A Revaluation of William
Morris 's Influence in Japan1
Chiaki Ajioka
The Min gei movem ent , which bega n i n japan in the 1920s an d continues today, ha s a lmost a lways been d iscussed as one which revolved ent irely a rou nd Yanagi Soetsu(1889-1961), a religiou s philosophe r a nd the apparent fou nder of the m ovement.2 The movement, and Yanagi's theory on the beauty of folk crafts, have bee n k nown to theWest particula rly a fter Wor ld War ll through a number of publications in English, the most famous being The Unknown Craftsmmz, adapted by Bernard Leach and first published in 1972.3 N1ore recend y, two touring exhi bitions based on Yanagi's collection at the Japan Folkcra ft Museum (Mingeik an ), have been organised in rhe West: Mingei: The Living Tradition in japanese Arts (Glasgow, Sunderland and London, 1991-92) and Two Centuries of Japanese Folk Art (Massachusetts, Nebra ska , California a nd Texas, 1995-97).
Ya nagi presented his craft aesthetic i n a series of a rticl es publ ished i n 1927. It consisted of a number of principl es: first, that the purest beauty of craft is found amongordinary objects; second, that the essence of the beauty of ordinary crafts is their simplicity of shape, warm th of ch aracter and spirit of service {i.e. ease of use); thj rd , that their beauty springs not from the creativity of the individua l producers hu t from the concerted efforts of the mult itudes over genera tions; fou rth , that their beauty is thus free from the individua l ism which has caused the degradation of art and craft, and is therefore superior to works of art bearing individual names; fifth , that the characteristics of their beau ty come from the facr that they are m ade in large quantities so the econom y of the produ ction process d r ives individual fancy ou r of the objects - the producers, therefore, were not conscious of the beauty they create; and si xth, that becau se it is impossible to return to r:he un consciou s past in this age of consci ou sness, the futu re of the crafts can onlyrest on i nd ivi dual producers. To achi eve the purest beauty of craft, h owever, the indi v idu a l craft artist mu st str ive to erase his or her indjvidu a l ity and surrend er to thepower from wit hout.
Curiously, unti l recently therehad been few critica l studies of Yan agi and the Mingei movement in either Ja pan or the West. For most people , Japanese or non-Japanese,Yanagi's vast knowledge of Western philosoph y and religion, and of numerous difficult Buddhist texts, per haps seemed roo daunting to allow them ro criticise him. In addi tion ,the bod y of his writings includ es his answers to, and counter attacks against, criticisms made during his lifetim e. There are questions, h owever, which have been repeatedly asked bu t remain unan swered - such as the vexing problem of the positi on of individual craft artists (such as Ham ada Shoji, Kawai K anj iro, Serizawa K eisuke and MunakataShik o) within a movement which considered the beauty of
folk cra fts superior to works by individu a l craft art ists."
However, when one steps ba ck from Yanagi 's actions a nd writings, and p l aces the Mingei move ment in the context of the wider contempora ry development of the cr afts inJ a pan, one begins to see a different picture in which most of these importanr questions are answered. ln most publications on the Mi ngei movemen t, irs h.isrory is
described as commencing with Yanagi when he, together with Hamada Shoji and Kawai Kanjiro, coined the word mingei (craft with the characteristics of commonpeople). However, this narrative ignores the significance of the earlier development from which the notion of mingei sprang. Why this is so will become clearer later inmy article.
The origin of what we call the Mingei movement can be traced back to the time when Bernard Leach took up pottery, which was early in the 1910s.5 Around this timeTomimoto Kenkichi, a progressive student of architecture and design, acted as an interpreter for Leach and his teacher Kenzan, and then began making pottery himself.6The style of this pottery wa s derived from old English folk art and other Western and Middle-Eastern traditions. Tomimoto became acquainted with these traditions atthe South Kensington Museum (now the V & A), and while travelling in the Middle East between 1908 and 1910.
