ABSTRACT
What is called the mingei ‘boom’ started in the late 1950s and continued into the early 70s. During this period, there was a sustained demand for handmade crafts of all kinds, but particularly of pottery. This demand was primarily urban; those who bought the vast majority of mingei objects were women. Their enthusiasm for bamboo baskets, iron kettles, woven textiles, lacquered trays and virtually every shape, size, colour and design imaginable of pottery, was kindled and fanned by the media which drew attention to mingei as part of an overall Japanese ‘tradition’ – a tradition, it was asserted, that was rapidly being lost in the face of modernization and so-called ‘westernization’. This enthusiasm was satisfied in the cities themselves by department stores and other retail outlets which not only made mingei available to would-be buyers, but also put on major exhibitions of ‘ceramic art’ by such potters as Kawai Kanjirō, Tomimoto Kenkichi and Hamada Shōji – all of whom had been designated the holders of ‘important intangible cultural properties’ (jūyō mukei bunkazai) and popularly known as ‘national treasures’ – as well as by the English potter, Bernard Leach (Moeran 1987).
