Spirituality and Japanese Design Practise

A “mirror world,” akin to Through the Looking Glass. An “alien planet we can actually do business with, a future,” or so observes William Gibson. While researching this piece, I was in awe of the number of fantastic things different people had to say about this place. A recent cover of I.D. magazine had in bold, so beautifully strange and oddly familiar—we can’t take our eyes off of it. There is an undeniable interest, nay fetish, with Japan and Ambidextrous is looking to unravel part of that.

J@pan Inc Magazine’s Stephen Mansfield calls Japan the global imagination’s proxy setting for the future. They do indeed seem to be on the cutting edge of creativity and potent design practise, from architecture to high-tech engineering to fashion. So how does a nation once so steeped in tradition become the world’s ambassador to the future? Such a shift seems antithetical, no?

Part of this riddle was introduced to America through Frank Lloyd Wright’s apparent debt to Japanese art. The enigma is not that Wright freely acknowledged that he was indebted to the philosophy of Japanese aesthetic, but that he consistently rejected suggestions that Japanese architecture had any direct impact on his work. The first effort to differentiate his appreciation of Japanese ideals from the use of Japanese forms came in 1911 when an architect friend, C. R. Ashbee, claimed that “the Japanese influence is very clear. He [Wright] is obviously trying to adapt Japanese forms to the United States, even though the artist denies it and the influences must be unconscious.”

Wright protested, “Do not say that I deny my love, for Japanese art has influenced me—I admit that it has but claim to have digested it. Do not accuse me of trying to ‘adapt Japanese forms,’ however, that is a false accusation and against my very religion.”

The Japanese have demonstrated a rare syncretic genius in learning how to borrow and adapt from their own culture and elsewhere, and then to retool these materials into something uniquely theirs. In the land of the capsule hotel and the frenetic Bunka Fashion College, one also finds the follower of the tea ceremony who prepares his implements in a manner that may be traced back to the practises of Sung dynasty China, and spends a lifetime mastering a single subtle gesture.

In the Meija era, Japan embarked on its acquisition of new expertise and technology from the West. Thus we see their adopted elements of us refracted back, taking on peculiar qualities and not wholly comprehensible. At its core, culture and popular aesthetic represent a common denominator of social expression within society. The Japanese design site, shift.jp.org, claims that design has replaced art as the cultural and communicative signifiers of a people. However, the question of how to relate Japanese concepts to those of their Western counterparts has been a major problem among intellectuals.

Philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) portrayed religion as one form in which manifold social experiences can be organised. In this—a sort of sociological projection theory—it is observed that “religion emerges in social relations of special intensity. In his relation with God, the individual repeats and transcends his relation to the collectivity. The unity of the group is expressed in religious terms; the deity is the name for that unity.” Religion can be seen as a sort of defining analogy which consequently delineates social mores through time.

Such grand dynamics lie outside the everyday experience of the Western individual, resulting in a lack of vernacular by which to explore our involvement in them. Instead, morals are imposed via the most secular interpretations of exoteric texts—foregoing the beauty of esoteric analogies. Experiences are employed by religious institutions in order to build on interpretations of individual salvation. Even the tensions in religious thought are thought to be part of a symbolic whole that integrates experience in a manner transcending any other.

In Buddhism, a deep self-awareness of oneself is tantamount to divinity. However, Semitic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) eschew equality in favour of a necessitating a faith paramount to oneself. A faith provided, rather than personally garnered. It’s also debatable as to whether Buddhism is even a religion in the orthodox sense of the word, as it is a set of harmonious philosophical doctrines by which its tenets can be lived out; there is no worship. The people of Japan also comfortably accept the rites of many spiritual models into their lives. Shinto, Japan’s native religion, where respect is held for nature spirits and one’s descended elders, peacefully co-exists alongside Buddhism; many also choose to appreciate Christian weddings and other festivities in addition.

Zen, the well known Japanese branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism, criticises textual study and the pursuit of worldly accomplishments. By concentrating primarily the pursuit of an unmediated awareness of the processes of the world and the mind, Zen offers an escape from the trappings of ego and a subjective appreciation of ‘nothingness’—or no-thingness.

