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Produced by the Department Photograph credits Japan 1904. Kasai Torajiro (attr.). Chromo-
of Publications, The Museum lithograph, 18% x 24%” (473 x 61.8 cm).
Photographs on the pages indicated are Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and
of Modern Art, New York, Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.;
© 2009 by the named rights holders: Artists
and 5 Continents Editions, Milan Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Bowl, Japan c. 1910-20. Cloisonné enamels
Paris: 17; Kenji Ekuan: 54; The Metropolitan with silver rims. Courtesy V&A Images, Victo-
Museum of Art: 12 top and bottom, 15; ria and Albert Museum, London; Taisho, Em-
Published by The Museum of
Issey Miyake Inc.: 35; Science & Society Pic- peror of Japan, c. 1909. Geo, Grantham
Modern Art, 11 West 58 Street, ture Library: 20 bottom; Hiroyuki Tazawa and Bain; Set of spinning tops (Magic Top), Japan
New York, New York 10019 Adachi Shiki Kogyo Co., Ltd.: 111, 125; Yohji 1920-39, Printed cardboard and metal.
Yamamoto: 28 left; Kazuhiro Yamanaka and Courtesy V&A Images, Victoria and Albert
Pallucco Italia SpA: 184; Tokujun Yoshioka: Museum, London; Kanto Earthquake of
© 2009 The Museum of Modern Art,
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New York/5 Continents Editions, pages indicated appear courtesy Shin Azumi: University Library; Kimono, Japan 1937
Milan. All rights reserved. 36 left; Shizuko Fukuda: 31; Arata Isozaki/ Printed wool. Courtesy V&A Images, Victoria
TENDO Co., Ltd.: 27; Memphis Srl: 32 bot- and Albert Museum, London; Seven-jewel
tom; Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris: 17; mechanical watch with stainless steel case,
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Canada by D.A.P./Distributed Art Bridgeman Art Library: 16; Sony: 20 top; © 2009 Seiko Watch Corporation; Donate
Publishers, Inc., New York Toshiba: 19; Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.: Clothes for the Returning Refugees, Espe-
38. Photographs by Kenji Aoki: 36 right; De- cially for Women and Children, Japan, fall
partment of Imaging Services, MoMA: 43, 1945. Yamana Ayao. Offset print, 19% x 16%.”
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and Canada by Abrams Books, 81-83, 86, 87 89-92, 96, 105, 114, 116, 118, rate Museum; General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief
London 119, Jon Cross/Erica Staton: 42, 45, Jason of the Army General Staff, signs the Instru-
Mandella: 32 top, 46, Jonathan Muzikar: 76, ment of Surrender on behalf of Japanese |m-
85, Kate Keller: 58, Keller/John Wronn: 84, perial General Headquarters, on board USS
Library of Congress Control Number: Mali Olatunji: 94, Thomas Griesel: 54, 88, Missouri (BB-63), September 2, 1945. Cour-
2009921182 95-97, 99, 102, 104, 108, 109, 117 122-29, tesy US National Archives; Honda Supercub
134, 135, Griesel/Muzikar: 111, 115, Griesel/ motorcycle, 1959, Courtesy hondanews.com;
SBN: 978-0-87070-739-41
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Wronn: 103; Laurent Sully Jaulmes: 17; Peter of the Yoyogi sport center. © 2009 ClO;
This book is typeset in Neue Helvetica Lindbergh: 28 right. Images pp. 137-39, by Honda Civic car, 1972. Courtesy hon-
by Duke & Company, Devon, column, left to right: Rickshaw, Japan danews.com; Pac-Man game images. Pac-
1880-92. Courtesy Powerhouse Museum, Man® © 1980 Namco Bandai Games, Inc.;
Pennsylvania. The paper is R4 Matt
Sydney; Dressing gown, Japan c. 1880. Silk Money Brokers Take Rest at a Tokyo Broker-
Satin 170 grm? and cotton, 53” long (134.6 cm). The Metro- age, November 6, 1998. Toshiyushi Aizawa.
politan Museum of Art. Gift of Katherine Bab- © 2009 Reuters/ Toshiyuki Aizawa; Eternal,
Color separation by cock Cavalli, 1970, and Gift of Theodore 2008, Tokujin Yoshioka. Courtesy Swarovski.
Fischer Ells, 1975. © 2009 The Metropolitan © 2009 Tokujin Yoshioka
Eurofotolit, Milan
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cabinet, Japan 1890-1910. Courtesy V&A Im- In reproducing the images contained in
Printed and bound by Conti Tipocolor, ages, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; this publication, the Museum obtained the
Florence, Italy Japanese pavilion at the World’s Columbian permission of the rights holders whenever
Exposition in Chicago, 1893. From Columbian possible. If the Museum could not locate
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Grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposi- information concerning such rights holders
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Rebecca Roberts editor tion of 5000 Miles of Railroad Track, Japan
1906. Color lithograph and collotype, 5/%« x Epigraph page 11: Empire of Signs,
5 Continents Editions 3%s" (18.8 x 8.8 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard
Boston. Leonard A. Lauder Collection of (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 43.
Debbie Bibo ecitorial director Japanese Postcards. © 2009 Museum of Originally published as L'Empire des signes
Laura Maggioni editorial’coordinator Fine Arts, Boston; True Report of the Great (Switzerland: Editions d’Art Albert Skira
Annarita De Sanctis layout Sea Battle at Lushun Bay; Number Two, S.A., 1970).
Kinship by Design: uv
Japan and The Museum of Modern Art
Paola Antonelli

Japanese Design in the Twentieth Century: 11

Tradition Encounters the Modern World
Penny Sparke

Catalogue

Timeline
Penny Sparke

Bibliography 140
Penny Sparke

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art

AN:
NY
 Paola Antonelli

Kinship by Design: Japan and

The Museum of Modern Art

Japanese designers, with their restless curiosity and their dreams of building a new world
through art and design, are leaders in both modern and postmodern design, and their work
has found an important place in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. The relation-
ship between the Museum and design from Japan is the product of a natural attraction and
elective affinity first manifested in the middle years of the century. Like the objects designed
at the Bauhaus, in Finland, or in the American Midwest that populated MoMA’s galleries, the
traditional Japanese hand-crafted objects celebrated in those years by Seotsu Yanagi, the
champion and disseminator of the Mingei folkcraft movement, are characterized by formal
reduction, material economy, and strict functionalism.

The Museum showcased its affinity with Japanese design in 1941 when it mounted a major
retrospective of the work of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose
encounter with Japanese architecture and design culture had sparked his revolutionary
stance toward the discipline. Arthur Drexler, who led MoMA’s Department of Architecture
and Design for thirty-five years, beginning in 1951, not only acquired and exhibited Japanese
design and architecture but also helped shape a new generation of curators equally fluent in
Japanese contemporary material culture. In the first year of his tenure the Museum mounted
the exhibition Japanese Household Objects, from which it acquired tea ceremony objects
and other Mingei artifacts, and in the summers of 1954 and 1955 it erected a traditional
Japanese wooden house in the Sculpture Garden, designed by architect Junzo Yoshimura
and built by the most skilled Japanese craftsmen then living. The house, the third in a series
of buildings erected in the garden since 1949, was an inspiration for the 1955 exhibition The
Architecture of Japan, which was accompanied by a series of small shows about Japanese
calligraphy, pottery, and vernacular graphics and paired with a tour of a selection of objects
from MoMA’s collection to four Japanese cities.

Museum curators continued to follow the evolution of Japanese design very closely, and
under the leadership of Stuart Wrede (1986 to 1992) and Terence Riley (1992 to 2006), the
Department’s connection with Japan strengthened. Matilda McQuaid organized mono-
graphic exhibitions of the work of textile artist Kyoko Kumai (1991) and architect Shigeru Ban
(2000) as well as the major exhibition Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese
Textiles (1998), which featured work by many of the designers discussed in this volume,
including Reiko Sudo, Issey Miyake, and Junichi Arai. Curators studied and exhibited the
work of Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando—to whom Wrede devoted a monographic show in 1991—and
many others, and in 1997 the preeminent Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi was selected
as designer of the Museum's millennial renovation and expansion project.

The Museum of Modern Art’s collection of recent design, including work by these Japanese
practitioners, illustrates that in the best of contemporary production, the rigor and discipline
of classic modernism are tempered (and simultaneously preserved) by the exercise of a sort
of poetic liberty that transforms objects into pure poetry and simplicity into baroque detail.
This form of postmodernism, evolving within the modern tradition, thrives in Japan and at
MoMA, where it is best represented by the ground-breaking furniture designs of the late
Japanese master Shiro Kuramata—his dressers 49 Drawers (1970) and Side 2 (1970) and
the Miss Blanche Chair (1988). The same creative spirit characterizes the work of designers
Kazuhiro Yamanaka and Tokujin Yoshioka and the design group Nendo, whose widely varied
work MoMA curators collect passionately. Japan’s tradition of minimalism is carried on in the
contemporary work of Naoto Fukasawa—in his cellphones, for example, whose extreme
simplicity is the result of the designer's effort to tame form and function into objects of purity
and lightness. Technology and poetry also meet in the recent products of corporations such
as Sony and Yamaha.

Japanese culture is characterized by extremes. From the other side of the world, it may be
hard to see a connection between Mingei and the flamboyance and stylistic delirium—at
least by Western standards—of the Harajuku style, between the ethereal and obsessive
ritualism of a tea ceremony and the unabashed violence and sexuality of anime, between
handmade traditional objects and fantastic postmodern furniture. Yet, despite this astonish-
ing cultural range and even with differences in language and culture, The Museum of
Modern Art’s curators and Japanese designers have always understood each other.

||
 Penny Sparke

Japanese Design in the

Twentieth Century: Tradition
Encounters the Modern World

The Japanese thing . . . is not outlined, illuminated; . . . around it, there is: nothing, an empty space.
—Roland Barthes, 1970

For over half a century, Japan has nurtured a distinctive and extraordinarily successful
modern design culture. Holding firmly to tradition while simultaneously embracing all that
contemporary visual and material culture has to offer, Japanese designers have evolved a
design ethos and aesthetic that has increasingly exerted a strong international influence,
affecting developments in architecture, interior design, product design, fashion, graphic
design, and craft around the world. While neighboring countries—Korea, Taiwan, Singapore,
and China, among them—have been working hard to emulate this success, in the early
twenty-first century Japan still leads the way, producing some of the world’s most innovative
designers and design.

