Design Discoveries: Towards a DESIGN MUSEUM JAPAN

Japan House

15 May 2024 – 8 September 2024

14.06.2024

Incredibly, for a country associated with everything that is hi-tech, Japan does not have its own museum of design. At Japan House, the Design Discoveries exhibition puts together seven major designers to consider what they would contribute in the form of design treasures to such a museum. We get a chance to see the rich diversity of Japanese design and some of the unique and inspirational design stories in the land of the rising sun.

I went to this exhibition after my first visit to the Design Museum here in London. I realised that I needed to learn more about this subject, design. Design is all around us. I often wonder to myself if I can ever extract myself from everything that is human made and see real wilderness. The reality is that everything around us – especially in London – is designed. Even when you are in the parks, the parks have been sculpted to look like what they look like. And this exhibition was an illuminating look into the nature of design creativity, how it depends on a historical and geographic context and a rich history of tradition.

Here are the design treasures and my personal comments on each of the exhibitions:

Haburagin, the Clothing of the Noro Priestesses: Design to Protect the Wearer by Morinaga Kunihiko, Fashion Designer

Worn over 500 years ago, these garments enable spiritual safety for the wearer and the community. The stitching keeps out evil spirits. This exhibit was particularly fascinating. Because protection is what coordinates, what is at the basis of our human relationships. I was talking about this with one my best friends. Women want a man that protects them. Men want a woman that gives them protection from the world. Protection is the basic need of humankind. And, I am named after protection: Sunil Dutt who saved the actress Nargis from the fire that broke out on the set of the film ‘Mother India’, a film itself made to protect the honour of India from attacks from the West.

The spirituality of fashion design, fashion built for a community and its spiritual needs was an insight into a world where clothes are not about looking good, but which protect the mind and the self. A psychology of safety that you wear to enable mental functioning and health.

But what is sad about this garments is the reality behind the design: that sometimes the evil spirits creep in and then you no longer have protection.

The premise behind this design may seem archaic, but it continues into the present. I am partially Hindu and my background is that we pray to the Mother Goddess, the warrior, to protect us. And I wear a bracelet on my hand of Bastet with her cats, because she protects and brings good health.

This design is a treasure because it shows that what is important to humans from a design point of view is the fulfilment of of deep-rooted psychological needs such as security and wellbeing, mental health.

Whip Tops and Tops Inspired by Them: Toys as Our First Contact with Design by Tsujikawa Koichiro, Film Director

Here’s what the exhibition notes say:

‘Toys nurture the five senses and the child’s primal desires to touch, see and hear. They embody design in its most primitive form’.

There is a mystical property to the spinning tops because their motion mirrors the human life cycle. They remind us of death when they stop spinning.

What intrigued me about the spinning tops exhibition in terms of design is how rich, colourful and beautiful design is when adults are designing things for children. Because then, the love for design becomes one with the love of children. Adults are trying to initiate children into the world of the human imagination and they present everything that is best about it. And, the conscientious adult – like the designer of these spinning tops – does not stint with knowledge and the experience of life. The design that is made for children is to educate them into the passage and the meanings of life, each of its different stages. It is the greatest moment of sharing in culture: when you are trying to mould the mind of the inexperienced through your own experience. This is why these spinning tops – and design for children – is always so beautiful. The meaning of our human existence is to share our knowledge, our appreciation of beauty, our experience with the future and the next generation.

Jōmon Village Design: Design Found in 10,000-year-old Living Spaces by Tane Tsuyoshi, Architect

‘The Jōmon people designed based on a ring system. The structure of village society was a ring. For 800 years, others joined this ring and belonged to the ring’.

‘Houses were arranged in a circle with the entrances facing the centre. At the centre, there was a ring of stones. This central ring was a place where the living paid their respects to and mourned the dead’.

In my view, the elemental social unit of gathering and community is the ring. With the discovery of fire, the original human group would have ranged themselves in a circle around the fire. This is the only way of maximising the warmth of the flames. This ring design of the Jōmon people embodies the basic unit of organisation.

In our society, where there is no longer eye contact, much face to face interaction, where we sit or stand for hours by ourselves in an unnatural state of affairs, the ring stands for community, integration, oneness. It is a beautiful ideal that we have lost: that connection of human to human that is the secret longing of every heart that dreams for something better than what we have now.

This design is a treasure because it speaks to a fundamental human need for connection and community. It is a reminder of what we have lost in the modern age.

State-of-the-Art 3D Sportswear: Inspired by a Lantern Festival in Toyama by Sudō Reiko, Textile Designer

Before computers, there were humans. And what humans have, compared to a computer, are traditions, spirituality and the brilliance and resourcefulness of their brains. Culture.

Before computer-aided design, there was the festival where the designer made bamboo frames which transformed two dimensional drawings into three dimensional lanterns. And it was because of that that he was able to make three dimensional garments such as 3D-cut woven skiwear in the 1970s..