In his book, The Tacit Dimension, Michael Polanyi maintains that certain ideas—what he refers to as ‘tacit knowledge’—do not take the form of language yet nevertheless play important roles in a society. In Japan, these elements integrate philosophy, religion, art, moral, and lifestyle. They are embodied via introspective processes.

The Japanese don’t see emptiness as synonymous with infertility or barrenness as we tend to perceive it. Instead, nothingness is that from which form can emerge. The painters of Japan believed that emptiness was apparent as a context only after the first well conceived stroke was put to paper. What might seem like an inconsequential difference actually structures an entire people’s appreciation of meaningful presence. Emptiness to us, by any other name, plays a procreative role in Japan and, through its subtle mastery, achieves meaningful presence.

A similar appreciation can be seen in design theory, such as in Alex W. White’s Thinking in Type: “The spaces surrounding and within letters are as significant and the letters themselves. In fact, the shapes around the letters define the letters. Managing the spaces between and around letters makes type more or less legible.” A simple context taken outside of the constraints of language can allow for a deeper understanding of typography, architecture, or one’s spiritual journey. As any knowledgeable designer can attest, the effect of legibility is lost if emptiness is too richly furnished, if simplicity is replaced with opulence and clutter; a concept applicable to the innate syncretism of traditional Japanese lifestyle.

A further link between this visible surface world and the invisible interior, enforcing the delicate and fragile sense of ukiyo, the “Floating World,” is embodied also in traditional Japanese architecture. Before people began distinguishing rooms with particular functions (eating, sleeping, cooking), Japanese houses didn’t have screens to separate rooms. As various contexts were applied to functions within the home, the use of partitions become more popular over time. These interior divisions, creating clever optical illusions with limited space, can be aarranged at will according to practical as well as aesthetic needs. Traditional design tended to regard the inside and the outside of a house as a continuous element, not two separate environments. For example, the doors, windows, and alcoves are situated for the most advantageous viewing of the gardens or other contemplative settings. The home was not a separate entity from its surroundings. Nor were the Japanese people.

As a traditional Japanese home was often devoid of gratuitous cultural artefacts, the lack of elements and a use of holistic simplicity freed the contextual confines of rooms. Design as a response to real constraints has an obvious precedent in this type of home. If you have half the space, the sliding of one screen can double the functionality. It was their assumption of roles that defined the space, not the space that defined their roles when within.

MIT design prof John Maeda posted a quick bit on his blog last year dealing with the nature of design in the West. He wrote, “I find beauty in freshness and fragility—two qualities that the modern designed object is not allowed to possess. Once an object is acquired, it eventually becomes stale in your apartment; were an object to be crafted as to break upon the slightest touch, it could not be sold. For these reasons I find my beauty in nature, where every item has a purpose and a life cycle that is perfectly natural.”

Ando Tadao, the acclaimed self-taught Japanese architect, developed a radical approach to architecture characterised by exposed concrete and complex three-dimensional spaces revealed by geometric simplicity. Essentially, a vivid richness in spatial articulation, not unlike the white space that frames the letters upon a page. Well known for many projects, it is his ‘Row House in Sumiyoshi’ that began to illustrate the enlightened purpose of his designs. It is a small, two-storey concrete home consisting of two enclosed interior spaces separated by an open courtyard. So if it is raining, one might use an umbrella to go to the rest room. Many would perceive this as an inconvenience in design, and many Westerners would be quick to question Ando’s decision. Nevertheless, living in such a space is unlike that of any other. People are forced to disclose themselves, to be among nature even if for just a moment, storm or shine.

