What an excellent piece! You really write well, and this reads like a long-form essay in a magazine, or the introduction to a beautiful book about the Mingei movement. The idea that it came about as a reaction to mass production and mass-market disposables is, as you say, extremely relevant to what's happening now. I couldn't help but think of Ai, busily producing, not only mass-produced cheap and disposable images, but equally cheap and disposable thoughts and attitudes while it gains momentum to overwhelm humanity's shared culture of ideas and perceptions at an equally "breakneck speed." What's to be done? I started imagining a future museum of "ideas generated organically from human thought." I'm probably going a bit off subject here, but I don't think it's too farfetched. Thanks for this essay. I'm in Tokyo now. I will try to go there.