American Design in the Prewar Japanese Design World, Focusing on Russel Wright

The origin of modern design in Japan, as in various other countries, began with the implementation of functionalism advocated by the Bauhaus school established in Weimar, Germany in 1919 under the leadership of W. Gropius. In Japan, the Keiji Studio, which was formed in 1928, embarked on the first experiments in that style. This was an organization of devotees formed in October 1928 by Chikatada Kurata (1895-1966), who taught interior design at the Tokyo Higher School of Arts and Technology (Tokyo Koto Kogei Gakko), and his disciples and was prompted by their studies of German literature. They primarily designed and tested the suitability of furniture for Japanese people and Japanese homes and presented four exhibitions over the period from 1929 to 1937. Based on these results, they also tried mail-order sales of standard furniture in cooperation with women's magazines in 1930 and 1936. However, more systematized research and experiments were developed in an organized manner by the Industrial Arts Research Institute, which was established in March 1928 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. In 1933, Bruno Taut was invited to the Institute while he was visiting Japan, and in keeping with his proposal, standardization research called master models was started (Fig. 1). Michiji Suzuki, Isamu Kenmochi, Katsuhei Toyoguchi, Junkichi Okayasu, and Tsuyoshi Ogata were selected as assistants and carried out research and testing on functional design. Taut presented his Glass Pavilion at the German Work Federation (Werkbund) Exhibition held in Cologne in 1914, and he attracted attention for his expressionist approach. He later designed public collective housing units in the city of Magdeburg, and he pursued efficiency and individuality in his designs. This background also drew attention in Japan, but he left Germany in May 1933, which was under the control of the Nazi regime, and went to Japan on an invitation by the International Architecture Association. In his famous debate about standardization among Muthesius and Van de Velde at the 7th Annual German Work Federation (Werkbund) Conference in 1907, Taut strongly supported individual inspiration in design in opposition to Muthesius, and in this way, it was an irony of history that he would later guide Japanese research in standardization. However, it is undeniable that the strong aesthetic approach incorporated into his design activities strongly appealed to young designers at the Institute. In Japan, this was because, in the 1920s, before functionalism gained wide recognition as a major movement, many architects and designers had been obsessed with the expressionism of E. Mendelsohn and others. To achieve the national goal of increased exports, the Industrial Arts Research Institute worked firstly to improve products made using traditional Japanese techniques and secondly to conduct scientific research of industrial arts. Research in standardization, belonging to the second category, was not considered a research topic of primary importance, and research was in fact abandoned after Taut left. In this way, in prewar Japan, the wellspring for the concepts and practice of modern design was almost in its entirety dictated by Germany.

Nonetheless, in the 1930s as a result of improvements in industrial production, in Japan as well, interest was generated in world trends and different types of design methods that suited the mass production that had become a reality. For example, Shichiro Hasegawa (1913- ) entered the design department of the Teikoku School of Art in 1932, where he learned about design trends in North America and Europe from professor Sen Arai and was involved in editing "desegno" published by the design department. At about this time, he showed interest not only in Bauhaus, but also in American design, and he wrote "the industrial designer, which is a new occupation of the 20th century developed chiefly in the U.S. . . . takes as its premise a reform in aesthetic concepts, which had come to seem immutable to date." He gave Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, and Henry Dreyfus as examples. However, at the same time he said, "The industrial design of the U.S., which is pursuing a new style that regards the mechanical structure with secondary importance in certain aspects, is one bad manifestation moving in the direction of highly developed U.S. commercialism and it is not necessarily in accord with the proper union of manufacturing and art that we are pursuing." In this statement, it is clear that his own stance was close to that of functionalism. Within that context, everything from the "world renowned existence of Raymond Loewy" to "Russel Wright who aestheticized the desk and home goods and Chicago's Barnes and Reinecke and others that are aiming for maximum effect with minimum material in Sakiya pure bath goods and light industrial products" is touched upon, and I would like to focus on the overlaps between these and the designers who were employed in the postwar. In 1939, Tilly Prili-Schloemann2 was invited from Germany, which was Japan's ally. This was in accordance with the primary objective of the Institute, which was the expansion of exports. She had experience in selling at department stores, and it was Suleimann who probably taught marketing to the Japanese design industry before Wright. However, the key design factions only acknowledged this as a preliminary step that revamped the native Japanese techniques, and so they probably could not grasp this perspective. This was also the reason that Charlotte Perriand, who was well-known as one of the contributors to Le Corbusier, was also invited in June 1940. In June of the following year, she presented the results on her study in Japan in the "Tradition, Selection, and Creation" Exhibition and attracted wide attention among many Japanese designers (Fig. 2). At this time, the Japanese army had advanced into French Indochina, and Perriand later attended the Japan Design Exhibition held in Hanoi in December, where she presented some of her work created in Japan, and by doing so, clearly demonstrated why she was invited.

