Since the 19th century, artists, art theorists, and art historians have dreamed of a Japanese aesthetics of materials - of the beauty of the formless, the ephemeral, and the processual. This book deals with the history of this material-aesthetic Japonism. It shows the historical, technical, and discursive foundations upon which the idea of a Japanese material aesthetics is based. It also subjects the iconographic attributions associated with the tradition of Japanese tea ceramics, wooden architecture, or ink painting to a critical revision. This opens up a new perspective on modern Japanese art after 1945, which has sought a radical engagement with such iconographic associations.