Leach and Tomimoto not only experimented in pottery but in prints and other crafts, and designed exhibitions in an unconventional manner. Their works and activitieswere innovatory, and as such had an extremely strong and lasting impact on many young Japanese artists and craftsmen. For some time, this younger generation ofartists had been seeking new kinds of expression that would reflect their recently established, largely Westernised, urban life. Their works struck a sympathetic chord in a new consciousness among the artistic community. This new consciousness, which one may ca tl a modern culture, emerged among the urban intellectua ls from the beginning of the century. One important element of this new culture may be seen as exoticism. Living in a now fully developed urban society in which information aboutWestern cultures and art movements was readily available, these intellectua ls began to see not only foreign cultures but also their own past, their rural culture, as exotic.In this context, one must point out the effect of Japan's colonisation of Taiwan in 1905 and annexation of Korea in 1910. A strong sense of cultural superiority often accompanied this taste for exoticism; for example, Masaki Naohiko, the president of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, spoke thus of 'native crafts' in 1913:
Recently, natives' art has become fashionab l e. As our culture becomes more advanced, people begin to prefer objects which represent the opposite. As everything from the social structure to our everyday life is becoming more and more complicated and sophisticated, and so is our work, it is natura l that we seek our repose in simpler objects.?
Masaki illustrated this with pictures from his collection - mostly from the South
Pacific, North Amer.ica and the Middle East.
One of the artists on whom Leach and Tomimoto had a strong impact was Hamada Shoji (1894-1978). Hamada went to a technical school to study ceramics, but wasdetermined to make pottery in the style developed by Leach and Tomimoto rather than in the highly refined and skill-oriented styles of tra ditional Japanese cerarllics.Hamada visited Leach and offered help in setting up a kiln at St Ives in Cornwall. Here Hamada- who grew up in Tokyo and worked in Kyoto- met British artists andintellectuals, such as Eric Gill, who chose to live the simple life in the country.H They served their guests not with Doulton or Wedgwood ware but with locally produced slipware plates and bow ls which were in perfect harmony with their surroundings.
This was the &recrion in which Hamada was determined to proceed. On his return to Japan in 1924, Hamada began foraging in antique shops and markets in Kyoto for pieces to his taste and for his creative u se.9 ln other words, his experience in the Wesr opened his eyes to objects which were otherv.rise taken for granted in Japan. Hamada's behaviour at first puzz led his friend Kawai Kanjiro, who had established himself as an extremely skilled ceram ist yet was n ot satisfied with his work and was searching for anew direction . Yanagi Soetsu was also living in Kyo to a t rbe time. The three men quickly discovered their shared interest in simple folk crafts, and a strong friendship wasformed . It was du ring this period th at Yanagi devel oped his Mingei theory.
It is i mportant to note, however, that Hamada Shoji had doubts abou t Yanagi's Mingei theory being used as a formula for appreciating a ll art a nd craft.10 Yanagi's theorywas a synthesis of his previous spiritual journey in search of tr u th through religion, science and psychology. When he 'discovered ' rhe beauty of folk crafts, be identified his aesthetic with spiritual truth . The notion that ordinary craft made by ordin ary artisans for use in everyday life could have a supreme beauty was a kind of enlightenment forthose who read Yanagi's pa ssionate writings. The lack of logic in some of his arguments was overlooked. His was a revolutionary theory which completely overturned the convention al artistic hierarchy.