1850 to 1950
An account of Japan’s modern design movement must start in the late nineteenth century,
when the country opened its doors to the West. For the entire duration of the Edo period,
between 1602 and 1867 Japan, under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns, had looked
inward, sustaining and nourishing its deeply rooted traditions and developing new ones:
Kabuki theater and ukiyo-e prints were just two responses to the cultural demands of that
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Utagawa Kuniyasu (Japanese, 1794-1834), Three Kabuki Actors Playing Hanetsuki, c, 1828. Three polychrome woodblock prints,
each: 8% x 7/4" (21.3 x 18.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Jack Greene Gift, 2001

Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760-1849), The Great Wave at Kanagawa from Series of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. c.. 1880-32.
Polychrome woodblock print, 10% x 14"/a" (25.7 x 379 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art. H. O, Havemeyer Collection, bequest of
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
era’s new merchant class. Beginning in the 1850s, Japan began to open up—a process that
culminated in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, represented by the Emperor's return to rule—
and embraced the challenge not simply of catching up but, more important, of leap-
frogging the technological, social, and economic achievements it was encountering for the
first time. In exchange for technological know-how, Japan offered its decorative goods—
fans, kimonos, lacquered bowls, and prints—to the West.

During the 1870s and 1880s, western dress and furniture began to replace the kimono and
the tatami mat as Japan underwent a rapid program of industrialization and westernization.
Over the following century, these processes came to influence a larger and larger portion of
Japanese society. As the country gradually embraced a way of life inspired by the West,
design developed erratically, sometimes moving enthusiastically forward, fired by advances
in technology, and sometimes resisting advancement, mirroring and reinvigorating the
continuing role of tradition and spirituality in everyday life. At its best, design brought the two
forces—tradition and a belief in progress—together in a new union.

One of the strongest reactions to industrialization is reflected in the ideas and achievements
of the Japanese Mingei, or folkcraft, movement, which gathered momentum in the 1920s.
Just as the English designer William Morris, together with his Arts and Crafts followers, had
demonstrated a dislike of anonymous, mechanized mass manufacture and revived medieval
craftsmanship in the last decades of the nineteenth century, so the Japanese philosopher
and art critic Soetsu Yanagi, together with potters Shoji Hamada and Kawai Kanjiro, sought
a return to traditional Japanese craftwork. In his 1927 book Kégei no Michi (The Way of
Crafts), Yanagi discusses the rich heritage that crafts embody and the importance of
sustaining their production in a modern context.

The promoters of Mingei valued functionality above all else. Their museum—The Japan Folk
Crafts Museum—opened in Tokyo in 1936. In it, historical and modern examples of
traditional Japanese crafts are displayed for the public to see. These ceramics, textiles,
baskets, and lacquered and wooden items are not meant to be viewed as art objects; they
are presented as simple, functional objects created to facilitate daily life. Objects such as
bamboo whisks (chasen) and ladles (hishaku), both used in the tea ceremony, fall into that
category. They demonstrate that natural materials may be transformed into simple, useful
objects through skilled craftsmanship.

Shoji Hamada played a key role in the Mingei movement. He studied at Tokyo’s Advanced
Technical College, and following his graduation in 1916 he became acquainted with the
English potter Bernard Leach, who was spending time in Japan. Hamada subsequently
traveled to England and spent three years working with Leach in his hometown of St. Ives, in
Cornwall. The Japanese potter’s simply decorated glazed pots and bowls successfully
combine Japanese tradition with a sense of contemporaneity based in an understanding of
the continuing relevance of craft to modern life. Another potter working in Japan in this
period, Kitaoji Rosanjin, combined pottery with calligraphy, woodwork, lacquer, and painting
(and was a renowned restaurateur, as well). Many of his ceramics were destroyed by the
Tokyo earthquake of 1923, after which he created some of the classic pots of the century.
His pieces adhere to the principle of wabi—the rustic, understated beauty inspired by the
world of nature that underpins traditional Japanese crafts. Through the contribution of the
textile craftsman Kichinosuke Tonomura (who set up the Kurashiki Museum of Folkcraft in
1948), weaving also came to play an important role in the Mingei movement, and by the end
of the 1930s a powerful modern Japanese craft movement embracing a range of media had
been established. Just as in the West the ethic and aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts
movement underpinned the work of designers at the Bauhaus school in the 1920s—which,
in turn, was the basis for subsequent full-fledged architectural and design modernism—
so Japan’s early-twentieth-century craft revival established a strong foundation for the
technology-led modern design movement that emerged some decades later.

Japanese and western architects and designers did not work in ignorance of each other.
Soon after encountering Japanese art and design, westerners began to borrow heavily from
it. In turn-of-the-century Europe, the French and Belgian Art Nouveau movement was
heavily influenced by japonisme. |In the United Kingdom, designer Christopher Dresser drew
inspiration from the asymmetry and decoration of Japanese artifacts. American architect
Frank Lloyd Wright admired the lines, structure, and underlying philosophy of the interior of
the Japanese house, and he incorporated them into his designs. In the early 1920s Wright
built the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which would be another victim of the 1923 earthquake.
 hristopher Dresser (British, 1884-1904). Wave Bowl. c. 1880, Glazed earthenware, 7 x 7 x 4/4" (178 »
Manufacturer: Linthoroe Pottery Wort Yorkshire, England, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, James David Draper Gift
 Junzo Sakakura
(Japanese, 1904-1969).
Japanese Pavilion at the
1937 Paris Exposition
Internationale

Also, along with the numerous Japanese students who traveled outside their country to be
educated in the West, young Japanese architects came to Europe and the United States to
study and work alongside modern masters. Junzo Sakakura and Kunio Mayekawa both
spent time in the studio of French modernist architect Le Corbusier. Sakakura went on to
create a pavilion for the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale that combined elements of
eastern and western architecture in a single building. In 19383 German modernist architect
Bruno Taut was invited to Japan by the Japan Architects Association, and he ended up
spending three years there. Le Corbusier's collaborator, Charlotte Perriand, lived in Japan
between 1940 and 1943. Her task was to advise the Japanese Ministry for Trade and Industry
on industrial art and suggest which Japanese goods would appeal most to western markets.

By the early 1940s the two-way traffic of designers and design objects between Japan and
the West had become significant, and an industrial, economic, and aesthetic infrastructure
had been created for the realization of Japan’s own modern design movemént. The
devastation the country experienced in World War Il and the necessary reconstruction after
its surrender in 1945 slowed its development, but by 1950 Japan was poised to engage fully
with the modern world, both technologically and culturally.
Charlotte Perriand
(French, 1903-1999).
Basculante Chaise
Longue. 1940.
Lacquer, bamboo,
oak wood, beech
wood, and aluminum,
29% x 55)k x 2014”
(74 x 140 x 52 cm),
Musée des arts
décoratifs, Paris

1950 to 1985
In the 1950s and 1960s, Japan entered a period of growth that has become known as the
“economic miracle.” As it completed the process of industrialization and westernization,
becoming a global manufacturing power, the country was transformed into a consumer
society. Several decades-old manufacturing companies came to the fore and turned their
attention to high-tech consumer goods. The roots of the Seiko watch company, which made
an impact with its high-tech products in those years, go back to the late nineteenth century,
as do those of many of the successful postwar automobile corporations—such as Toyota,
Mazda, and Datsun. Sharp, established in 1912 as the Hayakawa Electric Company, was
transformed in the postwar years into a leading manufacturer of electric and electronic
goods. Its early consumer products were more technically than aesthetically appealing,
however. The same could be said of a number of other goods produced around the same
time, such as the bulky 1950 G-type Tape Recorder by Sony (a new, postwar company),
which owed much to wartime developments but had not yet been transformed into a
desirable consumer product.
In the 1950s Japanese manufacturers had to create home markets for their goods before
attempting to address the challenge of overseas sales. To that end, in 1955 Toshiba created
an electric rice cooker, which rapidly became an essential item for newlyweds. As the
number of servants in Japanese homes continued to decline, the demand for electric and
electronic gadgets grew apace. In 1960 Sharp offered Japanese consumers the first color
television set. It is a bulky wooden object with Detroit styling applied to its metal control
panel. Two years later Sharp launched a domestic microwave oven, another crudely
designed object. Advanced technology alone was enough to engage consumers.

The presence of the American army on Japanese soil in the 1950s stimulated a strong
program of Americanization, and many of the first products to be manufactured—transistor
radios, automobiles, motorbikes, and tape recorders—owe much to the idiom of stream-
lining. The fascia of Sony’s little TR-55 Transistor Radio of 1955, for example, has a Detroit
look to it, as does the Toyota RS Crown automobile of the same year. Likewise, Tokyo’s
famous bullet train, launched in 1964, features a dynamic streamlined profile. However,
Japanese product designers quickly moved beyond surface styling as a means of making
goods appealing and consumable and began to exploit the possibilities of technological
virtuosity as a powerful selling tool. Learning from the past—in particular from the Japanese
ability to adapt to small, highly flexible living spaces, using screens (shoji) to transform
spaces as needed and storing items, such as futons, when not in use—a number of
Japanese high-tech manufacturers began to develop sophisticated products characterized
by portability, flexibility, and a miniature scale. In 1959 Sony developed the world’s first solid-
state television receiver, the TX8-301 Television. It has an eight-inch screen and weighs only
thirteen pounds. Combining technical virtuosity and clever design, Japan’s electronic
products began to gain a significant reputation in the international marketplace.

In the late 1970s, the Sony Walkman employed miniaturization as a marker of high
technology and as a means of linking the product to the body and exploiting its potential to
transform daily life—ensuring, thereby, that the traditional closeness between material
culture and daily life in Japanese culture would continue to inform high-tech products. In the
hands of Japan’s designers, objects—“tools”—existed to support life, not the other way
around. The Walkman utterly transformed daily activities such as riding the subway and
jogging in the city streets. Mitsubishi's Electric Micro-Shaver (1980) and Casio’s little Film
Card Solar Calculator (1982), among numerous other objects, demonstrate Japanese
Toshiba Corp. (Japan,
established 1937).
Electric Automatic
Rice Cooker. 1955

manufacturers’ ongoing ability to exploit advanced technology and to create electronic

products with no bulk. Japanese designers also excel at creating miniature nonelectronic
items, such as Yoshiaki lida’s Plateon Sewing Kit (1986). These objects demonstrate the
country’s advanced developments in plastics molding, and they built on Japan’s tradition of
careful packaging and effective storage in the domestic sphere.
Sony Corp. (
established 194
Trans or Radio

Sony Corp. (Japan,

established 1946)
Walkman TCS 300
with He Ac
oS

c, 1980
As well as embracing American commercial styling, in the early postwar years Japanese
designers began to respond to developments in Europe, emulating European pedagogic
practices and the modernist ideals that underpinned them. Through the work of the critic
Masaru Katsumie and others, the ideas developed at the Bauhaus were transported from
Germany to Japan, and a number of design-education institutions were established in Japan
that embraced Bauhaus pedagogy. In Tokyo they included the Creative Arts Education
Institute (1951), the Kuwasawa Design School (1954), and the Visual Art Education Center
(1955). The Industrial Arts Research Institute, associated with the Ministry for Trade and
Industry—and at which the German architect Bruno Taut acted as adviser in 1983-34—
moved into design education in those years; the furniture and product designer Isamu
Kenmochi, one of its founders, headed the institute’s industrial design department.

