電子書籍

Objects That Remember: Japanese Folk Tools and the Beauty of Everyday Ingenuity

(著) 山本富三

作品詳細

[About the Book]

Smartphones and tablets. Compact vacuum cleaners.

Surrounded by convenient tools in our daily lives, we may have, somewhere along the way, lost the very sense of living with tools.



This is a photographic collection documenting everyday tools that were used in Japanese households from approximately 400 to 100 years ago.



From a yagen (a traditional hand mill used for grinding medicine), to a large wooden handcart for transporting goods, to hand mirrors commonly carried by women, tobacco trays, and nagamochi storage chests—this book carefully records the tools that once existed naturally within the daily lives of Japanese people, captured in evocative black-and-white photography that conveys a sense of quiet nostalgia.



In addition to tools, the collection also includes spaces of everyday life where people gathered, learned, and lived: fire watchtowers, waterwheels, terakoya (traditional temple schools), and living rooms of folk houses centered around the irori hearth.



Each photograph is accompanied by clear explanations of how these tools and places were used, along with the ingenuity and wisdom behind them.



It may have been a time less materially abundant than today. Yet it was also an era in which people valued their tools, used them for long periods, and found beauty within the rhythms of daily life.



The author, based in Kyoto, walked through the Kansai region, encountering folk implements that are gradually disappearing amid rapid changes in modern life, and recorded them while sensing “something being lost.”



For those who enjoy exploring everyday tools from around the world, and for those who wish to understand Japanese perspectives on objects and material culture, this is a book to be quietly contemplated—offering many moments of insight.



[Photographer Profile]

Tomizo Yamamoto

Born in Kyoto City in 1934 (Showa 9). Graduated from the Department of Photography, College of Art, Nihon University in 1957. In 1960, he joined the Photography Department of Dentsu’s Kansai Branch and handled advertising photography for newspapers and magazines. His works have received many awards, including selection in the Asahi Advertising Award and the Minister of International Trade and Industry Award. He retired from Dentsu in 1994, and in recent years has been working on photographing heritage-like objects and old things. Member of the Japan Society of Photographic Science and Technology, member of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association, and member of the Shin Shashin-ha Association.