On January 10 1926, Yanagi Sōetsu and the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō sat talking excitedly late into the night at a temple on Mt Kōya, in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture.
They were debating how best to honour the beauty of simple, everyday Japanese crafts. Out of that conversation came a new word, mingei, and a plan to found The Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo. Later, Yanagi would describe what emerged that night as “a new standard of beauty”.
