Hugo Munsterberg - The Folk Arts of Japan

acknowledgments

T HIS BOOK would not have been possible without the kind help of my Japanese colleagues and friends. I wish to express my gratitude to them all, but in particular to Dr. Soetsu Yanagi, the guiding spirit of the Japanese folk-art movement, who throughout my work gave invaluable help and advice, and whose collections and writings I consulted again and again. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Hachiro Yuasa, President of International Christian University, who first suggested the idea of this book to me, and to Mr. Izumi Yamaguchi, who put the wealth of his experience at my disposal. My thanks are also due to my assistant, Mioko Onchi, without whose devoted help this book could not have been written; my wife, who revised the manuscript; Dr. Roy Miller, who translated the preface; and my secretary, Miss Fumiko Tomoyama, who assisted in the typing. I also wish to express my thanks to Mr. Toshigi Shirasaki, Mr. Shu Ito, Rev. Lioyd Craighill, the Bijutsu Publishing Company, and the Japan Folk Art Society, for their kindness in placing the black-and-white illustrations at my disposal. The color plates, for which I make grateful acknowledgment, were used through the courtesy of the Bijutsu Publishing Company and the Japan Folk Art Society.

by the same author:

the arts of japan: an illustrated history (tuttle, 1957)

the landscape painting of china and japan (tuttle, 1955)

twentieth century painting (1951)

a short history of Chinese art (1949)

the spirit of japanese folk art

THE DISCOVERY OF THE UNIQUE esthetic values of folk art, the art of children, and that of primitive people is one of the peculiar achievements of our age. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that modern man, living in a complex and highly industrialized urban society, finds in these arts a freshness and simplicity which is lacking in the self-conscious and sophisticated art of our time. Men like Paul Gauguin, who settled in Tahiti, and Robert Louis Stevenson, who spent his last years in Samoa, were symptomatic of this trend, which resulted in a new interest in primitive civilizations and their arts. In the same way, the peculiar beauty of the modern primitive, the so-called "Sunday" painter, came to be appreciated through the work of Henri Rousseau; and Paul Klee, by trying to portray the world with the naive spontaneity of a child, opened the way for the appreciation of children's art as a serious form of artistic expression. The interest in and the systematic study of folk art is yet another aspect of the same phenomenon, for the modern city-dweller, sick of his decadent world, discovers in the art of simple, rural people a directness of vision and honesty of purpose which to him are both spiritually refreshing and artistically appealing. It is for this reason that folk art today is enjoying such great popularity.

It is ironic that this new appreciation should come at the very time when folk art has almost died out due to the competition of modern machine-production techniques. However, this in itself is symptomatic, for the interest in folk art represents, as did Gauguin's attempt to find a new life and vitality in a primitive culture, a kind of nostalgia for a lost paradise. The common people had, prior to this time, accepted themselves and their crafts without questionunself-consciously and placidly. For them, their productions, which we think of as artistic, were simply utilitarian objects made without any thought of creating works of art. If patterns and designs were added to the handicrafts they produced during the long winter months in their rural villages, they were not thought of as artistic endeavors, but rather as ornaments which would add color and variety to the utensils they were making.

Folk art is not, as some authors have suggested, merely an unsophisticated reflection of the culture of the cities, but an indigenous creation of the ordinary people of small towns and villages, especially those who are cut off from the main stream of urban civilization. This does not mean that they are wholly isolatedfor the dominant culture no doubt influences and modifies their workbut rather that folk art has a tradition which remains unchanged over generations and sometimes even centuries so that it is impossible to date it with accuracy. Furthermore, since this art is always a craft art connected with the actual lives of the people, it has a purpose which modern art often lacks. It is a part of the life of the community, and, to paraphrase Lincoln's famous saying, it is an art of the people, by the people, and for the people, in contrast to the art made for the nobility or the well-to-do bourgeoisie. Yet it is not a primitive art like that of aboriginal civilizations, for it exists within the framework of a higher culture (although certain primitive states of mind and, especially in European folk art, primitive and now-misunderstood symbolism often survive in it). The designs used in folk art are almost always abstract, emphasizing geometric patterns and stylization instead of naturalismanother way in which folk art appeals to modern taste. The love of simplicity and distrust of all unnecessary elaboration correspond to the contemporary desire for functionalism and honesty of material and craftsmanship and make the modem interest in and appreciation of folk art quite understandable.

Color Plate 1. Miharu doll, papier-mache, Fukushima Prefecture. (See text, p. 100.)

Color Plate 2. Thread ball, Naha, Okinawa. (See text, p. 106.)

A century ago works of local craftsmen made with the skill and care of a long, indigenous tradition were manufactured all over Europe, Asia, arid America. However, at the very time when European ethnologists and art historians of the late nineteenth century first discovered the beauty of folk art, the industrial revolution had all but destroyed it in Western Europe. Only in Eastern Europe was it still a living force; yet even there the growing industrialization of the twentieth century had practically done away with the flourishing local crafts of the Slav and Magyar people. In America the same process was taking place, and only among the backward and isolated mountain people of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina did real folk art survive into the modern period; while the beautiful crafts of the New England villages and townships and the rural arts of the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers disappeared in the growing urbanization. Even the crafts of the American Indian have deteriorated of late, and one has to go to more backward and primitive countries, such as Mexico, Guatemala, or Honduras, to find good examples of folk art today.

Although industrialization has been world wide, fortunately it has not yet been able to kill the folk art of Asia; but even there cheap, modem, machine products have more and more replaced the beautiful handmade objects which were almost universal only a few decades ago. The folk art of Japan, in particular, is still flourishing, however; and it is the purpose of this book to give an introduction to the various kinds of folkcrafts as they exist in present-day Japan. The situation is a particularly interesting one, for in Japan the most modem developments of twentieth-century technology may be found next to the most primitive and traditional ways of manufacture. The contrast of new and old existing side by side, often in the same home or shop, enables us to appreciate the unique qualities of the traditional crafts, which have an honesty and beauty often lacking in overelaborate or poorly made machine products.