Catch a Rising Sun - I.D. on Japan

This presentation was originally presented on November 11, 2007 by Julie Lasky, editor in chief of I.D. Magazine and Design Conference during Tokyo Designer's Week.

I must begin this talk with a confession. This is my first visit to Japan. Imagine a fashion editor who has never seen Italy or a food expert who has never been to France, and you can understand my embarrassment. I don't have to tell you that Japan has long been respected for its beautiful crafts and for the sensitivity of its architects to color, light, and texture. More recently, the world has looked here for inspiration in automotive design, consumer electronics, and fashion. Japan is a design capital and should be considered a first stop in the careers of people like myself.

Thanks to this conference, I am finally correcting the error of my ways. But I also take comfort from the fact that my magazine has visited Japan many times before. I.D. was founded in 1954 as a publication for industrial designers. It came to life at a time when Americans were in love with the goods and convenience made affordable by mass production, and it immediately began looking over its shoulder to see how the rest of the world was developing.

In July 1959, for example, I.D. published an in-depth article called "Made in Japan." Its author began by asking, "How has it happened that a country with a vigorous folk art tradition and a highly developed sense of fine workmanship has acquired a reputation for shoddiness and imitation?" Her explanation took the form of a lesson about Japan's economic circumstances, trade organizations, domestic and international markets, and limited educational opportunities for industrial designers. Meanwhile, she challenged negative attitudes about Japanese design with pictures of Canon cameras. Mitsubishi trucks, and a Toshiba rice cooker designed by Yoshiharu Iwata, which was said to have been the salvation of many Japanese marriages.

Click on the image above to view more photos

Other stories about Japanese products followed; and in 1984, the year in which Sony introduced the Walkman, I.D. devoted an entire issue to Japanese design. You can see the Walkman on the cover, attached to an obi, signaling the overlap of tradition and modernity. By this time, of course, Japan was at the top of the global economy. Companies that were mentioned only briefly, if at all, 25 years before-Canon, Honda, Matushita-were now the subjects of a lead article celebrating Japan's detail-oriented "corporate design process." A story titled "Irony, Novelty, Quality" featured products that could easily be marketed today, such as Shiro Kuramata's plexiglass wall clock and a simple wood and glass coffee table by Kazumasa Oda. I'm especially fond of a lamp with metal struts that's described as the work of "architecture student" Shigeru Ban.

In the 1980s, I.D. broadened its focus beyond industrial design. But when I became editor in 2002, I wanted to reflect the interests of contemporary designers by making it truly interdisciplinary. I noticed that while many countries showed strength in a particular medium such as textiles or furniture, Japanese designers were excelling in all areas-from graphics to fashion to architecture. Case in point: in January of 2005, we published a "power list" of the 50 most influential people in design. Five members of the group were Japanese. Not only did this number represent an impressive 12.5 percent of a list drawn from the entire world, but this group was extremely diverse. It consisted of John Maeda, the Japanese-born graphic designer and new-media pioneer; Toshiyuki Kita, designer of the Sharp Aquos TV; Teruo Kurosaki, owner of the design emporium Id?e Naoto Fukasawa, who ran the Tokyo office of the American design firm IDEO and has been the genius behind many products sold by Muji; and the team that designed the Prius hybrid car for Toyota.

Click on the image above to view more photos

There seemed little doubt that it was time for another issue on Japan, and we produced one in November of 2005. We wanted to publish a spectrum of Japanese design, but not to include overly familiar topics for American readers, such as manga and robots. The Honda robot on the cover is in fact the only one showed. Our goal was to make a magazine that would be as interesting-and even surprising-to a designer from Tokyo as it would be to one from Cleveland, Ohio. So we published an exhibition organized by Kenya Hara, the creative director of Muji, of practical objects that are not just visually appealing but stimulate all the senses. These included Hara's zero-energy humidifier consisting of water droplets evaporating from paper and Shin Sobue's rubber coasters, which look like tadpoles swimming in puddles.

We learned about an architect called Kei'ichi Irie, who builds tiny, beautiful houses with splashes of brilliant color, and we interviewed the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto about his fascination with classic building.We showed what Japanese design magazines look like (we obviously had a lot to choose from). We explored how traditional Japanese crafts were being brought into the 21st century through the revival of boro patchwork textiles and a modern interpretation of karatsu pottery.

In the two years since that issue, we have approached Japanese design and designers from many points of view. This feature from June of 2006 about the London-based designer Tomoko Azumi focused on the difficulties of running a studio for a woman who had recently separated from her husband and business partner, Shin Azumi. Our September 2006 story about the Tokyo-based firm Super Robot represents them as up-and-coming young designers who have a gift for economy and efficiency. You can see it in this house in Kawaguchi they built with prefabricated steel box frames, and in their designs of steel furniture that can be assembled with minimal tools. This light was built from a satellite dish.

Click on the image above to view more photos

Last spring we featured Tokujin Yoshioka's Media Skin cell phones on our cover-we greatly admire Yoshioka-san's fearless treatment of materials, such as chairs of polyester elastomer that are baked in the oven and giant environments built of drinking straws. This last summer, we gave top honors in our Annual Design Review competition to one of my favorite young studios, Nendo. Their Hanabi lamp, which is heat-sensitive and opens like a flower when illuminated, was the winner of the Furniture category. Their Polar table, which forms different patterns when stacked in different orientations, took second place. I first saw Nendo's work a few years ago at the Milan Furniture Fair, where they were exhibiting in the section reserved for young designers and had little to show but this screen. It's not easy to forget. The Italian furniture company Cappellini is producing it now. This is a restaurant called Kisalathey recently designed in Tokyo.

Click on the image above to view more photos

Our most recent issue, which features more than 200 of the most ingenious new products of 2007, includes names like Ippe Matsumoto, who designed this calculator for the London studio Industrial Facility; the manufacturer Kyoei, which produced this umbrella stand combined with a flower pot; Toyo Ito, who created this faucet for the Spanish company Altro; Jiro Endo and Masafumi Sumiyoshi, who designed this mercibeaucoup, shop in Aoyama; and Tokyo-based Craft Design Technology, which released what they claim is "the most beautiful inkpad." They're right. It is. I could name other examples except that I'm sure I'm pronouncing all these names incorrectly (except for Craft Design Technology).

As I hope this presentation makes clear, I not only appreciate but also depend on the innovative design coming out of Japan. And I am far from the first I.D. editor who has done so. Fifty years ago, even though Japan had yet to develop its reputation for manufacturing excellence, my magazine recognized its potential to become an industrial-design power. It pointed out that the simplicity and austerity of Western Modernism, which made for efficient machine-made products, originated in the West's obsession with Japanese aesthetics. It also suggested that standardization-another requirement of mass production-was easily understood by a society that based its architectural dimensions on the unit of the tatami mat. What captivated my predecessors, as it captivates me, is the ability of Japanese design to be simple and economical without sacrificing its soul. This lesson can be learned in many boutiques and in any bookshop in America representing Japanese style, but I am delighted to finally have the opportunity to study it at its source.