BOOK REVIEW ~ The Beauty of Everyday Things ~ Soetsu Yanagi

The Beauty of Everyday Things has emerged as an odd sort of sequel to the first compilation of Yanagi's writings - The Unknown Craftsman.  The latter has been such an influential book for me in how it defined Beauty, Art and Craft and creativity in all its forms as a spiritual practise. So I approached this new book with anticipation of a richly rewarding experience, but also wondering whether anything could really compare well against The Unknown Craftsman.

Comparisons don't allow things to be what they are. So what is this book? The title itself, The Beauty of Everyday Things, sets you up with an expectation of  being helped to appreciate the objects in your home in a new light. It is inconsistent in this aim and frequently covers the same ground as The Unknown Craftsman but with less clarity and succinctness in its explication. In fact whilst reading some chapters you really do wonder what on earth all this has got to do with appreciating The Beauty of Everyday Things.

For example, there is a long chapter near the end which is a transcript of a letter he wrote to the Korean people to apologise for the way the Japanese had treated them. and in it he extols the qualities and achievements of Korean culture at great length. But this doesn't relate back to the books purported subject matter at all. Similarly, the concluding chapter about how the Japan Folk Museum was founded.

Soetsu Yanagi  1889-1961

The first quarter of the book contains its better written chapters, the peak being for me the essay on What Is Pattern?  This had me jumping up and down with delight and underlining the sentences that somehow got to the nub of why ordinary things could be a source of beauty. Discussing how pattern presents to you the essence of an object.That there are three qualities that combine to make a pattern beautiful - utility, materials and technique. He then broadens out his argument to extend the beauty of patterning beyond just being a feature of craft making to patterning in pictures.  It is classic Yanagri at his most insightful and inspiring.

"A pattern is thus not a depiction of an object as it exists in nature, not a realistic rendition. It is an image of the object as it appears to the intuition."  

" it is only with the advent of pattern that we truly come into touch with the beautiful. Pattern is the conveyor, the transmitter, of beauty."

"Good pattern is pattern that belongs to all the people"

The chapters which follow immediately after this are on particular forms of Japanese folk craft, bashofu, kasureru and kogin  textiles, ceramics, woodblock prints and Otsu-e  painting. Which though informative about the techniques and history of their making, again enlighten you little about what makes these ordinary things beautiful. They are more folk art history, a record of a dying craft.

As a book on the beauty of everyday things this is not a good one, its a very thin affair. One really excellent chapter followed by what could be seen quite frankly as a lot of filler. However, this was not a book written and conceived by Yanagi, its really an editorial compilation of articles he wrote. They were never written with a book with this title in mind. For the title is pure marketing that fits it into a certain contemporary publishing zeitgeist.

It makes you appreciate all the more the editors of The Unknown Craftsman, who expertly wove their compilation into such a seamlessly cohesive book. That its taken several decades for this book to emerge means that was a truly hard act to follow. The compilers of The Beauty of Everyday Things being left with only a few scraps of Yanagi's genius to sweep up and make something of. If you've never read any Yanagi before, read The Unknown Craftsman, before this.