Latest / It's All Japanese to Me / Ep. 2 — Yō no bi: the beauty of use

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Ep. 2 — Yō no bi: the beauty of use · It's All Japanese to Me

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Rikuto Murakami.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So today's word is yō no bi.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is written in three characters, yō, no, bi.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yō means use or usage.
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  SPEAKER_00: No is a particle, a bit like of.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And bi means beauty.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yō no bi is literally saying the beauty of use.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this phrase is closely titled a one called Yanagi Soetsu.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Actually,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: many Japanese dictionaries give Muneoshi as the reading of his first name,
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  SPEAKER_00: but he's also widely known as Soetsu.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that is actually also how the Japan Folk Craft Museum writes it in English.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the way,
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  SPEAKER_00: he lived from 1889 to 1961,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: and he's known as the founder of the Minge movement in Japan.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Minge itself is a word he made up, together with two potters, Kawai Kanjiro and Hamada Shoji.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: According to the Mie Prefecture Art Museum, they came up with it in December 1925.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's short for Minshuteki Kouge, which means something like Crafts of the People.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they were interested in ordinary things, everyday pottery and clothes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Things made by craftspeople whose names nobody knew and used every day in ordinary homes.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the time, these things were not treated as art.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Yanagi and his friends felt there was a kind of beauty in them
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  SPEAKER_00: that existing words like art or craft couldn't quite describe.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that is why they needed a new word.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in 1936, Yanagi opened the Japan Folk Craft Museum in Komabu at Tokyo.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's actually still there today.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Yonobi is the idea at the center of all this.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Heibonshire World Encyclopedia describes it as using everyday wares
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: in daily life and says this idea led Yanagi toward a kind of aesthetic of living.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Also, Kougei Standard, a Japanese online magazine about crafts, has an explanation of this.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: They separate Yonobi from functional beauty.
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  SPEAKER_00: Functional beauty is in the object itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: For example, a cup with a handle that is easy to hold, or a teapot with a spout that pours well.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is functional beauty.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yonobi also includes how people use the object.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the beauty is not only in the thing,
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  SPEAKER_00: It's also in the relationship between the thing and the person using it day after day.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's been about a hundred years since Yanagi's time,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I feel I can still sense the essence of Yonobi today.
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  SPEAKER_00: For example,
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  SPEAKER_00: when I look around my home or visit flare markets or antique markets,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I see many things that aren't beautiful in the functional beauty sense.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they've been used for a long time and they are not the cleanest, cleanest objects.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it can sense the beauty of how people have used them with affection.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are not the fanciest looking,
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  SPEAKER_00: but their form and structure are very well suited to practical use.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is just how I understand Yonobi in my current own daily life.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, that is it for today's episode about Yonobi.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening and see you next time.