtfully weaves them back into the broader idea of Shibui.

One of my favourite reflections is on the concept of tantanto, moving through life lightly and with detachment, going with the flow without force. It is the opposite of relentless striving, yet it is not resignation either. There is something deeply comforting in that balance.

I’ll end this review with a quote from the author that beautifully encapsulates the spirit of the book:

“Let us love heartily, live gently, and release gracefully all that’s not meant for us—let’s savor all the mellowed sweetness of aging.”

[Dominique · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this lovely book for Christmas from a dear friend and love the message of finding beauty in aging. Being 59 I have definitely entered the aging chapter and find that the messages of our world, and specifically our western culture, are focused on youth being the ultimate goal. Which is funny when we are all aging ... even the young. Everything thrown at us has a message that aging is bad - anti-aging is the way to go (and also a great way to spend money and support this billion dollar industry through products and procedures).

The book is beautiful and so calming as the author adeptly weaves in her Japanese heritage with the fact that she has been raised in America. I didn't walk away with any huge "ah-ha's", other than to realize that for the most part my attitude toward aging is fairly healthy. Don't get me wrong - I have my days and struggles. But the struggles are more a residue left form my earlier years and youth when I was very invested in the outer shell being everything - the most important thing. I wholeheartedly believe that is false, AND sometimes find it lonely standing in that truth when everything around me says that the definition of femininity is the spend every available resource in pursuit of my appearance. Let that sink in. Every, Available. Resource.

I found the book as a gentle recentering, although true to what makes us purchase books, it felt like you could turn the book into a checklist. Very American.

I am opting not to do that. I enjoyed it and am setting it out in our little free library so it can bless someone else it whatever way they need. It spoke to me in the language I needed to hear.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The illustrations are beautiful. This book gives an insight into Japanese culture and their perspective on aging and a lot of this is based on shintoism and Buddhism. The author could not clearly explain what is shibui in the beginning but the quote she had included in the book explained it succinctly - beauty that is revealed with time.

However, in some parts of the book, I thought the author was stretching too far to connect the unrelated story to the main idea they wanted to state in the chapter.

Also, one has to be aware that because one can afford to slow down and do things leisurely in old age is a privilege that one cannot always have in their younger years. A lot of working people, simply do not have the time in every single situation to move around leisurely like old and retired people. Can they make time to be mindful? Yes. But, people just cannot do it 24/7.

[Susan Muldowney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything about this book. The size is perfect - it fits comfortably in your hands and is substantial without being heavy. Sanae's beautiful watercolors throughout would be reason enough to buy it, but her message on aging will make you think and touch your heart. The book is divided into six chapters, and each of those are made up of smaller bites of wisdom. Perfect to read, stop and digest before going on. I've read it twice and know I won't stop there. A thoughtful gift for anyone of a certain age.

[Chloe Kelly Wee Chua · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was horribly frustrated at the shallowness of this all before finding out this was just meant to be a picture book, nothing more, nothing less. The topic itself is interesting, and I like how simple and calming the writing is, so I hope Ishida considers writing longer essays on it soon, longer memoirs, longer thoughts. (Something like an expanded version of this picture book might be nice, is what I'm trying to say.) The illustrations were nice.

[Kimball · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick read. I liked the idea and the subtitle. The author’s writing style felt a little disjointed. She shares what the meaning of a few Japanese words and concepts are and then suddenly at the end of the book. I think I was hoping she would link the ideas together a little more cohesively, but I did like some of the ideas she shares and it made me think about my own aging (hopefully gracefully).

[Jeannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️ 3.75
A sweet little coffee table-esque book about Japanese insights on aging. Loved the message.
"Rather than focusing solely on reaching an arbitrary finish line, may we find beauty and meaning in each circuit."

[Rahdika K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely book with beautiful illustrations. Most of the insights were valuable though it’s something that have been there or read upon many times by most of us who are familiar with such concepts. Still enjoyed the book.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love anything by Sanae. Now approaching my mid 40’s, I’ve been looking for less “anti-aging” and more “appreciate aging,” so this little book was just in time. More like a series of essays, you can pick it up whenever you please and read for a few moments. The paintings are all really nice too.

[Udon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short easy winter read for when the sznal sadnothingness hits. That said i felt the book relied a lot on telling and not showing, with personal essays that seemed repetitive even as they are supposedly spanning different themes. Still, a pretty cosy book esp with the illustrations!

[Varnu]

Kintsugi, boro and tsugihagi embroidery

osozaki "late blooming"

[Emily Mellow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important and well executed. It's a very quick read, and worth it.

[Lauren Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting journey through the Mahayana Buddhist worldview, particularly in regard to ageing and death. Little practical advice.

[Jessi Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important read for anyone aging, especially in America.

Very short and the illustrations added to the depth of the message. Very beautiful book!

[Edie Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gives a positive spin on growing old based on Japanese precepts. The author presents a much needed vision of aging.

Her illustrations are charming.