In his buildings, Ando creates spaces of enclosure rather than openness. On the exterior, the wall deflects the surrounding urban chaos, while on the interior it encloses a private space. But what first appears to break tradition actually serves a very Japanese purpose: to experience the bridge between oneself and nature. What the West sees as two dualistic elements are viewed here as a whole, reflecting the nature of Buddhism and Shinto. Ando has specifically erected these barriers out of the most ‘natural’ element of the urban landscape—concrete—and created an elegant barrier against the cacophony outside those walls. Because space, light, and geometry remain the everlasting property and building blocks of nature, Ando’s architecture eschews the contextual constraints of man-made décor, the spiritually frivolous. In such an environment, a person cannot help but be invited to engage an inner dialogue with her or his subtler nature.

Maeda’s desire for the chaos that nature provides is a natural counterbalance to the functional, over-accommodating environments we design for ourselves. The separation we construct between ourselves and nature is unwarranted, but the natural social repercussion of the Semitic dichotomy we bear. The potential for change and a lack of predictability speaks to our soul. It is the shifts in perspectives that pave the way for new and alternative methods of problem solving, the very heart of all design.

The relationship between tradition and change in Japan has always been complicated by the fact that change is itself a tradition. Japan’s elegance lies in its ability to metamorphose and absorb change within the framework of established patterns, and for them, there is a pattern for everything.

Novelty, the persistent craving for the new, an urge to replace outdated forms—such stereotypical aspects of contemporary Japan are by no means recent phenomena. Takao Yoshii, in his book The Electric Geisha, notes that “social and cultural phenomena would arise one after another, and each new value thus generated might soon be overturned by the next.” Though it is easy enough for us to chronicle the cultural trends that the Japanese adopt from period to period, it is not possible by Western standards to accurately document the wisdoms acquired from each adaptation to new influences. Such wisdoms are the introspective, tacit property of the people, which are only ever interpreted through the lens forged by the mores of any outsider. While vernacular and semantic are debated, we turn to aesthetics to best understand the Japanese—through their actions and design practises.

Zen has so influenced Japanese art and culture that a whole vocabulary of Zen aesthetic principles has arisen. These principles include preference for simplicity and asymmetry, which can be seen throughout the gardens. Japanese revere the sensitivity and creativity required to achieve an exquisite effect by the simplest possible gesture. Elements in Japanese gardens are usually arranged in odd numbers of seven, five, or three to suggest the asymmetry of nature. Contrasts between slender and massive, vertical and horizontal, smooth and rough stimulate the mind to find its own path to perfection.

The most important concept of traditional Japanese gardens, meigakure is the quality of remaining hidden from ordinary view. Each feature of the garden appears from partial concealment, creating a profound sense of mystery and encouraging visitors to continue their journey. Communicating through implication rather than direct statements, many Japanese believe that meaning exists beyond what can be described in words. Implicit to the design is their involvement, their interpretation, and the context in which they want to place the randomness of the chaos they’ve cultivated: in the beauty of nature.

An aesthetic concept known as wabi is growing in popularity in the West, but has grown far removed from contemporary Japanese culture. Like Maeda’s fleeting experience that accompanied the naturalness of decay, wabi is hard to translate into English without the use of poetics. It refers to a sense of refined melancholy or loneliness, but in foresight to the new growth or experience that will naturally supersede an analogous ‘death’ or decay. In the Buddhist garden, this principle requires that the stems of the lotus are left in place long after the flowers have died and the leaves have fallen. When one sees the stems sticking up through the snow and ice, one is led to reflect on the transitory nature of beauty.

The mystery of meigakure is an invitation to explore the deeper potentials that exist should they so choose to embrace the act of exploration and, consequently, discovery. Ukiyo, the wondrous realm where the unexpected is expected. Followed by wabi, an appreciation of what was, in order for what will be to come into its own.

One of the oldest aesthetic principles of Japan is also one of the most effective in understanding their current approach to design: iki, the orientation toward simplicity in everyday life. Iki can be described as a sophisticated artlessness in accord with the human will, reduced down to its simplest context in which the subjective interpretation is paramount. A circle is the perfect form. However, radial patterns draw attention to a particular, creating extraneous movement or focus, which is antithetical to the nature of iki. As the Japanese tend to use “iki” more in a situational sense than in any formal sense, it allows for a wider, more flexible interpretation and it is relative and context-dependent, subject to change.

