how Japan turned every craft into a path that makes the person who walks it
You found it through the Greek: ethos, pathos, logos. But "the pathos of things" is only the English translation of mono no aware — Japanese thought never built itself to fit Aristotle's three. So there is no exact mirror to hunt for.
What there is turns out to be richer: a whole way of treating character not as a creed you declare but as a path you walk. That is the real Japanese ethos — and it has a name.
You do not study tea. You walk the Way of tea, and it studies you.
Dō (道, also read michi) means "way" or "path." Borrowed long ago from the Chinese Tao, in Japan it became the suffix that turns any skill into a lifelong discipline of self-cultivation. Add it to a craft and the craft stops being a thing you do and becomes a road you travel — one that refines not just your hand but your character, conduct, and spirit.
So ethos here isn't a list of rules. It is something you practice into being. The art is the vehicle; becoming is the destination — and there is no arriving.
Across the culture, disciplines take the -dō and turn into paths of character:
The Way of Tea. Rikyū's — already in your set.
The Way of the Brush. Where the ensō lives.
The Way of martial arts — kendō, jūdō, aikidō, kyūdō.
The Way of Flowers — ikebana, arranging as meditation.
The Way of Incense — "listening" to scent.
The most famous ethos is bushidō (武士道) — the way of the samurai: character forged toward honor, loyalty, and a calm readiness to die. It is usually told through seven virtues:
integrity
courage
benevolence
respect
sincerity
honor
loyalty
Honest flag: that tidy seven-virtue code is largely a modern assembly — popularized by Nitobe Inazō's 1900 English book written for Western readers. Real samurai ethics were messier, regional, and shifting. Bushidō as a fixed ancient creed is partly a later invention.
Every Way shares a map of mastery — shu-ha-ri (守破離), the three stages a student passes through:
Obey the form exactly. Imitate the master without deviation.
Once the form is yours, break from it and experiment.
Transcend the form entirely. Move freely, the rules now instinct.
And then? You keep walking. The Way has no finish line — the discipline is the point, not a destination. Which is, quietly, impermanence again: no final state, only the path.
This is the companion to everything before it. The aesthetic ideas — mono no aware, yūgen, wabi-sabi — were about how the Japanese see and feel: the eye and the heart. The Way is about how they act and become: the hand and the will.
So if mono no aware is the closest thing to your "pathos," then dō — character walked into being — is the closest thing to your "ethos." Not a mirror of the Greek. Its own answer to the same human question: how should one be?
The Greek frame was the way in, but it doesn't map cleanly: "the pathos of things" is a translation of mono no aware, not evidence of a Japanese ethos-pathos-logos system. I chose the genuine Japanese idea of ethos — the Way — rather than manufacture a tidy mirror.
Dō itself is borrowed from the Chinese Tao (道), the Daoist-Confucian Way, then made distinctly Japanese. Shu-ha-ri is real traditional pedagogy from Noh and the martial arts. And the bushidō seven-virtue code is substantially a modern codification (Nitobe, 1900) — handle the "ancient samurai code" story with care.
As for the third Greek term — logos, reason and the word — it fits Japanese thought the loosest of the three. If you want to complete the triad anyway, the nearest threads are kotodama (言霊, the spirit living in words) or the Confucian love of order. Say so and I'll build it, flaws flagged as always.