The term ‘Mingei’ — literally meaning ‘arts of the people’ — was coined by Japanese philosopher and critic Yanagi Sōetsu and potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō in 1925 to describe beautiful and functional folk crafts by anonymous craftspeople, but also a movement that aimed to revive an appreciation for Japan’s rich and ‘vanishing’ cultural heritage. The Mingei movement was, in part, a reaction to the rapid modernisation and industrialisation of the early 20th century, and can be viewed as part of the broader Arts and Crafts movement that swept across the British Empire, and the rest of Europe and America between 1880 and 1920.
Fast forward to the present day, and although the influence of Mingei waned over the second half of the 20th century, its ethos and design principles have left an enduring impact on popular aesthetic. In the recent year or two, there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in Japanese folk crafts, as can be seen in major 2024 exhibitions such as Afro-Mingei at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum to ‘Art Without Heroes’ at the William Morris Gallery in the UK. Mingei centers human production; its present popularity may speak to digital fatigue, or some pushback against an increasingly homogenised, globalised society. Whatever the reason, Japanese folk crafts have never been as relevant and accessible as they are today.
The following books are a fine introduction to the world of Japanese folk crafts. I have loosely grouped them into the ‘stages’ of learning about this subject, beginning with those offering an overview of various folk crafts and ending with more academic (but no less fascinating) analyses of mingei and its place in 20th century history. You can, of course, read them in any order you wish.
Start by learning about mingei
If you begin your mingei education with only one book, make it Manami Okazaki’s Japanese Mingei Folk Crafts. This illustrated guide does what it says on the tin, and does it well. It introduces 30 of Japan’s folk arts in clear, accessible language, giving the reader just enough information and colourful detail to get a sense of the craft without an excess of sweeping statements. The book also includes interviews with mingei scholar Chiaki Ajioka, curator and tastemaker Terry Ellis, and 9 folk artists — practitioners of different crafts than those covered under the previous 30. The final section is a shopping guide broken down by prefecture, aimed at the tourist who wants to ‘mingei hop’ around Japan.
Those who appreciate image-heavy coffee table books will do well to pick up a copy of Craftland Japan. Produced by German design duo Uwe Röttgen and Katharina Zettl, this richly photographed tome documents the stories of 25 specialists, covering crafts such as ceramics, brassware, indigo dyeing, embroidery, bamboo basketry, calligraphy, copperware, and more. It is a photobook, but with beautifully immersive storytelling alongside, and worthwhile for the reader. Strictly speaking, by focusing on a single studio per craft and treating their stories with an almost painstaking reverence, the book doesn’t seem to quite fit the idea of the celebrated anonymous craftsperson. Nevertheless, this isn’t a complaint; this book is worth the space it takes up on your coffee table.
Diane Durston’s Japan Crafts Sourcebook was first published in 1996, and as such is likely out of print. Nevertheless, it remains an excellent book on Japanese craft traditions, covering over 90 of them, along with insightful writing on their histories and contexts. The book is divided into the following sections: ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, bamboo craft, Japanese paper, woodcraft, metalwork, and ‘other crafts’. It is assuredly comprehensive: the lacquerware section alone explores ten different lacquer traditions. It may not be exhaustive enough for the folk craft researcher, but for the curious and enthusiastic beginner to mingei, there are few better books than this. (Should you be unable to track down a physical copy, you can read it on the Internet Archive.)
Meet the main figures of the mingei movement
The three main figures inextricably tied to the Mingei movement are the philosopher and aesthete Yanagi Sōetsu, and potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō. As noted above, they coined the term ‘mingei.’ Yanagi in particular was a major driver of Japan’s Folk Craft Movement throughout the 1920s through to the 1970s, and as part of his efforts, he wrote and published many essays on the subject. His writings are useful in contextualising the mingei movement, as well as understanding the beliefs and concerns that its proponents had.
Two of Yanagi’s essay collections are available in English. The first and most famous is The Unknown Craftsman, first translated and published in 1972 with an introduction by celebrated British potter Bernard Leach. The second is The Beauty of Everyday Things. Both are treatises on everyday objects as art, containing some moving (and even timeless) ideas on beauty, craftsmanship, aesthetics, the creative process, and our relationship with objects. Perhaps one of its most important reminders is that we should “surrender [our]selves, reflecting on [our] own smallness.”
