Plate 1-45 I ssey Miyake (b. 1938), Blouse and pants with laser-beam printed geometric design in graduated colors, 1977. Printed on cotton. Collection of Mary Basket, Cincinnati. Photo: Katy Uravitch, The Textile Museum, Washington, DC. This outfit was published in 1978 in a pioneering book on Miyake’s designs, Issey Miyake, East Meets West.48 Miyake was one of a number of prominent avant-garde contemporary artists and designers who contributed to the landmark 1978 exhibition about ma.
Plate 1-46 Jun Kaneko (b. 1942), Dango, 2006. One of a group of seven sculptures for the Water Plaza at the Bartle Hall Convention Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Glazed ceramic, height ca. 230 cm. Kaneko is famous for his large-scale, boldly glazed sculptures called dango, named after the Japanese word for “steamed dumpling,” that he fabricates with seemingly endless variations of scale and surface design. Kaneko has said that ma “defines his entire practice as an artist—as painter, sculptor, designer, ceramicist … a term that derives from what one might call the metaphysics of Shinto.”49
In 1933, at a time when Western-influenced modernity was beginning to exert profound influences on the Japanese way of life, novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) wrote a short essay about what he considered the essential character of the Japanese aesthetic psyche. Titled In Praise of Shadows, the essay was only translated into English in 1977, and immediately became an inspiration to foreign enthusiasts of Zen-influenced Japanese aesthetics. Not surprisingly, Tanizaki’s essay was acclaimed at the same time the word ma came into fashion, because it describes aesthetics sympathetic with ma. In his essay, Tanizaki railed against the garishness of the electric light bulb and argued that Japanese objects and rooms possess a mysterious beauty dependent on their being visible only in spaces permeated with the diffused light of shōji screens or the flickering of candles or oil lamps. In short, he promoted an aesthetic centered on beauty emerging from the darkness of the void-like space of ma.
Plate 1-47 Writing table (bundai), Meiji period, late 19th century. Black lacquer on wood with gold sprinkled powder (makie) and engraved gilt bronze fittings, 14.4 x 63.8 x 36.4 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Gift of Mrs Jack Rieger in memory of Mrs Hortense P. Lorie, F76-30/1. Photo: Jamison Miller. In describing the beauty of Japanese lacquer, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō wrote that “lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partly suggested.”50
Plate 1-48 Tokonoma alcove in the tea room at the Sesshūin subtemple, Tōfukuji, Kyoto. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō eloquently noted of these essential spaces in tea rooms that “Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and flower arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the shadows.”51
NŌTAN
THE DARK–LIGHT PRINCIPLE
Nōtan, the dynamic interaction between dark and light values in a two-dimensional image, is a Japanese aesthetic term wholly invented by modern-day Westerners, used mainly by artist educators and designers. The two Japanese words, “dark” and “light,” that comprise this term were never joined together as aesthetic terminology in Japan. However, it has been widely used in the international design community since the early twentieth century and therefore merits consideration. Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922; see page 121) was responsible for its initial wave of popularity. In the 1920s, artist Rudolph Schaeffer (1886–1988), then a professor of the California School of Fine Arts, began using it to teach design principles. Later, he founded the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, which was influenced by Asian aesthetics and philosophies. One of his students in the 1920s was artist Dorr Bothwell (1902–2000), who in 1968 co-authored an influential book on nōtan for design educators, Notan: The Dark–Light Principle of Design. Her book featured practical exercises for instilling understanding of nōtan in students, and it remains in print to this day.52 The book’s foreword described nōtan as “the basis of all design” and noted that the mirror-image circular symbol for the Eastern philosophical concept of the opposing values of yin and yang embodies its principles.53 The book explained how to create dynamic designs on flat surfaces by emphasizing positive/ negative spaces including symmetrical and asymmetrical balance, relative placement of dark and light areas, and spatial distortions. Its acknowledgements section credits Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908; see page 134) as probably the first to introduce (my italics) the term to the US in the 1890s and Dow as the first to apply it to Western art design.54 This description reflects the misunderstanding of many artists and art educators who regard it as an authentic Japanese design term, not one invented by Fenollosa and used by Dow, as was actually the case.55 Regardless of its derivation, the term remains widely used. American artist Sharon Himes, founder of the early Internet artists community ArtCafe, recently authored an article about it in her widely read online journal, “Notan: Design in Light and Dark.”56
Plate 1-49 Sword guard (tsuba) with eight folding fans, Edo period. Shakudo, gold, and copper, 6.9 x.6.5 x .42 cm. The Walters Art Museum, 51.140. The design for this tsuba relies on the strength of its positive and negative nōtan elements. Folding fans encircle the perimeter and the eye reads the empty spaces where they intersect as a bold star-shaped pattern.
Plate 1-50 Stencil with undulating vertical lines with cross hatchings at intervals. Late 19th–early 20th century. Mulberry paper, persimmon tannin, 18.1 x 38.8 cm. Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Gift of Virginia Tobin, 1994.48.9. Japanese stencils, with their bold, flat, contrasting patterns, are generally regarded as the pre-eminent Japanese art form in which the principle of nōtan is most clearly apparent (see also Plate 3-8).
MINGEI
JAPANESE FOLK CRAFTS
Early chanoyu tea masters were the first to recognize and admire a definitive aesthetic, defined by rusticity and unpretentious ruggedness, associated with the dwellings and functional objects used by Japanese farmers. Medieval period tea masters incorporated this aesthetic into their new wabi-style tea ceremony in preferences for rough, unglazed stoneware ceramic tea utensils and unpainted, wood-framed, thatched-roof tea houses. But tea masters only valued arts that resonated with their ideas about chanoyu. It was Yanagi Sōetsu (see page 138) who rediscovered and promoted appreciation for a much wider variety of inexpensive, utilitarian, handmade crafts by and for commoners that extended from Japan’s prehistory to his own time. In 1926, he coined the phrase mingei (“people’s arts”), which he translated into English as “folk crafts,” purposely avoiding the word “art.” He believed that the anonymous artisans who made these objects utilized natural materials and pre-modern production methods to create practical, functional products imbued with an unconscious spiritual beauty that revealed an elevated moral or social consciousness superior to objects created as luxury goods for the wealthy and élites of society. He considered these arts reflective of the true aesthetic expression of the Japanese people. Although he spearheaded appreciation for these crafts, many of which would otherwise have been lost to history, his insistence that they be classified as separate from other types of fine arts and crafts has led to their marginalization from many mainstream art museums and collections of Japanese art.
Although Yanagi called these products “folk crafts,” and although some mingei artists are