A number of organizations emerged in the 1950s that would play key roles in the
development of Japanese design over the next few decades. They include the Japan
Advertising Artists Club (1951); the Japanese Industrial Designer’s Association (1952); the
International Design Committee (1953); the Japan Designer Craftsman Association (1956);
the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Council (1957), which introduced the Good Design
Selection “G-Mark” System in emulation of Italy’s Compasso d’Oro award; and the Japan
Interior Designers’ Association (1958). Collectively, these organizations, all of which mirrored
western equivalents, provided a supportive framework for the further development of
modern Japanese design. Although in 1954 Japan hadn't been ready to participate in the
10th Milan Triennale, an important international design exhibition, three years later Japanese
designers felt confident enough to play a part.

The government and large corporations also provided support for design. However, unlike
their American equivalents who made a virtue of naming the famous consultant designers
they patronized—men such as Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel
Geddes, and Henry Dreyfuss—Japanese companies did not single out individuals but
depended, rather, upon anonymous, in-house design teams that collaborated with the
engineering and marketing departments. Companies’ brand names were all-important and,
in line with Japanese tradition, designers were considered to be faithful employees working
in a collective culture. The companies were, however, training grounds for many of the
young designers who in later years would become much more visible internationally and be
credited for their individual contributions. Makio Hasuike, a product designer who set up a
company in Italy in 1968, worked in his early career for Seiko, Mitsubishi, Mazda, and
Honda, while Naoto Fukasawa, a younger designer who came to prominence in the 1990s,
worked for Seiko in the 1980s.

In spite of the widespread anonymity of designers employed by Japanese corporations

through the 1960s and 1970s, a handful did succeed in making their individual contributions
visible. Kenji Ekuan, a founding member of the Japanese consultant practice GK Design
Group in 1958, is a rare example of an independent designer who worked outside the
corporations. Before his design schooling at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and
Music, where he first came in contact with his future GK colleagues, Ekuan had trained as a
Buddhist priest. Throughout his long and successful career as a consultant designer—he
was responsible for Yamaha motorcycles and the Akita bullet train, among other projects—
he sought to maintain links between traditional Japanese aesthetics and contemporary
design. His simple Kikkoman Soy Sauce Dispenser (1961)—one of Japan’s most banal
artifacts—demonstrates how that philosophy can be applied to an everyday object. Isamu
Kenmochi, a founder of the Industrial Arts Research Institute, began working as a furniture
designer under Bruno Taut in the 1930s and formed Isamu Kenmochi Design Associates in
1955. He is best known, perhaps, for his collaboration with the Japanese American sculptor
and designer Isamu Noguchi, whom he met in the office of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange
in 1950. Together the artist and designer created Stool (1963), a piece of bamboo furniture
that became an international icon of modern Japanese design. Although the item is
constructed through traditional Japanese basket weaving, its form reflects the organic
aesthetic embraced by modern furniture designers in the West in those years. This
combination of Japanese craft traditions and modern design made a powerful statement
about the role and meaning of modern design in Japan, especially as stools and other
chairs were still relatively new objects there. Another design by Kenmochi, the wooden
Kashiwado Chair of 1961, also became an internationally recognized icon of modern
Japanese design. Most important, Kenmochi’s exposure to western modernism—he
traveled extensively in the West and collected many objects and images there—helped
introduce other Japanese designers to it.
Sori Yanagi—the son of Soetsu Yanagi, leading promoter of the Mingei movement—played a
key role in the early years of the modern Japanese design movement. Between 1940 and
1942 he worked in Paris in Charlotte Perriand’s studio, learning about European modernism
firsthand. An artist by training, he studied industrial design beginning in 1947 He opened his
own Tokyo design studio in 1952, and the same year he cofounded the Japanese Industrial
Designers Association with Kenmochi and Riki Watanabe. Like Kenmochi, Yanagi brought
Japanese tradition and modern western design principles into contact. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in his Butterfly Stool (1956), which combines Japanese aesthetics with
molded plywood, an industrial woodworking technique developed by the American
designers Charles and Ray Eames. Yanagi worked in both furniture and product design, and
in one of the first attempts by an electronics manufacturer to work with a member of the
new Japanese design community, Sony hired him to design the H-type tape recorder,
launched in March 1951. Yanagi went on to create a wide range of products, including
ceramic and metal kitchen objects, lampshades, children’s toys, underground rail stations,
cars, and motorcycles, and he designed the torch for Tokyo’s Olympic Games in 1964.
Thirteen years later he became the director of The Japan Folk Crafts Museum, which his
father had helped to found four decades earlier, in 1936.

A younger group of Japanese architects and furniture designers carried on the work initiated
in the 1950s and 1960s by Kenmochi and Yanagi. Kazuhide Takahama and Reiko Tanabe
both created furniture in the modern idiom. Takahama had studied architecture in Tokyo
between 1949 and 1953. Like many of his contemporaries, he had traveled to Italy in 1957
to see the 11th Milan Triennale, and after being approached by the Italian manufacturer Dino
Gavina he became one of the first of his generation of Japanese designers to stay and work
there. Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, he produced numerous furniture pieces for a
range of Italian manufacturers, including a stretched-fabric lamp for Sirrah that won the
Compasso d’Oro award for design in 1979. Tanabe also trained as an architect and worked
in the areas of interior and furniture design. As Yanagi did before him, he employed molded
plywood; his Stool (1961) is one of his greatest achievements in that material. Tanabe’s work,
like Yanagi’s, displays the unity of Japanese tradition and western modernism that defined
Japanese modern design in those years.
The best-known member of this heroic second generation of Japanese modern furniture
designers is the interior and furniture designer Shiro Kuramata. Kuramata was the first
Japanese designer working in the modern style to be recognized and admired outside
Japan. Like his contemporaries, he built upon Japan’s traditional aesthetic forms, combining
them with metal and plastic and other new materials from the West with the goal of aligning
traditional Japanese aesthetics and crafts with modern western sensibilities and production
techniques, but he made a more individualistic contribution to postwar Japanese design
than many in his generation. Operating in the gap between design and fine art, Kuramata
moved beyond “tasteful” modernist design to embrace a new, postmodern approach. He
developed a multifarious group of forms, materials, and images with which he expressed his
thoughts and preoccupations.

Kuramata’s background was in woodcraft,

which he had studied in Tokyo, and furniture
making, both of which had been followed
by training in interior design that included
principles developed in the West. He first applied them in his work for the interior design
department of the Matsuya department store. He opened his own office in 1965 and began
to work on a number of projects that made an immediate impact. Over the following years,
up until his death in 1991, he created a body of work that included over 180 pieces of
furniture. He also designed a number of store interiors, including boutiques in Paris, Tokyo,
and New York for the fashion designer Issey Miyake. Characterized by terrazzo or metal
mesh (which he had introduced in the Matsuya department store), those temporary spaces
brought together two hugely talented designers.

The preoccupations displayed in Kuramata’s interior designs are mirrored by those that
inform his furniture designs. From his multidrawered and irregularly shaped dressers
49 Drawers and Side 2 (1970), he went on to create the renowned all-steel How High the
Moon Armchair (1986) as well as other strikingly innovative designs. His Miss Blanche Chair
(1988), inspired by the corsage worn by the main character in Tennessee Williams’s 1947
play A Streetcar Named Desire, epitomizes Kuramata’s skill in combining transparency,
spatial articulation, and storytelling in a single piece of furniture. Kuramata succeeded in
bringing Japanese furniture design to the attention of the rest of the world, and in his work
for Miyake and others he helped to show the international community that Japan was also
excelling in the areas of architecture, interior design, and fashion.
While deeply rooted traditions linked to portability, flexibility, and the quality of everyday life
informed many Japanese designs for audio and video equipment and cars, the craft-based
fields of architecture, interior design, fashion, textiles, and ceramics were more linked to
another range of Japanese traditions, including a Zen Buddhism-inspired aesthetic
minimalism that from the early 1980s onward was one of the world’s favored design idioms.
Existing alongside the decorative, complex forms and images of postmodernism, this
neomodern style provided a level of stability in a world that was increasingly characterized
by change. Linked to the new materiality that accompanied, and indeed offset,
developments in the digital world (which favored the virtual over the real), the minimal
Japanese interior represented everything that had been lost in western culture. In Japan
both architects and furniture designers embraced the possibilities it offered. Studio 80,
founded by Shigeru Uchida and Toru Nishioka in 1981, was responsible for many stunning
minimal designs, including fashion-boutique interiors for Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake.
Uchida was dependent on traditiona! Japanese ideas of interior space, but he promoted
new ways of tea drinking and created a number of rooms for that purpose. Takashi
Sugimoto created the firm Super Potato Design in 1973. Since then his team has been
responsible for many remarkable, minimal spaces emphasizing a commitment to natural
materials, including wood and granite. Recent designs include the interior of Seoul’s Park
Hyatt hotel in 2005.

The story of modern Japanese architecture parallels that of design in the years after 1945. It
was driven by architectural giants such as Kazuo Shinohara, Mayumi Miyawaki, Hiroshi
Hara, Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, and Kenzo Tange and those who studied under and worked
with him (Kisho Kurakawa, Arata Isozaki, Fumihiko Maki, and Yoshio Taniguchi). Japanese
architecture influenced the development of modern industrial design through its many
protagonists who also engaged in design projects. Isozaki, a member of the same
generation as Takahama, Tanabe, and Kuramata, is among the best-known designers in that
context. Isozaki studied under Kenzo Tange in Tokyo. After completing his studies in 1954,
he worked in Tange’s office until 19638, when he set up his own practice. Through the 1960s
lsozaki was a member of the Metabolists, an architecture group so named because of the
5]
organic forms of their buildings. He broke away from them in the 1970s to develop his own
form of soft architectural minimalism, which combined Japanese and western traditions and
aligned itself with international postmodernism. His buildings of those years include the Oita
Branch Bank (1966) and the Fujimi Country Club, also in Oita City (1978). By the 1980s he
had developed a more mannered architectural style, which is visible in his design for the Los
Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (1984-85). He designed the Monroe Chair (which
owes a huge debt to the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whom
Isozaki admired enormously) in 1974. It quickly became an icon of modern Japanese design,
earning Isozaki a reputation as a designer of worth as well as a prolific, internationally active
architect.

