Together with Hamada Shoji (1894-1978), Tomimoto Kenkichi (1886-1963) and the Englishman Bernard Leach (1890-1966), Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966) was one of the leading potters of the Japanese Mingei (Folk Craft) movement. This developed in early twentieth-century Japan as a social and aesthetic crusade. It held ideas in common with the English Arts and Crafts theorists John Ruskin and William Morris about the value of hand-work and the negative effects of industrialisation and mass production. It actively sought to save and revive Japanese folk-craft traditions, which were becoming sidelined due to the forces of modernisation and urbanisation, and was part of a broader cultural movement in which Japan sought to articulate and assert a sense of national identity in the face of burgeoning westernisation.

Kawai was originally introduced to Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), the philosopher-critic on whose theories the movement was founded, by Hamada. This was in 1924, shortly after the latter's return from England, where he had spent three years helping Bernard Leach set up his pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall. During the early 1920s Kawai used his extensive scientific knowledge (gained at the Tokyo Technical College and then at the Kyoto Municipal Ceramic Research Institute) to experiment with and recreate the glaze effects on classical Chinese ceramics. However, his growing interest in folk crafts resulting from his friendship with Hamada and Yanagi coupled with misgivings about the direction his work was going led him to reject technical ostentation in favour of a more restrained and robust aesthetic.