Ohara Museum of Art and Kurashiki Archaeological Museum have teamed up for the first time to present the special exhibition “1925,” a joint exhibition now running through Sunday, December 21, 2025.
As a related event, the 1925 Roundtable Discussion, “Out of Mingei and the 1925 Tumbleweed Trail,” was held.
Combining gallery talks at two museums that represent Kurashiki with a roundtable discussion, this educational event explored connections in culture from 100 years ago, moving between art and Mingei, and archaeology and antiquarianism.
As music from the “Kurashiki Jazz Street” performances drifted in from outside and mingled with laughter, the event offered a moment of guidance in exploring modern history.
Here is a tumbleweed-style introduction to some of the topics discussed at the 1925 Roundtable Discussion.
The information presented was current when this article was published in November 2025. Please note that it may differ from current information.
1925 Roundtable Discussion: “Out of Mingei and the 1925 Tumbleweed Trail”
On Sunday, November 2, 2025, the 1925 Roundtable Discussion, “Out of Mingei and the 1925 Tumbleweed Trail,” was held as a related event for the “1925” exhibition.
The speakers were:
- Jikuhara Yosuke
Designer who worked on publicity materials for the 1925 exhibition and member of the design unit “COCHAE” - Nakamura Yuta
Artist and associate professor in the Faculty of Art at Kyoto Seika University - Takaoka Chikako
Ohara Museum of Art venue coordinator for the 1925 exhibition and director of the Research Department at the Ohara Art Foundation - Ban Yuko
Kurashiki Archaeological Museum venue coordinator for the 1925 exhibition and researcher and curator at the Ohara Art Foundation
What is “Out of Mingei”?
People trying to draw another map beyond the boundaries of the word “Mingei.”
“Out of Mingei,” a collaborative project by designer Jikuhara Yosuke and artist Nakamura Yuta, is an undertaking by these two people.
The two focus on the 1920s and 1930s, when the Mingei movement emerged, and the many craft movements that sprang up simultaneously around it. Their research also encompasses the people and objects involved, as well as networks of publishing and distribution.
They carefully study materials, mainly old books and magazines from the period, and visualize the relationships in a network diagram. The process is almost like reconstructing “another history of Mingei.”
It is an endeavor that uncovers the creative power residing between what has been called Mingei and what has been placed outside its boundaries, quietly updating our view of Mingei.
Mingei in 1925—What Is Beauty in Modern Society?
1925, exactly 100 years ago from now (2025).
A casual conversation in a Kyoto townhouse would go on to greatly change how people in Japan viewed things.
The thinker Yanagi Muneyoshi, and potters Kawai Kanjiro and Hamada Shoji. The three, from different fields, met and traveled together to research Mokujiki Buddha statues, discussing the beauty hidden in handcraft.
The term that emerged from their reflections was “folk craft”—in other words, Mingei.
After moving to Kyoto following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, Yanagi, together with Kawai and Hamada, visited morning markets and antique shops around town, finding beauty rooted in everyday life in nameless vessels and tools.
It was also an attempt to reconsider “What is beauty?” in a modern society where mechanization and mass production were advancing.
From the Meiji era to the Taisho era, and then the Showa era.
As ways of life changed, Mingei thought renewed people’s sensibilities around clothing, food, and housing, and eventually spread beyond Japan to the world.
And in 2025, it has been 100 years since the word Mingei was coined.
It seems that the question is still being posed to us today.
Mingei × Kurashiki 1950: Ohara Museum of Art 20th Anniversary Events
Mingei and Kurashiki
A symbolic episode connecting the two dates back to 1950.
An unprecedentedly large-scale cultural event was held to mark the 20th anniversary of the Ohara Museum of Art. The idea came from its second director, Ohara Soichiro.
Just five years after the end of the war, in an era still deeply marked by turmoil, Soichiro planned the event with the hope of “illuminating the future through the power of art.”
The people who gathered in Kurashiki formed a dream team that truly embodied Japan’s postwar cultural scene. They included Hamada Shoji and Kawai Kanjiro, who led the Mingei movement; writers Shiga Naoya and Mushakoji Saneatsu of the Shirakaba school; and Western-style painters Yasui Sotaro and Umehara Ryuzaburo, among others.
Around 40 cultural figures from fields including art, literature, and architecture gathered in Kurashiki, led by these six, and the city was filled with an energy that heralded the rebirth of postwar culture.
The highlight was the public roundtable discussion “Art and People,” held in a second-floor gallery of the main building.
