Whitespace or negative space is well understood by western artists and designers. It's right here in the design of medium itself. It's right there in your...

...paragraph gaps as well.

I feel this article is wandering off into mystifying an everyday thing and exaggerating cultural distances and I've not found that helpful in the past.

Manuke is etymologically a musical term,

""the time between two beats (間) is missing (抜ける)". So literally a term for a lack of rhythm. Offbeat. Terms get re-used out of their original context all the time. Talk to someone in the English department some time. And the art department... and the Japanese language department...

:)