ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will further examine how Yanagi appropriated and hybridised key ideas from Occidental sources into both Mingei theory and its related major activities. During this stage, Yanagi began research on Japanese art objects, starting with his research on mokujikibutsu, wooden Buddhist statues believed to have been carved by the travelling Buddhist monk Mokujiki Shōnin (1718–1810), then going on to his major work on Japanese folkcrafts (mingei). He privately collected Japanese folkcrafts, taxonomised them and exhibited them in the Japan Folk Crafts Museum which he established in 1936 in Tokyo. He created Mingei theory around a core idea of the ‘criterion of beauty’ disseminating his ideas in numerous publications, he encouraged the creation of medievalistic craft guilds and he was also involved in developing craft trade and commercialising folkcrafts, displaying them in model houses so that they could be integrated into modern living. During the course of the formation of Mingei theory, he creatively appropriated various narratives embedded in the discourse of ‘Orientalism’ and reinforced them through his hybrid Mingei theory and the Mingei movement.
