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Author: Soetsu Yanagi
Creators: Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach
Publisher: Kodansha International
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$35.00~~
Buy New: $20.01
You Save: $14.99 (43%)

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

5 reviews
Sales Rank: 130989

Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 232
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 7.1 x 0.8

ISBN: 0870119486
Dewey Decimal Number: 745.44952
EAN: 9780870119484

Publication Date: January 15, 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: O20081120202630D

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese insight into beauty
•	Paperback - The Unknown Craftsman

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
This book challenges the conventional ideas of art and beauty. What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for "objects born, not made."
Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical.
Soetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art, but this is the first translation in any Western language of a selection of his major writings. The late Bernard Leach, renowned British potter and friend of Mr. Yanagi for fifty years, has clearly transmitted the insights of one of Japan's most important thinkers. The seventy-six plates illustrate objects that underscore the universality of his concepts. The author's profound view of the creative process and his plea for a new artistic freedom within tradition are especially timely now when the importance of craft and the handmade object is being rediscovered.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

A beautiful set of fine essays October 25, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

I know very little about pottery but I have spent a lot of reading time studying Buddhism and specifically Zen and its underlying life philosophy. I found these essays to be especially beautiful in showing the way for artists and craftsmen to embrace 'no-mindedness' in their creative efforts, effacing their own egos and personalities in order to let nature flow through them in the creative process.

'Objects born, not made' is an especially humbling concept to consider. To think that the objects are 'born' through nature and the craftsman is mostly a mere vehicle for that, his signature on 'his' work completely unncessary, the object itself being the 'signature'.

I was pleased to see in the next to last essay in this collection, the author's references to the 'Way of Tea' and its demonstration of the same principles embodied in this work. I strongly recommend 'The Book of Tea' by Okakuro Kakuzo as an adjunct to this material, amplifying his ideas and further reflecting the beauty of Zen.

My only objection, and this is really minor, is this work's subtitle 'A Japanese Insight into Beauty'. As many Japanese are not Buddhist and do not embrace the Zen philosophy, nor understand it, this insight is not so much 'Japanese' as 'Zen'. Thus the finer subtitle could have been 'A Zen Insight into Beauty'.

5 out of 5 stars

great for the study of craft in Japan May 12, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

This book was written by the father of the crafts movement in Japan, Yanagi Soetsu. He encouraged the Japanese to appreciate their national arts at a time of modernization and Westernization in Japan. The book covers areas of craft such as cermaics and lacquers.

5 out of 5 stars

A book you HAVE to read, and you'll CRAVE to own... January 18, 2006
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

This remarkable, must-have book is half superb pictures of various Oriental objects of manufacture become recognized as quintessentially "unselfconscious" objects of art (the one of the "top" teacup in Japan alone is worth the book's price), and half short but very eye-opening essays on various dimensions of beauty, creativity, and the aesthetic experience.

MUCH generally accepted superficiality (and downright phoniness) in the field of art appreciation is solidly debunked here (read the other reviews for more on the author's qualifications, plus some relatively piddling criticism from a few experts).

The pieces on the degeneration of the so-called "classic" Tea Ceremony and the cult of deliberate "beauty of ugliness" will provide much food for thought. Anyone interested in beauty and its representations will do very well indeed to acquire this truly irreplaceable read.

I too wish the book were 10 times as long! I believe it was out of print for awhile -- great to see it available new from Amazon at a reasonable price.

Oh -- on second thought, DO just buy this title, rather than borrow one first -- my copy is so heavily marked up that it would have been agony to have read a library copy....

4 out of 5 stars

Humble pie never tasted so good March 25, 2003
46 out of 47 found this review helpful

Soon after getting into custom furniture and cabinetmaking as a profession, I had come to that point where I began to tie my sense of self-worth to what other people thought of my work. Even worse, I began to feel that I was in a competition with my fellow woodworkers. Not only did I want their approval, but I thought I must strive to be better than them or I wouldn't achieve distinction (and therefore success). Then, via my explorations into Buddhism, I came across this book. It presented me with a heaping, much-needed serving of humble pie by telling me things like:

"A beautiful work of art...is the work of a man who is not (bound to) either beauty and ugliness or even to himself."

Yanagi was talking about the craftsman of Japan's past who, working with "total disengagement", created some of the most beautiful art objects the world has ever seen. This work was never signed because these were the products of craftsman who "made no effort to express their individuality through the medium of things; (instead) they produced things through the medium of man". As my understanding of Buddhism deepened, so didn't the import of these words. The bottom line was that I relaxed, I let myself enjoy the process and I let the objects I made speak for themselves. Humble pie never tasted so good.

5 out of 5 stars An Aesthetics Bible! December 8, 1999
30 out of 31 found this review helpful

Yanagi's words are so dense, packed, and rich with meaning. He has keen insights into what real 'seeing' is, and how necessary it is in discerning beauty. But Yanagi's words run beyond insight, and have some of that deep ring of eternal 'Truth' to them. I highly recommmend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about what true 'seeing' is, and how it relates to the perception of beauty.

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