Th e similarities between Morri s's wr itings and Yanagi's Mingei theory are
unmistak able. Yana gi, however, insisted on the originality of his ideas, declaring that he h ad not k n own of Morris's or R uskin's ideas before he formulated his own theory.Most of Ya nagi's followers do n ot questi on the vaJidi ty of this claim. 11 Western schola rs, on the other hand have tend ed to see a strong influence of Morris on Yanagi. Brian Moeran has been the most per istent advocate of th is view. 12 Elizabeth Frolet, a French artist and scholar, is another who considers that Yanagi's inspirati on carnelargely from Morris.1 l
My view is that the circumstances in which Yanagi's theory was formed suggest that he could not have been unaware of Morr is and his ideas. However, Ialso believe tha tthere are too many other Eastern and Western ideas which certa inly influen ced Yanagi to say that Morris's was the main influen ce on him. For example, there is a strikingresem bl ance between Emile Male's representation of the Gothic craftsmen fajthfully following the rules of image prod uction - in his book The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Ce11tury {1902) - and Yanagi 's description of the selfless artisan who unconsciou sly created bea uty. This has somehow escaped rhe notice ofMingei historians, although they know tha[ Yanagi read and wrote about Male's book some years before forming his .Nlingei theory.
Some people, including Bernard Leach but particularly Japanese scholars such as lvlizuo Hiroshj and Jugaku Bunsbo, hold that Yanagi actually surpassed Morris in that Yanagi 'raised' the aesthetic appreciation of folk crafrs to a spiritua l level.l4 For those who believe that spiritual discourse has a higher va lue than artistic discourse, it may be so. One may a rgue, however, that by presenting a persona l aesthetic as uni versa l truth, Yanagi created confusion. Firstly, he completely cur off his aestberic from history and mad e it a kind of gospel which claimed tha t once your eyes were opened to this tru th, you were able to understand beauty. This was precisely what Ham ada feared and warned aga inst. To the extent that Yanagi 's wri tin gs opened up new possibilities of seeing beau ty in objects that had never been considered beautiful,
this provided the freedom of a modern sensibility. Yet, at the same time as Yanagi did so, he shackled his reader s to his formu la -a pre-set value wh ich determinedwhat was beautiful and what was not.
Another serious problem with Yanagi's theory, which Hamada pointed out, was that when Yanagi illustrated his argument with examples of folk craftworks, he didnot fully explain why he selected them out of the tens of thousands of other objects of similar kinds which would also apparently satisfy his criteria for beautiful objects.The fact that they were selected by Yanagi with his celebrated connoisseurship was not mentioned, as Yanagi wanted to genera lise from the objects' beauty rather than to draw attention to his own good taste.
Hamada's criticisms were very important as they anticipated the direction in which Mingei theory would develop. By the time he voiced his concern in 1931, a new movement was emerging, in Tottori, a coastal city on the Sea of Japan, led by Yoshida Shoya, an ear, nose and throat doctor an d ardent admirer of Yanagi. Yoshida interpreted Yanagi 's theory as a practical manual for appreciating and creating beauty; be and others like him believing that if the older artisans produced beautiful objects through repetition of the same shapes and patterns, properly guided artisans would also be able to produce beautiful objects even in the modern age. These werethe peop le who eventually overwhelmed the more cautious readers of Yanagi's writings and became the mainstream Mingei movement , particularly after the war. Forthem, the movement started when Yanagi first perceived the beauty of folk crafts.
The earlier group, Leach, Tomimoto, Hamada, Kawai and Yanagi, shared their
love and admiratio n of folk crafts. The ind ividualistic pursuits of craft artisans (as most of them were) happily coexisted with their admi ration for extraordinary pieces of old folk ware. Yosh ida Shoya and others who became the mainstream Mingei movement, however, held that one should despise individualistic crafts, because Yanagi despi.sed them . Ironically, it was the high prof ile of the artists under its wing, like Hamada and others, and later, Munakata Shiko or Serizawa Keisuke, thatprom oted the Minge i movement as a whole. How, then, did these artists and craft artists reconcile their position in a movement which, as a principle, condemnedindividua lism? The answer was that they did not take Yanagi's theory at its face value and, contrary to popular belief, did not let his theory guide their work. As toHamada and Kawai, for example, they simpl y shared Yanag i's taste for <extraordinary mingei'. The younger craft artists of the moveme nt, on the other hand, werefostered by Yanagi's discernmen t and encouragement, as well as the brotherhood-like support within the group. In this light, it is significant that Kuro da Tatsuaki, awoodwo rk artist who set up a cooperative (under Yanagi's suggestion) in 1927, claimed that it was Shoya, rather than Yanagi, who popu larised the word mingei. 1s
To conclude the first point: once the self-contradictory nature of Yanagi 's Mingei theory and the different degrees of his influence (or non-in fluence) on the members of the movement are acknowledged, it follows that a discussion of Morris's influence on Yanagi and the Mingei movement now needs to be more specific asto how the influ ence was ef fected and to what degree.