Masayuki Kurokawa, another architect-designer born in the prewar years, graduated from
the Department of Architecture at the Nagoya Institute of Technology and set up his
architecture practice in 1967 Embracing furniture, clocks, watches, lighting fixtures, drinking
glasses, cutlery, and jewelry, his work is deeply indebted to the culture and craft traditions of
the Kanazawa region of Japan. The boundaries between architecture, interior design,
product design, furniture design, and fashion and textiles eroded throughout the 1970s and
1980s, extending the idea of the unified designed environment that underpins traditional
Japanese craft and design. If spaces are defined by the smallest objects contained within
them, then as much attention must be given to, say, a pen or an ashtray as to the space
that contains it. Kurokawa’s Gom set of stainless steel and rubber desk objects (1975-92)—
ashtrays, containers, a pen, and the like—epitomizes the minimal approach of traditional
Japanese craftsmen.

Japanese fashion design made a huge impact internationally in the 1980s. Its roots extend
back to Hanae Mori, who, from the 1950s onward, worked to establish a modern Japanese
fashion design movement. Her Tokyo fashion house opened in 1951, and she spent the rest
of that decade creating costumes for the film industry. In the midt960s Mori moved into
haute couture, making a name for herself in the United States and France. With the
emergence in the 1960s of such hugely talented individuals as Issey Miyake, Kenzo Takada,
Kansai Yamamoto (who was inspired by the costumes worn in Kabuki theater), Yohji
Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo, a modern Japanese fashion movement was established,
Arata lsozaki (Japanese,
born 1981), Monroe Chair.
1974. Leather and wood,
xX 2]
(109 x 54,5 x 54,1 cm)

27
Yohji Yamamoto (Japanese, born 1943). Autumn-winter collection, 1981-82

Rei Kawakubo (Japanese, bom 1942). Comme des Garcons (Japan, established 1969), Sweater. Fall-winter, 1982-83

and it rapidly gained an international reputation. Yohji Yamamoto and Kawakubo developed
an “antifashion” movement characterized by an austere minimalism, a reduced color palette,
and “deconstructed” garments. They introduced to the rest of the world a new philosophy of
fashion, based on the loose-fitting kimono, that emphasized the importance of textiles and
the sculptural role of dress.

Miyake set up his studio in Tokyo in 1970 after training in graphic design and spending
several years working in Paris and New York. Characterized by their flowing forms and, from
the late 1980s onward, their tightly pleated fabrics, his garments transformed the rela-
tionship between clothing and the bodies it envelops. The importance of textiles to new
Japanese fashion was demonstrated by Miyake’s collaborations with Japan’s leading
modern textile designer, the weaver Junichi Arai, through the 1970s and 1980s. Arai’s
contribution to modern Japanese design is hugely significant, as it was he who brought
Japanese traditions in that field into the modern era. Arai was born into a mill-owning family
in the city of Kiryu, in the Gunma Prefecture, a long-standing center for textile production.
From the mid+950s onward he injected modernity into traditional weaving practice by
introducing metals into his woven fabrics. By the late 1970s he was using computers to
innovate yet further and was pushing the traditional techniques of ikat and tie-dye into new
areas. In 1984 Arai cofounded NUNO, a company and retail outlet specializing in innovative
fabrics. His work evokes the natural world, referring to waves and human hair, and
emphasizes the rich textural possibilities of woven fabrics. Arai’s continuing respect for
Japanese tradition is reflected in his collaborations with the local craftspeople who create his
products. His ability to cross the boundaries between art, craft, technology, and fashion
renders the distinctions between those categories redundant.

Through the early 1980s, product designers, architects, interior designers, fashion
designers, and textile designers increasingly collaborated on projects. Others—graphic
designers and ceramicists, for example—remained more firmly entrenched in their traditional
territories, but they still engaged in a considerable amount of innovation. Postwar
developments in graphic design built on Japanese traditions in packaging, popular prints,
and magazines. In the nineteenth century, prints had been one of the mediums through
which modern Japanese culture was popularized in Europe. That export phenomenon
persisted after 1945, although, as in architecture and product design, graphic design in
Japan began to integrate ideas and ideals of European modernism. This two-way
movement is expressed, for example, in posters by Yusaku Kamekura and Tadanori Yokoo.
American packaging also made an impact in the early postwar years, and the American
designer Raymond Loewy modeled a cigarette package for a Japanese tobacco company
on his famous design for Lucky Strike cigarettes. The 1964 Olympic Games provided an
opportunity for Japanese graphic designers to showcase their skills, and from that year
onward a modern Japanese graphic design movement, based on European Constructivism,
developed. The giants of postwar Japanese graphic design include Ikko Tanaka, Kiyoshi
Awazu, and Shigeo Fukuda. Fukuda, a graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts
Ey
and Music, worked not only as a graphic designer but also as a sculptor, theatrical set
designer, and muralist. His skill as a visual humorist is widely recognized. In 1965 Fukuda
mounted an exhibition of his work that comprised 120 toys made from natural materials. He
cites the Italian designer Bruno Munari, who worked in both two and three dimensions, as
an influence. In the mid-1980s Fukuda designed many striking posters.

Influenced by the same Pop sensibility that underpinned much Japanese graphic design of
the 1960s and 1970s, the ceramicist Makoto Komatsu’s little crumpled paper bags made of
porcelain and glass—such as the Crinkle Tumbler (1974)—reflect a meeting of craft traditions
with mass-mediated popular culture. Japan had always embraced the popular and the
everyday while also celebrating craft skills, and Komatsu’s artifacts succeeded in extending
that alliance into the postwar era.

1985 to now
By the mid1980s modern Japanese design was fully formed. Japan’s architecture, interior
design, high-tech products, graphic design, crafts, textiles, and fashion were widely
disseminated through the world’s design press and international exhibitions, and_ their
influence was widely felt. Most important, following the tradition established in the early
years of the twentieth century, Japanese designers increasingly traveled to the West to work
and to study, and western designers went to Japan to learn about its traditions and to work
in the exciting contemporary context of Japan’s design culture, which warmly embraced
new technology. The expansion of global interconnectedness in the 1980s meant that
nothing could be truly contained within national borders—design included—and a fluid
movement across boundaries began to encourage the development of hybrid cultures.
Where design was concerned, hybridity provided a context for enhanced creativity and
innovation.

In 1982 Makio Hasuike established MH Way, in Milan. He had moved to Italy in 1963 after
working for a number of Japanese corporations, including Seiko, with whom he had
designed clocks for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Hasuike spent his first five years in Italy
working for other designers, including Rodolfo Bonetti, before launching his own company.
Shigeo Fukuda
(Japanese, 1982-2009).
Impossible Utensils, 1981.
Ceramic, dimensions vary

MH Way worked across the design/manufacturing spectrum and issued, among other
products, a range of plastic briefcases that proved to be extremely popular, as well as the
highly successful polyvinyl chloride Zoom Tube, designed to carry drawings. Hasuike’s work
displays aesthetic characteristics—purity, clarity, simplicity, transparency, portability, a love of
materials—that Owe much to Japanese tradition. His family of desk products—including
pens, pencil cases, and diaries—have much in common with the simple everyday objects
created by Muji, a no-name brand that became a global Japanese success story in the
1990s.

Toshiyuki Kita arrived in Italy in 1975, and like Hasuike he made his reputation there. He had
studied at the Naniwa Design College and opened his own office in Tokyo in 1967; he had
been collaborating with Italian firms since 1969. His first Italian design of note, the famous
Wink Lounge Chair, was launched in 1980 by Cassina, the premier Italian furniture maker. Its
bright colors and Mickey Mouse ears betray Its western Pop allegiance, but its flexibility and
adjustability are Japanese in inspiration. After the success of the Wink Lounge Chair, Kita
designed a series of Japanese-style lights and from his base in Italy initiated a campaign to
 Toshiyuki Kita (Japanese,
born 1942), Wink Lounge
Chair (model 111.01).
1980, Polyurethane foam,
steel, and Dacron,
upright: 40% x 31% x 38”
(108.2 x 80/3 x 83.8 em);
reclining: 24%" x 6'3 7%"
x 38" (61.9 x 192.4 x
83.8 cm). Manufacturer:
Cassina SpA, Milan
The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Gift of
Atelier Intemational, Ltd.,
1981

asanori Umeda
Japanese, bom 1941).
Tawaraya Ring. 1981.
AE SSO 2 SQ"
(i2 x 2°8 x 2.Siimn):
Manufacturer; Memyhis
Sri, Italy. Collection the
Design Museum, Belém,
Portugal, and The
National Museum o
Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan

[32]
protect traditional Japanese crafts—papermaking, lacquerwork, bamboo work, and basket
making—from extinction.

The first exhibition of work by the Memphis design group, held in 1981 in Milan, represented
a key moment in the story of Japanese designers in Italy. Led by the veteran Italian designer
Ettore Sottsass, Memphis sought to renew the language of contemporary design, and three
Japanese designers—Arata lsozaki, Shiro Kuramata, and Masanori Umeda—were invited to
participate in the adventure. Their work was among the most innovative on display,
demonstrating that Japan was no longer following the European avant-garde but running
abreast with it or, arguably, leading it.

In the 1980s Japan was in rapid transition. A new consumer society was emerging whose
citizens favored products aligned with popular culture. Pink electrical appliances aimed at
young girls sat in stores alongside cute (kawaii) products such as Tomoyuki Sugiyama’s
Bubble Boy Speakers (1986), while everyday objects, such as plastic food and anonymous,
novel electrical goods, filled the shelves of retail outlets and the environment in general. The
coexistence of a range of cheap and cheerful popular designed goods and images—manga
comics and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, among them—with the campaign to retain craft
traditions represented a continuation of the existence of two parallel levels of material culture
that had been in place in Japan for many years.

