The Japanese craft movement emerged as a counter to industrial mass production, paralleling the English Arts and Crafts Movement and drawing inspiration from the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris.
Before Meiji led westernisation no distinctions were draw between what the west sees as craft and the fine arts. The crafts, along with painting and sculpture were simply regarded as trade crafts. The Renaissance idealisation of the creative individual artist set apart from ordinary people by their creativity, was foreign to Japanese ideas of craft/art.
The term Mingei, meaning ‘art of the common people’, was coined by Kyoto based philosopher Yanagi Soetsu in the early 1920s, and 1926 saw the foundation of the Nihon Mingai Kyokai (Japan Folk Art Association). Yanagi’s later book, The Unknown Craftsman, made the ideas more readily available to the West.
With his lifelong companions, the potters Bernard Leach, Hamada Shoji, Tomimoto Kenkichi and Kawai Kanjiro, Yanagi sought to counteract the desire for cheap, mass-produced products by pointing to the works of ordinary unknown craftsmen that spoke to the spiritual and practical needs of life.
Although frequently associated with pottery, Japanese folk art includes painting, sculpture, wooden artefacts, furniture, metal work, lacquer, textiles, basketry and paper as well as pottery.
Characteristics
In its true forms, Japanese folk art is associated with a wide range of characteristics, including:
· anonymous localised production;
· everyday functionality characterised by an unselfconscious directness and understated simplicity;
· a sensitive use of natural materials producing an asymmetrical balance and harmony; and
· a strong appreciation of age and wear on the created objects.
The Tea Ceremony Parallel
In many ways the tea ceremony is the opposite of these characteristics, with its elitist patronage, its emphasis on formal ritual and its search for a sophisticated refinement. However, there are strong points of contact between the two.
In the tea masters’ admiration for simple anonymous functional utensils made from natural materials, raising them to the status of art, there is a strong parallel with the western influenced philosopher, Yanagi, raising the same simple anonymous functional utensils to the status of art.
And in this lies a certain irony, for in elevating folk art to a status above the ordinary and equal to the western notion of fine art, the very best exponents of their crafts loose their anonymity and become renowned for their creative works.
It is almost as if in their pursuit of the ideal, they develop the unconscious knowledge of, and skills with, their medium, they rise above the crowd around them. Moreover, in a Westernised Japan, notions of individual creativity grew strong and lead to the eventual nomination as National Living Treasures.
And this, perhaps, is a further parallel with the tea ceremony, replete as it is with icons of the various traditional kilns.
Mingei Pottery Regions
Among the many areas which made fine folk pottery, perhaps the following areas have become most famous. True folk works are the pre-twentieth century works characterised with the prefix ko meaning old. Thus we have ko-Bizen, ko-Onda and so on.
Bizen, Echizen, Hagi, Iga, Karatsu, Mashiko, Mino, Okinawa, Onda, Seto, Shigaraki, Shodai, Tamba, Tokoname
Partly as a result of the impetus generated by the Mingei movement, there has been both a continuation of the dynastic traditions in some areas and a twentieth century revival in others.
Mingei Movement Potters
Bernard Leach, Hamada Shoji, Kawai Kanjiro, Shimaoka Tatsuzo, Shiko Munakata Shiko, Serizawa Keisuke