「NEW BOOKS」Chinese Handicraft Travelogue, Expanded Edition

Mingei, meaning folk crafts, was a term coined by Yanagi Muneyoshi in the mid-1920s. Yanagi argued that practical crafts made by unknown artisans could possess beauty that rivaled that of fine art.

Mingei Okumura is a popular online store that sells handmade household goods collected from all over Japan and the world. The owner, Shinobu Okumura, has inherited the spirit of Yanagi and other folk art pioneers and offers a wide range of Mingei items that are suited to modern times and lifestyles.

Okumura was fascinated by China, and traveled there almost every year until 2019. Among those places, he visited Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, which are featured in this book, the most.

Yunnan Province is home to many hidden places and breathtaking views. On the other hand, Guizhou Province is known as the poorest province, but still retains its unique culture. It was a piece of cloth that first attracted him to this area, and he decided to visit with the desire to "visit a place where something like this is made."

For Okumura, handicrafts do not simply mean things like pottery, weaving, or braided goods, but also include things like rice terraces, Chinese tea, local cuisine, architecture, and all aspects of culture and life.In this book, while introducing the handicrafts of Yunnan and Guizhou, she also touches on the lifestyles of ethnic minorities and the customs of each region.

Okumura is known as a foodie, and says that the food is the greatest pleasure of his travels in the Chinese countryside. One of the attractions of this book is the numerous dishes that appear one after another, which cannot be found in Japan.

Even if you try to research Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in Japan, the information available is limited. This book not only introduces the handicrafts that Okumura encountered there, but also serves as a travel report, offering more encouraging advice than a guidebook on how to get around in a place where even basic English is barely spoken and Google is not available.

The photographs in this book were taken by Yayoi Arimoto, who travels around the world and continues to take photographs, while accompanying Okumura. Arimoto's sensibility vividly captures the local colors.

The first edition of this book was released at the end of January 2020, just as news reports began to circulate that the source of the "mysterious plague" was China. The plague quickly spread across borders, shutting down the world and making it impossible for Okumura to travel to China to make purchases.

This book is an expanded edition with a new chapter on the travels of the author, who finally resumed full-scale purchasing in China in 2024 and visited Yunnan and Guizhou for the first time in four years and several months. It is a valuable resource both for conveying the state of China before COVID-19 and for learning about the major changes that have occurred since COVID-19.

Publisher Seigensha

Published 2024

Pages 328

Size 190x129mm