Special Exhibition: 100 Years of Mingei 民藝 – Kyoto’s Legacy of Everyday Beauty

This autumn, I visited the special exhibition “The 100th Anniversary of Mingei: Kyoto’s Legacy of Everyday Life”¹ at the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art². The show commemorates a century since the birth of the Mingei movement, led by Soetsu Yanagi³, Shoji Hamada⁴, Kanjiro Kawai⁵, and others, who sought to rediscover beauty in the objects of everyday life.

Inside the galleries, visitors are greeted with a rich variety of works—ceramics, lacquerware, woodwork, textiles, and more. Each piece embodies the principle of yo no bi (用の美 the beauty of use), celebrating handmade crafts that gain their true brilliance through daily life. From robust wooden sculptures and exquisite mother-of-pearl boxes to humble pottery vessels and dyed kimono, the exhibition demonstrates how deeply beauty is woven into ordinary existence.

What is the Mingei Movement?

The Mingei (folk craft) movement was founded in the late 1920s by philosopher Soetsu Yanagi, together with potters such as Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai. At a time when Japan was rapidly modernizing, they turned their eyes to the anonymous, hand-crafted objects used in everyday life—ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, woodwork—and recognized in them a quiet, universal beauty.

Mingei emphasized three core values:

1. Handmade – crafted by the hands of ordinary people rather than mass-produced.
2. Practicality – created for everyday use, not solely for decoration.
3. Communal Beauty – beauty that is not individualistic, but shared and timeless.

Through their writings, exhibitions, and collaborations with international figures such as Bernard Leach, the movement spread widely and reshaped how Japanese people—and later, the world—viewed the relationship between craft, daily life, and art.

The Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art: History and Renewal

Opened in 1933 as the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum is one of the oldest surviving public art museums in Japan. Its stately prewar architecture remains intact, while the 2020 renovation transformed it into a space where tradition meets modernity. The addition of glass-walled galleries and bright new spaces allows natural light and the surrounding greenery of Okazaki Park to flow into the visitor’s experience.
After viewing the exhibition, stepping into the light-filled lobby with its panoramic view of the Higashiyama mountains was a powerful reminder of the Mingei philosophy: the unity of nature, life, and art.

Kyoto and the Mingei Movement

Kyoto played a central role in the development of Mingei. Here, potters, lacquer artists, and textile makers contributed their skills and traditions to the movement. Kanjiro Kawai’s free-spirited ceramics, Kenkichi Tomimoto’s refined designs, and the collaborations with Bernard Leach⁶ and Shoji Hamada were all rooted in Kyoto’s fertile cultural soil.
Through the exhibited works, one can feel the warmth of handcraft, respect for natural materials, and the enduring idea that beauty belongs not only to rarefied art but also to the rhythms of daily life. This philosophy resonates profoundly with Kyoto’s broader craft culture.

Reflections

The exhibition was a chance to rediscover the timeless value of Mingei. Its message—that beauty lies in the ordinary, in the objects that accompany us every day—remains as fresh and inspiring now as it was a century ago.
At Kogei Art KYOTO, the works we introduce are closely connected with this spirit of Mingei. They embody “beauty in use,” crafted by hand, rooted in tradition, and cherished across generations. This exhibition reaffirmed that such values remain vital for both daily living and global appreciation of Kyoto’s crafts.

Information of the exhibition

Footnote

1. https://kyotocity-kyocera.museum/en/exhibition/20250913-20251207 ↩︎
2. https://kyotocity-kyocera.museum/en/ ↩︎
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanagi_S%C5%8Detsu ↩︎
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dji_Hamada ↩︎
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawai_Kanjir%C5%8D ↩︎
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Leach ↩︎