By removing extraneous artefacts of context upon the canvas of everyday life, the Japanese masters are free to truly interpret and act upon their world as they so please. Iki does not exist in nature, but in the human act of appreciating nature.

Iki is also an etymologically flexible word. When a Japanese word is written with different ideograms, the same single (phonetically identical) word can carry dozens of different nuances. When a Japanese word is written with phonograms, either hiragana or katakana, the word leaves the possibility of interpretation open. Fourteen examples of different ideograms exist for iki in popular song and literature from the Edo period (pre-Tokyo, where iki originated as a concept). If iki is written with phonograms, the precise meaning of the word becomes almost indeterminable. Manifestations of iki oscillate depending on the context.

Because art in the Western sense did not exist in pre-modern Japan when iki was practised, it is an aesthetic of non-art since the boundary between ‘art’ and ‘everyday’ was nonexistent from the beginning. The criterion ‘Japanese art’ is essentially a Western product, in our need to label and impose semantic unto everything.

As in any design, too many features or embellishments easily diffuses the intent. In Japan, as technological advances compound, the simple elegance of each mastered form may amalgamate and produce new design vernaculars by which future generations can further adapt. This allows for reinterpretation, allowing perfected designs to be reused in various manners as sees fit the person.

James Kirkup wrote in his 1966 book Tokyo, “It is still the expression of a state of mind that thrives on the appreciation of infinitesimal detail.” One such example is the tea ceremony.

The tea ceremony (chado or sado, or “way of the tea”) was initially brought to Japan by a Buddhist monk from China in the ninth century. It has been noted that the tea ceremony can lead to an integrated mind-body experience by balancing both hemispheres of the brain. The left side of the brain is stimulated by the logical sequences of the tea ceremony such as the making of the tea to the handling of the utensils, and the intricate methodology learned through years of practise. The right side: by the environment of the tea room, the awareness placed on movements and gestures of yourself and others, by symbols, and by the feelings evoked by one’s participation. Active and cognizant participation in the tea ceremony can lead to this balancing of the brain’s hemispheres.

At its core, the tea ceremony itself is not important. The guests play the important role and must have some prior knowledge and understanding of the ceremony. Prescribed gestures and phrases are expected throughout, which establish a familiar setting by which participants may focus on subtler details. In an ideal situation, practitioners are involved in a complex choreography of movements and adhere to strict rules of conduct and behaviour.

When both the host and guests are experienced with the tea ceremony, both are removed from the mundane details of the event itself. Subtle expression and mastery over minutiae becomes the primary mode of communication, and even the smallest offsets and gesture may skew context and the intuitive dialogue being exchanged. As is the case in many forms of meditation, repetition is used to keep the everyday process of thoughts busy with the mundane while conscious effort is made to maintain lucid involvement in a so-called tacit dimension.

The prescribed gestures of the tea ceremony are thus the forms used to elicit calculated experiences. Ideally, all involved are on a similar plane of interaction and may begin to explore even more abstract dialogues of nuance. The same can be said of two lovers or even athletes in the midst of their acts.

Within most Japanese homes, regardless of whether they are Japanese or Western style, exists a traditionally styled Japanese room, the washitsu. Within is a designated alcove, the tokonoma, in which is placed a vase of flower arrangement or an ornament (okimono) such as small stones that catch one’s eye in nature, and a scroll of Japanese painting or calligraphy upon the wall. Only a few objects are ever displayed at any given time, and these must maintain the metaphorical connections among themselves taking into account the context of the season. Here, the entire harmony has priority over the value of any given artefact. Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, describes the importance of context in Japanese alcoves in his Praise of Shadows: “Even the greatest masterpiece will lose its worth as a scroll if it fails to blend with the alcove, while a work of no particular distinction may blend beautifully with the room and set off to unexpected advantage both itself and its surroundings.” When one compares tokonoma and art exhibition, it is clear that tokonoma places the utmost emphasis on the context rather than objects.

