Japan’s design-led culture

Wandering in Tokyo, I realised that being surrounded by great design makes life better. Great design is everywhere; the architecture, store design, train station information, receipts, luggage tags, construction hoardings, man hole covers, roadwork signs; everywhere. Removing the noise that bad design decisions creates is my brain, I am mentally calm, able to ponder bigger things, and continuously inspired by the great choices that surround me.

With all that mental space and clarity, I became obsessed by how they have consistently pulled off innovation in a deeply conservative culture. The answer lies in the unique blend of culture, business and inheritance tax.

Design born of culture and values

Consistency comes when deeply rooted principles are understood, shared, and replicable. Japanese design is born of culture and built on values, honed from centuries of practice. These design principles are the essence of Japan and of being Japanese.  

Kanso - the art of simplicity. Made famous by Marie Kondo, this zen philosophy promotes simplicity to enable the functional. It removes decoration of unnecessary embellishment and clutter to enable clarity in a natural, simple life.

Fukinsei - designed asymmetry. This zen ideal acknowledges irregularity can be balanced through composition, and celebrates the surprise of achieving a dynamic balance. It creates beauty in imperfection.

Shizen - natural over artificial. This idea embraces the natural beauty of unforced and elemental design stripped of artificial falseness. It’s the idea that something has always been there, that this is they way it was meant to be. Resolved.

Seijaku - bring stillness inside. This is an outcome of kanso, fukinsei and shizen, and an intent. It provides for solitude, reflection, meditation. In physical space it might be a nook, a void, an aperture. In graphics it might be negative or white space.

Deeply held principles are more consistently applied.

To fit or not to fit

Consistency in Japan is reinforced by a collective mindset, essential for harmony in a high density population. While the see collectivism as ‘follower mentality’, the desire for individualism in Asia is seen as ego-driven and selfish.

Conversely, the West ideologise individuality. Nicholas Cage in “Wild at Heart” proclaims with pride ‘this snakeskin jacket is a representation of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom’. We actively try to pull apart from each other, to stand out.

Japan is a homogenous society with 98.5% of the population Japanese, one of the most mono-cultural societies in the world. It is a ‘high-context society’, where shared cultural connection allows concepts to remain less defined, and language more ambiguous. Nuance and non-verbal communication is important; the subtleties and details really matter.

A heterogenous culture by comparison has different racial, cultural and historical beliefs, concepts remain simpler to enable connection, and communication is a blunter instrument. Diversity is a beautiful thing, but it gets stuck on the collisions, while the Japanese can go deep.

A homogenous culture enables deeper exploration of subtlety.

Consensus decision making

Then there’s the Ringi system which is how Japanese businesses are managed. The Ringi is the concept and business case, created in middle management, then sent through layers of upper management for approval. Each time a change is made, it goes back to the originator and starts the journey back to the top again.

It is bottom-up decision making, the people on the front line define the solution with upper management responsible for approvals against (sometimes 100yr) strategy and budget. Top-down decision making has the people in the Boardroom setting vision, with the rest of the organisation responsible for delivery.

The Ringi system takes a long time, and if input strays from remit, can become ‘design by committee’ diluting the concept. It makes innovation difficult, and assumes the people on the front line understand every audience they are designing for.

It is also the source of the ‘Japanese miracle’ of post-war recovery through continuous improvement of reverse engineering, cementing the notion of Kaizen – never settle – into every management theory.

Enhancement of a concept through appropriate input hones the idea.

Architectural form and function

Then we consider the risk-taking of built form. The secret behind it is impermanence.

The unstable environment makes destruction and renewal part of culture. This in combination with hefty inheritance taxes and technological obsolescence has created a “scrap and build” approach to architecture where a 20yr old home is old. There are a lot of architects in Japan, 11 times more than Canada, seven times than UK, five times than US. This community strive to create visionary, poetic moments driven by principles of creativity. They define the living canvas, the city scape, and closes the loop on the cycle that hardwires the value of creativity.

Impermanence frees the risk aversion to fresh ideas.