The economic recession of the 1990s changed things dramatically. The slowdown of the
economic expansion that had underpinned the emergence of Japan’s postwar design
culture (and the rise of the country’s corporations to domination of world markets) brought a
new sensibility to the fore. The pendulum swung away from ephemeral gadgets and popular
culture and back to the more universal, craft-based end of the design spectrum.
Architecture and interior design took on a new importance, and both disciplines re-
emphasized their roots in Japanese tradition. The anonymity of company designers was
replaced by a new, individualized design culture in which, following the example set by the
West, designers were revered almost as fine artists, capable of acts of creativity and poetry.
A new generation of designers emerged in the 1990s, many members of which had studied
and worked with the designers, such as Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake, who had come
ol
to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. The premature death of Kuramata in 1991 created a
hiatus in which Japan and the rest of the world reflected on where Japanese design had
come from and where it was going. Several exhibitions held around this time of Kuramata’s
work and of Japanese design in general from the period after 1950 offered ideal oppor-
tunities for such an assessment.

Most important, the processes of internationalization and globalization that were already in
motion accelerated after 1990, and the movement of designers across the globe increased
significantly. More and more Japanese designers worked outside the country, while
increasing numbers of westerners—including Nigel Coates, Jasper Morrison, George
Sowden, John Pawson, Norman Foster, and Ron Arad (British); Ettore Sottsass, Michele de
Lucchi, and Aldo Rossi (Italian); Marc Newson (Australian); and Philippe Starck (French)—
came to Japan to design.

Product design, one of the strongest of Japan’s design fields in the years following 1990,
took on a new identity in the postcorporation era. Individual designers became prominent,
and they increasingly embraced a wide spectrum of operation, from high-tech and electronic
goods to lighting and furniture. A few corporations, such as Canon, continued to work
successfully with in-house design teams. Following in the footsteps of craft-based product
designers—such as Michio Hanyu, who had created simple metal flatware in the 1960s—
many of the new product designers aligned themselves more closely with Japanese craft
traditions than with high technology. Among those born in the 1940s are Shun Takoaka and
Kei Takoaka (designers of the 1982 Front Rotation Alarm Clock), Hiroyuki Tazawa (who
designs objects made of recycled paper), and Kazuo Kawasaki, whose Carna Folding
Wheelchair (1989) grew from his own experience after he was injured in a car accident.
Kawasaki has made a significant impact with designs incorporating a strong social agenda.

The next generation of product designers, born in the late 1950s, includes Hiroaki Kozu
(Speakers, 1989) and Kosuke Tsumura (Final Home 44-Pocket Parka, 1994), who have
crossed the boundary between fashion and product design. However, Naoto Fukasawa has
undoubtedly been the most successful and influential designer of that generation. In 1989 he
left his job at Seiko in Japan and moved to San Francisco, where he joined the company
 | PLEATS
EASI

Issey Miyake (Japanese, bom 1938), Pleats Please (catalogue page). Spring-summer, 1994

that would soon become the prestigious design firm IDEO. In 1996 he returned home to set
up a Japanese branch of the firm, and he remained with it for the next six years. In 2008
Fukasawa formed his own company and became one of Japan's leading product designers;
he has taken on a number of roles, including creative director of Muji. In 2004 he launched
the domestic-product brand plusminuszero. The Wall-mounted CD Player (1989) he
designed for Muji, along with his mobile phone designs (Infobar Cellular Phone, 2003, and
Neon Cellular Phone, 2005) and the many other objects he has created—including the Plus
Minus Zero Humidifier (2003) and a range of household appliances and furniture items—
have earned him numerous design prizes. Fukasawa’s philosophy is rooted in the traditional
Japanese belief that design should make everyday life more beautiful and more efficient.
 Shin Azumi Japanese, born 1965), Tomoko Azumi (Japanese, born 1966), LEM Bar Stool, Bleached beech or dark walnut veneered
plywood, white and black lacquer, leather, fabric, and chrome-plated steel tubing, 29% x 138'%« x 16/4” (75 x 35 x 42 cm), Manufacturer:
Lapalma, Italy

Rieko Miyata (Japanese, born 1977). Saya-Lamp. 2008. Pendant lamp and satin ribbon, 8% x 4"%e" diam, (21 x 12 cm)

Younger product designers active today, born in the 1960s and 1970s, include Kazuhiro
Yamanaka, who created a range of lamps in the early 2000s (“Rainy Day” Lamps, 2008),
and Tokujin Yoshioka, one of Japan’s most innovative young designers. A graduate of the
Kuwasawa Design School, Yoshioka worked with both Kuramata and Miyake before going
freelance in 1992; he made his Milan debut a decade later. He is an interdisciplinary designer
who combines shop design with exhibition design and furniture design. He uses high
technology—especially fiber optics—in a very creative way, combining it with a sophisticated
approach to the use of light. Many of his designs are installations of one kind or another. He
compares the objects he designs to Japanese cuisine—their simple appearance conceals
the hard work that has gone into preparing them.

136]
Along with product, furniture, and environmental design, Japanese crafts have gone from
Strength to strength over the last two decades. In the area of textile design, in particular,
modern heroes, such as Junichi Arai, have led the way, with the Mingei tradition behind
them. A group of younger designers, born in the 1940s, includes Koichi Yoshimura, Kyoko
Kumai, Yoshihiro Kimura (who has worked with both Kansai Yamamoto and Issey Miyake),
and Eiji Miyamoto, also a collaborator with Miyake.

Reiko Sudo and Yuh Okano, two of Japan's younger textile designers, have made significant
contributions in recent years. Following the ethos and aesthetic Arai developed, both
designers subtly blend traditional values with new technology. Sudo and Arai formed NUNO
Corporation in 1984, and Sudo took over the firm three years later. She is best known for her
textured woven fabrics, which often incorporate pleats, and her extensive use of synthetic
materials and computer-aided design. Okano, educated at the Rhode Island School of
Design, also uses both synthetic and natural fabrics. In the parallel field of contemporary
ceramics, Shigeyoshi Morioka, among others, has shown that early-twentieth-century
Japanese pottery has not been forgotten, and reworked traditional forms are having a lasting
impact. Indeed, while it may have seemed that Japan's contribution to modern design lies in
its enthusiastic embrace of new technologies, as the twenty-first century advances it is
becoming increasingly apparent that its lasting contribution will, in reality, be in its skill in
bringing its traditions to face the challenges of the present day.

Although Japan’s economy has not yet fully rebounded from the recession of the 1990s, in
the early twenty-first century the country is a serious contender for world leadership in
innovation in contemporary design. Tokyo now boasts its own design museum—?21_21
Design Sight, led by Issey Miyake and Naoto Fukasawa—and it hosts its own annual design
shows and events along lines developed in Europe. Tokyo’s contemporary environment,
epitomized in the upmarket shopping street Omotesando Dori, pays homage to international
architecture and design. Young designers from around the world travel to Japan to see the
stunningly innovative projects on display, while young Japanese designers—including the
Nendo group; the Tonerico trio, two of whose members emerged from Shigero Uchida’s
office; and Rieko Miyata, who makes lamps out of ribbons—exhibit internationally. Others,
such as Shin and Tomoko Azumi, based in London, live and work abroad. The globalization
Toyota Motor Corp. (Japan, established 1987), Prius, Touring Edition. 2008

that began to emerge several decades ago is now a reality, and Japanese design may be
found anywhere in the world.

While a few of Japan’s corporations continue to produce world-class designs—a strikingly

minimal LCD projector designed by Takuya Niitsu for Sony and Toyota’s hybrid car, the Prius,
stand out in this context—the best Japanese design is done by talented individuals who
challenge conventions, cross boundaries, and call on tradition to provide a necessary
continuity with the past. There can be no doubt that the work of the giants of modern
Japanese design—Shiro Kuramata, Miyake, and Arata lsozaki, in particular—has been
seminal in bringing that past to bear on the present. Thanks to them, in the early twenty-first
century Japanese design no longer looks to the West for inspiration but is, rather, setting the
pace the rest of the world must follow.
 r a a
es -. e -

4 +

>

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CARE

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7
MWin|)
A \'\

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}
Shogen Kuroda
Dates unknown

Ladle, before 1953

Bamboo, 2% x 15% x 1
(5.7 x 40.3 x 4.8 cm)
Gift of Japan, 2001
Kitaoji Rosanjin
1883-1959

Vase, 1953
Bizen ware, 9 x 4/4" diam.
(22.8 x 11.4 cm)
Gift of the Japan Society, Inc.,
1954
Sony Corp.
Established 1946

Television (TX8-301), 1959

Plastics, metal, and glass,
8% x 8% x 10”
(21.6 x 21 x 25.4 cm)
Gift of Jo Carole and
Ronald S. Lauder, 1997

45]
 Sori Yanagi
Born 1915

Butterfly Stool, 1956

Molded plywood and metal,
15x Wis Xx 12
(39.4 x 44.4 x 30.8 cm)
Manufacturer: Tendo Co.,
Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of the designer, 1958

—=

Yusaku Kamekura

Iie OOK

Peacefully Use Atomic Energy,

1956
Silkscreen, 40% x 28
(102.8 x 72.7 cm)
Gift of the designer, 2000 [eR PIPER Zak
 Kitaoji Rosanjin
1883-1959

Footed Bowl, 1953

Hand-thrown Shino ware,
4" diam. (10.8 x 23.5 cm)
Gift of the Japan Society, Inc., 1954

48
Kitaoji Rosanjin
1883-1959

Square Platter, Rounded Edges, 1958

E-Shino ware, 1% x 10% x 10%”
(4.4 x 26 x 26.7 cm)
Gift of the Japan Society, Inc., 1954

49]
Hiroshi Ohchi

Born 1908

Nissan Landry [sic] Soap, 1954

Silkscreen, 28% x 19%”
(71.8 x 50.2 cm) wee
Gift of Jack Banning, 1987
\ NISSAN }
j LANDRY

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 Kenji Ekuan

Born 1929

GK Design Group
Established 1953

Kikkoman Soy Sauce Dispenser,

1961
Glass and polystyrene,
5% x 2%" diam. (13.3 x 6.4 cm)
Manufacturer: Kikkoman
Corp., Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 2005

54!
[
Reiko Tanabe

Born 1934

Stool, 1961
Molded plywood with teak veneer,
14¥ SN We (CSS) Se atey 2cm )
Manufacturer: Tendo Mokko nc
Yamagata-Ken, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1967

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 Bonniers International

Dates unknown

Ashtray, c. 1968
Metal-glazed ceramic,
eaexXe Ae Giaiiaw(4ao cul Oke (elm)
Gift of the manufacturer, 1968

[56
Yusaku Kamekura

ISiS—1997

Tokyo 1964, 1962

Lithograph, 40% x 21%”
(OZ eS 6M)
Gift of the designer, 2000

QSeY
TOKYO 1964
 Michio Hanyu

Born 1983
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Flatware, 1966
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Born 1936

Silk 71, 40
(102.9 x 73.7 cm)
Gift of the desig ner, 1969
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|
Shoji Hamada
1894-1978

