ArtJ 398: Designing Everyday Life in Modern Japan

Japan House at the University of Illinois
Instructor: Chris Palmieri
Spring 2022

Overview

ArtJ 398 is an introduction to the modern history of Japanese design from 1920 - Present, its role in continuously reshaping everyday life in Japan as well as the individual and collective identity of its people.

Throughout the course, we engage with design artifacts, read works of aesthetic theory by designers and scholars, and hear from current day designers working in Japan.

We do this to build competence in critical analysis of design artifacts and the narratives used to frame them; to learn to place and connect design within its historical and cultural context; and to examine the aesthetic choices and defaults in our own environment and creative practices.

Outline

1. Yanagi Soetsu and Anonymous Beauty
1B. Kon Wajiro, Design Ethnographer
2. Hamaguchi Miho & the Remaking of the Japanese Home
2B. Yanagi Sori, Craft Spirit and Industrial Scale
3. Kamekura Yusaku and the 1964 Olympics
4. Ishioka Eiko, city as stage and the new, new woman
4B. Issey Miyake, fashion technologist
5. Tanaka Ikko and the no-brand
5B. Tsuzuki Kyoichi and a Tokyo Style
6. Hara Kenya, Design Poetry and God

Readings and viewings by (partial and tentative):

Yanagi Soetsu, Kuroishi Izumi, Kon Wajiro, Hamaguchi Miho, Laura Lynn Neitzel, Yanagi Sori, Kamekura Yusaku, Ichikawa Kon, Ian Lynam, Kawajiri Koichi, Yabumae Tomoko, Ingrid Sischy, Tsuzuki Kyoichi, Koike Kazuko, Tanaka Ikko and Hara Kenya