, also known as Yanagi Muneyoshi, was a Japanese art critic, philosopher, and founder of the '' mingei'' (folk craft) movement in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

in the late 1920s and 1930s.

Personal life

Yanagi was born in 1889 to Yanagi Narayoshi, a hydrographer of the Imperial Navy and Katsuko. His son, Sori Yanagi, was a renowned

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

er. His great grandnephew Shinya Yanagi is a renowned weaver, and the third generation of the Yanagi family of weavers.

Career

In 1916, Yanagi made his first trip to

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

out of curiosity about Korean crafts. The trip led to the establishment of the Korean Folk Crafts Museum in 1924 and the coining of the term ''mingei'' by Yanagi, potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966). Yanagi was not an artist or craftsman himself. His theory of the in Korean art has been said to have influenced the development of the Korean idea of '' han''. Following the March First Movement, Korea's independence movement in which thousands of Koreans died at the hands of the Japanese police and military, Yanagi wrote articles in 1919 and 1920, expressing sympathy for the Korean people and appreciation for Korean art. Yanagi cautioned against the Korean independence movement. In 1926, the

Folk Art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

Movement was formally declared by Yanagi. He rescued lowly pots used by commoners in the Edo and

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

s that were disappearing in rapidly urbanizing Japan. In 1936, the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum (''Nihon Mingeikan'') was established. He was also working together with Onta ware.

''Mingei'' theory

The philosophical pillar of ''mingei'' is . Yanagi Sōetsu discovered beauty in everyday ordinary and utilitarian objects created by nameless and unknown craftsmen. According to Yanagi, utilitarian objects made by the common people are "beyond beauty and ugliness". Below are a few criteria of ''mingei'' art and crafts: *made by anonymous crafts people *produced by hand in quantity *inexpensive *used by the masses *functional in daily life *representative of the region in which it was produced. Yanagi's book ''The Unknown Craftsman'' has become an influential work since its first release in English in 1972. It examines the Japanese way of viewing and appreciating art and beauty in everyday crafts that include

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be c ...

textiles Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

, and woodwork. Yanagi was editor of ''Kōgei'' ('Crafts'), the journal of the Japanese Folk Arts Association, issued between 1931 and 1951.

Legacy

In 1984, Yanagi was posthumously awarded the ''Bogwan'' Order of Cultural Merit, the first to be awarded to a non-Korean. Yanagi was a considerable influence over the likes of potter Bernard Leach, sculptor

Isamu Noguchi was an American artist, furniture designer and Landscape architecture, landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Grah ...

, and architect Bruno Taut.

References

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External links

Nihon Mingeikan (Japanese Folk Crafts Museum)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soetsu, Yanagi 20th-century Japanese philosophers Japanese art collectors Shirakaba-ha University of Tokyo alumni People from Tokyo 1889 births 1961 deaths Mingei Recipients of the Order of Cultural Merit (South Korea)