Plate, 1960
Glazed ceramic, 2% x 10%” diam. (5.7 x 26.7 cm)
Gift of Walter Bareiss in honor of Arthur Drexler
and the Arthur Drexler Fund, 1987
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Age
£ e

basis ee
Dy fs* ain 2
ie
= Ss

q
ee
} u 3 PS
——
—~S

| ii
Se

i
|
Se ———

tae on Se
ay
 Ikko Tanaka

1930-2002

Let's Take Away Violence from

Our Streets, 1960
Lithograph, 40% x 28%”
(103.2 x 72.1 cm)
Gift of the designer, 2000

8]
62
Ryuichi Yamashiro
Born 1920

Col /age '69 Yama shiro 1969

Off Set littNograp f 28%x 4ws) "
(7 14% o0.0'Cim )
Gift of Leona rd Lauder, 1981

63
 1
ue
i |

Ff
Takahama Kazuhide

Born 1930

Saghi Lounge Chair, 1972

Chrome-plated steel, foam, and
synthetic wood, 25% x 29 x 23%"
(64.8 x 73.7 x 59.4 cm)
Manufacturer: Simon International,
San Lazzaro, Italy
Gift of Architectural Supplements, Inc., 1974
Masayuki Kurokawa
Born 1937 -

SACO Oe, (Guo Nias KN G.olCmM)

Manufacturer: Fu so Gomu Ind
Co., Ltd., Tokyo
Gift ofof the designer, 1979
 Ikko Tanaka

ear
@a
rice eight
1930-2002

Morisawa Photosetting Co., 1973

Offset lithograph, 40% x 28%"

ase am
(102.8 x 72.5 cm)
Gift of the designer, 1990
happy ‘s
&

down nail enemy

yellow woman

Be:
=
=,
i
=<oe

life z E a
@
2
pe os zB

earth
*eo7¢@ z
home

e2:302
09.
osS6@eacé
nephew

i
4on0889
2-9
three 5%tom
= q

au®
z5

@ee
SFBO
error

‘Lt
St right
eS =
@
love eyewaler g

Makoto Komatsu

Born 1943

Crinkle Tumbler (CR-L5), 1974

Magnesia porcelain, 24 x 2%”
(6.4 x 7 cm)
Manufacturer: Ceramic Japan Co.,
Ltd., Aichi-ken, Japan
Gift of the designer and Emilio
Ambasz Fund, 1982
Shiro Kuramata

1934-1991

Side 2, 1970
Lacquered wood and aluminum,
67% xX 24% x 20%"
(lia 62:38 xX 52.4em)
Manufacturer: Aoshima Shoten
Co., Ltd., Japan
Gift of The Junior Associates
of The Museum of Modern Art
and the manufacturer, 1998
Unknown designer

Video Capsule Television, c. 1974

Plastic casing,
Closed: 12% x 10% x 10%”
(GES X27.3 X 273 Clim):
open: 14% x 10% x 10%”
(86.8 x 273 x 273 cm)
Manufacturer: Japan Victor Corp.
(JVC), Japan
Department Purchase Fund, 1988
 Shuichi Obata
Born 1932

Technics Turntable (model SL-10), 1979

Aluminum die-cast cabinet, plastic
casing, and audio components,
38% X 12%6 X 12%" (9 x 31.6 x 31.8 cm)
Manufacturer: Matsushita Electrical
Industrial Co., Osaka, Japan
Gift of Panasonic Company, 1981

57]
 Unknown designer

as Plastic Hamburger, before 1977

Plastic, dimensions variable
Greta Daniel Fund and
Yale University Fund, 1977
Masayuki Kurokawa
Born 1937

Gom Ashtray, 1975

Stainless ie)steel and rubber,
i aie a oie! (2 5x 156 15cm)
Manufacturer: Fuso Gomu Ind
Co., Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of the designer, 1979
Makio Hasuike

Born 1938

Cucciolo Toilet Brush Holder, 1976

White ABS polymer and rubber,
1S oe! SSirXalS1 Chm)
Manufacturer: Gedy SpA, Milan
Gift of IDG Marketing, Ltd., 1977
 Shiro Kuramata
—|

1934-1991

49 Drawers, 1970
Lacquered plywood, steel, and
aluminum, 47%. x 45% x 1846"
(121.5 x 114.9 x 47.4 cm)
Manufacturer: Aoshima Shoten
Co., Ltd., Japan
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Purchase Fund and gift of
the manufacturer, 1998

Makoto Komatsu

Born 1943

Crinkle Shiwa Old-Fashioned

(OF) K101, 1979
Blown ten-percent-PbO glass,
BH X 3%e" (8.4 x 8.4 cm)
Manufacturer: Kimura Glass Co.,
Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of the designer and
Emilio Ambasz Fund, 1982

7
 09
CYB 9
OCC AAAI)
YAK
%IOUH DR AAA
0944
XX XLV
ARKO) XX AAOORK
944404 4
/ 449
 Shiro Kuramata

1934-1991

Miss Blanche Chair, 1988

Paper flowers, acrylic resin, and
aluminum, 36% x 24% x 20”
(93.7 x 68.2 x 51.4 cm)
Manufacturer: Ishimaru Co.,
Japan
Gift of Agnes Gund in honor of
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, 1998

Shiro Kuramata

1934-1991

How High the Moon Armchair,

1986
Nickel-plated steel mesh,
2842 X 37% X 382%"
ssid
(72.4 x 95 x 88.2 cm)
Manufacturer: Vitra International,
Ltd., Basel, Switzerland
Gift of the Vitra Design
Foundation, Switzerland, 1989

80
 YX)()
¢
XK yo y ¢

.
"6: (XX) is
KXXNXXKAKK
R XY
KH
YY AR R
AK\)
XAYK\3 x) vy
YX)
OOiAAA LY YORK,
WAAAY XY LY WYK
AAA OOK)
XK) VAY
WAY \,

BN HRN
XA UARRXR
VAAA OARANKS A
RS
‘,
ARK
MAAK
YY W
YA
KYW
SRASO
BK) v4
NA i nt
XX
Ra Hs

() RAK
XO

\
XX
WV YAXAXKXY)

WAAAY N00
() XXX

04"
NAW Ci LSS

Wine
Any WA
Wey t |

pee
Vin We ‘
AeA
{|
iVigt

i) he
Tomoyuki Sugiyama
Born 1954

Bubble Boy Speakers, 1986

anal
Ceramic casing, 11 x 8% x 7
(28 x 21.9 x 20 cm)
Manufacturer: INAX Corp.,
Tokoname, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1996
 Yoshiaki lida

| Born 1947
 ati
wiNN *ayNy
 Kazuo Kawasaki |
Born 1949 |

Carna Folding Wheelchair, 1989

Titanium, rubber, and aluminum
honeycomb,

Ltd., Ishikawa, Japan

Gift of the designer, 1995

Shigeo Fukuda

1932-2009
I i ‘ Y‘ Y Pr |

12AD7—FAb
1984#12A18+ BB+
AC) 28 ALI
women
br
Gift of the designer, 1986 RRNA
FRRAR
= zw nee ana=
 Shun Takoaka

Born 1947

Kei Takoaka

Born 1948

Front Rotation Alarm Clock, 1982

ABS polymer, 3% x 3% x 1/6"
(9.5 x 9.5 x 3.7 cm)
Manufacturer: Matsushita Electrical
Industrial Co,, Osaka, Japan
Gift of the designers, 1984

12
oe 2 @.... .
7% OBE

7—
6

36
Casio Computer Co., Ltd.

Established 1957

Film Card Solar Calculator

del SL-800), 1982
Plastic, 24% x 8% x Ye”

87
Mitsuo Maki

Born 1948

Born 1958

Kikukawa Katsuyoshi
Born 1935

echanical Pencil and Ballpoint

Pen, 1980
Stainless steel, 5% x %e” diam,
eX OLSiCim)
Manufacturer: Platinum Pen Co.,
Ltd., Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1981
Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
Established 1921

Electric ene aeaver, 1980

plastic casing,yyx1
X 3 X
Fuji Photo Film Co.
Established 1934

Fujicolor Super HR One-Time-Use Camera, 1987

Polystyrene plastic with cardboard cover,
246 X B'%e6 X 114” (5.8
x 9.7 X 3.8 cm)
Gift of the manufacturer, 2001
Ikko Tanaka

1930-2002

Kanze Noh Play, 1981 it>

lie
+

Offset lithograph, 40% x 28

(lO2°8 x 72.5 Cin)
Gift of the designer, 1990
as
Vb}
oa]
1S
DOO)

SEE
Ritere
Sk#exes
e—
OSSNS
Cube
fois
>es
 Hiroaki Kozu

Born 1959

Speakers (model YST-SD90),

1989
Fabric, rubber, wood, and
painted Nextel finish,
19% x 9%” base diam.
(50.5 x 24.8 cm)
Manufacturer: Yamaha Corp.,
Hamamatsu, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1991

Naoto Fukasawa

Born 1956

Wall-mounted CD Player, 1989

ABS plastic, 6% x 6% x 1/4”
(171 x 171 x 3.8 cm)
Manufacturer: Ryohin Keikaku
Co., Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of MUUJI, 2005

ol
Kiyoshi Awazu

Born 1929

Noh Performan ce at UCLA, 1981

¢
Offset lithograph, 4 O ee Q
(102.8 X f 2 .5 cm)
Gift of the College of Fine Art Ccoy;
UCLA, 1990
Shigeyoshi Morioka
Born 1944

Tsubo Shape Jar, 1981

Ceramic, 17% x 15%.” diam.
(44.5 x 39.5 cm)
Zaidee Dufallo Fund, 1981
Kazuo Kawasaki

Born 1949

Ouzak Design Formation

Established 1996

X&l Scissors, 1983

Stainless steel, scissors:
overall: Ax 2x 7%" (1.2 x 1.2 x 18.5 cm),
open: 4 x 1% x 5%” (0.8 x 3.5 x 18.7 cm),
closed: x 4x57 (0.88 x 16.7 em);
sheath: 4x 7% x %" (1.2 x 18.5 x 1.2 cm)
Manufacturer: Takefu Knife Village, Japan
Gift of Ouzak Design Formation, 2006
Mazda Motor Corp.

