Of course, it is certainly not impossible to find meanings analogous to [the Japanese phenomena of] iki in Occidental culture and discover some common points through formal abstractions. This is not, however, a suitable methodological attitude for understanding a cultural state of being as the mode of being of a people. Even if we arbitrarily vary the phenomena which carry the ethnic and historical determinants of a state of being, and perform what is called 'ideation' within the domain of the possible, such a method can only obtain an abstract generic concept which comprehends the phenomena.

The secret of success in the understanding of a cultural state of being is to grasp it in living form just as it is, without damaging its concrete facticity. Bergson says that when we recall the past in scenting the fragrance of the rose, we do not associate ideas of the past with the fragrance of the rose. We scent the recollection of the past. The fixed, invariable fragrance of the rose, something shared and conceptually generic for all, does not exist as an actuality. There are only particular fragrances with different contents. Thus to explain experience by means of the alliance of the fragrance of the rose (which is something general) and recollection (which is something specific) is, he says, like trying to produce the specific sounds of a given language by lining up the letters of an alphabet common to many languages. It is the same as formalizing the abstraction of iki by looking for common points with analogous phenomena in Occidental culture. So when we make a methodological enquiry to grasp the phenomena of iki we are questioning nothing but the problem of universalia.

-- Kuki Shuzo, Reflections on Japanese Taste: The Structure of Iki, Introduction, p 33-4

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