What is kintsugi? Before I answer this question I'd like to explain how I got the idea to write about it.
It was like this...
There's a series on HBO Go that Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "L'Épine dans le coeur") contributes to. It features Jim Carrey in the lead role, and in addition to him, you can see on screen the likes of Catherine Keener, Frank Langella, and Judy Greer. The whole series is a bitter story about loss and coping with it. Carrey is fantastic, humor appears in the least expected moments, and absurdities are mixed with human tragedies. This series is called "Kidding". In one of the episodes appears a character of the Japanese version of the main character, Mr. Pickles. During a conversation about life with the heroine played by Catherine Keener, he mentions kintsugi. The art of gluing ceramics together using powdered gold. He talks about it in the context of the scars that life - metaphorically of course - leaves on our bodies. I wouldn't be me if I didn't start digging into the subject and finding out what exactly this kintsugi is. Are there any other examples in the culture of said mending?
Well, what is it?
The history of kintsugi is linked to an event that took place in the 16th century. Shogun Yoshimasa Ashikaga broke his beloved tea bowl. The bowl came from China, so that's where it returned. Chinese experts went to great lengths to repair the bowl. They were trying to figure out what to do, how to make the Shogun's precious object usable again. Unfortunately, the results were not satisfying, to say the least, because the bowl returned to the Shogun, but it was full of metal prostheses. Hence, Ashikaga instructed the Japanese craftsmen to find a repair method that would restore his beloved bowl to its former glory. They thought and thought and finally came up with one. They figured that since the damage couldn't be hidden, maybe it could be turned into something that would give the vessel a new character. They approached the matter in the opposite way for the Chinese. This is how they came up with the idea of repairing cracks by using lacquer, to which precious metals are added, such as the powdered gold mentioned above. Over time, they became so skilled that some people purposely destroyed vessels just to repair them using the kintsugi technique.
Philosophy
However, that's not all. The fact that kintsugi appears in "Kidding" in the context of life and our scars is no accident. The Japanese approached the subject philosophically, and according to them, we too break. Just as the Shogun's vessel broke. Why we crack depends on ourselves and our experiences, but over time no matter how hard we try we become more and more chipped. Thus kintsugi enters the scene. Because while we can't prevent cracking, we can approach it in two ways:
- Try to camouflage the flaws, which is unlikely to work.
- Raise our heads and heal our wounds with gold. Add value to ourselves by doing so.
And we should wear those golden scars with pride, not shame because it is the golden scars that make us authentic. Not dentures made of metal, hiding the cracks. Anyway, "Kidding" is not the only title in which kintsugi appears. It turned out that one does not have to look far. It is enough to reach for Joanna Bator's book "Purezento" in which kintsugi plays a key role in the whole plot. As the author herself says:
Glued together with gold, the teapot is a metaphor for fragility and durability, past and present, unleavened material glued together with precious. This is how we can glue ourselves together in life into a new whole. It is not true that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Glued together we will be fragile and cracked, but whole.
This is not the end either. Because with kintsugi you can meet, among others. In the series "The Man in the High Castle", which you can watch on Amazon Prime. One of the episodes is not accidentally titled like this. This philosophy also resonates in films by Guillermo del Toro. Such as in "The Shape of Water". This last example applies to his entire persona, as the philosophy I've described is extremely close to him and directly relates to the director's experiences as a young man. Finally, I will leave you with a musical theme. Because kintsugi is not only books, movies, and TV series, it's also music. For example, Death Cab for Cutie recorded an album titled just that. An important album for the band, because it was recorded as a result of and in response to numerous professional and private turmoils. One can, of course, look for more examples, but I'll leave that to you. Until the next one.