Soetsu Yanagi was a philosopher, art historian, aesthete, poet and the originator of the Japanese folk crafts movement known as mingei.

In The Beauty of Everyday Things, Yanagi describes mingei as common, ordinary objects sturdily and intentionally made by lesser-known (and often under-appreciated) artisans and craftsmen.

If you’ve ever purchased (and fallen in love with) a hefty ceramic coffee mug or a razor-sharp sushi knife forged from Damascus steel or a canvas apron so heavy it could choke-out a forest fire, you’ve experience the magic of mingei.

Whether or not you’re interested in folk art, you can’t help but romanticize mingei and its larger metaphor of taking the work you do seriously.

In Zen Buddhism, there’s a saying––and I’m paraphrasing here––that success and happiness are derived from a dogged work ethic without expectation.

I see mingei as the embodiment of this Zen Buddhist principle.

For those working a creative vocation––especially here in the western world––Yanagi would argue that viewing yourself as a craftsman rather than an artist may allow you to find joy in the process rather than the outcome of your artistic endeavors.

This, Yanagi explains in The Beauty of Everyday Things, is made possible through repetition…

“

They have become one with the task at hand, free of all self-awareness and thoughts of artistic manipulation, effortlessly applying themselves to the job at hand. They may be cheerfully talking and laughing as they work, but most surprising is their speed. Speed is necessary if they are to make a living. Thousands of times, tens of thousands of times, it is this repetition that frees their hands from thought. It is this freedom that is the mother of all creation. When I see them at work in this way, I am astonished beyond words. They have complete faith in the power of their hands. There is not a smidgen of doubt.

”

The novelist Haruki Murakami’s philosophy around his work is startlingly similar to that of Yanagi’s mingei. Rather than viewing himself as a “artist”, Murakami considers himself a craftsman punching in out of a factory each day.

In the mornings, Murakami brews a pot of coffee and immediately gets to work to meet his daily quota of ten Japanese manuscript pages (the equivalent to 1,600 English words). On the days he feels like writing more, he resists the urge. And, on the days he doesn’t feel like writing at all, he forces himself to muscle through his promised ten page quota.

While most would consider Murakami and Yanagi artists by every stretch of the word, it’s avoiding working like artists that has allowed them the title.

Art isn’t so much inspiration as it is the compounding of repetition over days and weeks and months and years at a time. It’s finding so much joy in the process that the process itself is enough to sustain the artist’s soul.

By Cole Schafer.

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