We just finished up a delicious Thanksgiving feast at my friend’s restaurant in Tokyo, Locale, and as I reflect upon what I’m grateful for—beyond friends, family, health, and husband—I have to say I am very grateful for the writings of Soetsu Yanagi and how much they’ve opened my eyes to the beauty in the everyday objects surrounding me.
Soetsu Yanagi is a philosopher and art critic and together with two potters, Kawai Kanjiro and Shoji Hamada, he formed the Mingei movement, aimed at promoting their philosophy of beauty and introducing various handicrafts from all over Japan. The word Mingei was invented by the founders and combines two Kanji characters, ‘Min’ meaning, the masses or the people and ‘Gei’ meaning, craft.
“民芸
Min-Gei”
At the movement’s heart, is the goal to rewire people’s perception of beauty to include the utility of an object, not just the outward appearance. As Yanagi wrote, the perception of beauty at the time too heavily relied on an object being made by someone famous or having a high price tag. By spreading their philosophy they were hoping to empower individuals to intuitively discern beauty—free of definition or prior approval.
In 1925 they first coined the term and by 1936 they had opened the Japan Folk Craft Museum in Tokyo. This movement came to rise at a very interesting time in Japan, the country had reopened to the Western world just about 50 years prior, the Great Kanto earthquake had leveled Tokyo in 1923, and the country had undergone rapid industrialization between 1890 - 1930s. People’s lifestyles were shifting away from rural and agrarian to industrial and urban. Soetsu Yanagi and his contemporaries were working to bring attention back to the contributions of the provinces (areas outside the cities) and to demonstrate a specifically "Japanese" aesthetic that existed in the crafts that they created.
Ceramic dish by Shoji Hamada
The Mingei Philosophy
Object is made for daily use
Object is not expensive
Object is produced in great numbers
Object’s creator is not famous, and the work is not signed
Object is made of carefully selected material
Object is sturdy (not overly fragile) - it can stand the test of reality!
Yanagi explains that in the Mingei universe, objects, people, and processes are honest, sincere, wholesome and utilitarian. It’s a utopian view of society for sure, but who wouldn’t want to encourage a vision of the world (people, places and things) that are more humble, wholesome, and useful?!
Reading these tenets about 100 years after they were first written, I feel like they are ideals we are still working toward, and that with climate change our need to find a new relationship with the things we make and consume is of paramount importance.
Pitcher by Yumiko Shimoya
Photograph was taken in Mashiko at the annual pottery festival.
Engaging with Mingei Today
As part of my immersion into Mingei, and relearning the beauty of things around me, I’ve been trying to engage with crafts as much as possible. My immersion has included:
Reading Soetsu Yanagi's "The Beauty of Everday Things." In one of the essays, Yanagi introduces the term ‘muji’ which means 'simplicity,' and how he felt the Japanese tendency toward and eye for simplicity was going to be one of their greatest gifts to the West. Isn’t it ironic that almost 100 years later, Muji, is a very successful company, and in many ways HAS been a great gift to the West! Wild!
Visiting the Japan Folk Craft Museum in Tokyo to see the objects that Soetsu Yanagi collected over the years. Seeing his collection of articles helped me to better understand how he evaluated beauty. Take note, on December 14th, they'll start a craft exhibition where you can actually purchase pieces, it will be the perfect place to pick up Christmas presents!!
Traveling to Mashiko, where Shoji Hamada had his studio and which hosts a pottery festival twice a year (recommendations for future visitors to Mashiko). Thank you to both Akio Nukaga and Hideki Takayama for their time and energy to show us around. They are carrying on the Mingei spirit, and I loved meeting the next generation of craftsmen.
Taking a woodblock print workshop. This was an important experience to try and understand Soetsu Yanagi's emphasis that woodblock prints are in fact crafts, not arts. While there are some artists that have made very famous works (i.e. Hokusai) he feels that the general use of the woodblock print was for spreading information and religious images. The woodblock enabled mass printing and thus should be considered a craft, not a fine-art.
Mending a broken object with kintsugi. Kintsugi is a technique to repair objects with a lacquer mixed with gold or silver dust. It is a topic that Soetsu Yanagi touches on as he explains the beauty in the imperfect, and that how imperfection is an expression of absolute freedom. It was a fun meditative experience to repair my Grandmother's ring holder and to think about the benefit we can receive when we draw attention to imperfections rather than try to hide them.
When I was at kintsugi class, my teacher handed me a brush. I was so struck by the brush’s design that I commented on it. The teacher smiled and shared that this particular brush was made of disposable chopsticks and nylon fiber that he cut from larger paintbrushes to create the perfect tool for spreading very small amounts of lacquer over cracks.
I’m pretty sure Yanagi would have also found it beautiful. The perfect combination of form and function, not seeking the recognition of ‘beautiful’ from others, but naturally living in a state of beauty. I was proud that my recognition of beauty had started to expand from the purely visual arts to also include utility!!
Waribashi Lacquer brush by Kuge Sensei
Soetsu Yanagi explained many more crafts in his essay and I'm excited to engage with them in the coming months/years. Some at the top of my list to try and weaving cloth made of banana fiber (Okinawa), making washi paper (Fukui), and revisiting tea ceremony (something that Soetsu Yanagi felt was at the center of Japan's ideas of beauty).
Personal Relevance
As a hobby, I enjoy taking photographs and one thing that I've found language to explain since reading Soetsu Yanagi's book is why I enjoy the beauty of photographs taken with a film camera, more than the ones taken with a digital camera.
“My hope is that my work will be not produced, but be born naturally.”
Soetsu Yanagi returns to the theme of natural beauty again and again in his essays. He describes it as, "The fact that beauty emerges from the handicrafts is due to nature’s refusal to bend to human whim, to nature itself exercising freedom."
Nature in a way lends its strength to human hands and enhances whatever we are creating. He also explains that if humans are to try and manufacture some imperfection, to try and mimic nature it is visibly inferior to the intuitive eye because it feels so forced.
When I take photos on film, not all of them are great, really only just a few are decent. But the film photos that do turn out are far superior to the images I take on my digital camera because the forces of nature get to play a hand in making the beauty shine through. And if I were to try and edit the photos after the fact to achieve the same effect, they never look nearly as good as when it occurs naturally. I will work to include more film photos in my future newsletters (the ones above were all taken on digital).
So the journey continues, what a gift this past month has been. I love that for me there are yet, so many undiscovered themes, villages, craftsmen, and craft. Excited to continue sharing with you as I encounter them.
For anyone with even a slight interest in Japanese ceramics, crafts, tea ceremony, or design aesthetic, I highly recommend reading “Beauty of Everyday Things.” Soetsu Yanagi’s passion for the objects he collects is infectious and his way of explaining their beauty isn’t overly esoteric. It’s illuminated so much for me in what I see around Japan day-to-day and I think for a visitor coming over it would be a great primer to get you excited for what you are about to experience.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
P.S. Shoji Hamada is 100% the original hipster, I mean look at those glasses, I'm sure bartenders in Brooklyn would be gaga over them!
