Fruit in Japan has a reputation for commanding high prices — ¥10,000 for a fancy melon, or a cool ¥260,000 (about $1,700) for a prized Miyazaki Prefecture-grown “Egg of the Sun” mango. Everyone seems to know about these fruits with their perfectly smooth skin and almost cloyingly rich flesh, nestled inside premium packaging with immaculately crinkled tissue paper.
But the unsung heroes of Japanese produce are to be found in the aisles of everyday fruits and vegetables. There, great boxes are a designer’s delight.
This summer, watermelon — one of the more ostentatious, high-risk, high-reward fruits consumed by humans — was a domain of stiff competition at the market. The boxes for Yairokko-branded watermelon from Niigata Prefecture came with an ornate pale green and white wash, mimicking the outside of the rind. Watermelon boxes from Kanazawa were more smooth and graphic but no less thoughtful; one of the black seeds shown in the flesh of the red fruit doubles as a kaga umebachi, a symbol of the city in Ishikawa Prefecture.
A box from Yamagata Prefecture was busy and hard to decipher, with the logo for JA Michinoku Murayama (one of the country’s many regional agricultural cooperatives) evoking the fruit; although it was probably a red sun rising behind a mountain, it also looked like a cute watermelon having a very bad hair day.
My deep appreciation for domestic produce boxes started early in my time in Japan. I was in the parking lot of a supermarket in Fukuoka, picking through flattened and stacked cardboard boxes that people could take for free. Even though I just needed a basic, medium-size box to ship some things home to the U.S., I found myself eyeing each design carefully like I was buying art for my apartment. Although it’s been more than five years and a few different homes in two cities, I’m still holding onto the same box showing a parade of brown and white onions, presumably representing skin-on and skin-off, from the town of Kunneppu in Hokkaido. The box never made it to the U.S.
Since then I’ve become a fruit box superfan: Their flat, kawaii graphics stand out when you come from a country where produce boxes are either plain, full of text or over-designed with loud branding or unimaginative, photorealistic designs. With apologies to other countries, Japanese produce boxes are in a league of their own.
It’s most common to see a graphic illustration of the fruit itself, as in the many different apple box designs I came across a few years ago in Yamagata.
Some use local mascots or anime characters. Consider the bipedal pony Gunma-chan holding up an eggplant, while JA Sawaisesaki mascot Vejita-kun, a boy with a tomato for a head, double-fists eggplants on the other side of the box edge.
One of my favorite designs is a box for garlic from Oirase in Aomori Prefecture. At first glance, the illustration is of a bulb of garlic standing on its head, but it could also be seen as a nose, presumably taking a deep whiff of the odors emitted from within.
Japan’s high-quality packaging and design is of course globally admired, and each year the Japan Packaging Institute awards prizes for innovations in packing. In past years, recipients have included numerous designs that cut down on plastic use, a tofu package which bears a mark that only appears when it’s chilled at exactly the right temperature of 17 degrees Celsius and a Pizza Hut box for the World Cup that can be turned into a soccer stadium.
But these humble fruit and veggie boxes hardly seem to qualify for such lofty accolades. Neither do they adhere to some industry standard or regulations set by the government, or say, the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, the vast and powerful organization of farming lobbies.
So where does the impetus for these thoughtful designs come from? The answer, as is seen at consumerist loci all across Japan, might simply come down to the country’s patented blend of local pride and marketing.
The eye-catching watermelon box from JA Matsumoto Highlands resembles both the mountains of Nagano Prefecture and a slice of the sweet summer fruit. The very top of the shape is slightly paler than the rest, simultaneously evoking snow-dusted mountains and white edges of watermelon slices. Kazuya Ota, head of the specialty vegetables department at the association, says my email was the first watermelon query he’d received that was not about the fruit but their boxes.
“I haven’t really noticed (the cuteness) either. It was unexpected,” he says with a laugh.
The bright color is intended to make the box stand out in supermarkets and grocers, says Ota, and the shape is meant to play off brand recognition between the fruit and Nagano’s mountains.
“The shape of this mountain is synonymous with the image of Nagano Prefecture, and I think it’s quite an old design,” says Ota. “When people from outside the prefecture see this mountain mark, I think most people understand that it represents Nagano Prefecture.”
The mountain shape is not only used for the watermelon boxes; it also appears on produce containers from across the prefecture, with the design originating with JA Zennoh Nagano, the umbrella group for the local associations. Heads of green leaf lettuce grown in the southern end of the prefecture come in boxes printed with a (somewhat counterintuitively) blue version of the mountain; bunches of long green onions from the central areas come packaged with the mountain (more fittingly) in green.
But watermelon fit especially well with the preexisting design, and representatives from the local division of watermelon farmers worked with JA Zennoh Nagano to adapt accordingly. In its current form, which was last updated four years ago, on the narrow side of the box, a slice of watermelon stands in for a third peak of the mountain range.
I’m not the first person to have their interest piqued by this box series. Last year for a school project, Matsumoto-area junior high students created designs for five gachapon (capsule toys) based on actual cardboard boxes and had them fabricated to support local agriculture. Palm-sized versions of watermelon, Chinese yam, long green onions, apples and gobō (burdock root) boxes from Nagano were sold for ¥300 each.
Over the years, I’ve picked up a few more produce boxes for storage, but in a Tokyo apartment it’s impractical to try and catch them all. There’s no space underneath the box with bright orange slices watched over by Mika-chan of Mikkabi mikan (Japanese mandarin), and I’ve already had to say a tearful goodbye to a box of smiling, encouraging bok choy. These sturdy, dependable boxes seem unlikely to fail me, but should I ever need to replace one, there’s always another season of boxes around the corner.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.