This design story resonated with me deeply because it shows the resourcefulness of creativity, the inspiration from tradition that prompts innovation. Creativity can be at its best when you are importing or transferring one design tradition into an innovation for another problem.

And, myself, I find constant inspiration from religion. When I was a child, my mother got me, out of everyone, to take the incense and burn it before the mother goddess, the warrior, in the prayer rituals of the house. Bowing my head and holding my hands joined together before her. We asked for her protection. And that moment comes backs to me over and over again and it has become one of the powerful inspirations for creativity and life. The work for the goddess, the work for the festival, the work for the people.

A design treasure because love is work and work is love.

Print to Pattern: Unveiling the Kimono Through Japanese Prints

Ezen Foundation, Angel

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi on 19.05.2024. (Suneel’s original artwork from 2016).

This is my personal view of the exhibition and does not reflect the view or any consensus at any of the places I work at or volunteer.

For a very long time, Ezen Foundation featured a breath-taking wedding kimono decorated with cranes in its exhibition space. I was absolutely entranced by this wonderful construction of textile and art. I would take a careful look at the kimono every time I went to the gallery. For me, the kimono stood for everything that was beautiful about not just Japanese, but Asian culture. For the kimono was red, like the wedding dress of an Indian woman. The textiles were magical, shiny, seductive, splendid. They spelt out love.

My family comes from those involved in the clothing trade in India and in Britain. My mother’s side are leather merchants. My grandfather’s side were shoe makers. My grandmother worked in textiles when she was invited into this country. My mother made her own Punjabi suits when I was growing up on the sewing machine at home from the sumptuous fabrics she bought from the Indian shops. It has always been interesting to me to look at clothes and, when my grandmother passed away, I am reminded of her through the beautiful clothes that I see around me. She made me shirts and jumpers when I was a child and even when I was an adult. So when I look at these kimonos, I think of my grandmother and my mother, even if they have been made by men. That is the memory

Familiar to even the farthest flung nooks and crannies of the globe, the kimono is synonymous with Japanese culture and style. This exhibition at Ezen Foundation aims to showcase the clothing’s remarkable evolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century alongside the country’s ‘cultural and artistic transformation’.

Print to Pattern displays over 20 antique woodblock prints from kimono pattern books primarily dating from the late 19th century, also known as the Meiji era. The pattern books are fashion catalogues which were used in a multitude of ways by a diverse range of audiences and which feature designs for kimonos, patterns and motifs. The exhibition comes in the form of pictures, curator labels and then QR codes which give us more information about the exhibits.

The exhibition begins by featuring kimono designs of trees and their blossoms as auspicious motifs. A tree loving country is how we know Japan. From the bonsai tree collector Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid to the equation of everything Japanese with the cherry blossoms, that is how we have imagined and known Japan in the West. We are told how the trees form symbols and meanings, how humans are relating to the natural world by representing it in a system of human meaning. We form the idea of the Japanese as those that communicate through nature, that style themselves through nature. That see human qualities in the plants as well as abstract qualities like transience in the cherry blossoms or adversity in white irises.

There is a sensation of magic in the air because the trees are regarded as auspicious symbols in these designs. We are seeing the aspiration of magic in the flesh, the starvation for sorcery. Magic infiltrates the picture plane, the desire for success to be accomplished, the desire for love. It is a touching human moment.

The exhibition then moves to animals that figure on kimono design such as bats and cranes. As with the natural environment in the form of trees, we find out the meanings of these auspicious creatures and how they have figured in the Japanese imagination. The case of the bats is indicative of the historical contextualisation at work in the exhibition. We learn how the bats went from representations of prosperity to representations of modernity and aspirations for economic growth and social advancement.

Objects as motifs in kimonos now make their way into the gaze. There are bobbins, threads and needles as well as sake cups. Then, there is a print showing the iconic Mount Fuji which has remained ‘a prominent theme in kimono designs’. We learn that the motif has traditionally adorned the kimonos of young boys and has stood for resilience and strength.

We then stand before a wall decorated with floral patterns. Each element repeated into an overall scheme in a sparing, minimalistic aesthetic, with the use of negative space and flat colours to highlight the Japanese emphasis on the idea that what is not there structures the space just as much as what is there.

Other exhibits include wonderfully coloured and striking, intricately designed obi belts and prints which feature women in beautiful kimonos.

Then, finally, we see how the kimono looked on the body and in the social contexts that the women carried themselves in. We are reminded that the kimono was for presenting the body, for presenting subjectivity. There has been a move from the realm of abstract design towards how these designs signified the female form, the concrete lived experience of the Japanese in time.

