14 The Japan Times Tuesday, October 2, 2012

第３種郵便物認可

life & style

What it means tobe ‘Made in Japan’Architect and writer Naomi Pollock shares
her favorite aspects of Japanese design
Alice Gordenker
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES‘M

ade in Japan” is a such asimple phrase, yet it instantly
evokes an image of
exceptional design and highquality production. Japan today is known
for creating some of the most stylish,
innovative and whimsical products in theworld.
Tokyo-based architect and writer Naomi
Pollock spent the last two years immersedin Japanese product design, conducting
hundreds of interviews and reviewing
countless products. In a recent interview
with The Japan Times, she talks about her
new book and what she finds so exciting
about product design in Japan.

You’re an established architecture
critic who has helped bring Japanesearchitecture to the world through yourreports in Architectural Record and otherinternational publications. Why thisswitch to products?

It’s not actually a switch. Writing about
product design is a natural extension ofreporting on buildings because so manyarchitects also create products — everythingfrom teapots to chairs. After seeingprototypes in their offices, I began to think
about writing about product design.
Initially, I had a book on architectdesigned objects in mind. But when I
realized the bounty of good design out
there, and how little information wasavailable in English, I quickly broadened myscope.

Arresting style: Naomi Pollock (far left),with Masako Ban at the designer’s Moto
Azabu store Acrylic. Pollock is holding up
Ban’s Acrylic, Honey-Comb Mesh +Bracelet bag (detail above).   
© Masako Ban/Acrylic
Below left: H-Concept Yasuhiro Asano’sSplash umbrella stand.  
© H-Concept Co., LtD.
Below right: Pollock’s new book “Madein Japan.” All product images on thisTell us about the book. What will wefind inside?

The book begins with acomprehensive introduction that
reviews the history of recent
Japanese product design and places
contemporary work in its broader social,
cultural and geographical contexts. This
sets the stage for profiles of 100 newproducts, each of which includes
beautiful color photos and a brief essay.
In these texts I explain the developmentof the products, and talk about the people
who make and use them. There are also
short biographies of the designers whose
work appears in the book, including Naoto
Fukasawa, Tokujin Toshioka and Toyo Ito.
With so many great products, how did
you narrow it down to 100?

I wanted to inform the reader about
contemporary Japanese lifestyle through thelens of product design, so the first criterion
was whether the product had a story totell about some aspect of Japan.
I also wanted the personality of each
designer to come through in theproduct profile. This meant that I had
to be able to speak directly to each
designer.
Finally, I was looking for newwork: most of the products in thebook were designed within the last fiveyears.
Is there something unique about
Japanese product design?

All-round bowls by Sotaro Miyagi© Miyagi Design Office / Cherry Terrace

Yes, definitely. In Japan, even the machinemade or mass-produced object often
embodies the craftworkers’ ethic ofmonozukuri. This traditional idea ispage are courtesy of “Made in Japan: 100
New Products” by Naomi Pollock

probably the most important influence oncontemporary Japanese product design.
Monozukuri? Making things?

Yes, but it means so much more. It is thecommitment by the designer andmanufacturer to do their best possible workby refining and redesigning repeatedly.
A good example is Splash, an umbrella
holder designed by Yasuhiro Asano that
resembles a raindrop hitting the pavement.
It started as a cast-aluminum container
with a tapered shape, but after numerous
revisions, it came to market in a completely
different material — brightly colored rubberthat will cheer up even the darkest of entry
foyers.
How does the lack of space in Japan
impact design here?

It’s a huge influence. Because living space istight, there is demand for compact objects
and household goods that are easy to store,
like Allround Bowls, a set of kitchen
accouterments designed by Sotaro Miyagi
to nest neatly one inside the other. The lackof space has also yielded miniature versionsof everything from cars to kettles.

Any other traits that define Japanesedesign?

Portability is another area in which
Japanese designers excel. Japan has a long
history of building homes withmultipurpose spaces that can be adapted tothe season or function by moving
furnishings around. Even today, many

Japanese consumers prefer products thatare easy to move and store when not in use,
whether the product is a humidifier or adish-drainer.
Can you relate something special you
learned in the course of your research?

