The Reception of the Bauhaus in Contemporary Japan

Jun Ishikawa

Zusammenfassung

What are we to make of the Bauhaus? This query has two principle aspects. One is the question of how its ideals, which have resonated globally as universal principles, have interacted with the unique ecologies, traditions, and aesthetics of specific regions. Another is the issue of how the "honest aesthetic" of modernism, with its rejection of superfluous ornament, can avoid falling into an oppressive orthodoxy and be successfully integrated into society. Mainly from the latter point of view, this paper focuses on the efforts of MUJI (Mujirushi Ryōhin, Inc.) as an example of an innovative effort to carry forward the ideals of the Bauhaus in contemporary Japan. One of the greatest aesthetic achievements of the modernism pioneered by the Bauhaus was the discovery of space as protagonist or void as presence. MUJI, which has staked out its territory with paradoxes such as "design as non-design" and "brandless branding," has inherited this approach, as may be seen in its use of "emptiness" as an advertising concept. In the growth of MUJI, we may see the development of a keen perception of the wasteland of vanity that is contemporary society, and a sensibility that recoils at it, seeking to convert its very hollowness into a vessel that may receive the light of grace.