In contrast, the West’s emphasis is placed upon the objects—and more recently, experiences—rather than being defined by a user-created context. On his website, Dutch designer Max Bruinsma questions the way product is communicated in the West. What is the product, then, if the content and context, too, are being pre-designed to convey an experience simply to sell.

Bruinsma continues by evaluating some of the West’s core religious tenets, namely the sacrament and Salvation through Christ, “for if Christianity invented anything, it’s the experience economy. And in terms of experience design and converging media, a sixteenth century High Mass in a well equipped cathedral still beats about any themed environment today, regardless of available technology.” For the believer, the experience is the message, and we see corporate America adopting a similar practise in order to build up a fabricated context in which we ‘need’ certain goods and services in order to be well.

“If enchantment becomes the entire message, the message threatens to become entirely manipulative. The Church, for instance, has a long—and not wholly uncontroversial—track record of manipulating the masses into having the right experiences, the kind of experiences that keeps them part of the flock.” Bruinsma is afraid of having the shopping experience turned into a holy experience, yet we are awash in evidence that shows that shopping has, in fact, become a ‘spiritual’ endeavour for many. It is not uncommon now for designers to explore the avenues consumers take in circumnavigating one particular brand’s attempt to enchant, in order to predict remedial contexts to be readied before the consumer is even aware of their desire for one or the other.

But further yet, a schism lies in that we still feel this need to judge the appropriateness of any experience, for better or for worse. Shaped from their earliest myths of creation and spiritual concepts of humankind and nature, the Japanese are a people that disseminate a strong introspective capacity for self-awareness. They can allow each person to gauge an experience for themselves. Western trepidation towards the unknown, rooted in our inadequacy to embrace responsibility on the individual level, is revelatory in comparison.

Today, as artistic expression merges with design functionality, it is a more accurate voice by which to know a people. However, the absence of museums in Japan is further case for exemplifying the way of the Japanese. That there was no institutional art museum founded in traditional Japanese culture suggests a difference between the attitudes of Japanese and Western aesthetics. The first modern Western art museum in Japan, the Ohara Museum of Art, was not built intil 1930, coinciding with the publication year of the first critical look at iki, Kuki Shuzo’s The Structure of Iki—an attempt to extradite the aesthetic of iki unto Western analysis.

Ukiyo-e, “pictures of the Floating World,” that plane where perceptions die and are reborn from which Buddhists sought release, refers to a young culture that bloomed in the urban centres of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto. Ukiyo-e were a form of woodblock prints originating in the seventeenth century and was primarily a form of popular entertainment, but certainly not a fine discipline such as the martial arts or the Zen-influenced tea ceremony, archery, or bonsai “tray gardening.” Rather, these pictures were personally appreciated and few people would have thought of ‘exhibiting’ ukiyo-e in public spaces. Therefore, the first substantial exhibition of ukiyo-e was held in the United States, not in Japan, and even then, it was initiated by an American, Ernest Fenollosa.

The West’s natural tendency was to contextualise their mundane in an attempt to immortalise the beauty that they crafted from their fleeting moments. But the term ‘Japanese art’ is elusive because ‘art’ is tightly integrated with everyday life—to be precise, they were never separate in pre-modern Japan. In the West, a part of everyday life includes art, but the whole of everyday life is not art. Art is an attempt to differentiate a part of everyday life in order to make it more than everyday life. In the Western context, everydayness is the norm that should be destroyed in order to be creative. A work of art must be framed, distinguished, and authenticated to be legitimate, to be different from everyday life. As an accomplice, the museum is an institution to perpetuate this.

We live in a world where we are constantly trying to differentiate ourselves—a characteristic of that dualism that shaped the Western meta-paradigm. On the website Limited Language, designer Maziar Raein claims that these illusions of distinction are further perpetuated by the designer, be they fashion, product, or graphic designer. “The need to witness a UFO or the fantasy of being a character in a film is analogous to the need to be the hero of that story which is our own life. We recount to ourselves the implausible narratives that fulfil our need for the extraordinary.” In this, because we have so far removed the extraordinary from the everydayness of life, the designer furthers the isolation of distinction by composing entire situations and storylines by which we can be enchanted.