Yanagi and his Mingei theory were not the major recipient of Morris's influence in terms of the development of modern Japanese crafts. A more significant and farreaching in fluence of Morris's ideas and practice can be observed in Tomimoto
wrote of Tomimoto in 1986:
The core task in modernising ceramics, that is, to break through the practice of copying traditional styles and to establish the concept of original ity, was first achieved byTomimoto, and he did it in a most spectacular manner. ,,
Tomimoto is usually considered ro be the one who bridged the gap between Morris and Yanagi by introducing Morris 's ideas ro him. Tomimoto wrote a rwo-part article on Morris which was published in 1912 i n a very influential art magazine called Bijutsu Shinpo. There is a general unwillingnes s to acknowledge Morris's influence onTomimoto him self, however. The single ground for this unwillingness, it seems, is the fact that Tomimoto once wrote that he had been disappointed to find no originality inMorris's work. 17
Tomimoto was the champion of origina lity in craft design. He is f a mou s for his aphorism 'never make pattern s from patterns', and, faithful to this motto, he took pride ind rawing from natur e to create all the patterns for h is craft. Because of his commitment to originality, his above comment on Morri s has been taken out of context, and as a consequence his repeated pra ise of Morris and acknowledgment of his debt to Morris have been all but ignored. One can fairly argue that Tomim oto was an ind epende nt craft artist, and hi s debt to Morris in his practice as a craft artist lay deeper than his introduction in print of Morr is's ideas to th e Japanese public . My intention here is to highlight Morris's influence on Tomimoto as he interpreted .Nlorris, rath er than to examine whether his interpretation was va lid. Tomim oto was by no means a sch ol a r of Morris, andone must not overestimate his competence in the English language as well as the research opportunities during his limited sojourn in Britain (twelve months from December1908 and less than a month i n April 1910 before returned to Japan ) . Let us look a t two aspects of Morr i s's influence on Tomimoto here. The first is Mo rris's approach tocraftmak ing in which he mastered various skilJ s while always keeping them unde r the conrro l of his aesthetic. In the 1910s, craft
production in Japan was strongly dominated by the conventional idea that skill
was the most essential value in craftwork. When Tomim oto adopted Morris's
attitude, it beca m e the fundamenta l power in breaking through this concept of
craft production in j apan.
Tomimot o wro[e:
I found [Morris's wallpaper designs] very interesting when I first saw them . As 1 became familiar with them, I came to be fasci nated with them. The noble taste of the serious and gentlemanly artist deeply im pressed me. 1s
And:
When I think of the time and effort Mo rris had taken, wit hout help or teaching from others, in dissecting the details [of old carpets] and in carrying our many trials until hecould weave them on his own, my respect for this man seems to acq uire even more lustre.l 9
from storage and himself began weaving.
