| >Basically nobody in Japan has ever heard of this. Whenever I'm hanging out in Japan and run across another viral post about "The ancient and time-honored Japanese tradition of goldjoin", I ask Japanese people about it in Japanese
Not once has anyone heard of it.* Almost nobody one would casually ask in Europe has heard of tons of European medieval, renaissance, or even 19th century techniques and terms either. For example, 99.9% of the people don't know that Chopin is not a classical composer (it's a romantic one) - laymen just call the whole "old orchestral music" thing "classical". How many know what chiaroscuro (a huge tradition once) means, or what a zither is? >There's plenty of historical evidence that it's been done, but it's not some common thing that people in Japan regularly do. Well, it was never a "common thing that people in Japan regularly do". It was a period-specific aesthetic choice of crafts artists. >I'm asking "Hey, have you ever heard of this thing where you fix a broken item using gold? Like gold glue?", and I show them the viral post du jour Sorry, someone's story said that modern Japanese would fix pottery using gold as glue? Most don't even have any expensive pottery, aside household items they use for soup, to drink tea, and stuff. At best they'll have some ordinary vases... Even TFA says: "a unique form of Japanese art restoration known as kintsugi." Art restoration - not what Hiroshi Sixpack does to fix his broken tea cup or kitchen plate. |