How long does it take to read The Unknown Craftsman?
A Japanese Insight Into Beauty
Muneyoshi Yanagi, Yanagi, Soetsu Tanagi, Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach
The Unknown Craftsman by Muneyoshi Yanagi, Yanagi, Soetsu Tanagi, Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach takes about 4 hours 13 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 13 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1972. 230 pages, about 63,250 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 2 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 13 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 38 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
This book challenges the conventional ideas of art and beauty. What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Sōetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for “objects born, not made.” Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author’s ideas are both far-reaching and practical. Sōetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art, but this is the first translation in any Western language of a selection of his major writings. The late Bernard Leach, renowned British potter and friend of Mr. Yanagi for fifty years, has clearly transmitted the insights of one of Japan’s most important thinkers. The seventy-six plates illustrate objects that underscore the universality of his concepts. The author’s profound view of the creative process and his plea for a new artistic freedom within tradition are especially timely now when the importance of craft and the handmade object is being rediscovered. SŌETSU YANAGI was born in Tokyo in 1889 and graduated from the literature department of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1913, majoring in psychology. Proficient in English and with a deep feeling for art, while still a student Mr. Yanagi became associated with the Shirakaba (“Silver Birch”) literary group, to which he was partly responsible for interpreting Western art to Japan. In 1921, he completed the organization of a Korean folkcraft museum in Seoul, and, in 1936, the present Japan Folkcraft Museum in Tokyo was completed through his efforts. Mr. Yanagi traveled widely in the Orient, Europe, and America. In 1929 he lectured at Harvard University for one year. In Japan, sometimes in the company of the potters…
Subjects: Decoration and ornament, Design, Design - General, Art & Art Instruction, History Of Art / Art & Design Styles, Japan
