kanjiro kawai 河井寛次郎

louie, my son, was here and stayed overnight a few weeks ago when he came to osaka on his business trip. as he’s tokyo based, it’d been more than a year since i last saw him. but 2 years ago, he stayed with me at every weekend while taking 2 month job training at his company’s head quarters in osaka. so one of saturdays we were together, we visited my father’s grave in kyoto (it’s a september must-do for buddhists) and the kanjiro kawai museum 河井寛次郎 記念館 in gojozaka 五条坂 after that.
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the much admired potter, late kanjiro kawai’s home with workshop is now a private museum and run by his granddaughter. the neighbourhood used to be a popular place for local potters to set up their kilns. in the museum premises you can see his unusual kilns and wood house that he designed himself. it was a quiet place and made us relaxed. louie really liked it there. i, as his mother, felt glad at the fact that we could actually have the same taste.

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kanjiro kawai was one of the key figures of the mingei (folk art and crafts) movement 民芸運動 that occurred in the late 20’s and 30’s of the 20th century. i guess you’ve heard of sori yanagi柳宗理or seen his butterfly stool, which has become a mid-century design collector’s item. his father, soetsu yanagi 柳宗悦 was the aesthetician and philosopher who led the movement along with kanjiro kawai and another potter shoji hamada 浜田庄司 who worked with the british potter, bernard leach.

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soetsu yanagi along with the fellowmen coined the term, mingei 民芸 (art of handcrafts that are characteristically produced in the regions) and the mingei movement aimed at winning people’s recognition for the beauty of everyday objects made by unknown craftsmen. sounds familiar? yes, it was influenced by the arts and crafts movement occurring in the last years of 19th century and the early years of the 20th century in britain (and america? which i know little). needless to say, those particular years were so inspirational and exceptionally vibrant with new ideas as well as aesthetic practices around the world.

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interestingly enough, the period of the mingei movement is roughly the same time as bauhaus operated in germany. all those british, german and japanese mentors had a same concept: combining crafts and arts. they all had a sense of mission that was to seek an aesthetic value in something functional, utilitarian and mass-used. if i was allowed to have the cheek, i'd conclude that their attempts were all about “lifestyle”, since each of them promoted not only things but positive attitudes towards the quality of life, as it were.

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if you visited the kanjiro kawai museum, you’d see how he fulfilled his desire for work and domestic life, and then you’d get the picture. kanji kawai did not sign his work, by the way. he said “my work itself is my signature.” my hypothesis is that it was out of his resistance to elitism: something like tea bowls were made and signed by some elite potters only for exclusive people? i presume that he was too modest to consider himself an artist.

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unlike bauhaus design, mingei never looks sleek or cool. maybe because japan was still in a transition and pre-industrial period at the time, so the term and even concept of “design” was not adopted yet. maybe because we have the traditional (kind of zen?) aesthetics of appreciating the imperfectness, a beautiful but slightly misshapen plate, for example (i’m not talking about quality of commodities as seconds, though). in this sense, the beauty of irregularity is among soetsu yanagi’s discoveries in the mingei movement.

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from his prize-awarded vase to a pebble at the kanji kawai museum you will find the warmth of humanity that is also one of indispensable characteristics for the mingei movement. and its spirit lives on! ... i hope.