午夜剧场

I work as a book designer for books, specifically manga. Since I want to share something fresh with you, I will try to summarize the content of a lecture I recently gave at my other alma mater, Musashino Art University, regarding "Simplicity and Ornamentation."

I believe many people interested in design are fans of MUJI products. Modern design, including MUJI, tends to be thought of as having simplicity as its norm. However, my recent interest lies in questioning whether that is actually true. Do MUJI fans want to make their rooms "lonely" by placing MUJI furniture and clothing there? On the contrary, I think we can find a desire to make their lives more "vibrant."

In other words, the desire to "decorate" is surprisingly fundamental. Consider how drastically different life with the cave paintings of bulls at Lascaux 20,000 years ago was compared to life without them. "Decorating" a room with simple MUJI products sounds a bit contradictory at first, but that is due to the prejudice of viewing simplicity as a norm. If we view it as merely a technique rather than a norm, we can better explain reality.

Originally, I was interested in the ambiguity of "Wa" (Japanese style). When we think of Japanese style, we vaguely associate it with simple things, but in fact, Japanese culture contains both the height of simplicity and the height of flamboyance. Even looking at National Treasures, the former includes works like "Unohanagaki," "Dojigiri Yasutsuna," and the "Pine Trees Screen," while the latter includes "Inaba Tenmoku," the "Seven-Branched Sword," and the "Scenes in and around Kyoto Screen." If you try to read normativity into simplicity, you cannot explain such ambiguity.

So, if simplicity is not the norm—that is, not the standard of value—then what is the source of the value felt in the masterpieces mentioned above? I believe it is "the time spent." Not only in detailed works like the "Scenes in and around Kyoto Screen," but also in simple works like the "Pine Trees Screen," people sense a vast amount of time through the deliberation and refinement required to compose the image. When we encounter this sensation, we feel a determination to enrich life—in other words, ornamentation. I believe that is where the source of value lies.

The next time you buy a book, please try to imagine the "time spent" on it.