Among the greatest of Japan's gifts to the world is surely the gift of design.
I am not referring here to the borrowed word dezain, a noun that indicates the arrangements of parts of something into a whole, but to the English verb "to design" — meaning to fashion in the mind and invent; to formulate or devise a plan for something; to plan out systematically in graphic form; to create for a particular effect or in a highly artistic manner.
It is these nuances that I have come to realize apply to Japanese creativity in its multifarious facets.