Starting in November 1940, Wasaburo Mizumachi, head of Department No. 3 in the National Ceramics Research Center, was dispatched from the Industrial Arts Research Institute for a survey on industrial arts in North and South America. After visiting Argentina and Brazil, he stayed in New York for about half a month from the beginning of May of 1941, and he visited department stores such as Macy's and Wanamaker and stores specializing in furniture and ceramics such as Jensen, Plummer, and Pitt Petrie in an effort to understand the trends in sales and consumption. He visited the studio of P. Freigang as an industrial designer, but it seems that the technical level did not leave an impression on Mizumachi's trained eye for ceramics. Upon returning to Japan, he reported the results of his survey with numerous photographs in a booklet entitled "An Industrial Arts Summary of North and South America." At department stores, Mizumachi saw that goods in the classic style and goods in the modern style were not mixed at sales sites and were sold in clearly divided camps (Fig. 3). Of the latter, he frankly noted that Wright's reputation exceeded his expectations gleaned from print: "I came across many items that were made from the designs of the famous industrial arts designer Russel Wright. The name of Russel Wright is a familiar name in foreign magazines, but I did not know that it was actually sold to this extent." Perhaps for this reason, Wright's works were the most numerous that were introduced among American designers (Fig. 4). However, the indoor space of functionalism and the modern style had not quite crossed over to Japan, and as a result, no efforts had been made for the design of suitable livingware. Mizumachi also pointed out that although works with an Asian influence by American craftsman such as Stanmeyer and Panzri were being used, the only Japanese products that were being exported were cheap, mass-produced ones. This report would likely have been widely read among those involved in design at that time and so it is probably something that generated a new awareness of Wright's value and reputation.

As odd as it may sound, the purpose of the visit was a market survey for expanding sales routes to the continental U.S. The Japanese government, which had intermittently been expanding military conflagrations in China since 1931, was on the other hand, continually pressing for economic growth through expanded export trade to Europe and the U.S. In addition, the following people also made visits for similar purposes: Kado Sugita (craftsman) in 1937 to Europe, Toyochika Takamura (craftsman) in 1941 to Mexico and North America, Takao Miyashita in 1938 (professor at the Tokyo Higher School of Arts and Technology) to Europe and the U.S. However, with the start of war with the U.S. in December 1941, the policy of expanding exports was completely abandoned as the central concern shifted to a basic policy for conserving resources in wartime. In October and November 1941, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry presented National Lifestyle Exhibits designed by the Industrial Arts Research Institute in Tokyo and Osaka that attracted wide attention and promoted modular furniture that was on display. This was the work of Kenmochi and various others who were once involved in the master model standardization research. The following year, these efforts resulted in the promotion of modular furniture under the name of National Furniture (Fig. 5), and in 1943, these were displayed in combination with the life-size standard housing models designed by Housing Corporations. In this way, the research on master models that started in the 1930s become the most important research topic for the Institute during wartime by the researchers with the standardization of industrial materials being pursued as a part of the policy for conserving wartime resources. They were also involved in research and development work on adhesives and new materials as applied military technology for airplanes. Accordingly, although the functionalism school was aware of American design by Wright and others before the war, the movement was incorporated into the wartime system before it could pursue its course.

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