Japanese product philosophy holds that good products precisely fit their intended purposes—not approximately serving multiple needs, but exactly matching specific uses. This creates product specialization: rather than one knife serving all cutting needs, purpose-specific knives optimized for particular tasks. The satisfaction of exact fit, of the right tool for the job, expresses deep cultural appreciation for precision. Generic solutions that work adequately fail to achieve the excellence of specialized products that work perfectly.
This pattern shapes design: products must be developed with clear understanding of use contexts, user needs, and specific problems to be solved. Quality means exact correspondence between what the product is designed for and what it actually does.
Comments