In my view, Print to Pattern is a good, short introduction to the Japanese aesthetic and kimono design in the Meiji period. I remember that gallery space through the inclusion of that wonderful red wedding kimono dancing with cranes and beauty. And the exhibits of kimono design are beautiful too. Textile design is itself a neglected field in Western art history and the gallery space, so I feel that the exhibit does something to remedy this injustice. With fabrics and clothing, we see how the body relates most intimately to art and the movement of the exhibition has expressed this very well, from abstract design to, concretely, women wearing the kimono designs. There is much food for thought with the arrangement and the research into the symbolism of the things we are seeing. And the exhibition stimulates our curiosity to learn more and to see more kimonos, the crystallisation of skills in cloth-making, dying, design and fashion.

Print to Pattern is organised and curated by Olivia Mieke Maria-Paulina Martha, Wojtek Doria Dernalowicz, and Kalliopi Hadjipateras.

Review of Tsunagu/Connect: Uncovering the Lives of Japanese Women in the UK. (Barbican Centre)

18.02.2024

My mother is a migrant from India. Many of my relatives and friends are migrant women. I volunteered for years teaching migrant and refugee women English. Although I have heard my mother talk about why she came to the UK, I haven’t heard in much detail about what these women think of their arrival here, their journey in becoming British – even when I have asked them about it. You get snips and pieces: women that feel the hostility of this environment and the judgement of the people here over them. You get a sense of the insecurity and loneliness, the lack of belonging, when you watch them orchestrate their lives around phone calls and video calls back home, when you see that their closest friends are other migrant women from their home country. You sense their confusion about life here in London and the people here from the comments that they make. Tsunagu/Connect was a chance to hear what they wanted to be heard said about all of these topics.

Addressing the neglect of the topic, this exhibition is about the personal experiences and memories of migrant Japanese women that have come to the UK since the end of the Second World War. Over 30 Japanese women were interviewed to provide the oral histories for the exhibition on a one to one basis.

One of the stated aims of the exhibition is to overturn the ‘myths about Japanese women as passive and obedient housewives and provide an insight into the complexity, diversity, and agency of Japanese women in the UK’.

I picked out a few of the exhibits that caught my interest. I didn’t have time to listen to the audio descriptions. Masayo Aizawa chose to talk about her father through a strange object which she remembered him through, a calculator. She spoke about his harshness and the fact that he was traditional, that she could never express her gratitude to her father and that she only understood him late in life. This exhibit was interesting to me because it is often arbitrary objects that we associate with people. Because this was an example of a migrant woman reflecting on the people that she left behind, that she couldn’t get to know as well as she wanted to, that she had to separate herself from. And at the end of the exhibit, she says that she is like her father – it is just the illusion of separation. Perhaps this is what these migrant women feel – that their connection with the people around them in their countries of birth is unbreakable, one of the greatest influences on their lives. Perhaps this is what gives them stability and belonging, their identities.

Elizabeth Fusae Thurley spoke about what has been the astounding fact that I have witnessed throughout my life – that someone can come into a new country without knowing anything about it and at the greatest risk of precarity. Sometimes, they don’t even know the language. Elizabeth had come with a man with no job, no house and whose parents were against the marriage. She astonished herself with her bravery. You have to have courage to leave everything behind for a hope. She reminded me of my grandfather who came to this country from India and left everything behind him for the hope – the future for the children. Elizabeth came here in the hope of love: she got it.

Atsuko kamura spoke about how strange the people seemed here when she came: ‘The people sitting on the tube looked like as soon as they got off the train they would go and kill themselves’. That quote conveys the radical sense of defamiliarisation that these women experienced when they came to this country. But it carries a sadder tone for me – she came here for her happiness. But what she found when she first came here was sadness. What you think will make you happy in life often makes you sad. It is the way of the world.

This is conveyed most vividly in the story of Haruka Kuroda: ‘soon after I arrived in the UK, I was extremely homesick. I didn’t speak a word of English and for about 3 months, I called home every day using collect calls – remember those?! – costing my parents over £1000 on the phone bill each month!’

The dual kinship of the women here to their home countries and to the UK was apparent in the desire of Miyuki Tanaka to have her ashes floating in the air around Japan and the UK. After all, when they are here, the UK becomes their home. But it doesn’t always supersede their original home for all these women. Home is home is home. You can have more than one home – and what could be better than to have many places to call a home?

I reflected on the exhibition for a good while. Was it a success? Was it a failure? Some of the stories were about the bravery of these women, their pioneering entry into art school. Some of them were about their bravery in love, like I have mentioned above. Some of them were about the sadness, the struggle. The narrative of the exhibition is to present these women as heroes in the traditional mould – someone brave that faces adversity, that overcomes, that achieves, that finds a place in the world. The exhibition wants us to think of these women as strong. As strength. But I have a question. When the whole world is dominated by the West, when this country has a superiority complex, when the whole world is being Westernised, when people in this country think that every other country is misogynistic and a restriction on women’s freedom, how innocent is this narrative? Isn’t it just part of the problem? Is the only way a woman can be seen as a hero is to embrace the West? The Indian watches. The Indian judges. The Indian finds the exhibition wanting. What strikes the Indian is the sadness of coming to this land. To endure here. The disappointment. The defeat of the dream. That is what I found in this exhibition.

