"The Japanese Perspective"(1957) by Soetsu Yanagi
- haleyindorato
- Mar 31, 2024
- 7 min read
A brief summary and my thoughts of Yanagi's essay "The Japanese Perspective" featured in the book "The Beauty of Everyday Things" (2017). Yanagi was the founder of Japan's Folk Craft (mingei) movement and it's Folk Craft museum. He was a philosopher, art historian, aesthete, and poet
Soetsu Yanagi’s essay “The Japanese Perspective” is based on his reaction to a museum in Japan’s show, “Modern Perspective,” and how “modern” seemed to be equated with “western”. Yanagi wanted the art in Japan to influence modernism, or at least have it’s own version of modern. I'd like to point out I believe Yanagi is primarily concerned with object based art. In 1954 in Japan, the Gutai Group was formed; a collection of artists doing performative and installation based pieces of art. The Gutai group were some of the first artists anywhere in the world to do performance based art. The rest of the world was close behind with "happenings" done by Allan Kaprow in NYC and the legacy of Dada influencing artists in Europe.
Since writing this essay in the 1950s, there’s been a lot of recent push in the art world, especially museums, to value work outside of western, white, male perspective in order to add context and share different cultural viewpoints. Still, at the time there are some qualities that reappeared in Japanese art (as well as Chinese, Korean, Indian etc) that are different from the ones based in Greece and Europe. Most notably in the art objects people surrounded themselves with. As well as different cultural values that contribute to why the art looks like it does, and the people value what they do. Personally, I’m a big fan of almost all art from Asia, so I’m going to share some points I found relevant to myself from Yanagi’s essay.
Another quick note: at the time of writing this, it had only been 12 years since the dropping of atomic bombs and the end of WWII, and 5 years since the US had been occupying Japan. There was most likely a lot of post war trauma, trying to recover infrastructure, develop technologies to compete with other countries, and a clash between the increased presence of “western ideas” and “traditional Japanese values.” Before WWII, Japan had already felt a need to westernize to avoid being a victim of imperialism during the Meiji period, starting in 1850s. If you read my thoughts on his other essay, “The Beauty of Everyday Things,” you’d remember Yangai is not a fan of the industrial and mass produced. He worries that we will stop seeing and making valuable objects.
In “The Japanese Perspective”, he says,
“The United States is probably the most outstanding example of a mechanized country,
but still many of it’s citizens are suffering from stress and feelings of angst. The fact that tranquillizers are in such demand there is a reflection of social disease. As rich as it is, America is perhaps unrivalled for its vulgar lack of propriety and decorum, which may account for it’s having the world's highest crime rate.”
He basically says Americans are all depressed, on drugs and do crime and as an American I agree and I think it’s hilarious.
More seriously though, Yanagi thinks Japan can be modern and preserve its culture through the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and the qualities of Asian art. Mahayana thought extends the Buddhist idea of absence of self to all things; nothing has an essence and the existence of each thing is dependent on the existence of other things, referred to as “emptiness” (shunyata).
Yanagi believes that Japan can offer their aesthetic to modern art; and their ability to see the underlying beauty of things as they are. Yanagi believes while Greek based art sought perfection, Japanese art seeks the beauty of imperfection. Imperfection, to me, is much more interesting anyways. The flawed reflects us. Yanagi mentions e-soragoto (art [picture] is fantasy). He describes it as, “the quest for truth that goes beyond truth.” The idea that picture based art (e.g. painting) is fantasy or false and searches for a deeper truth is fundamental to my interest in painting. It’s not an easy thing to express visually, and I’m still working on figuring out how.
Yanagi then goes on to talk about how much of Japanese art is based around tea ceremonies, originating during the Muromachi period (ca. 1336-1573). He points out tea ceremonies are often considered outdated, but it’s way of perceiving beauty is the foundation for the Japanese aesthetic. The shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s (1436-90) was a large supporter of the arts, and Zen priests like Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) made tea ceremonies more heavily intertwined with both the arts and Buddhism. Tea ceremonies would be used to contemplate and measure beauty through the physical objects themselves.
Buddhists aim to achieve nirvana through the cessations of self, greed, and attachment. The beauty of tea is the beauty of poverty or simplicity. Tea masters were called sukisha-ki meaning “lacking”; masters of enjoying what was lacking. Yangai uses Zen terminology buji, byojotei, and muge as to why tea ceremonies are beautiful: natural beauty, of everyday life, and egoless freedom. Concepts that are very different from Greek based western art that sought the perfection of man, fantastical scenes, and superiority. Yanagi also believes that once tea ceremonies became established, they lost their freedom and therefore their beauty.
