The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty

230 pp. Glossy color photographic plates, black-and-white photographic illustrations in text (76 illustrations in all). This book challenged the conventional ideas of art and beauty. What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition and producing the same objects continuously for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even a roughly lacquered Japanese farmer's rice bowl be beautiful? The late Sōetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for "objects born, not made." Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which barriers between them disappear-- an ego-free world of pure innocence and constant rebirth. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical. What is the process of making forms and patterns-- of artistic creation? What attitudes help an artist's work touch an unending source of life? Soetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art as the founder of Japan's folkcraft movement, but this is the first translation in a Western language of a selection of his major writings.