Three Japanese designers with global impact
Influential Japanese designers that you should know about
By David Tonge
For those of us in the design business, Japan's architecture, craft, design, and fashion have long been important influences. More recently, Japanese design has attracted the interest of a wider audience, thanks to the international expansion of brands such as Uniqlo and Muji, the growing popularity of Japanese animation and manga (comics), and the outreach of cultural centres such as Japan House in London. .Japanese food, art, and aesthetic concepts like Wabi Sabi have broken out from the sphere of designers and culture aficionados into the mainstream.
I have been lucky enough to meet, interview, and work with some of Japan’s most celebrated designers. It's almost impossible to pick the most influential, but I'd like to highlight three designers in three different fields, whose work has particularly impressed me. All three have had a tremendous impact on design, both inside and outside of Japan.
Kashiwa Sato – Graphic and Brand Designer
It would be hard to name a Japanese brand that has had more impact on the global high street than the casual wear retailer, Uniqlo. The Uniqlo brand was created by graphic and brand designer, Kashiwa Sato. He, it turns out, has designed a huge number of brand marks for well-known companies including Rakuten, Nissin and many more besides.
I first came across his work through his design for Seven-Eleven Japan. When I'm in Japan I often visit convenience stores to buy everyday supplies, fill time between meetings, keep cool, and, these days, to drink their much-improved coffee. In the years since I became a frequent visitor, the improvement in the design of convenience stores' home-brand products has been enormous.
Sato’s design for Seven-Eleven’s Premium range is a perfect example of this. The simple design with a strong graphic identity and colour palette covers a huge range of products from snacks to stationery. For me, it has a more flexible personality than the much-lauded Muji products that some other convenience stores sell.
What stands out about Sato’s work ?
While there are better known Japanese graphic designers, the quiet ubiquity and impact of Sato's work is impressive. Whether you're making a pit stop at a suburban convenience store, trying on clothes at a Uniqlo flagship store in a global capital, or browsing Rakuten's online marketplace at home, you'll be touched by his work and Japanese culture.
Reiko Sudo – Textile Designer
In the late 1990s I was working at a design company in the Axis Building in Tokyo's Roppongi district. This complex houses the headquarters of Axis magazine, a global design journal, and is known as a place for design and craft exhibitions. It's also the home of several shops. One of them, located in the basement, is called Nuno, which simply means cloth in Japanese.
Although I didn’t know its significance at the time, I would browse Nuno's bolts of unique fabrics, buying small samples for reference and the occasional finished piece, including the scarf that I still wear in the winter months.
Nuno was founded in the 1980s by Junichi Arai. Born into a textile manufacturing family in Gunma Prefecture, Arai was not cut out for business. Instead, he used his knowledge of textiles as a consultant. In the '70s and '80s, his collaborations with big names in fashion, including Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto, put him on the map in the industry.
Shortly after Arai opened his store; a treasure trove of textiles in the newly developed Axis building, he was joined by Reiko Sudo. Like him, she comes from a family steeped in the traditions of Japanese textiles.
Why is Reiko Sudo important to the world of textiles?
Sudo continued to develop Nuno's output where Arai and his experimental approach left off, and she introduced it to a global audience. With a dizzying list of accolades, she and her team advise companies such as Muji on the use of recycled fabrics, collaborate with architects and art institutions on global exhibits, and work with artisans and students of textile design, all the while continuing to create unique fabrics and products for the public through their stores in Tokyo and beyond.
Sudo's work stretches, smashes and subverts the strengths and weaknesses of fabrics to find unique applications and aesthetics beyond what we might think of as Japanese. For her no-holds-barred approach, she truly deserves the mantle of disruptor (a frustratingly overused term these days) in the textile industry.
Sori Yanagi – Industrial Designer
Sori Yanagi and his father Soetsu Yanagi were pioneers of modern Japanese design. Soetsu Yanagi was the founder of the Nihon Mingeikan or Japanese Crafts Museum. He authored my favourite book about Japanese aesthetics: "The Unknown Craftsman," and was a longtime collaborator of Bernard Leach, the famous British ceramicist.
Sori Yanagi was a true modernist whose design was functional, true to materials, and unadorned with unnecessary decoration. He designed many of his best-known pieces, such as the iconic, plywood Butterfly Stool in the 1950s and 1960s. Although he sadly passed away in 2011, his Tokyo studio and workshop remain active.
My first contact with his work was in the late 1990s, when I bought some pieces of his Alienware cutlery. Manufactured in stainless steel, this range offers a unique, Japanese take on the shape and use of cutlery for western style eating. For example; the much wider-than-usual spaghetti fork allows the diner to roll their spaghetti around it, and the soup spoon requires the diner to drink their soup from the front not the side – as you might witness in more polite circles!
I am a visiting professor at Kanazawa Art University, where Sori Yanagi was a professor. The university has created a memorial to Yanagi’s work where you can see a dizzying array of wonderful objects, including furniture, textiles, graphics, household appliances, and ceramics. If you're lucky enough to be in Kanazawa I recommend a visit.
Why do I love Sori Yanagi’s work?
What I love about Yanagi’s work is its distinctly Japanese personality. Many modernist designers of the 20th century followed a recognisable, international style of simplicity, which one could argue conceals where the work was created or manufactured. This is just as true today, when white and square are the hallmarks of Japanese modernism.
Yanagi, by contrast, managed to be both an international modernist and a Japanese traditionalist. His works are unmistakably Japanese yet universally appealing. The shape and use of materials are evocative, almost swaggering, communicating an optimism that's hard to experience in these more cynical times.
I am happy to say that with the recent rise in popularity of Japanese design and culture, many more foreigners are now experiencing Yanagi’s work. Long may it continue.
Where can you find out more about Japanese design?
If this article has whetted your appetite and you want to expand your knowledge of Japanese design I recommend Naomi Pollock’s recent book: Japanese Design since 1945, published by Thames and Hudson. Although it leaves out some important names in fashion design, it includes profiles of over 70 Japanese creators whose work you might appreciate, accompanied by short takes on iconic products and related topics.