The Japanese perspective sought natural beauty. And that’s it, nothing more. And Yanagi believes the western perspective seeks the strange and extraordinary, but for the sake of spectacle. Especially, since Yanagi was writing this during the end of modernism (ca. 1850-1950s), with goals of advancement. Art, technology, and "civilization" only had forwards and upwards to go, always on to the next best thing. And while he doesn’t like intentional deformation, something incorporated into most western art at the time (think simplifying painting to extreme-hard edge painting), accidental deformation was part of tea ceremonies for 400 years. There was still beauty in cracked ware. There’s even Kintsugi, the process of repairing broken pottery with gold to emphasize the cracks.
As a result, Yangai has observed that Japanese people tend to quickly perceive the value and beauty in things more than non-Japanese people. Of course, keep in mind he is writing this in the 1950s, and he isn’t saying people from other places can’t see value in things. Just that the cultural legacy of tea ceremonies, Buddhism, and simplicity in art are a foundation of Japanese culture and as a result, the people that grew up in that culture can see the value in ordinary objects quicker than others. Japanese people, according to Yanagi at the time of writing this, live in a world of specifically chosen objects, based on some standard. There is a cultural understanding across all of Japan, that shibumi (simple, subtle, unobtrusive beauty) is the standard. Of course in the days of globalization and rejection of tradition, this isn’t always true anymore, now it’s a matter of preference.
Yanagi then goes on to explain what seeing is. Which is extremely important to visual arts and something my figure drawing professor lectured about quiet often. People rarely see things as they actually are. Influenced by preconceptions. As Yanagi says, “knowing has been added to the process of seeing.”
“We see something good because it is famous; we are influenced by reputation, we are swayed by ideological concerns; or we see based on our limited experience. We can’t see things as they are. To see things in all their purity is generally referred to as intuition…things are comprehended immediately and directly…In Zen terms it might be expressed with the saying, ‘One receives with an empty hand'.”
As any type of visual artist, but especially as a painter who works from life, seeing things as they are is extremely important. From a technical perspective to make sure value and form are correct, and from a subjective perspective as well. I remember I struggled a lot in college with this painting of my mom and brother eating dinner. I was frustrated cause I couldn’t get my mom to look like how I thought of her. I was too close emotionally to the
subject. In my recent painting, “Mother, Daughter, Dog,” I was able to put less pressure on myself for the people to look a certain way, and as a result the piece captured unsettling, intriguing distortion that expresses a lot of my conflicted feelings even I’m not always aware of. I enjoy painting with no expectations, to discover something in the process. Seeing things without judgment can help with that.
"We see something good because it is famous,” really hits a nerve in me. For example, I love Van Gogh. However, before I seriously started painting, I didn’t like him because he was popular (I’m one of those people). Then, in my last year of college I picked up a book of his artwork and I was floored with just how beautiful his work really is. Nowadays I get so upset when I see people flock to a Van Gogh painting in a museum, and especially when they waste money on that Van Gogh video projection money grab. We all know the one. Cause I feel like they only go to take selfies in front of his work because it is popular. They buy Van Gogh merch because it’s a name they’ve heard growing up. And don’t get me wrong, he’s one of my favorite painters, but it hurts to see “the masses” like him for the wrong reasons.
Yanagi was the founder of Japan’s Folk Craft Museum. One of his goals was to highlight the Japanese eye rooted in Buddhist thinking and a quest for truth. Finally, Yanagi adds on the concept of muji (no ground), again from Buddhist ideas of all being empty and void. Things that are plain, solid colored, or un-patterned. Japanese views have often sought out the plain while the west sought the opposite. Here, Yanagi believes Korean ceramics and textiles are actually the pinnacle of muji. In Korea’s case, this is due to it’s history and natural environment. In these cases, appreciation is directed towards the forms of the vessels or where glazes are uneven or end and raw clay is exposed. I also think Chinese paintings, especially scholar paintings, incorporate this emptiness well. Especially paintings of mountains. Perspective is no longer linear and empty space is essential to the overall composition.
In the end, Yanagi wants people globally to start to evaluate beauty based on simplicity in addition to other ways of seeing beauty. I don’t think there is one definition of beauty. And while many modern artists we learn about today are from the West, they were also influenced by Japanese arts. Especially impressionists and woodblock prints. The different cultural settings contributed to different ways of valuing things. Yanagi just doesn’t want the Japanese aesthetic or way of appreciating things to become second to European ways.
In current times, art is collected based on personal taste. However, incorporating these ideas of beauty, simplicity, and emptiness, we can start to see beauty and value in everything around us. Multiple perspectives allow us to more easily understand and form our own opinions of the art we encounter.
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