What this trite imagery misses out on is the fact that kintsukuroi requires a lot of work to repair a piece like that.  It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a great deal of investment.  Sometimes parts of the original are damaged beyond repair, and you have to instead painstakingly create entirely new ones.   It’s still not the same.  Maybe it’s something more beautiful. But it’s not the fact that it broke that makes it beautiful. It’s the work put into it.  It’s the fact that people made the effort to salvage it, because it was worth salvaging, because it was important enough to salvage.      It’s the care that makes the beauty.   An apology can’t always fix what has been broken.  That doesn’t mean it’s not irreparable, sometimes you can go on to rebuild and repair.  But it won’t ever be the same as it was again.