Michiko Yamawaki ( 山脇 道子 Yamawaki Michiko, 1910 – 2000), was a Japanese designer and textile artist who trained at the Bauhaus. She was one of four Japanese students to study at the Bauhaus in Dessau, studying drawing, weaving, and typography.
She was born in the 43rd year of the Meiji (era) in Tsukiji, a district of Chūō, Tokyo, as the oldest daughter of Zengoro Yamawaki, a Urasenke tea ceremony master. She married photographer and architect Iwao Yamawaki in Japan in 1928; as she was a heiress and the eldest daughter of an important family, he was asked to adopt her family name, which he did - in exchange, the family financially supported both of their studies at the Bauhaus. In May 1930, Michiko and Iwao left Japan for California and then New York, where they spent two months, before travelling to Berlin, where they were reunited with Koreya Senda, who had already been living in Berlin for about two years. Senda, a politically active socialist, was involved with underground theatre in Berlin, and with the Japanese artistic community in the city, which he introduced the Yamawakis to.
At the Bauhaus she studied in the early 1930s under teachers including Wassily Kandinsky, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, and Gunta Stölzl. After her time in Germany came to a close after the Nazis closed the school in Dessau, she and her husband returned to Japan in 1932. Upon their return to Tokyo their transnational experience and education became trademark in their work, as well as their lifestyle. They were influential in promoting the Bauhaus teaching model and aesthetics in Japan. Among her creative pursuits in Tokyo, she taught at the Shinkenchiku kōgei gakuin (School of New Architecture and Design) in Tokyo as head of the weaving course, helping to bring the Bauhaus pedagogical and aesthetic approach to Japan. After the Second World War, Michiko taught at the Nihon University.
Early life
Michiko was the eldest daughter of Zengorō Yamawaki, a businessman from an Osaka sake brewing family, who was a major owner of land in the Tsukiji area of Tokyo. Zengorō devoted his time to tea ceremony, which he practiced in the style of the Urasenke School. He himself produced some of the vessels used for the ceremony. The life of he and his family resultingly centered on the tea ceremony aesthetics of seasonal change, truth to materials, and simplicity. Michiko’s childhood also then centered on tea culture, and her father's collection of old art objects. Scholars of Michiko's life and career note that a penchant for modern and fashionable things in her childhood may have given her a special sensitivity towards the Japanese quality she later encountered at the Bauhaus. Although Michiko claimed in her book Bauhausu to Chanoyu (Bauhaus and Tea Ceremony) that she had no interest in design prior to meeting Iwao, her life and sense of taste were formed by her family’s refined home and her father’s tea ceremony practice, which later resonated with her experience of the Bauhaus and the modern art she encountered in Germany. In particular, she later felt an affinity with the Bauhaus ideas of simplicity, functionality, and a deep interest in materials, their quality and use.
Young Michiko became the heiress to a portion of the family wealth when her uncle died prematurely. When Iwao Fujita met Michiko through omiai, or formal introduction, and married the beautiful, young, and extremely wealthy Michiko in 1928, he was asked to enter the family and adopt its name, which he accepted, in return for an opportunity to study at the Bauhaus. Michiko's father, who spoke German and was aware of cutting-edge artistic production in Germany, supported the idea and used his finances to turn the Yamawakis' study trip into a fuller professional experience. Access to education indicates the Yamazaki family's pedigree in a culturally elitist world: for women, the opportunity to study visual art was restricted compared with men, and studying abroad even more so restricted by social class.