ABSTRACT
Yanagi’s formation of Mingei theory is inextricably linked with his absorption and appropriation of Orientalism. It was the process by which Yanagi constructed the self-identity of Japanese culture in the image of Japan as Other cast on Japan by Orientalism. The cultural difference was enunciated by essentialising the cultures of the Orient and the Occident within the dichotomic framework of the Occident and the Orient. The Orient was orientalised and the Occident was occidentalised. It worked as a complementary relationship to strengthen further this problematic fictitious dichotomy. Sakai Naoki observed that this cultural framework, which affected Japanese modernism, is firmly backed by the ‘complicity relation’ between ‘Occidental narcissism’ and ‘Oriental cultural essentialism’ and created an identity for the modern nation. 1
