What Is Mingei? Japan’s Folk Craft Movement Explained
Sep 28, 2026
Quick answer: Mingei (民藝) is a modern Japanese term for “folk craft” or “ordinary people’s craft.” It was coined in 1925 by Sōetsu Yanagi together with potters Kanjirō Kawai and Shōji Hamada. The Mingei movement drew attention to the beauty of useful everyday objects—bowls, textiles, baskets, furniture and other things that had often been overlooked because they were made for ordinary life rather than fine-art display.
Mingei is therefore not an ancient Japanese word for all traditional craft, and it is not a synonym for “wabi-sabi.” It is a specific 20th-century movement and way of thinking about objects.
What does Mingei mean?
The word was created as a shortened form of minshūteki kōgei, meaning roughly “crafts of the people” or “folk crafts.” The Japan Folk Crafts Museum records that Yanagi, Kawai and Hamada began using the term in 1925.
Their attention centred on ordinary utilitarian objects that had usually not been treated as art: household pottery, textiles, woodwork, baskets, lacquerware and other tools of daily life.
Who was Sōetsu Yanagi?
Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961) was the thinker most closely associated with the Mingei movement. Before focusing on Japanese folk craft, he had already become deeply interested in Korean ceramics and everyday material culture.
As he travelled through Japan, Yanagi collected and wrote about objects made by often unnamed craftspeople. His argument was that useful, repeatedly made objects could possess a kind of beauty that conventional art institutions had ignored.
Who were Kanjirō Kawai and Shōji Hamada?
Kanjirō Kawai and Shōji Hamada were major potters who worked closely with Yanagi in the early formation of the movement. Together, the three are credited by the Japan Folk Crafts Museum with coining the term Mingei in 1925.
Hamada later became strongly associated with Mashiko pottery, where his work helped bring international attention to an already existing regional pottery industry.
What kinds of objects did the Mingei movement value?
The movement paid particular attention to objects that were:
- used in daily life;
- made in quantity rather than as one-off display pieces;
- practical and durable;
- rooted in local materials and established techniques;
- often made by anonymous or little-known craftspeople.
That does not mean every Mingei object fits every one of these characteristics perfectly. The movement itself evolved, and the museum has long shown work by named artist-craftspeople as well as anonymous makers.
Is Mingei the same as all Japanese folk art?
No.
“Japanese folk art” can be used very broadly in English. Mingei is more specific: it refers to a modern movement, its ideas and the kinds of ordinary craft objects that Yanagi and his circle sought to recognise.
Likewise, not every handmade Japanese object is Mingei, and not every traditional Japanese craft should be described through Mingei ideas.
Is Mingei the same as wabi-sabi?
No.
The two are often combined in English-language lifestyle writing, but they come from different histories. Mingei is a 20th-century movement centred on everyday craft and the beauty of ordinary use. “Wabi-sabi” is a much broader and historically different aesthetic vocabulary.
Using the terms as interchangeable labels makes both less useful.
Why did everyday objects matter so much?
Because daily life creates different design pressures from gallery art.
A rice bowl has to be held comfortably. A storage basket has to survive repeated handling. A textile has to wear well. A cup has to balance in the hand. When many people repeatedly make and use objects under those constraints, forms can become highly refined without being designed as “luxury.”
This is one reason Mingei remains relevant to the way we look at Japanese tools and household objects today.
Does Mingei reject individual designers?
The early movement placed strong value on anonymous craft and communal tradition, but the story is not that simple.
Yanagi's circle itself included highly individual named makers such as Hamada and Kawai, and the Japan Folk Crafts Museum has exhibited artist-craftsmen since its foundation. Mingei therefore created a productive tension between anonymous tradition and individual creative work.
When was the Japan Folk Crafts Museum founded?
The Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo opened in 1936, ten years after the first prospectus for a folk-craft museum had been announced. Yanagi became its first director.
The museum became the institutional centre of the movement, collecting ceramics, textiles, wood and lacquer work, metalwork, basketry, paintings and other objects from Japan and abroad.
What does Mingei have to do with Mashiko?
Mashiko already had a ceramic industry before Hamada arrived, but his move there in the 1920s connected the town closely with the Mingei movement.
That relationship is useful because it prevents two opposite mistakes. Mashiko should not be reduced to “Hamada’s pottery,” but Hamada’s influence on how Mashiko was understood internationally should not be ignored either.
Read more in Mashiko Pottery: How a Japanese Town Became a Ceramics Centre.
Mingei and traditional Japanese craftsmanship
Mingei is one chapter inside the much larger world of Japanese making. It should not become a universal explanation for Japanese craft.
For the broader framework—regional production, materials, hand and machine processes, shokunin and monozukuri—see Traditional Japanese Craftsmanship: Materials, Skills and Making Today.
How should we look at a Mingei object?
Instead of asking whether the object has a rustic “Mingei look,” ask:
- What was it made to do?
- Was it intended for ordinary repeated use?
- Which material and regional techniques shaped it?
- Was it made by one named artist, a workshop or a broader local industry?
- How did the object's form respond to use, production and repair?
Those questions are more useful than turning Mingei into a decorating style.
What should we film when exploring Mingei today?
- ordinary objects being used rather than posed;
- repeat production of the same form;
- wear on tools and finished objects;
- local materials before they become products;
- makers discussing function rather than “perfection”;
- old everyday forms beside contemporary interpretations;
- objects with visible repair or long use;
- the relationship between workshop, market and household.
The strongest Mingei story is not “Japan loves imperfection.” It is how ordinary objects acquire value through material, use, repetition and skilled making.
Wabi and Sabi are often mentioned alongside Mingei, but they are not the same idea. Wabi and Sabi are older aesthetic concepts; Mingei is a twentieth-century folk craft movement with its own history.