Readers will do well to note that both books fall prey to that strain of essentialism which permeates much of Japanese writing on the arts and crafts. Not all readers will have the patience for Yanagi’s tendency towards repetition, or his penchant for truisms and sweeping statements phrased as universal facts; much less the paternalistic, colonial attitude towards the “blissful innocence” of the “humble,” “naive” Koreans and their pottery. Some may also find the writing style quite dated. Still, both books are important artifacts for the history of the movement, and worth reading at least once.
I have previously written about Hamada Shōji and his life’s work in Mashiko. The account of his life was drawn from Susan Peterson’s classic book Shōji Hamada: A Potter’s Way and Work, an authoritative portrait of this ceramicist that offers personal insights as well as an in-depth look at the techniques and various processes involved in producing Mashiko ware. Over 200 new colour photographs enrich the updated version of the book published in 2020, along with a new concluding chapter that examines Hamada’s ongoing legacy in the world of studio pottery.
The potter Kawai Kanjirō was a fascinating and charismatic Renaissance man. His work was not limited to ceramics; he was also an artist, calligrapher, sculptor, writer, poet, and philosopher. Interested readers should seek out a copy of Kawai Kanjirō: The Kawakatsu Collection in the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, which catalogues 250 of his beautiful pieces along with an encyclopaedic introduction to his life and work. To hear from the man himself, visitors to the Kawai Kanjirō House in Kyoto — his house transformed into a museum, run by his relatives — can pick up a copy of We Do Not Work Alone, a 22-page book by Uchida Yoshiko recording the thoughts of Kawai, based on conversations with him and his son Hiroshi.
Dive into the context and history of mingei
Nothing is produced in a vacuum — not food, not furniture, and certainly not folk craft. That the Mingei movement began during the 1920s and 1930s — the decades between the world wars — will not have escaped the notice of some. This is the context for Kim Brandt’s Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan, which argues that mingei was central to the way that Japan became both a modern nation and imperial world power. Brandt locates the origins of the mingei movement in colonial Korea (see: Yanagi), and traces the way mingei was used in crafting a vision of prosperity for Japan, and by extension the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Brandt stops short of making an explicit link between mingei and fascism, although this is quite clearly the conclusion that the reader is meant to draw. It is not a perfect book, but overall, it is a well-researched and fascinating study of mingei in its social, cultural, and political context.
Central to some of Brandt’s arguments is the idea of ‘Oriental Orientalism,’ the Japanese appropriation of Western Orientalist ideas to nationalist ambitions, a concept thoroughly examined by Yuko Kikuchi in Japanese Modernization and Mingei Theory. (It is unsurprising, perhaps, that informally speaking I have often heard Japan referred to as ‘the whitest Asian nation’ or ‘the white people of Asia’ — a dig at its imperial past.) Kikuchi’s sprawling analysis of the ideas behind the concept of Mingei looks at Yanagi’s hybridisation of Western Arts and Crafts theory with Japanese concepts of Zen Buddhism, and traces the way it was then exported back to the West in a process Kikuchi terms ‘Reverse Orientalism.’ This is a dense and erudite academic study, and is not for everyone; it will, however, prove immensely rewarding for the mingei anorak and armchair craft historian.
Mingei: Art Without Heroes is the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of the same name, held at the William Morris Gallery in 2024. Curated by Roisin Ingleby, the exhibition explored the evolution of the Mingei movement within the context of today’s concerns, with objects from ceramics and furniture to textiles and toys making up the displays. It takes Mingei as both movement and a set of principles, situating it in the wider global historical context of the time. As with the other books mentioned above, both exhibition and book examine Japan’s cultural imperialism in the Mingei movement, including and contextualising folk art objects from ex-colonies Korea, Hokkaido, and Okinawa. The objects are gorgeous, of course, and accompanied by a narrative of Mingei that is complex and highly considered. This is a book well worth owning if you can get your hands on a copy.
Written by Florentyna Leow