Innovation & wonder

A traveling exhibit spotlights quirky work by designers in Japan

Oh, those crazy Japanese. What clever invention or toy will they come up with next?

Japanese Design Today 100 On view: Grand opening 5:30 p.m. Thursday then continues 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays through Sept. 13 Place: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, 2454 S. Beretania St. Admission: Free Call: 945-7633 Note: An English-speaking guide will lead walk-throughs, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. July 29; a Japanese-speaking guide from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

From Hawaii's vantage as the closest American state to Japan, we've welcomed them as travelers and pop-culture creatives. We've observed up close their almost limitless spending, their affection for all things kawaii (cute) and fruity-colored, and their passion for anime and gadgetry, often getting swept up in the thrill of the new ourselves.

Beyond such seemingly carefree, consumerist behavior, however, are real worries and real concern for the future that fuel their inventions. If you can't see that, the implications are frightening. We represent, after all, two cultures at peace and quite comfortable with one another, and if we can't fully understand one another, what chance do we have of understanding or being understood by a hostile culture?

Having thought of all this long ago, the Japan Foundation, an independent organization that works closely with Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been on a mission to promote global understanding. Where Coca-Cola once aspired to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony," Japan aims to teach the world to see.

"By promoting our popular culture to people overseas, we believe people will be able to appreciate Japan and in the future have better relations," said Natsuko Ono, a cultural adviser and researcher for the Consulate-General of Japan in Honolulu. He is one of many hands busily working to stage "Japanese Design Today 100," an exhibition of everyday objects created between the 1950s and now, showcasing the quirky, innovative work of modern Japanese designers. The show opens Thursday at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, and it is just one of about 20 Japan Society-sponsored shows criss-crossing the globe at any given time.

"Japanese Design Today 100" has been on the road two years since opening in Japan, heading to South Korea, Mexico and crossing the United States from New York to San Francisco. It will travel next to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The show will amaze and delight those with an appreciation for great design, and many pieces will bring a smile even to those who don't. Yoshinobu Ishida's MOGU (2001), for instance, are cuddly, feel-good, huggable cushiony forms in anthropomorphic shapes, filled with Styrofoam beads, designed for comfort and stress-reduction.

Pieces selected by Hiroshi Kashiwagi, a professor from the Musashino Art University in Japan, range from the ubiquitous Kikkoman shoyu bottle (1961) to Toyota's Prius (1997), considered the world's first practical hybrid-energy car.

The show covers the post-war evolution, which started when the United States started sharing its technical and design expertise with Japanese manufacturers so that they could produce Western-style housewares needed by some 20,000 families of U.S. occupation troops in Japan and South Korea. Since then, design in Japan, a country versed in craft traditions, has evolved as a language of its own, full of poetry, whimsy and hope.

Setting up the Japanese Design show may have taken longer than usual because workers unpacking the objects often stopped to coo over the pieces, turning them over and over, sometimes trying them out to see if they lived up to their billing, as with a pod chair to help people who have difficulty sitting cross-legged on the floor, a stringless guitar and "Final Home" jacket. The latter is a lightweight, all-weather jacket with multiple deep pockets for toting just about anything. Stuffing its pockets with newspapers causes it to function like a down jacket. The jacket is being looked at for distribution to victims of earthquakes and other disasters. In Hawaii, the homeless might find them useful.

At every stop, there are always several people who offer to buy the products. Here, it's already started with the gallery workers asking, "Where can we buy this?"

"Unfortunately, we can't sell," Ono said, apologetically. "We can only show."

GREAT DESIGN doesn't develop in a vacuum. It represents answers to a puzzle or solutions to problems. In Japan, Ono said, people have had to deal with several natural disasters, cramped living quarters and high stress levels due to work demands and overcrowding.

Concerns over environmental degradation have led to lamps made from recycled car parts and tables made from paper tubes, while cramped homes have given way to wall-mounted CD players, convertible and collapsible furniture, and a table-top Electric Bucket (2001) washing machine, that looks like an oversized coffee pot or blender, in pretty pastel, of course.

"Living in Japan can be stressful, so designers try to make things to make us feel more relaxed and happy," Ono said, marveling at the pace of development.

"I left Japan in 1997 and when I go back the cell phones are so different I feel like I'm in the Stone Ages," she said. "The subway stations change so quickly that I see people standing outside wondering how to get into the station."

You have to appreciate a country that turns out designers who can take a problem and not just come up with a logical solution, but one that is also witty and whimsical. We've long used flat erasers, for instance, but it is only the eraser corners that are effective. Taking note of this, Hideo Kanbara created an eraser to look like a Rubik's Cube that has been pulled apart to offer multiple corners. About 10 will be distributed as raffle items on opening night.

"In Japan, there's a sensitivity to little things," Ono said. "They don't just create a box, but a box that is cute, kawaii, with an extra essence, even if it doesn't have a function."

All this has a tendency to give way to excess in that designers have been trained to deliver the next novelty to consumers, continually searching for the new, even if there's still a lot of life left in the old.

Function and longevity are still prized by certain factions in America, where remnants of a Puritan, no-nonsense past still remain. You can hear it in the complaints of those who rail against built-in obsolescence and the push toward more power -- whether in automobiles or computers -- when we can barely use what we have. Ever better music storage and video-game platforms lead to more spending, without necessarily improving life.

Why create the robotic pet dog Aibo (Sony, 1999), also on view in the show, if not simply to separate fools, or the lonely, from their money?

But consulate employees Katsutoshi Oikawa and Ayumi Sugahara strongly believe in Aibo's value to humankind, and have no problems adapting to innovations from their homeland.

Where in America, science and new technologies are mistrusted for their capacity to curtail individual freedoms or be turned toward evil means, in Japan there's an optimistic belief in technology, scientists and designers as saviors, forces for beneficial change -- even though the nation was a victim of U.S. nuclear technology during World War II.

Speaking through interpreter Julie Suenaga, Oikawa said: "I always want something more, better than now. It's human nature to want to go forward.

"Aibo is necessary, not from a money-making perspective, but because its designers are trying to create robots that are more like human beings. Aibo is in-between, a test-pilot robot that has artificial intelligence. You can teach it.

"Look at Honda and ASIMO (the dancing, stair-climbing humanoid robot)," he said. "You have to ask yourself, 'Why would a car-maker be making a robot?' It's because they're thinking about the future."

"In the future, robots will be able to help disabled people," Sugahara said.

"They won't replace human beings, but will be substitutes," Oikawa said. "For example, they'll be able to dive underwater in conditions difficult for human beings."

STAGING A SHOW like this requires cooperation from a wide variety of businesses. Its importance is not lost on designers willing to grant interviews as the show moves from city to city, long after their works were introduced.

Speaking by telephone from Japan through an interpreter in Honolulu, furniture designer Kaname Okajima, creator of the Pod chair, said, "A product can't walk or talk about itself, so it's important for me to send out information about my concept."

He developed the chair for a London exhibition to reflect the Japanese tradition of living close to the floor, sitting on zabutons instead of couches or Western-style chairs.

"The zabuton mattress is kind of old and out of date and I wanted to give it a modern touch," he said.

It is constructed to assist people who have difficulty sitting cross-legged on the floor, such as some Westerners and the elderly.

"The value of any product is when it's actually used by consumers," Okajima said. But because the Pod has not been marketed in Hawaii, the exhibition may be the closest people will come to it.

Although Okajima has never been to Hawaii, he said he feels a vicarious connection to his chair's experience. "My designs are a reflection of myself, so I feel I am in Hawaii if my design is there."