[Morris] overcame great difficulties in having various produ ctS made in the way he wanted them. The works which he him self patterned - in various materials such as si lk, corron, linen or wool- show me, apart from their noble artistic value, that Morris trusted hi mself and was faithfu l to h imsel£.20
A revelation came ro Tomimoro when he saw chi n tz and paintings bung side by side at the South Ken ington Museum. The display stru ck home the idea that an andcraft have the same va lue. Tomimoto concluded:
'The appeal of the individuality of the anise or 'things that are infinitely beautiful' must be recogn ised not only in pain t ings and sculpture bur also in weaving,metalwork and all other crafrwork. Morris was a forerunner like no other in perceiving this, and I feel that he showed us the way through his own practice.2 1
Tomimoto thus learned from Morris hi 'let's see wha t can be done' attitude, that is, to believe only in one's own taste when creating objects and foUow it through. In Japan, this was a radical departure from the long-established craft-ma king practice, and Tomimoto immediately met strong resistance from the craft community. In fact,when Tomimoto devised a vase wirhou r a neck, other potters sneered at him, saying that he had on ly done so because he was not skilled enough to make the neck. Onthe other hand, his unconventional experiments and his num erou s thought-provoking essays l iberated many young craft artists from conventional ideas and practices.He was n ot a lone in claiming that artists should follow their own taste and not any p rescribed ru les. Bur he was the first a nd certa inly the most inf luential one in the field of the cra fts. There were a number of craft movem ents developing during the 1910s and 1920s, an d those who initiated these moveme n ts were often influencedby Tomjmoto's progressive ideas and sensitivity.
As well as hi s comm itment to the originality and integrity of the artist, social conscience was also fundamental to Tomim oro's .life an d wor k. He was deeply interested i n Morr is's socialist activities and cond ucted resea rch into this aspect of his work wh ile in Lon don. Un til after the war, h owever, he was not prepared topublicly admit this, nor pu blish his research , as this would certain ly have meant imprisonm enr.22 One suspects that Tomimoto read Morr is's lectures on art andsociety, and w ished ro contr ibute tO Morris's ca u se in his ind ividual capacity. This led him to turn to the possibility of mass-producing his designs so that peop le whocould n ot afford his expensive pots could still enjoy h is work. As earl y as 1917 he wrote:
This year, I began ro desire to make craft which can be used by anyone for everyday life, a t the lowest price possible. This is a very important matter for me, and I think it wilJ have an important role in the direction I will proceed in.23
He also wrote to Leach in 1918:
£rom everyday life. If people create decorative arts without thinking about everyday
life, the work will be mere toys for grown-ups... I want to make cheap obj ects - particu larly tableware. And I want to provide people 'with as much of it as 1 can.
The qual ity of my vessels will certainly suffer, but to combat ordinary wares, I must have low prices as the weapon.24
Tomimoto attempted mass production in different ways - from drawing designs himself on large quantities of bases mad e by others, to pr oviding originals to have themreproduced. His efforts during the greater part of the 1920s were focused on devising patterns which were easy to copy. In 1929, as his first l arge-scale experiment, he went toShigaraki, one of the old pottery regio ns, and drew iron-glaze patterns on thrown plates. Tomimoto was living in Tokyo around this time, and it became an annual event forhim to leave Tokyo's cold winter for warmer pottery-producing regions and draw designs on a large number of bases made by skilled artisans.
Tom i moto encoun tered many difficulties, however, and envied Morris for what he thought was lacking i n himself : 'What Iadmire most about William Morris is his powerto unite and ability to lead'.25 Bur the real cau se of his frustration was the fact that he was ahead of his time. Af ter the war, in 1947, he recalled:
About thirty years ago made medium-size plates for use in the kitchen in ceramic producing areas like Seto and sold them at around fifty sen each. The next year, however,those p l ates were sold as a kind of antique ware, at forty or fifty yen each [approximately 100 times the value]. Iwas saddened that things had gone in a com pletelydifferent direction.26
Yet he contin ued to persist with his experiments with mass production . In 1957, he created a brand called Torrusen under which his origina l works were mass-produced anddistributed through a large craft company. Unfortunately, production ceased in the mid 1960s, soon after Tomimoto's death . Today, a brand called Tomihana, ceram ics withcopies of Tomimoro's patterns, is sold by the same company (Japan Craft).
