07/11/2023
From: The unknown craftsman by Sõetsu Yanagi
Yanagi and Leach
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1964 an international exhibition of contemporary studio pottery was held in Tokyo. Most of the work selected came from Europe, America, and Japan and was "abstract" in character, clearly showing the pressures of present-day life and art.
I felt a general lack of maturity both in motivation and technique. The first impression given was one of power, or force, but it was followed by a sensation of violence and at the samen time of emptiness. On the whole, the Japanese exhibits had a greater traditional content and were more skilful in technique, but were less alive than the pots from the West. Shells without fish. The abstract examples were mannered and did not spring from a genuine internal life.
In the whole exhibition, the pots that I admired most were made by Bernard Leach. Many other Japanese potters agreed with me. Curiously, these were the quietest pots in the whole show. Whether he works in the East or the West he preserves a simple and straightforward approach. The focus of his work is the most concentrated and personally expressive. This quality in his work has been apparent for over fifty years. The feel- ing in his pots comes from a high inspiration that defeats both weakened traditions and the violence of modern motivation I have mentioned. He draws his strength from the soil of his own nature and his life experience. This is spring water, I feel the difference between this inspiration and that of others very strongly. His stance between East and West is a true balance, not a measured middle.
When Sōetsu Yanagi was young, he immersed himself in Christian mysticism. At that stage he wrote a long book on William Blake and published a Japanese magazine called Blake and Whitman. Later, together with his literary and painter friends, he entered the world of Post- Impressionism, Impressionism, and so back over the centuries of Euro- pean art to the Renaissance and to the Primitives. That took him gradu- ally back to his own East, especially to Korean art and to Japanese folk art, which he may be truly said to have discovered. This was not an intellectual and systematic process with him, but one of intuition dictated by an extraordinary visual perception of truth. In like manner, as a religious philosopher and as a disciple and friend of Dr. Daisetsu Suzuki, he searched his way through the developments of Buddhist thought-Zen first, for the lone seeker, followed by Jōdo Shinshū and Jishū for the many, the two aspects called jiriki ("Self Power") and tariki ("Other Power") respectively. Finally he reached that point where the apparent difference is fused and cancelled out. That led him to the consideration of beauty and ugliness in art and to the need of an aesthetic that embraces both. Thus he arrived at his Kingdom of Beauty.
Yanagi and Leach shared a similarity of approach during fifty years of close friendship, even when they were half a world apart. In fact they were never apart. Yanagi is gone, but the friendship has deepened. Leach has translated a selection of Yanagi's essays in a way that no one else could have done, and this in itself is a creative continuance of that friendship.
What impresses me most in Yanagi is the strength of his vision, his direct eye for beauty. Critics, in general, may be divided into those who collect, and who get bogged down in collecting, and those who split hairs of aesthetics. Yanagi escaped both pitfalls. He employed no intel- lectual foot-rule. His was an immediate and intuitive faculty of an extra- ordinary kind. His actions followed fast upon the heels of this perception.
Visitors to the folkcraft museum in Tokyo often complain of the brevity of the descriptions of the objects, written in red on black lacquer tablets, saying that this is inconsiderate and insufficient. Yanagi always insisted that this was a greater kindness because it helped visitors to develop their own perceptions instead of relying upon written words and other people's ideas. All this causes me to describe Yanagi as a creative critic. Leach's A Potter's Book is known in America and elsewhere as a
potter's Bible. I have the idea that this present volume will come to be
regarded in the future as a sutra of Oriental aesthetics.
Shōji Hamada