Established 1920

MX5 Miata Automobile Taillights, 1983

Acrylic resin, polypropylene plastic,
and other materials,
6% x 15 x 4” (15.9 x 38.1 x 10.2 cm)
Manufacturer; Mazda Motor Corp.,
California
Gift of the manufacturer, 1998

ay
Toshiyuki Kita
Born 1942

Kick Table, 1983

Enameled steel, lacquered wood,
and rubber, 16%. x 17%. x 19/4"
(40.8 x 44.6 x 50.5 cm)
Manufacturer: Cassina SpA, Milan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1984
Shiro Kuramata

1934-1991

Flower Vase, 1989

Acrylic plastic and glass,
B45 X 4% x 4%"
(21:55« dad % 1a cm)
Manufacturer: Ishimaru Co.,
Japan
Andrew Cogan Purchase Fund
2002

Sg)
CES tRrcig cm eet
| 1990_1999
Fy
 Toshiyuki Kita
Born 1942

Multilingual Chair, 1991

Resin-transfer-molded fiberglass-
reinforced plastic and steel,
52X26 7 2875"
(132.1 x 60 x 60 cm)
Manufacturer: Kotobuki
Corp., Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 1997

Yuh Okano

Born 1965

Epidermis (Ocean), 1994

Shibori-dyed and heat-set
polyester, 53 x 6 x 2”
(134.6 x 15.2 x 5.1 cm)
Manufacturer: Daito Pleats Co.,
Gummia, Japan
Takeo Ohbayashi Purchase Fund,
2001

=r Xe)
Kyoko Kumai
Born 1943

Wind from the Cloud

Wall Hanging, 1992
Stainless-steel wire,
Ge eo CAE
(222.3 x 292A x 10:2 em)
Gift of the designer, 1993
Takeshi Ishiguro
Born 1969

Rice Salt and Pepper Shakers, 1994

Extruded, slip-cast, and molded rice
Slurry, seven variants:
XxX 2" (1.3 x 6.4 cm),
eX Vite (226% S°9) em):
% x %" (1 x 1.9 cm),
hx 3” (1.3 x 76 cm),
1 x 4” (2.6 x 10.2 cm),
14x 1%" (3.2 x 3.8 cm),
WX Sie" (250 X 8.7 O1n)
Gift of the designer, 1998
 Junichi Arai

Born 1982

Crinkled Sheer Fabric ’ & 195)

Polyester and nylon 20' xX 32”
(609.6 x 81.3 cm)
Gift of the designer, 1996

Eiji Miyamoto
Born 1948

Scarf, 1991
Silk, 675” X 388% ” (195.6 x 85.1 cm)
Manufacturer: Miyashin Co OF)
Ltd. Tokyo
Gift of the designer ’ 1996
 i
sina é
arteries meamion
cee ene
ree sit oe Biers Ne

sig oad,
LF ie
 Yoshihiro Kimura

Born 1947

Pedocal, 1996

(579.1 x 119.4 cm)

Baa
Manufacturer: Kimura Senko Co.,
Ltd., Shinga, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 2000

EAS “Jx
AGPe

ONS

om.

Joe
Hajime Sorayama
Born 1947

Sony Corp.
Established 1946

Aibo Entertainment Robot

(ERS-110), 1999
Various materials, 10/4 x 16/4 x 6”
(26.7 x 41.3 x 15.2 cm)
Manufacturer: Sony Corp.,
Creative Center, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 2001

=o
| Issey Miyake
| Born 1938
Dai Fujiwara

Born 1967

A-POC Queen Textile, 1997

Cotton, nylon, and polyurethane,
dimensions variable
Gift of Miyake Design Studio, 2005
Hiroyuki Tazawa

Born 1948

nn]
Reiko Sudo
Born 1953

Feather Flurries Fabric

(no. 966A), c. 1993
Silk with feathers, 6'1%” x 46%”
(186.4 x 1178 cm)
Manufacturer: NUNO Corp.,
Tokyo
Gift of the manufacturer, 1994
Reiko Sudo

Born 1953

Rakugaki Fabric, c. 1994

Polyester base and rayon pile,
21'2” x 48” (645.2 x 121.9 cm)
Manufacturer: NUNO Corp.,
Tokyo
Gift of the manufacturer, 1996
 Masayuki Kurokawa
Born 1937

Fieno Scuba (Self-Contained

Underwater Re-Breathing
Apparatus), 1993
Injection-molded polycarbonate-
polyester blend, 6% x 20% x 13%"
Gao xeSiii< 65.2 cm)
Manufacturer: Grand Bleu, Inc.,
Japan
Gift of the designer, 1998

Kosuke Tsumura

Born 1959

Final Home 44-Pocket Parka,

1994
Nylon, 48% x 23%” (110 x 60 crn)
Manufacturer: A-net, Inc., Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 2006
 Masayuki Kurokawa
Born 1937

Gom Pen, 1992

Injection-molded synthetic rubber,
stainless steel, and brass,
1 X %" diam. (17.8 x 1.6 cm)
Manufacturer: Fuso Gomu Ind.
Co., Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of the designer, 1998

116}
Kazuo Kawasaki

Born 1949

Ouzak Design Formation

Established 1996

Pla Schola Pencil Sharpener

for Kids, 1998
Stainless steel and plastic,
1% x 4% x 4" (4.5 x 12 x 0.5 cm)
Manufacturer: Takefu Knife Village,
Japan
Gift of Ouzak Design Formation,
2006

4
Koichi Yoshimura

Born 1940

lridescent Satin, 1994

Polyester monofilament and
cotton, 44” (111.8 cm) wide
Manufacturer: S. Yoshimura Co.,
Ltd., Fukui City, Japan
Gift of the manufacturer, 2
Tadanori Yokoo

Born 1936

Japanese Culture of the Postwar

Years 1945-1995, 1996
Silkscreen, 40%. x 2854”
(103.4 x 72.8 cm)
Gift of the designer, 1998

1995
 i

»
 Py

4
Naoto Fukasawa

Born 1956

Plus Minus Zero Humidifier, 2003

Polycarbonate plastic, 6% x 12” diam.
(156% 30:5 cm)
Manufacturer: Plus Minus Zero Co.,
Ltd., Tokyo
Gift of the designer, 2006
Naoto Fukasawa

Born 1956

Neon Cellular Phone, 2005

Plastic, closed: 3% x 1 x
(8.9 x5 x 2.3 cm)
Manufacturer: KDDI Corp.,
Tokyo
Gift of the manufacturer, 2006
Naoto Fukasawa

Born 1956

Infobar Cellular Phone, 2008

Plastic and magnesium alloy,
5% X 1% x 7h" (18.8 x 4.2 x 1.4 cm)
Manufacturer: KDD! Corp.,
Tokyo
Gift of the manufacturer, 2006

JKL |t& MNO.

 Hiroyuki Tazawa
Born 1948 BOgCs
G0
En

<“ceOS
ONf£

OES
Kee

SRO

Snow Grabber, 2001

(te

op

Oo

SOS aN
5
Fafe

he CO _—
oO6

Ge eal
oe
©) v2

oeee:
Oe)=
-&

io
D

eo
oea
©©
cee ke
=

25
 Tokujin Yoshioka
Born 1967

ToFU Lamp, 2000

Acrylic and aluminum,
11% x 14% x 3”
(29:5 x 36.5:x 7.6 em)
Manufacturer: Yamagiwa
Corp., Japan
Gift of Yamagiwa USA
Corp., 2005

Junichi Arai

| Born 1932

Triple-pleated PPS Fabric, 2004

Aluminum and polyphenylene
sulfide (PPS) film, 57 x 50%”
| (144.8 x 128.3 cm)
Suzanne Slesin Purchase Fund,
2004
Canon

Established 1947

PowerShot S110 Digital Elph

Camera, 2001
Stainless steel, 2% x B% x 114"
5. X89 X32 cm)
Manufacturer: Canon Inc., Japan
Anonymous gift, 2008

|
H
i
i
z
Bs 3|

4
ij
>
 Reiko Sudo

Born 1953

Kinugasa Mushroom, 2007

Cotton and rayon, 20'2” x 40”
(614.7 x 101.6 cm)
Manufactured by NUNO
Corp., Tokyo
Gift of the manufacturer, 2007

te
nS Ww
KaSS2)
RR
i

Takeshi Ishiguro
Born 1969

‘enc oe WAAR ) . Chimney Il, 2004

ay ; : ABS plastic, 48%. x 5%” diam.
(110 x 14 cm)
Manufactured by IDEA
International Co., Ltd.
Gift of the manufacturer, 2007
Tokujin Yoshioka
Born 1967

Pane Chair, 2003

Polyester fiber, 29/4 x 29% x 31”
(74.9 x 74.9 x 78.7 cm)
Gift of The Contemporary Arts
Council of The Museum of
Modern Art, 2007
Kazuhiro Yamanaka

Born 1971

“Rainy Day” Lamps, 2008

Polyethylene, 4 x 19%" diam.
(10.2 x 50.2 cm)
Manufacturer: Pallucco Italia SpA,
Treviso, Italy
Gift of the manufacturer, 2005
Tokujin Yoshioka
Born 1967

Media Skin Cellular Phone, 2004

Plastic, 3x 14x
(101 x 4.6 x 1 cm)
Manufacturer: KDD! Corp.,
Toky O

Gift of the manufacturer, 2006

A,
 1880-1889 1890-1 900 1900-1909 1910-1919

Japanese industry develops Mass-produced goods for Japanese goods are shown Japan annexes Korea (1910)
hamamono, objects Japan’s domestic market at the Exposition Universelle
manufactured for export: begin to imitate western The Meiji period ends, with
in Paris (1900)
western cultural influence the death of the emperor.
designs
on Japan extends to the
Great Britain and Japan sign Taisho takes power; Tokujio
The Imperial Hotel opens the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Hayakawa founds the metal
theater and visual arts
in Tokyo in a three-story providing for mutual defense business later known as
wooden Victorian-style (1902) Sharp (1912)
building; the first national
election is held under the The first movie theater in
Meiji Constitution; domestic Japan opens in Tokyo (1908)
telephone service The Treaty of Portsmouth
is launched in Japan (1890) ends the Russo-Japanese
Japanese products are War (1904-5), giving Japan
shown at the World's control of Korea, the southern
Columbian Exposition in Sakhalin Islands, and China’s
Chicago (1898) southern Liaodong Peninsula

The Hattori Seiko Company

is founded by Kintaro Hattori
(1881)

