Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan: Materials, Makers, and Mastery by Christine M. E. Guth

Abstract

Mention of Japanese crafts or mingei typically generates an image of delicate straw baskets, indigo-dyed cloth, and lacquered combs. So too does it recall the well-known mark of distinction given to skilled artisans in Japan, even in the twenty-first century—“Living National Treasures.” Such icons of craft culture represent the institutionalization and preservation of traditional techniques and materials for specific crafts by contemporary practitioners. But in contrast to considering Japanese crafts in the context of unchanging traditions and the continuous use of the original materials that shaped everyday objects centuries ago, Guth takes a different perspective in Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan. Her deep expertise in Japan’s visual and material culture between the late sixteenth and nineteenth centuries leads her to develop a dynamic rather than static view of “traditional” Japanese crafts. For Guth, Japanese crafts are best seen not as direct descendants of a material culture developed centuries ago but as products of social and technological processes inherent to the environments in which they evolved. Such environments change over time, producing changes in the relationship between artisans and the natural materials and technical tools that they use.Guth also moves readers away from the common trope that Japanese craftspeople have been motivated principally by their reverence for nature in their creation of objects from local natural resources. Rather, she documents the importance of shogunal policies in the Tokugawa period to address the decimation of forests, various crops, and other resources that made it possible for craft production to continue. In short, crafts did not necessarily manifest a love of nature so much as a pragmatic approach to exploiting natural resources to create the tools and utensils for everyday life.Craft production was determined not only by the varying availability of raw materials but also by the development of consumer markets. In the eighteenth century, craft production dispersed across Japan as lords sought ways to diversify the local economies under their jurisdiction. To this end, they encouraged the production of goods for sale. Local products came from local resources, becoming the meibutsu (regional specialties) now familiar to contemporary Japanese people and to those who visit Japan.Guth also pays attention to the variety of people engaged in the production of goods and to the processes of learning that craft production entailed. The young men who were formal apprentices typically spent seven to ten years learning their craft through observation and practice, as opposed to disembodied book learning. Learning took place in the process of doing and making, an important part of which entailed observation and experimentation with the ways in which different materials interacted with each other. As Guth writes, “Craft practitioners were not embodiments of tenacious traditions. They were flesh and blood problem solvers who used available materials, technical know-how, and ingenuity to adapt to changing environmental, social, economic, and political circumstances” (192). Although women were generally excluded from the guilds, workshops, and other groups organized around crafts, they too were “makers of things.” Women typically performed their work within the household, entering it into the public domain through the market.Guth’s approach centers less on a standard aesthetic analysis and more on a sociological exploration of how craft production was embedded in particular urban and rural spaces as well as on the political, economic, and social forces that shaped those spaces. In utilizing this approach, she brings to life the meaning of the gorgeous objects and scenes included in this visually stunning book.