Raein continues, “Most designers have given up a genuine curiosity for the world around them and don’t even attempt to respond in a meaningful and poignant way to the issues facing them. Instead, they submissively reach for the latest contribution from the trend machine and adjust their ‘design’ by styling it. There are only a minority of designers who actually design, most of them have become stylists.

“To be able to alter the world one has to be able to alter oneself. To be transformed through the touchstone of the wondrous insight is the consequence of a deep spiritual need. When life offers us this challenge, we often fail to rise to the occasion and, faced with this miserable shortcoming in our character, we turn to the world for an answer.”

Tanaka Jun, a general manager for Seiko’s planning and development department, contends that design goals, once accomplished, do not necessarily have to undergo more radical change. “Like art, high-tech design involves the search for perfect form. Once that form has been discovered, we are satisfied to stay with it. Like the tea ceremony which the master Sen no Rikyu refined until a perfect form was achieved—that form has been maintained ever since. In Japan, there is a form for everything.”

Design durability is not being marketed in Japan; a transient perfection of function is. With this comes a new generation of designers—a motley, formidable group—whose work reflects a remix of influences from the West and appropriations of local forms. Of these, new masters will arise and bring together previous generations’ perfections of form, adapt them to achieve new functions, and move on to the next challenge. Where we attempt to express our introspections through the use of style and aesthetics, the Japanese don them as masks and embrace the new experiences wearing such façades bring them. Just as the Japan’s cherry blossom season will attest, the beauty of the exterior style and context are shed as is a tattered article of clothing. At the very moment the Japanese are celebrating the glory of the blossom, its imminent passing is being both mourned and savoured. The next moment brings a new style with which to adapt to.

With every passing adaptation, the Japanese masters reduce the functions of each design—more recently, each culture—down to its core. In his book, The City at the End of the World, Peter Popham hinted at the kinetic nature of Tokyo when he wrote that, “in its endless, anarchic shifting and shaking down, it sometimes captures some aspect of the process of change with a fidelity hard to match with mere words.” Tokyo, in fact, is hardly a city at all in the Western sense, but rather a metamorphic environment perpetually responding and adapting to change and the expediency of the moment. Through an appreciation of the moment, a wisdom of things passed and the functionality of each era’s form, the Japanese pass along the tradition of mastery itself.

As Frank Lloyd Wright contested, he had developed a spiritual sense of himself as a part of nature, transcending the duality instilled unto him by his upbringing. His work had nothing to do with adapting Japanese styles to those of North America. His was an inspired holistic approach inherent in himself; the Japanese served only to inspire him to look within. And more and more designers are beginning to reflect on what they do, and are arriving at similar approaches to life as Wright did.

Through their current Western mask, the Japanese tend to peer back with eyes that reflect a depth often unknown to ourselves. They work to perfect the very tasks we struggle with, and make a mockery of our aesthetics as they chew them up in order to savour the flavours. We are both fascinated and appalled; their disposable tools for self-discovery are the same by which we use to define ourselves.

Do not deny the effects of the global community over Japan, however. The commoners of Japan are just as prone to ‘buying in’ to the fanciful as those of the West, embracing forms and contexts in a world awash in others’ wry designs. But in any culture, there are the few who come to embody the implicit characteristics of their community—most often designers and artists. Through them, the spiritual wisdom they work to detail for others trickles down, in form and function, until its meaning has been completely withered and diluted among the masses. The intricacies of the soul are reflections of our religious myths, where our faith—whether religious or scientific—is blind and absolute; as has been our isolation from nature.

Further, with every new mastery the Japanese accrue, it only servers to further their tradition of metamorphosis. The more they change, the more they comprehend the frivolousness of passing forms. This may hint at another characteristic change which will begin to affect the face of design in the future: Westerners tend to anthropomorphise animals, in their semblance to us as ‘alive,’ where the Japanese have a habit of personalising objects, such as machines, superimposing human qualities on them…