LEILA FADEL, HOST:
One of the most important art, design and philosophical movements to come out of Japan is now nearly a hundred years old. It's called Mingei, or folk crafts. It reflects a reaction to modernity and industrialization. And as NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports, it's having yet another revival.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: We're at the Prefectural Museum of Art and Design in the city of Toyama on Japan's northwest coast. An exhibition touring the country is displaying items of daily use collected by founders of the Mingei movement - a black iron kettle, a tie-dyed kimono, pieces of earth-tone pottery. Museum curator Masane Naito explains how the founder of the Mingei movement, Muneyoshi Yanagi, thought about it.
MASANE NAITO: (Through interpreter) Let's focus on the everyday lives of ordinary citizens, reevaluate them, recognize their importance and find the beauty hidden within them.
KUHN: Rather than exquisite masterpieces made by famous artists from museums or homes of the wealthy, Mingei is art for the people. It's often simple and rustic, handmade by nameless local craftsmen to be used as much as enjoyed. Next, Naito shows us a thick, dark wooden hook for hanging pots and kettles over a hearth, the symbolic center of home and family life in Japanese farmhouses.
NAITO: (Through interpreter) As cooking is done in the fire directly below, the rising steam and smoke enhance the shine, and the beauty of the hook increases with use.
KUHN: Muneyoshi Yanagi announced the creation of the Mingei movement in 1926. In his book, "The Unknown Craftsman," he wrote about ethical consumption in an age of mass-produced products.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Muneyoshi Yanagi) On reflection, one must conclude that in bringing cheap and useful goods to the average household, industrialism has been a service to mankind, but at the cost of heart, of warmth, friendliness and beauty.
KUHN: Yanagi befriended British potter Bernard Leach, who helped to bridge the artistic traditions of Asia and Europe. In 1936, Yanagi founded the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, or Mingeikan, in Tokyo. He exhibited entire rooms finished with folk arts to show a harmony among the things people use and the spaces they live in. Naito admits the idea is a bit like an Ikea show room. As the Mingei movement was developing, Japan was building an empire. Yanagi and his colleagues collected folk art from Japan, as well as from Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, which Japan had colonized, and Hokkaido and Okinawa, which it annexed.
NAITO: (Through interpreter) One aspect of it was that people from Tokyo in tailored suits came to rural areas, praised items that were not valued by local people and took lots of them home. There is certainly criticism even today in Japan that there may have been some elements of a colonialist mindset.
KUHN: While Yanagi was mainly a thinker and collector, the movement's cofounder, Kanjiro Kawai, was a creator. In the city of Kyoto, he designed his own wooden home with a pottery kiln and workshops.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLOOR CREAKING)
KUHN: The home is now a family-run museum. Tamae Sagi is his granddaughter. She shows us some wooden drawers for shoes near the entrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRAWERS OPENING)
TAMAE SAGI: This is shoes case.
KUHN: She was 9 when he died. She remembers that he was constantly creating art and entertaining guests.
SAGI: (Through interpreter) There were always guests coming and going. It was rare for our family to have privacy, but it was a fun house and very lively. Even if I had a cold and was sleeping, or if I had to go to the bathroom, I still had to put on clothes and greet guests. But I wasn't dissatisfied at all about it.
KUHN: Kawai declined most official honors, and he seldom signed his works, which he believed were signatures enough in themselves. Sagi says her grandfather was very generous with his creations.
SAGI: (Through interpreter) He gave them much as farmers give away vegetables they've grown. Anyway, I think he gave away more than he sold.
KUHN: Kawai's house and every piece of pottery, furniture, sculpture and calligraphy in it are his artistic life work. They express who he was and show what he found beautiful. The true nature of beauty, he wrote, is the joy found in all things and events.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Toyama, Japan. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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