Floating Cloud (Ukigumo),

Japan enters World War |,
by Futabatei Shimei, is
Tokyo’s Waseda University allied with Britain and France
published. It is considered
baseball team travels to the (1914)
to be Japan’s first modern
United States for a series
novel (1887) Japan and China fight over Frank Lloyd Wright begins
of games against United
control of Korea (1894-5) work in Tokyo on a new
Arthur Lasenby Liberty, of the States college teams (1905)
Imperial Hotel building (1916)
London shop Liberty & Co., The Toyoda Company
Frank Lloyd Wright visits
visits Japan (1888) (later Toyota) is established The Matsushita Company
Japan (1906)
(1897) is formed; Japan’s postwar
Fusajiro Yamauchi founds the
economic boom begins (1918)
Nintendo Company in Kyoto
to manufacture handcrafted The Czech American
playing cards (1889) architect Antonin Raymond
arrives in Japan to assist
Wright; the Bauhaus is
established in Weimar,
Germany (1919)
 o20alo29 1930-1939 1940-1949 IIDU Oo 1960-1 969

MAcIc TOP

The Great Kanto Earthquake German architect Bruno Taut French designer Charlotte The Allies and Japan sign Economic growth averages
devastates Tokyo and is invited to Japan by the Perriand travels to Japan a peace treaty (1951) ten percent per year
Yokohama (1923) Japan Architects Association by invitation of the Japanese
NHK, the Japanese Japanese department stores,
and stays for three years inistry of Trade and
(1983) Broadcasting Corporation, such as Takashimaya, begin
ndustry; Japan joins the
performs the first public to exhibit and sell modern
Axis powers of World War II
Soetsu Yanagi founds The television broadcast in design objects
1940)
Japan Folk Crafts Museum; Japan (1953)
the Japanese Association The World Design
Japanese airplanes drop
of Design and Industries is The exhibition Gropius and Conference is held in
bombs on Pearl Harbor,
formed (1936) the Bauhaus opens at the Tokyo; the Japan Design
Hawaii (1941)
National Museum of Modern House, a permanent
The Marco Polo Bridge Allied forces bomb Hiroshima Art, Tokyo; Sony begins source of information — -
Incident, in July, marks the and Nagasaki and Japan employing full-time in-house about Japanese products,
beginning of the Second is defeated; Allied forces designers (1954) opens in Tokyo (1960)
Japan’s House of
Sino-Japanese War; a occupy Japan, stripping the
Representatives recognizes Sony produces its first The animated television series
Japanese pavilion designed emperor of political power.
universal male suffrage transistor radio; potter Astro Boy, based on a 1952
by Junzo Sakakura is Aid from the United States,
(1925) Hamada Shoji is declared manga character by Osamu
exhibited at the Exposition under the Marshall Plan,
The term mingei is coined Internationale in Paris (1937)
a Living National Treasure Tezuka, debuts in Japan
funds postwar reconstruction
to describe Japanese (1945)
(1955) (1968)
Seiko establishes its watch
folkcrafts, launching the Honda founds its design The Summer Olympic Games
division (1937)
Mingei movement; architects department; Japan are held in Tokyo (1964)
form a Japanese Secession participates in the Milan
group; Mamoru Yamada Triennale (1957)
builds the Central Telegraph
Office in Tokyo; Emperor
Taisho dies, and his son
Hirohito comes to power
(1926)

The National Industrial Arts

Research Institute is founded The Sony Corporation is
in Tokyo; Time magazine formed (it is named as such
features Emperor Hirohito on in 1957); an earthquake and Kawabata Yasunari wins
its cover (1928) tsunami kill 1,500 (1946) the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nissin Food Products Co. (1968)
The Japanese government
introduces the first instant
establishes the Ministry of The Japan Industrial Design
ramen noodles (1958) Promotion Organization
nternational Trade; the
modern Tokyo Stock Japan joins the United (JIDPO) is established (1969)
Exchange opens (1949) Nations (1959)
 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2009

Japan’s “economic miracle” Economic growth averages Economic growth averages After the stagnation of the
fades; economic growth four percent per year just One percent per year “lost decade,” the Japanese
averages five percent per year economy begins to grow
Toshiyuki Kita designs
Japanese audio and video the Wink Lounge Chair for The Diet of Japan authorizes
equipment enter world Cassina; the Namco arcade the deployment of Japanese
markets; architectural game Pac-Man Is released troops to Iraq; Spirited Away,
minimalism Supersedes in Japan (1980) written and directed by
the Metabolist movement Hayao Miyazaki, wins the
in Japan Academy Award for best
animated film (2003)
A gift of giant pandas to Designer Shiro Kuramata
Japan from the Chinese =| heJapan-Mexico free trade
dies; the exhibition Robotics
government celebrates the agreement comes into effect;
Japan opens at the Science
restoration of diplomacy Unfold Japan, an exhibition
Museum, London; Mingei:
between the countries and of contemporary Japanese
The Living Tradition in
starts a panda craze in Tokyo; furniture design, opens at
Japanese Arts opens at
Honda launches the Civic Viaduct, London (2005)
Designers Rei Kawakubo Glasgow School of Art,
car (1972) Scotland (1991)
and Yohji Yamamoto debut Chocolate, organized by
their “rag look”; Japanese Naoto Fukasawa, is the
Japanese Design: A Survey
designers collaborate with inaugural exhibition at 21_21
Since 1950 opens at the
the Memphis group in Milan Design Sight, Tokyo's first
Philadelphia Museum of
(1981) design museum. The
Art; Sony launches the
museum building is designed
Junichi Arai is awarded PlayStation video game
by Tadao Ando (2007)
the title of Honorary Royal player (1994)
Designer for Industry in The Swarovski flagship
Kuramata retrospectives
the United Kingdom (1987) store, designed by Tokujin
open at Hara Museum of
Yoshioka, opens in Tokyo.
Tokujin Yoshioka joins the Contemporary Art, Tokyo,
The company features
Arata |sozaki founds the design offices of Shiro and the Musée des arts
designs by Yoshioka at the
Gumma Prefectural Museum Kuramata (1987) and Issey décoratifs, Paris (1995)
Milan Furniture Fair (2008)
of Fine Arts; at Sanrio, Miyake (1988)
Bandai releases the
designer Yuko Shimizu
Emperor Akihito succeeds Tamagotchi digital pet (1996)
creates Hello Kitty (1974)
his father, Hirohito (1989)
Structure and Surface:
Sori Yanagi is appointed
Contemporary Japanese
director of The Japan Folk
Textile Design opens at
Crafts Museum, Tokyo (1977)
The Museum of Modern
Art, New York (1998)

a5
Bibliography
ASHKENAZI, MICHAEL, AND EVANS, SIAN. Contemporary HIESINGER, KATHRYN B., AND KOZAK, GISELA, AND JULIUS Numi, Ryu. Tokujin Yoshioka
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Biographies
Penny Sparke
Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History and a pro-vice chancellor at Kingston University,
London, and the author of over a dozen books on various aspects of twentieth-century design.
She studied French literature at Sussex University and received a PhD in 1975 from Brighton
Polytechnic for a study of British design in the 1960s. Between 1982 and 1999 she taught in, then
led, the History of Design program of the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London. Her best-known publications include An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth
Century (1986; reissued in 2004 as An Introduction to Design and Culture, 1900 to the Present),
Japanese Design (1986), Italian Design, from 1870 to the Present (1988), As Long As It’s Pink: The
Sexual Politics of Taste (1995), A Century of Design: Design Pioneers of the Twentieth-Century
(1998), A Century of Car Design (2002), Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration
(2005), and, most recently, The Modern Interior (2008). Sparke has organized a number of exhibitions,
including The Plastics Age at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1990, and has appeared widely
on television and radio to discuss design. She lives in Putney, London.

Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum
of Modern Art, where she has worked since 1984. Her first exhibition for the Museum, Mutant
Materials in Contemporary Design (1995), was followed by many successful shows, including
Thresholds: Contemporary Design from the Netherlands (1996), Achille Castiglioni: Design! (1997),
Humble Masterpieces (2004), Safe: Design Takes on Risk (2005), and Design and the Elastic
Mind (2008). Antonelli has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Univer-
sity’s Graduate School of Design and has lectured extensively around the world.
 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art

David Rockefeller* June Noble Larkin*

Honorary Chairman Ronald S. Lauder
Thomas H. Lee
Ronald S. Lauder
Michael Lynne
Honorary Chairman
Donald B. Marron
Robert B. Menschel* Wynton Marsalis**
Chairman Emeritus Robert B. Menschel*
Harvey S. Shipley Miller
Agnes Gund
Philip S. Niarchos
President Emerita
James G. Niven
Donald B. Marron Peter Norton
President Emeritus Maja Oeri
Richard E. Oldenburg™*
Jerry |. Speyer
Michael S. Ovitz
Chairman
Richard D. Parsons
Marie-Josée Kravis Peter G. Peterson*
President Mrs. Milton Petrie**
Gifford Phillips*
Sid R. Bass
Emily Rauh Pulitzer
eon D. Black
David Rockefeller*
Kathleen Fuld
David Rockefeller, Jr.
Mimi Haas
Sharon Percy Rockefeller
Richard E. Salomon
Lord Rogers of Riverside**
Vice Chairmen
Richard E. Salomon
Glenn D. Lowry Ted Sann** ;
Director Anna Marie Shapiro
Gilbert Silverman**
Richard E. Salomon Anna Deavere Smith
Treasurer
Jerry |. Speyer
James Gara Emily Spiegel™*
Assistant Treasurer Joanne M. Stern*
Mrs. Donald B. Straus*
Patty Lipshutz Yoshio Taniguchi**
Secretary David Teiger**
Eugene V. Thaw**
Wallis Annenberg Jeanne C. Thayer*
Celeste Bartos* Joan Tisch*
Sid R. Bass Edgar Wachenheim III
Leon D. Black Thomas W. Weisel
Eli Broad Gary Winnick
Clarissa Alcock Bronfman
Donald L. Bryant, Jr. Ex Officio
Thomas S. Carroll*
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Glenn D. Lowry
Mrs. Jan Cowles** Director
Douglas S. Cramer*
Peter Norton
Paula Crown
Chairman of the Board of PS.1
Lewis B. Cullman**
H.R.H. Duke Franz of Bavaria** Michael R. Bloomberg
Kathleen Fuld Mayor of the City of New York
Gianluigi Gabetti*
William C. Thompson, Jr.
Howard Gardner
Comptroller of the City of New York
Maurice R. Greenberg**
Vartan Gregorian Christine C. Quinn
Agnes Gund Speaker of the Council of the City of New York
Mimi Haas
Jo Carole Lauder
Alexandra A. Herzan
Marlene Hess President of The International Council
Barbara Jakobson Franny Heller Zorn and William S. Susman
Werner H. Kramarsky* Co-Chairmen of The Contemporary Arts Council
Jill Kraus
Marie-Josée Kravis ‘Life Trustee
“Honorary Trustee
es

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