Resource: Kingdom of Beauty

Summary

History of mingei activism (with its origins in colonial Korea), the people important to its success, and how it was central to Japan becoming a modern and imperial power.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Beauty of Sorrow
2. The Discovery of Mingei
3. New Mingei in the 1930s
4. Mingei and the Wartime State, 1937-1945
5. Renovating Greater East Asia

Epilogue

Review

• Discussion on the origin of mingei (minye) with Yanagi's interest in Korean arts
• How cultural heritages are used by the government in ideological endeavors
• East Asian understandings of high and low-class culture and how folk art could be brought to the mainstream
• Question: How did the Japanese conceptualization/commodification of mingei informed Korea's own heritage-ification of folk art?