Japanese Design

Japanese designers’ special ability to combine aesthetic tradition with contemporary visual culture and material innovation has created a distinctive and exceptionally successful design industry in Japan, which has produced such divergent icons of modern design as Sori Yanagi’s Butterfly Stool, the Sony Walkman, the Honey-Pop Armchair by Tokujin Yoshioka, and the Toyota Prius. This book traces the development of Japanese design from the country’s craft revival in the early twentieth century to the extraordinary objects of high technology that have been a specialty of Japanese designers since mid-century. Paola Antonelli’s lively introduction provides an overview of Japan’s design culture; an essay and timeline by Penny Sparke illuminate the masterpieces of modern Japanese design that are superbly reproduced in the volume’s plate section.