Review: Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura
One of my favorite quotes is from the Russian author Fyodor Doestoyevsky, “Beauty will save the world.” In Makoto Fujimura’s book Culture Care: Reconnecting With Beauty For Our Common Life, the author builds the case for why rather than culture wars, people need to be engaging in culture care and on a micro-level, soul care. Fujimura is an extremely talented artist, and I had the privilege of connecting with him briefly at a conference in Pittsburgh back in 2010.
The book opens with a story from Fujimura’s personal life. He and his wife were struggling with a limited income, and the author was waiting anxiously for his wife to come home. He was concerned about their ability to be able to pay rent for the month as well as have money for food. His wife came home with a bouquet of flowers. He barked at his wife, “How could you think of buying flowers if we can’t even eat?” Her response was etched into his life (and now subsequentially into mine), “We need to feed our souls too!”
Rather than thinking of culture as a territory to be won or lost, he suggests an alternate metaphor, a resource meant to be stewarded for the good of all. As an artist, he argues that rather than creating art merely for a transactional benefit, we should, as stewards of culture create works for the delight of the soul, the pleasure of the mind, and the refreshment of the spirit.
Similar to the Nihonga style of painting that Fujimura practices, the book itself is a combination of essays that intersect with one another and draw from one another and synthesize into a beautiful whole. The degree to which we are able to connect to beauty, Fujimura argues, is reflective of our spiritual, mental, and physical health and maturity. Or as Dallas Willard has said beauty is “goodness made manifest to the senses.”
If you are interested in stewarding culture well, I believe you will find encouragement in Makoto Fujimura’s book. Give it a read, but then don’t stop there. Become a faithful steward of beauty and culture in a world that is starving for it.