A bowl falls and breaks. It could be thrown away, or glued trying to make the fracture lines disappear. The kintsugi does a third thing: it joins the fragments with lacquer and gold powder, and the cracks remain visible. In fact, they become the most luminous part of the object.
What kintsugi means
The Japanese term combines kin (gold) and tsugi (joint): literally “repair with gold”. It is also found as kintsukuroi, with the same meaning.
The technique uses urushi, the lacquer obtained from the Japanese lacquer tree, mixed or finished with gold, silver or platinum powder. It is a slow process: it requires multiple layers and weeks of controlled drying.
The origins
Tradition traces it back to 15th-century Japan. The most widespread story concerns the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who is said to have sent a damaged tea bowl to China to be repaired and had it returned held together with ugly metal staples. From that dissatisfaction, the attempts of Japanese artisans to find a way of repairing that would be beautiful in itself are said to have arisen.
The story is probably partly legendary, but the cultural context is real: kintsugi builds on two well-documented Japanese sensibilities.
Wabi-sabi, the aesthetic that finds value in the imperfect, the impermanent and the incomplete — as opposed to the idea of beauty as symmetry and integrity.
Mottainai, the sense of regret for waste: throwing away something that could still live is a loss, not a simplification.
Why it is discussed in psychology
In recent years, kintsugi has become one of the most used metaphors for talking about resilience. The reason is that it overturns a deeply rooted assumption: that healing means going back to how things were before.
After a loss, a trauma, an illness or a breakup, the demand — often internal, even before external — is to put oneself back together without it showing. As if the mark were proof that something didn't work.
Kintsugi proposes the opposite. The repaired object does not go back to what it was before: it becomes another object, one that carries its own history on the surface instead of underneath. And not despite the fracture, but through it.
Where the metaphor truly holds up
It holds up on three points, and it's worth distinguishing them.
Integration is not erasure. A painful event that has been processed does not disappear from memory: what changes is the way it is stored, and it stops dominating the present. In work withEMDR this is exactly the goal — not to forget the memory, but to remove its charge. Someone who has processed a grief has not stopped remembering the person: they have stopped being overwhelmed every time they remember them.
Repair requires time and material. In kintsugi, it's not enough to put the pieces together: lacquer is needed, multiple layers are needed, waiting between one step and the next is needed. It is the opposite of the demand to “react quickly” that often reaches those who are going through something.
Someone has to do the work. A broken bowl does not repair itself. This is perhaps the least cited aspect of the metaphor, and the most useful one: kintsugi is not a story about the spontaneous ability to get back up, it is a story about an artisan who takes weeks over it.
Where the metaphor becomes a problem
Here I have to be honest, because kintsugi is often used in a way that causes harm.
The toxic version sounds like this: wounds make you more beautiful, pain makes you stronger, everything happens for a reason. It's not true. Trauma is not a gift, and suffering has no value in itself. Many people emerge from difficult experiences more fragile, not stronger, and telling them otherwise adds a failure to a pain.
There is a substantial difference between “what I went through is part of me and I can look at it” and “I am grateful to have suffered”. The first is integration. The second is often forced positivity, and serves the listener more than the speaker.
There is then a second limit. Kintsugi speaks of what happens after, when the acute phase has passed. Proposing it to someone who is still inside the breakdown — in the midst of a grief, of a depression, of a crisis — does not console: it makes one feel behind on a task one is not in a condition to carry out.
The connection with post-traumatic growth
In psychology there is a related concept, studied by Tedeschi and Calhoun in the nineties: the post-traumatic growth. It describes the positive changes that some people report after very difficult events — in priorities, in relationships, in the sense of what matters.
Two important clarifications. It is not universal: many people do not experience it, and there is nothing wrong with that. And it does not derive from the event itself, but from the reworking process that follows — which brings us back once again to the craftsman, not to the fall.
Frequent use
Is kintsugi a therapeutic technique?
No. It is a craft technique that is used as a metaphor, and in some contexts as a workshop activity in the field of art therapy. It is not in itself a psychological treatment.
How is it pronounced?
Approximately “kin-tsu-ghi”, with a hard g and all syllables of equal duration.
What is the difference with wabi-sabi?
Wabi-sabi is an overall aesthetic sensibility about imperfection and impermanence. Kintsugi is a concrete repair technique that is one of its expressions.
Can it be learned?
Yes, there are courses and kits. It should be said that quick kits use epoxy resins and not the traditional lacquer, which requires years of practice and can cause skin reactions. The real lacquer is not food-safe without specific processing.
Does it mean I have to be grateful for my wounds?
No, and this is the most common and most mistaken interpretation. It means that a story can be integrated without being hidden. Gratitude, if it comes, comes on its own — and if it does not come, nothing is missing.
A journey in Florence or online
If you are going through a breakdown — a loss, a separation, an event that has changed things — and you feel stuck on the fragments, you can contact me for an initial introductory session. I receive in my office in Florence, at Via Tommaso Campanella 5, in the Campo di Marte – Coverciano area, and online.
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