One observation that made a deep
impression on me was that a wide range ofdesigners coexist amiably in Japan. At one
end of the spectrum are large companies
with in-house design capability. At theother end are the solo practitioners I call“cottage industrialists.” These tiny companies
design, produce (or outsource production tothe many small manufacturers that still existin Japan) and often market their goods ontheir own, either through small shops oronline.
A good example is Masako Ban, adesigner who creates jewelry and handbags
from locally made industrial materials not
usually associated with fashion goods,including acrylic and metal mesh.

After writing this book, how would you
define “good design”?

There are lots of characteristics of good
design. Among them, an object should
function well and look good. But many
designers in Japan seem to be aftersomething more.
A constant refrain that I heard was their
desire to make sustainable goods. For somethis means using environmentally friendly
materials and manufacturing methods. For
others it means making objects that will not

be cast aside or, worse yet, discarded.
In Japan, a country with a seemingly
insatiable appetite for the new, this goal isparticularly challenging since it entails
overriding the deeply entrenched habit ofreplacing something with an updated
version even if the old one is still usable.
But if someone truly loves an object andenjoys using it, they will keep it for a longtime, perhaps even their entire life. This is
not only the true meaning of sustainability,
it is also an essential quality of good design.

Second homes may be cheap, but they are often in disrepair
Finding a retreat from the city, whether it be in the woods,
right by the beach or hidden in the countryside, is not hard —it’s finding one that doesn’t need a lot of renovation that isHOME TRUTHS
Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku

Atami

The ad said the property was 2 km fromAjiro Station on the Ito Line, but it wasdifficult to tell how far we were traveling in
the agent’s car. Most of the trip was up asteep, winding road into the hills above
Atami on the Izu Peninsula, an area
developed in the 1970s by the Tokyu
Corporation for bessō, or second homes.
The realtor talked the whole way.
“The songwriter Yu Aku had a large houseover there,” he said, making a hairpin turn.
“But since he died his family has had a hardtime selling it, even at ¥40 million.”
Most of the homes didn’t look that grand,
especially the one we were interested in: twostories, 78 sq. meters of floor area on 247 sq.
meters of land. The neighborhood looked
like a typical Japanese housing development
except for a magnificent view of the Pacificto the east. The house was built in 1969 andhad been bought by a different real estatecompany from a man whose main home
was in Tokyo’s central (and chic) Shibuya
district. The company was renovating it, but
not today. We stepped over piles of lumber
to inspect the interior, which looked as if it
hadn’t been occupied for years.
The price, including the renovation, was¥8.5 million, which was reasonable, but aswith many bessō communities there wereno amenities in the area — no stores, gas
stations or even vending machines. And thedrive down that hill wasn’t for the fainthearted. We asked about the management
fee and were surprised to learn it was only
¥20,000 a year. Tokyu took care of things
such as garbage collection and roadmaintenance. In more exclusive bessō areas,
like Karuizawa in Nakano Prefecture or thefive lakes region near Mount Fuji,
management fees are ¥60,000-70,000 a year.

Then again, Atami levied its own special
bessō tax: ¥650 per sq. meter of floor area ayear, which a resident could get around byregistering the property as their main
domicile and paid jūminzei (local taxes).
Some of the houses were clearly vacanteven though it was the middle of summer
vacation, and some lots just had sheds onthem, “structures” erected for property tax
purposes. If land is zoned for residences andremains empty, it is taxed at a higher rate.
This is supposed to discourage speculation,and the agent told us that people bought
land here in the ’80s as investments,
expecting the value to increase, but prices
plummeted instead. They hung on in thehope the price would go up, but it never did
and never will. Even on the other side of thehill, a much higher-class development
called Minami Atami, properties that soldfor ¥200 million in 1990 are now worth lessthan half that amount.

OnjukuDespite the suit and tie, the agent who
showed us around Onjuku, a resort town on
the eastern coast of Chiba Prefecture, wasobviously a surfer first and a real-estate man
second. He said he moved to Onjuku fromhis landlocked hometown in GunmaPrefecture for the waves, and then married alocal girl. We were there to look at resort
condominiums, most of which were built in
the early ’90s. They were in buildings of fiveto 15 stories and faced the beach, which
described a gentle inward arc.
“Most people who buy a vacation condo
near the shore want to be on a higher floor
because of the view,” he said. “But thehigher the floor, the stronger the breeze.
They have coffee on the terrace for the firstweek and then never go out again.” Thebreeze is also fraught with salt, which does
more damage the higher you go. After a fewyears, window sashes and railings start tocorrode.
We looked at three units, all of which got
lots of sun but looked merely functional: aEscaping the city (clockwise from above): A second home in a picturesque wooded area of Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture; a block ofapartments on the beach at Onjuku in Chiba Prefecture; and a home facing the sea in Atami on the Izu Peninsula. PHILIP BRASOR

