Traditionally the Japanese are a patterned people who live in a patterned country, a land where the exemplar still exists, where there is a model for everything, where the shape of something may be as important as its content, and the profile of the country depends upon the contour of living.
The profile is still visible. To think of Japan is to think of form, of design as well since this triumph of form is mainly visual. Patterns are made for the eyes and names are remembered only if read. It is the country of the calling card, home to forests of advertising. Visual composition is not taught, it is known -- like having perfect pitch.
One could call all of this natural except that in Japan the natural is never enough. Forests become parks, trees are dwarfed, cut flowers are arranged and called living. One does not go against nature so much as one takes advantage of it -- smoothing, embellishing. Nature is only the potential, still necessary is the shaping and the meaning.
One of the satisfactions of Japanese design is that the natural forms -- that is, those based on nature -- are traditionally the most admired. The spray of bamboo, the single stone, the sheen of wood, the grain of rock -- these are delivered from the context of nature and given meaning through their isolation. As Peter Grilli has said: ". . . images of the natural world and not the abstractions of the intellect have motivated Japanese artists, designers, architects and decorators."
This is what impressed photographer Kenneth Straiton when he first arrived in Japan 20 years ago. Coming from the Western tradition, he said, "Where design is often decoration, relying on symmetry and elaboration, it was a revelations to see the subtly and strength of Japanese designs."
Camera in hand, he began collecting images of striking, often simple, but always quintessential design. He became, as he says, "sensitized to the host of details everywhere around me, even in the midst of an increasingly modern, reconstructed Tokyo."
He found that "there is something delightful, like secret messages, about these silent images residing all around. It is a constant reminder of the past, of the depth of the culture." Even though "contemporary Japanese are beginning to lose the ability to interpret these messages from their communal subconscious," these are still there for the gathering.
This is what Straiton does in this very handsome book -- he gathers together hundreds of beautifully photographed examples of Japanese design ("photographers are collectors by nature") and presents them to us: crisp, detailed, sharply focused, each still holding its own context.
He divides the collection into seven categories: One is given to designs illustrating natural flow (water, etc.); another to use of the circle; another to "kata" (patterning), and so on. Inside each category various motifs are followed. The photographer traces, for example, the "knot" design from Kobe's Soraku-en, to the sand garden of Honen-in, to the gate of Yasukuni Shrine, to the knotted ropes at the portal of Homyo-ji in Kyoto, to the decoration of a window at a subtemple of Senso-ji in Tokyo.
A separate section is devoted to "katadoru," because Japanese forms of writing are links between the natural world and the renderings of the craftsman or artist. As Grilli explains: "Learning to write ideograms instilled principles of balance and proportion . . . the essence of the ideogram-based writing system is this fusion of the choreography of the arm and hand with the intellectual discipline of absorbing meaning."
It is indeed not surprising that anyone learning to write in this way should simultaneously develop an appreciation for good design and fine proportion in all things, this appreciation being instilled through the ordinary processes of acquiring literacy.
Straiton's collection is thus an excellent introduction into Japanese design. There has been nothing like it since the 1962 "Katachi: Japanese Pattern and Design," a Bijutsu-Shuppan/Weatherhill book published by Abrams, photos by Takeji Iwamiya and, the second volume, "Design and Craftsmanship of Japan," 1963.
There the divisions were by materials -- wood, paper, clay, stone, metal, etc. Straiton's categories give importance to the design principle itself. Also, they are in color (Iwamiya's were monochrome). This gives added depth to images and, in this case, connects design and context. In addition the format is proper size, unlike the pocket-book size of the current reprints of the Iwamiya books. The Straiton book -- big and square -- offers scale and proportion and fits on the desk rather than in the pocket. It is for contemplation, not convenience.
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