Japanese and American Design through Russel Wright
by Hitoshi Mori

This paper attempts to clarify the significance of preparing and implementing the Russel Wright plan. Among the many design improvement campaigns in postwar Japan, this plan was considered one that was implemented most effectively in its initial stages. In light of the fact that Japanese design approached American design rapidly after World War II and made the methods and systems of American design its own to achieve success, it is necessary to show the importance in Japanese design history of this plan which served as the starting point. As a background, I will also show the simultaneous progress of attention and consideration of American design in the pre-war Japanese design world, where the influence of functionalism stemming from the Bauhaus movement started, and will scrutinize the evaluation of Russel Wright in that context. In these investigations, I will also examine the Russel Wright plan immediately after the war and consider the conditions that affected its realization. Specifically, in this study, I want to present an overview of postwar industrial design practice and a consideration of the significance of its continuity, beginning with an examination geared toward an evaluation of Wright in the context of design activities of the pre-war period as the starting point whereby Japanese postwar design began a mass movement veering toward American design.

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