Kumihimo – Japanese Silk Braiding by Domyo Exhibition

Kumihimo – Japanese Silk Braiding by Domyo Exhibition

Japan House (Free, book in advance)

Only until 11 June 2023

07.06.23

Silk is splendour. Silk is shine. Silk is skill. This wonderful material comes from the East and is one of its most remarkable achievements, the mode in which it has produced masterpiece after masterpiece, all of them wearable. The world of fashion is surely indebted beyond measure to the smooth, radiant designs that have been produced in the medium. For me, the beauty of the East is conveyed in the four letters of the name ‘silk’.

It was then with some big expectations today – as a lover of silk (and art, craft, fashion, Asia and the Japanese, as well as the art gallery and the art museum) – that I made my way down to Japan house for the very first time to view the Japanese Silk Braiding (Kumihimo) exhibition. As I came in, I received smile after smile and received a friendly, first class reception from the staff that were on. I was also handed a pile of goodies to take – a beautiful bookmark featuring the coloured silk braids in a rainbow of hues, a wonderfully designed and informative guide, and also a strikingly designed poster (or flyer) for the next exhibition that is coming up (WAVE – Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts, 6 July to 22 October 2023).

Japan house gleams with a minimalist white interior design. It reminded me somewhat of an oyster shell which contains the precious pearl. I was in a hurry after work so I could not take in everything but I got the general impression of painstaking cleanliness and the inspired arrangement of things and interiors that is the hallmark of the modern Japanese aesthetic.

The exhibition ‘explores the history, techniques and potential of kumihimo silk braiding’, with some focus on the craftspeople of the Domyo workshop which has been in business since 1652 CE and is in its tenth generation of artists (guide).

What is a great source of pride to Asian people (Indian) like me is the fact that our civilisation has been around in continuous form for several thousand years, unlike other ‘great’ civilisations that have fallen. So, I was glad that it was a similar story here with the Kumihimo. The silk braids have endured in some form in Japan since the time of the Jōmon people and early pre-history (if not in silk). We are seeing old knowledge extending into the present and into the future with technological advances in this exhibition, as new worlds of geometry and mathematical genius are being created with continuous forms throughout the greater part of post-ancient human history.

However, the Japan exhibition is not parochial. There is a global dimension to the braids because they have been shared across cultures across the world, which the curator was careful to show. There are examples from Tibet and Peru, for instance.

I was mesmerised by the videos showing the making of the silk braids. The one where the cords were dyed purple and washed in a vessel of water was a piece of art in itself, a metaphor for the act of creation out of the waters that have given humankind birth and belonging on this planet.

It was fascinating to see the use of the silk braids on armour as well as in religious sutras or scrolls and for such uses as the ‘internal organs placed inside a sculpture’. The designs were wonderful, a real virtuoso exhibition of the combination of skill, maths and technology to create beauty. My absolute favourites were, firstly, the ornamental braid from the Buddhist temple Hōryū-ji. It is a majestic piece in red and gold, with diagonals like the third eye of the Hindu god Shiva (to me). There are golden beads interlaced in the design which remind me of the organic shape of seeds. Secondly, I loved the other ‘multiple diamond’ designs done in brown and creme, achingly wonderful. Again, I particularly enjoyed the deconstruction of historical costumes such as a Victorian dolman which the workshop has used to recreate these splendours of the Japanese people.

Of great interest to me (science is another one of my hobbies) was the use of Kumihimo to create new mathematical structures and experimentations in concrete geometry. The model that had been created was an amazing piece of design innovation and a contribution to our shared knowledge as a species. Such is the influence and intellectual power of the Japanese people, all based on traditional knowledge and its reworking into modern day life – an example and a contrast for the countries in Asia that have been colonised and want to forgot their customs and local knowledges in favour of economic servitude to their erstwhile colonisers and their knowledges (or rather, complex of power/knowledge).

This silk braid exhibition is an experience that I will never forget. It had everything: a beautiful setting, beautiful people, beautiful things, a beautiful philosophy, a beautiful lesson. I have always admired the creativity, discipline and historical stewardship of the Japanese people and they never disappoint me with their arts and crafts. Japan house is a testament to the radiance of the people of the rising sun, and so is this exhibition. And to Japan’s generosity to the world. For as I made my way out of the exhibition, the smiling lady on the counter offered me a crane made out of origami which I had admired. It is just another of the gifts that the Japanese have given me in this life, this glorious culture that adopted our Indian religion of Buddhism and became our brothers and sisters.