This summer, just as I was leaving an urushi lacquer workshop in Kiso in Nagano Prefecture, I was invited to stay for tea by the mother of the family. On a low round table were rice cakes wrapped in magnolia leaves, edamame, cherry tomatoes pickled in sweet vinegar, and watermelon, served with cold barley tea. The woman told me that after finishing middle school, she had begun working in her family’s urushi lacquer workshop, before marrying an artisan from Matsumoto, who became one of the first to establish himself as an independent craftsman in Kiso. Today, their son has taken over the workshop.
When I noticed a half-finished duster beside her, she showed it to me, a little embarrassed, saying, “This is my only pleasure.” On a cut piece of towel, she had drawn diamond patterns with a marker and stitched along them rhythmically with red thread. She said she would give these out to local children and friends, adding, “People always tease me about this.”
Just how broad and deep is the term kōgei (‘craft’)? It is not only the works of those we call artisans or makers, those people with the technical skill and creative vision to give form to objects, that should be called ‘craft’. If we think more widely, we find craft in the everyday things around us, shaped with resourceful ingenuity from the materials at hand.
The folklorist and craftsman Kon Wajirō recognized this. In 1923, while walking through a rural hot-spring town, he encountered tin gas lamps hanging from the eaves of inns and sketched each variation. The locals called these lamps the work of “foolish tinsmiths”, but Kon saw in them something of himself, timid and distanced from the flourishing craft movements in the city. Fully inhabiting the spirit of a “poor, faithful craftsman”, he came to appreciate the depth and richness of craft as a form of expression.
A hundred years have passed since then, and Japanese craftspeople have continually refined their techniques. Yet when I look at such intensely perfected works, I always find myself shrinking back a little. And so, taking a cue from Kon, I would rather turn my eyes toward the unassuming objects of daily life. They often go unnoticed precisely because they cling so closely to life. Even so, I cannot help but feel that within this exhibition space, too, there are works of craft that embody that same breadth and depth.
中村裕太 Nakamura Yuta
Artist