Japanese Design - Patricia Graham

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are far from primitive. Mingei products are sophisticated in both design and technique. Their varied appearance stems from the fact that the definition of commoners in pre-modern Japan encompasses a wide range of individuals, from rural peasants to urban dwellers, with varied tastes, income levels, and access to different types of raw materials. The common denominators for these crafts include their reliance on locally sourced materials (for example, local clays, wood species, cotton, and plant dyes), their utilitarian function (including clothing, tableware, furniture, and even crafts and statuary made for religious devotions), the anonymity of their makers (who often work together in a communal spirit to produce crafts for the people of the area in which they live), and their handmade production techniques (see also Plates 2-57–2-61, and 3-22).

      Plate 1-51 Kettle hook (jizaigaki), late 19th–early 20th century. Zelkova wood, height 33.7 cm, width 30 cm, diameter 7 cm. Photo courtesy of Toyobi Far Eastern Art. The central room of traditional Japanese commoners’ houses featured charcoal fires in open hearths where an iron kettle hung from an adjustable wooden hook attached to a rope slung over the roof structure’s cross beams. The robust form of this hook is more than merely a practical object. Its inverted V shape intentionally recalls the shape of the hat worn by Daikoku, one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, protector of the home.

      Plate 1-52 Demon Reciting Prayers, 18th–early 19th century. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 53.0 x 20.4 cm. Gift from the Clark Center for Japanese Arts & Culture to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2013.29.47. These charmingly humorous talisman pictures (Ōtsue) were popular souvenirs that travelers purchased from makers in the town of Ōtsu, a way-station along the Tōkaidō highway. This one portrays a demon dressed as a monk, an image that was believed to prevent infants from crying at night.

      Plate 1-53 Futon (bedding) cover with pine crest and auspicious motifs, late 19th–early 20th century. Plain weave handspun, handwoven cotton cloth with tsutsugaki (free-hand paste-resist dyed) decoration in colors on dark indigo ground, 197 x 160 cm. Portland Art Museum. Gift of Terry Welch, 2009.25.44. Flaming jewels, a magic mallet, and peacock feathers were among the auspicious emblems blessing the person who slept under this cover.

      Plate 1-54 Massive Echizen ware water jar, 16th century. Stoneware with natural ash glaze, height 72.4 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: Edith Ehrman Memorial Fund, F92-32. Photo: Jamison Miller. This sturdy pot is a classic example of Japanese folk ceramics of the sort appreciated by chanoyu masters. It is distinguished by its irregular shape, derived from a combination of coil and wheel-thrown techniques, and a thick-walled surface embedded with coarse grains, augmented with a naturally occurring ash glaze that drips down its sides, an effect later potters cultivated.

      Plate 1-55 Mingei crafts shop in the town of Tsumago, Nagano Prefecture. Photo: David M. Dunfield, May 2003.

      Many types of traditional mingei featured auspicious emblems to offer their owners protection from diseases, injury, and other calamities, and as prayers for health, wealth, safe childbirth, and the like (see Plate 2-10).

      Yanagi did not single-handedly create appreciation for mingei. He developed his theories together with artist-friends, potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978; see Plate 2-21) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966), whose works reinterpret mingei aesthetics for the modern world.

      Today in Japan, the word mingei is widely used to refer to many types of local crafts, often produced for tourists, but based aesthetically on traditional, regionally made handicrafts.

      Plate 1-56 Interior view of the Takishita House, Kamakura, renovation dating to 1976; originally constructed early 19th century; moved and restored by architect Takishita Yoshihiro (b. 1945). Takishita has made a career of saving old minka (farmhouses) from demolition by moving those that cannot be preserved in situ and using their skeletal framework to create comfortable modern houses for himself and clients worldwide. Originally a village chief’s house from a town in Fukui Prefecture, this large minka features posts made of keyaki (Japanese zelkova) and massive curved beams from giant old pine trees.

      Plate 1-57 Munakata Shikō (1903–1975), In Praise of Flower Hunting, 1954. Woodblock print mounted as a hanging scroll, 150.5 x 169.4 cm. Art Institute of Chicago. Anonymous Donor, 1959.584. The prints of Munakata, a self-taught artist famous for carving his own woodblocks at a feverish pace, first attracted the attention of Yanagi Sōetsu and Kawai Kanjirō in the 1930s for his art’s sincerity and unpretentiousness. These qualities accorded with Yanagi’s beliefs that the beauty of folk crafts derived from the makers’ inherently Buddhist attitude of selflessness. This print, produced well after Munakata met Yanagi and Kawai, portrays hunters shooting flowers, not arrows, a Buddhist reference to compassion and connectedness. The sharp, energetic lines and bold contrasts between dark and light areas characterize Munakata’s style.

      Plate 1-58 Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), Poems from the Shinkokin wakashū (New Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times). Handscroll in ink, gold, and silver on woodblock printed paper, 33.8 x 830 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Purchased with funds contributed by members of the Committee on East Asian Art, 1999-39-1. The aesthetic appeal of this handscroll relies on the collaboration between the calligrapher Kōetsu and an unknown craftsman who first created beautiful stencil designs of ivy, grasses, and wisteria in gold and silver ink on the paper.

      RINPA

       DECORATIVE ART OF THE KLRIN SCHOOL

      The artistic style known as Rinpa emerged in the old imperial capital of Kyoto during the early seventeenth century through the efforts of a small group of independent-minded individuals. Their leader was Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), a calligrapher from a well-connected samurai family of sword polishers who immersed himself in various arts at an artists’ colony he founded, and his less well-recorded collaborator, the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu (d. ca. 1640). The subjects and styles of Rinpa art recalled the courtly culture of the Heian period and often featured ancient waka poetry, yet its greater abstraction and bolder colors imparted a modern flair to these arts.

      Beginning with Kōetsu, artists of the Rinpa tradition worked in multiple media, including lacquers, ceramics, and textiles, in addition to paintings in various formats. Many, like Kōetsu, collaborated with specialized craftsmen such as dyers, lacquer makers, or paper makers. Unlike the more familiar atelier system of artistic production in Japan, the Rinpa tradition has endured due to efforts of individual artists inspired by the achievements of earlier Rinpa masters. Following the initial burst of activity under Kōetsu, Sōtatsu, and his immediate followers in the seventeenth century, the painter Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716) and his younger brother Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743) created a second wave of interest in Rinpa designs, which they modified to appeal to patrons of their own time.

      The artist Sakai Hōitsu (1761– 1828), whose well-to-do samurai family had, generations earlier, patronized Ogata Kōrin, initiated a third major revival of the Rinpa tradition. Hōitsu revered Kōrin as the greatest Rinpa master and worked tirelessly both to promote him and to emulate his style.

      Although today the name Rinpa is widely used to designate artists whose work follows this tradition, that was not always the case. Since the time of Hōitsu and through the Meiji period it was called the “Korin

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