It was chaired by Yanagi Muneyoshi, director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum.
The event not only highlighted the breadth of his connections, but also reaffirmed the strong bond with the Ohara family, who had continued to support the Mingei movement.
The program, arranged at Yanagi’s suggestion, is said to have been more than a simple celebration; it was also a time for intellectual dialogue looking ahead to the future of the Ohara Museum of Art.
There was piano music performed by a musician invited from Paris, along with songs by people associated with the event.
The quiet town of Kurashiki was filled with a festive atmosphere reminiscent of a European salon.
Word of the event quickly reached Tokyo, where people reportedly said, “Culture is alive in Kurashiki.”
One particularly memorable story is that, for distinguished guests traveling from afar, a first-class sleeper car was specially attached to a night train to bring them to and from the event. In an era before the Shinkansen, this elegant hospitality was a story unique to the Ohara family, who brought art and people together.
The Mingei Perspective in Jomon
The Kurashiki Archaeological Museum displays a deep Jomon-period pot from the Middle Jomon period discovered in Kojima Bay.
Jomon pottery surviving intact and complete is extremely rare in western Japan, and this is the only example in Okayama Prefecture.
During the Edo period, it was accidentally caught in a fisherman's net and presented to the Ikeda family, lords of the Bizen domain. It was later discovered in a storehouse during the Meiji period and became part of the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum’s collection.
The person who saw this pot at the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum, which had just opened in November 1950, was Hamada Shoji, a potter and central figure in the Mingei movement.
This was during a visit to Kurashiki for the Ohara Museum of Art’s 20th anniversary events, and a record remains of him sketching the Jomon pottery. Hamada’s interest extended beyond his own creative work to Jomon-period pottery and clay figurines.
It is said that he saw in their forms the origins of the “beauty of the unintentional” championed by Mingei. Hamada viewed Jomon pottery as the root of Japanese creativity and is said to have called it “the ancestor of Japanese Mingei.”
After the war, he was also involved in a plan to make reproductions of Jomon pottery as educational materials.
It was an effort to pass the beauty of ancient forms on to the future in a devastated era.
Imagining Hamada Shoji gazing at the intact Jomon pot in the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum’s gallery, we can appreciate how deeply Mingei aesthetics were connected to layers of time.
Kojima Torajiro Between Art and Archaeology
When people hear the name Kojima Torajiro, they may first think of him as a Western-style painter.
But his gaze was directed not only toward the West, but also more broadly and deeply toward the ancient Near East and Japanese archaeology.
In photographs of his atelier and residence in Sakazu, Kurashiki, you can see some of his cherished possessions.
He visited Egypt in 1923, showing that his interest in archaeology was no passing phase. Look closely at the photograph, and you can see Sue ware lined up above the curtains.
Some of the Sue ware preserved at the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum bear the mark “兒,” indicating that they belonged to Kojima’s collection. They are believed to be the same pottery shown in the photograph.
Furthermore, the “Kojima Torajiro Diary,” which the Ohara Art Foundation is transcribing and researching, records excavations carried out in Sakazu and Chausubaru, Miyazaki Prefecture, between 1915 and 1921. This confirms that Kojima himself had tried an archaeological approach.
A century ago, during the formative years of archaeology in Okayama, Kojima Torajiro played a part in its development. The 1925 exhibition offers a chance to focus on another side of Kojima Torajiro: a figure standing between art and archaeology.
The Reach of “Out of Mingei” in Kurashiki
“Out of Mingei” takes this perspective a step further.
Kojima’s close friend from his days at the Japan Art School, described in his diary as his “only friend,” was Yamamoto Kanae.
The “Peasant Art Movement” he launched in 1919 aimed to have farmers make handicrafts during the agricultural off-season and improve their quality of life.
Beginning with carved wooden “koppah dolls,” the movement expanded to textiles, plant-dyed fabrics, and embroidery. It spread throughout Japan and remains alive today as a traditional craft in the Ueda region of Nagano Prefecture.
What is intriguing is that a similar movement can also be seen in Kurashiki.
“Kirakudo” was a project in which Kojima was involved in creating local specialty products at the direction of Ohara Magosaburo. Records show that prototypes were exhibited at the Nimikai Hall in 1925, and Kojima played a major role by providing design guidance and patterns.
Many of the finished crafts bear a striking resemblance to works from the Peasant Art Movement, suggesting that Kojima was influenced by Yamamoto Kanae.
