Beauty in ordinary things: why this Japanese folk craft movement still matters 100 years on

By Penny Bailey, Lecturer in Japanese Studies, The University of Queensland

On January 10 1926, Yanagi Sōetsu and the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō sat talking excitedly late into the night at a temple on Mt Kōya, in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture.

They were debating how best to honour the beauty of simple, everyday Japanese crafts. Out of that conversation came a new word, mingei, and a plan to found The Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo. Later, Yanagi would describe what emerged that night as “a new standard of beauty”.

A century on, Yanagi’s ideas feel strikingly…

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