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Yanagi Muneyoshi (柳宗悅, 1889-1961) is a modern Japanese thinker who developed ideas with consistent concerns about achieving and performing the understanding of truth which could even overcome differentiation between the East and the West in universal value, or absolute universality for human beings and the world and the most ultimate fundamentals.
The ultimate fundamentals mean all of the ultimate and fundamental basis, the final attainment through the pursuit of an object, and properties, structure, values, and objects of the area. Therefore, the ultimate fundamentals refer to Idea from the Western viewpoint of Plato and the world of dao from the Oriental perspective of Lao-Chung.
He made such great efforts to achieve the ultimate fundamentals because he was aware of limitations and irrationality of modernization of the East based on Westernization through Western forces governing the East and Western modernism based on rationality and there was strong
association between 'establishment of his identity as a human being' and the resultant issue of achieving the 'quality of life.' Right here, the thought of Yanagi has modern significance established because such a fundamental attitude of Yanagi is now the pioneer basis for all of us
when both globalization and localization develop.
The 'living or religious fundamentals' Yanagi recognized through extensive reading of Eastern and Western mysticism include oneness, nothingness, sameness, mutual sameness, non-difference, neutrality, and emptiness, all of which exist in the area beyond the boundaries of logic, judgement, and thinking of human beings as essence and real divine nature, or divinity. The ultimate fundamentals he became aware of through researches in beauty of folk crafts and common things of Chosun were commonness and tranquility. Besides, the ultimate fundamentals he became aware of during the process of establish Buddhist aesthetics were non-difference and the greatest possibility.
Each of these expressions Yanagi became aware of through each area indicates a certain part of the ultimate fundamentals: for example, non-difference and mutual sameness refer to relations between components of the ultimate fundamentals; neutrality, commonness, and tranquility refer to the ideal state of components of the ultimate fundamentals; nothingness and emptiness refer to existence types of the ultimate fundamentals; sameness and the greatest possibility refer to the
optimal state of the ultimate fundamentals; and finally, oneness refer to an ultimately fundamental object itself.
From the methods and results of his research in the ultimate fundamentals, Yanagi suggests the following: this world reveals two sensible phenomena, which were originally the same thing, or oneness.
However, since this one fundamental world is invisible, we also have to use the ability of intellectual intuition, which is the best ability of awareness related to the mind invisible to us. If one considers both sides in each situation (neutrality) using the ability, he or she becomes aware of truth attainment which can satisfy both of them; this boundary is the area where goodness, beautifulness, and rightness based on balance are realized all at once and emptiness which is the fundamental area of divinity and divine nature, or the ultimate target of the fundamentals, can be reached through repetitive efforts toward such a fundamental area. If this boundary of emptiness is reached, the greatest possibility is generated to realize all ideals and values of human beings as done by divinities; the boundary can be shared between human beings and divinities but we have to abandon ourselves in front of it since its basis is divine. This is because we can make us greater and more righteous and achieve the maximum of true self. As all these things related to the fundamentals could be recognized by Chosun art as a particular thing and by industrial arts (folk crafts) as general one, he suggested that only the pattern might have a cultural position of true art to enable restoration of humane life, additionally presenting the fundamentals and practical methods for our fundamental life.