Many people think that it is precisely simplicity that offers the means to portray true richness. One of the principles of modern design expounded by Mies van der Rohe was "less is more", and it seems likely that this was a principle that Mies actually acquired from Japanese thought. The idea here is that nothing does not necessarily mean the absence of anything, and that it contains within it the seeds of diversity.

There is a tendency within the Japanese aesthetic to place more importance on texture than on lavishness of form. As regards the use of washi paper, floors, walls and tatami mats, the aesthetic of the sukiya tea ceremony hut is based on simple forms and a paramount concern with texture. In the case of kimono too, it is the fine aspects of texture such as coloring and weave patterns that are regarded as important, and the form of the costume as such is totally standardized.

Expression has been cut away and simplified, but what is actually happening is the concentration of consciousness on minutes details.

Sen no Rikyu, the great master of the tea ceremony, is said to have greeted a guest with a single morning glory which remained after he had cut away all the other blossoms. His approach was no doubt based on the idea that the most vivid impression could be created by the process of elimination.

The Japanese sensibility is concerned first and foremost with minute detail, in which the whole world is considered to be concentrated. It is precisely by cutting away and eliminating that it becomes possible to liberate the enormous that lies hidden within details.

(Sen no Rikyu (1522-91): A merchant from the port city of Sakai and a tea master who taught the art of the tea ceremony to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who stood at the pinnacle of the military class. The simplicity of the sukiya tea ceremony hut might be considered as conveying a sense of resistance to the military class.)

	If one takes away the windows from the box-shaped space and then expands it, what remains is a space consisting of pillars and beams. The walls possess a rigid-frame structure and continuity. The space inside a Japanese wooden building is a pillar-and-beam structure created by removing walls, in distinction to European stone buildings with their fixed wall structures.
	Around the outside of the pillar-and-beam space that results from this process of removal are set outer walls made from wood and paper known as akari-shoji. These are temporary open walls which can be opened and closed at will. The floors are either simple planked structures or covered with tatami mats. The house thus consists of the absolute minimum of elements.
	This is a mizusashi jug as used in the tea ceremony designed by Masayuki Kurokawa. Made of silicon, it runs contrary to the traditional aesthetic of the tea ceremony, but the designer has striven to maintain a simple form with the emphasis on an extremely fine texture reminiscent of tofu, one of Japan’s traditional foods. It incorporates the aesthetic concept referred to in Japanese as ha.