Tomim oto was not the only artist who learned from Morris. But it was through this remarkable individual that Morris's ideas were made relevant for Japan, at a time when the modern J apanese spirit was ready to absorb them.
N OTES
1 This article is an edited version of the paper of the same title presented at the Morris Centenary Conference at Oxford in June 1996. All Japanese names in the main textappear surname followed by given name.
- This is true in both Japanese and Western }jrerature .
- Pu blished by Kodansha International, Tokyo.
4 This problem caused the split in the movement in 1953 when Miyake Tadaichi, a
dedicated Mingei activist, left Yanagi's Japan FoLk Craft Association and established a museum in which he displayed only folk crafts made by anonymous artisans.
5 Bernard Leach (1887-1979) arrived in Japan in 1909 after his encounter with Takamura Kotaro, arguably the most significant artist in modern Japanese art movements.
- For a brief introduction of Tomimoto and his ideas, see Yuko Kikuchi, 'Tomim oroKenkichi', Crafts, no. l48, 1997, pp. 22-23.
- Bijutsu Shimpo, vol. 12, no.6, p. 7.
- Bernard Leach , H ama da: Potter, (Tokyo/New York: Kodansha lnternational1990
[first edition 1975]), pp. 131-32.
9 Ibid ., p. 149.
10 Ibid., p. 168. Also see Kogei, no. 1 (Tokyo : Ra kuyodo 1931), p. 29.
11 Iam aware that Yuko Kikuchi has challenged this common japanese view in her
recent publications: see for exa m ple, 'A Japanese William Mor ris: Yanagi Soetsu and Mingei Theory' in The Journal of the William Morris Society, Xll, 2 (Spring1997), pp. 39-45.
12 For example, see 'Yanagi, Morris and Popular Ar t', Ceramic Review, no. 66, 1980 pp. 25-26; 'Bernard Leach and the j apanese Folk Craft Movement: the Formati ve
Years',journal of Design H istory,vol. 2, nos. 2&3, 1989,pp. 141-42;'Orientalism and the Debris of Western Civil isation: Popular Ar t Movements in Britain and Japan ', Europe &· the Orient, D. Gerstle and A. Miller (eds.), (Canberra : Th e Humanities Resea rch Centre 1994), pp. 36-37.
13 'Mingei: The Word and the Movement', Mingei: The Living Tradition injapan ese
Arts [exhibition catalogue], (Tokyo/New York: Kodansha Inrernationa l 1991), p.
13.
14 The comment by Leach was made during an interview with Professor Masaaki Maeda, on the latter's visit to Sr Ives io 1973. I discussed this point with ProfessorMaeda twice in 1992;Jugaku Bunsho, 'Uiriamu Morisu ro Yanagi Soersu', K ogei, no. 100, 1939, pp. 27-30.
- Kuroda Tatsuaki interview, recorded at Asahi Hall, Kyoto, 1976. A copy of thistape was kindly prov ided by Kuroda's son Kenkichi.
- Inui Yoshiaki, Tomimoto Kenkichi, lexhi bition catalogue), (Asahi Shinbunsha
1986), p. 171.
17 'Autobiograp hy' in Ir oe-j iki: Tomomoto K enkichi, (Tokyo: J apan Agency for
Cultu ral Affa irs 1969), p. 72.
18 Tsujim oto lsamu (cd.), Tomimoto Kenkichi Chosakusha, (Kyoto: Satsuki Shobo
1981}, p. 423.
- Ibid ., p. 439.
- Ibid., p. 436.
21 Ibid., pp. 445-6.
1-1 'A utobw. graphy', op. ct.t., p. 72.
B Ibid., p. 515.
24 From an unpublished letter, courtesy of Tomimoto Kenkichi Memorial Museum ,
N ara .
25 Tomimoto Kenkichi Chosakushu, op. cit., p. 526.
26 Ibid., p. 614..
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