Fukasawa Naoto designed the wall-mounted CD player of Muji, the no-brand retailer. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired it for its permanent collection. In the magazine Bungei Shunjū, Fukasawa said: Jibun o hyōgen shitai to iu omoi wa arimasen. Zutto ii “futsū” o sagashite kimashita. “I have no wish to express myself. I have always been looking for a good ordinary.”
design
Withered Technology
Kareta gijutsu no suihei shikō, lateral thinking with withered technology, is the phrase most associated with the Nintendo developer Yokoi Gunpei. The online encyclopedia Nico Nico Pedia explains kareta gijutsu as technology that has already spread widely and is fully mastered.
The same encyclopedia says that the Game & Watch was born when small LCD screens and semiconductors, overproduced during a sales war over electronic calculators, were put to use for play. A Japanese toy industry site tells the story the same way.
A New Emblem for Tokyo 2020
On September 1, 2015, the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee settled on a policy of no longer using the emblem it had chosen for the Games. The designer had revised the emblem after it won the competition. A Belgian designer had sued, saying it resembled his logo for a theater in Liège, and claims of copying had spread online.
The new selection was open to the public and drew 14,599 entries. On April 25, 2016, the committee chose Kumi ichimatsu mon, a checkered design by the artist Tokoro Asao.
Changing Clothes
Koromogae is the seasonal change of clothes. It came from China in the Heian period as a court custom of changing clothes twice a year.
Today the custom is to change from winter to summer clothes around June 1 and from summer to winter clothes around October 1. After Western uniforms came in during the Meiji period, officials and soldiers changed twice a year, and the custom spread to schools and homes.
In the summer of 2005, the Ministry of the Environment began to promote Cool Biz, light office clothing with air conditioning set to 28 degrees Celsius. At first it ran from June 1 to September 30. Later the period changed.
The Swallow Tables
In the Northern Song dynasty, Huang Bosi designed the Yanji tu, a set of banquet tables. A Chinese account describes seven tables, two long, two medium and three small. They could be combined into dozens of layouts to suit the occasion. Huang arranged them into twenty forms with forty names.
Sources differ on the number of tables. English Wikipedia gives six, with a seventh perhaps added later. Chinese sources trace the idea of the tangram, qiqiaoban, seven pieces that form many figures, to these tables.
Fridge, TV, Big Sofa
In 2022, the Li Auto L9 was the first car in its price class with a built-in fridge. Together with large seats and a large screen, it opened what a 2025 commentary calls the era of bingxiang caidian da shafa: fridge, color TV, big sofa.
The same commentary noted that rivals advertising their cars as a “mobile home” added the same features. So did some sports sedans with little connection to family use.
One Knife, One Pan
The Chinese kitchen knife, caidao, is a rectangular knife for meat, fish and vegetables. It slices, shreds and minces, and it also chops thin, soft bones such as fish and poultry. Its broad blade also scoops up chopped food and carries it to the wok or the bowl. Skilled cooks use it even for carving and fine work.
The wok, chaoguo, is mainly for frying and stir-frying. It is also used for steaming, stewing and deep-frying. Chinese Wikipedia calls it the main cooking tool of Greater China and Southeast Asia.
The Eight Immortals Table
The baxianzhuo is a wide square table that seats two people on each side, eight in all. Its other name, baizhuo, means worship table. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, even poor and humble households used it, and in many families it was the only large piece of furniture.
Four Phantoms
DJI released its first Phantom drone on January 7, 2013. It had no camera of its own, but it could carry a GoPro. In October 2013, the Phantom 2 Vision added a built-in camera. The Phantom 3 followed in April 2015 and the Phantom 4 in March 2016. In November 2016, the Phantom 4 Pro brought a 20-megapixel camera with a one-inch sensor.
Phones for Africa
The Chinese phone maker Transsion developed beauty camera functions to solve the photo problems of users with dark skin in Africa and India. It also built phones for a local habit. Many African consumers carry several SIM cards.
According to the market research firm IDC, Transsion held 8.1 percent of the world phone market in 2019, in fourth place. In Africa its share was 52.5 percent.