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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.

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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.