The two remained in contact after graduating from university, and when Kojima died in 1929, Yamamoto wrote a tribute to him.
Yanagi Muneyoshi, who later led the Mingei movement, criticized this peasant art as “Westernized craft.” In his book Mingei and Peasant Art (1935), he stated plainly that it was “not a beauty born of the natural way of life in a region.”
In other words, the Peasant Art Movement is a fitting example of “Out of Mingei”.
Though it fell outside Yanagi’s ideals, its spirit also reached Kurashiki and helped shape craft ideas in the 1920s.
Mingei and Cubism: The Spirit of 1925
On the first floor of the new exhibition wing of the Ohara Museum of Art’s main building, three works of art from different eras and contexts are displayed side by side.
- Mokujiki, Seated Eleven-Headed Kannon Bodhisattva (Edo period)
- Hamada Shoji, White-Glazed Vase with Indigo Sorghum Pattern
- Alberto Giacometti, Cubist Composition—Man
Together, these three works quietly bring to life the many layers of artistic expression in 1925.
Giacometti’s work is a Cubist composition in which multiple viewpoints are layered onto a single surface. He sought to realize in three-dimensional sculpture the pictorial experiments pioneered by Picasso, Braque, and others.
It also hints at Surrealism, while showing traces of influence from the visual arts of Africa and Oceania. Amid the turmoil of the 1920s, the visual arts were moving away from the center and broadening their gaze to the art of ordinary people around the world.
Meanwhile, the Mokujiki Buddha and Hamada’s vase are also expressions born outside the mainstream.
The Buddhist statues by the monk Mokujiki Shonin possess a vitality that is simple yet seems to glow from within. Hamada’s vase has an organic, flowing form created by the texture of the clay and the chance effects of the glaze.
Though they come from different eras, one can sense a shared spirit of prayer and freedom of form.
In his writings, Yanagi Muneyoshi described the Mokujiki Buddhas as Cubist.
Having seen works by Picasso and others firsthand, Yanagi may have grown more certain of his own views on Mingei. That is one possible interpretation.
In other words, 1925 was a time when Mingei and modernism, East and West, earth and abstraction reflected one another.
The three works displayed quietly side by side convey to us today the perspectives that intersected a century ago.
A Flexible Perspective, Not Fixated on “Mingei”
Looking at the network of connections mapped out by “Out of Mingei,” it is striking to see how, across Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, movements arose simultaneously in which people sought to shape their own lives through making things.
Yet, looking back from today’s perspective, it is true that Yanagi Muneyoshi’s Mingei movement has inevitably been placed at the center of the story. It is also undeniable that this powerful gravitational pull has led other creative currents to be treated as peripheral.
Their activities were by no means a declaration against Mingei.
Picking up old books and following intriguing names from one to the next naturally brings to light people who have been overlooked and contexts that have nearly been forgotten.
Like an extension of a club activity, they enjoy themselves as they expand the network of connections. What emerges from this lighthearted approach is a new map that challenges the idea of Mingei as a monolith.
Rather than rejecting Mingei, “Out of Mingei” may be digging once more into the layers of creativity in Japan during the interwar period, this time from the outside.
Articles about the Ohara Museum of Art
1925 Exhibition Information
| Name | 1925 Exhibition |
|---|---|
| Dates | Ohara Museum of Art venue: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. (last admission at 4:30 p.m.) Exhibition period: Thursday, October 2, 2025–Sunday, December 21, 2025 Kurashiki Archaeological Museum venue: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. (last admission at 3:30 p.m.) Exhibition period: Friday, October 3, 2025–Sunday, December 21, 2025 |
| Location | 1-3-18 Chuo, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture |
| Admission (tax included) | ■Ohara Museum of Art venue (admission fees are the same as those for the Ohara Museum of Art Main Building, Crafts and Oriental Art Gallery, and Kojima Torajiro Memorial Gallery) Adults: ¥2,000 High school, junior high school, and elementary school students (under 18): ¥500 ■Kurashiki Archaeological Museum venue (admission fees are the same as those for the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum) Adults: ¥500 University and high school students: ¥400 Junior high school and elementary school students: ¥300 ※Free for children under elementary school age ■Discounts are available for visitors who present a disability certificate (Mirairo ID) 【Special offer】 During the exhibition period, visitors entering the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum venue can present an Ohara Museum of Art admission ticket to enter for “¥400,” a ¥100 discount for adults. |
| Website | 1925 Exhibition Special Website |
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