Celebrating MUJI

November 19th, 2010By Category: Culture

Japanese retailer Ryohin Keikaku Co has published a book detailing the history of its popular MUJI consumer product brand to mark its 30th anniversary.

The 256-page book (Amazon.com link), which is available in Japanese, English and Chinese, has all the minimalist photos of MUJI products and retail spaces you could ever desire. It is the ‘‘most natural and realistic depiction of MUJI,’’ Kenya Hara, a designer and MUJI advisory board member, claims in the forward.

The company launched the MUJI line of products, ranging from food items, stationery and clothing to furniture, in 1980 as a private brand of major retailer Seiyu Ltd.

Kazuko Koike, who is MUJI’s creative director and one of its six founding members, writes that one force behind MUJI’s launch was concerns about environmental sustainability beginning to surface after the oil crises of the 1970s.

In particular, Koike credited internationally known graphic designer Ikko Tanaka (1930-2002), who served as MUJI’s artistic director for two decades, with having shaped the brand’s no-frills identity.

‘‘Tanaka, who pointed out that Japanese package design was becoming excessive, seemed to have decided from the start that if he were to develop a product line, monochrome packaging would be best, as it made a very strong statement against an overly ostentatious era,’’ Koike writes.

The book also shows MUJI’s advertising campaigns over the years. One of the earliest examples is a 1981 newspaper ad titled ‘‘The whole salmon is salmon.’‘

The ad explains that MUJI’s canned salmon uses flakes that include the meat found near the head and tail of the fish, encouraging shoppers to reexamine things that are often overlooked or discarded.

Other hits for the company include product designer Naoto Fukasawa’s wall-mounted CD player that has entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fukasawa has said that he gets artistic inspiration from observing the spontaneous actions of people as they solve little inconveniences in their everyday lives.

Fukasawa provides examples. Among them was a person improvising an umbrella stand using a gap between floor tiles. Another person, who was walking and typing a cellphone message at the same time, was seen following the yellow Braille pavers on the sidewalk, using them as a guide.

Fukasawa said designs extracted from such spontaneous and apparently subconscious human behaviors were ‘‘inevitable’’ and have cross-cultural elements.

Another source of inspiration, Fukasawa said, are everyday objects such as houseware and furniture that he sees around the world.

As examples from China, Fukasawa cited a simple aluminum dustpan, a wooden bench and a plain white dish from the Song Dynasty period (10th to 13th century).

The shapes of these objects are in harmony with people’s lifestyles as they have gone through continuous refinement over a long period of time, according to Fukasawa.

John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, claims in the book that well-designed tools present infinite possibilities for a user.

Maeda mentioned the story of film director J.J. Abrams and his ‘‘magic box’’—a cardboard box containing an unknown object which Abrams has kept for decades without opening, choosing to just appreciate the process of imagining what might be inside.

Maeda said good design and good storytelling have something in common, which is their ability to inspire people to ‘‘anticipate what comes next.’‘

Or as the company puts it; ‘MUJI is about the experience. Of course, function and design are important. But MUJI’s essence is its power to awaken people, MUJI is a mechanism for generating imagination.’

Since opening its first branch outside Japan in 1991 in London, Ryohin Keikaku currently operates more than 100 MUJI stores in 18 countries and regions around the world, with three of them located in New York.

While MUJI products are largely known in Japan for their value-for-money quality, outside they have established a strong reputation for their design, with New York’s MoMA store selling MUJI products since 2002, nearly six years before the opening of its first U.S. store in New York.

Find out more: www.muji.net

CD Player pic courtesy of materialicious.com

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GaijinPot

GaijinPot is an online community for foreigners living in Japan, providing information on everything you need to know about enjoying life here, from finding a job and accommodation to having fun.

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