"It Was Said That You Would Destroy the Sith, Not Join Them": When Mingei Became What It Opposed

The familiar Star Wars accusation may seem far removed from a Japanese art movement inspired by traditional craftspeople. But the history of Mingei, shaped by writer and philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu, contains its own story of an ideal confronting what it opposed. Baskets, textiles and pottery made by ordinary, often unknown people became a protest against elitism and industrial capitalism in the so-called higher forms of art.

Beauty in Ordinary Hands

In 1916, Yanagi visited Korea, where he developed a deep appreciation for local pottery and craft traditions. Upon returning, he continued collecting Japanese crafts that were disappearing, including Ainu embroidery and appliqué. In the mid-1920s, Yanagi, potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō coined the word mingei. The Japan Folk Crafts Museum dates the formal declaration of their museum project to 1926, the year the movement was officially established.

Yanagi Sōetsu, founder of the Mingei movement. Photo: Shigeru Tamura/Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Mingei is an abbreviation of minshūteki kōgei, meaning folk craft, or craft made by the people. The emphasis on craft instead of fine art was deliberate. Yanagi believed that categories, schools and artistic reputations could distract people from seeing beauty itself. For him, beauty could reside in objects made without the intention of individual artistic expression, but instead to serve people. A woven basket could become graceful through the hands of a skilled craftsperson following inherited methods.

The artist's identity, superimposed onto the object and making room for judgment, could also become a hindrance to perception. Mingei celebrated the continuation of regional craft traditions. Its ideal object was simple, useful in daily life and anonymous, the opposite of monumental art made for status or profit.

Seeing Before Thinking

Buddhist thought became central to Yanagi's philosophy. He contrasted jiriki, or self-power, with tariki, reliance on a power beyond the individual ego. Scholarship on Yanagi's Buddhist aesthetics connects this distinction to his belief that beauty could emerge when a craftsperson surrendered individual will to tradition, material and use.

Yanagi also emphasized seeing before thinking. We often focus so intensely on interpreting a painting or evaluating it instantly that we forget to experience its colors and shapes. In Mingei, beauty appears as a gift of practice rather than the declared purpose of the maker.

Yanagi published Kōgei no Michi (The Way of Crafts) in 1928. He spread his ideas through lectures and essays, and helped establish the magazine Kōgei. In 1936, with financial support from businessman Ōhara Magosaburō, he opened the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo.

When a Movement Becomes a Market

Mingei's postwar life exposed a contradiction already inside the movement. As museums, exhibitions, shops and tourism carried the idea to a wider public, anonymous utilitarian craft entered markets that rewarded names, rarity and cultural prestige. Craftspeople could earn livelihoods and regional traditions could survive, but the movement's popularity also made mingei a marketable label.

The interior of Yanagi Sōetsu's home, arranged around everyday craft objects. Photo: DavidEarlYoung/Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

One of Mingei's central principles was creation for service rather than individual fame. Yet exhibitions often celebrate founders and notable artists. Objects once valued for anonymity may now be sold through the reputations of particular studios, regions or collectors. The movement did not simply become the opposite of itself, but its success forced it to live inside the institutions and markets it had questioned.

That tension remains alive. Recent scholarship describes Mingei as a concept shaped over time by museums, markets, social movements and competing interpretations, rather than a fixed doctrine untouched by history. Contemporary exhibitions and preservation efforts keep traditional craft visible, even as they raise Yanagi's old question in a new form: can anonymity survive in a culture organized around authorship, branding and recognition?

Mingei can still return us to the beauty of useful objects and the skill of the communities that make them. But preserving the movement's spirit requires more than repeating its name. It requires attention to who makes the object, how it is used and whether the people carrying the tradition are allowed to survive.

Sources

• Kikuchi, Yuko. "A Japanese William Morris: Yanagi Sōetsu and Mingei Theory." The William Morris Society, 12.2, 1997, pp. 39-45.

• Yanagi, Sōetsu. The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. Kodansha International, 1989.

• Yanagi, Sōetsu. Kōgei no Michi (The Way of Crafts). Selected Works, Volume 1. Nihon Mingeikan, 1955.

• Yanagi, Sōetsu. "Sakubutsu no kōhansei" (The Afterlife of Crafts). Kōgei 15, 1932, pp. 56-58.

• Yanagi, Sōetsu. "Kōgei no kyōdan ni kansuru hito teian" (With Regard to Cooperation in Crafts). In Mizuo Hiroshi, ed., Yanagi Muneyoshi, Nihon Minzoku Bunka Taikei, Volume 6. Kōdansha, 1978, p. 309.