Yanagi Sōetsu

Yanagi was born in 1889 to Yanagi Narayoshi, a hydrographer of the Imperial Navy and Katsuko. His son, Sori Yanagi, was a renowned industrial designer. His great grandnephew Shinya Yanagi is a renowned weaver, and the third generation of the Yanagi family of weavers.

In 1916, Yanagi made his first trip to Korea out of curiosity about Korean crafts. The trip led to the establishment of the Korean Folk Crafts Museum in 1924 and the coining of the term mingei by Yanagi, potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966). Yanagi was not an artist or craftsman himself. His theory of the "beauty of sorrow" (悲哀の美) in Korean art has been said to have influenced the development of the Korean idea of han. Following the March First Movement, Korea's independence movement in which thousands of Koreans died at the hands of the Japanese police and military, Yanagi wrote articles in 1919 and 1920, expressing sympathy for the Korean people and appreciation for Korean art. Yanagi cautioned against the Korean independence movement. In 1926, the Folk Art Movement was formally declared by Yanagi. He rescued lowly pots used by commoners in the Edo and Meiji periods that were disappearing in rapidly urbanizing Japan. In 1936, the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum (Nihon Mingeikan) was established. He was also working together with Onta ware.