place to sleep, a place to bathe, a place tocook. Resort condos, the agent explained,were truly for weekenders. Owners could
live in them, close to the beach, and they
weren’t expected to become members of
the community with all the attendant social
obligations. That’s why bessō, wherever
they’re built, tend to be isolated in their own
communities, away from the locals.
The apartments were in the ¥5 - ¥10 million
range for about 50 sq. meters, but instead of
the yearly management fee you usually pay
for bessō, resort condos charge a monthly
management fee, in addition to a monthly
repair fee. Those in Onjuku totaled onaverage about ¥30,000 a month. The agent
said prices had remained flat for seven years
after falling for more than a decade. Sales
were good now. Onjuku is gaining areputation as a surfing alternative to Shonan
in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Onjuku is lucky. The resort condo wasborn in 1987 when the Diet passed the Law
for the Development of Comprehensive
Resort Areas, making leisure facilities anational project. Local governments anddevelopers were given incentives andproperty laws were relaxed. Hundreds ofthousands of resort condos were built,
especially in the mountains because there
was a ski boom at the time.
The boom didn’t last. Yuzawa, in Niigata
Prefecture, the home of the Naeba ski resort,
erected 58 buildings comprising 15,000
units, most of which are now empty. The
average price was about ¥14 million for 30
sq. meters when they went on sale. You can
now have one for as little as ¥40,000, but you
have to assume the accumulated unpaid
management fees and property taxes, which
can run into millions.
And it isn’t just ski resorts. There arecondos on the Izu Penninsula coast inShizuoka Prefecture that originally cost

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between ¥40 - ¥50 million and are now goingfor a few hundred thousand yen plus
assumption of the much larger management
debt. It requires money to maintain hotspring baths, swimming pools and elevators.

Nikko

The realtor worked out of a prefabricatedshack near the Daiya River, from where healso administered fishing licenses. He drovea big Range Rover that had no problem
going uphill through the snow, which in
mid-April remained on the ground inabundance.
The bessō we looked at was a one-story
house in a wooded area developed andmanaged by the Tobu Corporation, whichowns and operates a train line that connects
the tourist enclave of Nikko in Tochigi
Prefecture to Tokyo. The house was well laidout, but even though it was only 10 years old
the interior was in disrepair. Winters are

Naomi Pollock will be speaking about themaking of her book to the Society ofWriters, Editors and Translators at 3 p.m.,
Sun. Oct. 21. at the Wesley Center, 6-10-7
Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo. For
more information, visit www.swet.jp.
Her book, “Made in Japan: 100 NewProducts,” was released Sept. 18, and isavailable from online booksellers or thepublisher, Merrell Publishing, London
and New York.

A second homemeans extra utility
bills, some of which
can be extra costly
Bessō developments are like regularhousing developments in that theyusually come with infrastructure suchas sewage and gas lines; watersupplies, too, though that tends to be
more of a problem. Local governments
have to build large-scale water-delivery
systems to accommodate a part-time
population, so they usually charge
more for water to people who live inbessō communities.
InTsumagoi, Nagano Prefecture, thebasic monthly water fee for permanent
residents is ¥500, while for bessō
residents it’s ¥1,400.
The local government in Hakone,
Shizuoka Prefecture, also charges bessō
residents more for water, but it doesn’t
charge them a basic fee during months
when they use no water at all.
One bessō community in Hokuto,
Yamanashi Prefecture, sued the local
authorities over its inflated water bill,saying it was unfair, and the case went
all the way to the Supreme Court,
which ruled in favor of the bessō
owners.

harsh there, and the laminate floors andkitchen fixtures needed refurbishing. Theowners were an elderly couple from Tokyofor whom the trip up had become a burden.
We heard a similar story from a different
realtor who showed us another bessō. He
explained that most of the owners in thehills were people from the city who had alittle extra money and bought second
homes simply because they could. After anumber of years the appeal wore off
because getting to Nikko is such a chore.
Meanwhile, they pay fees and taxes but
probably aren’t maintaining the property.
There were dozens of bessō for sale in thearea. Some had been on the market for
more than a year.
Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku blog
about Japanese housing at www.
catforehead.wordpress.com.