This artisan heritage is ever more topical

Murakami at the Palace of Versailles, the architects of Sana'a winners of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2010, the Japanese establishment, in all its facets, collects more and more votes. But it is probably through the mundane objects of daily life that its singularity is expressed best. Evidenced by the current craze for the distribution of decoration and design Japanese.

In the land of the rising sun, the taste of the object is first the lack of space, the smallness of the housing. "Most people are tenants." They do not work at home and have very little furniture. The living environment is thus immutable with walls of neutral color. "Objects, starting with those of the newspaper, are their only way to express their personality," observes Jean-Luc Colonna of Istria the thank you shop, which regularly presents the creations of young designers from the archipelago. Consequence: a wealth of visible supply stores where you reach a level of sophistication and unknown segmentation in our latitudes. "RADIUS stationery can offer up to 140 qualities of white paper!", he added.

Simplicity and modesty

The practical dimension and use multifunction are the DNA of Japanese design. Everything must be in small spaces. As these brooms that were sticking to the wall with their sleeves in umbrella bec or the shoe horn of Shinichi Sunukawa to ask vertically. Ladle Tate Otama of Mikiya Kobayashi - one of the rising figures of discipline - is standing alone and releases the work plan. The nature and organic forms provide an inexhaustible source of inspiration: porcelain kitchen imitating the bamboo stem, distributor of tissue in the shape of mountain, beer glass inspired by Mount Fuji...

Seen as minor or accessory in the West, the object of every day becomes there essential. Essential, but never ostentatious. Simplicity and modesty of forms characterize (with the meaning of the perfection of detail) design "made in Japan". One point in common with that of the Norse and returns according Jean-Luc Colonna of Istria "to the necessity of never wanting to impose its taste to the other." The design object as "trophy" has no place in Japanese interiors. On the other hand, public, restaurants, bars, clubs, places are preferred of a supertechnological and constantly renewed, unbridled modernity field of expression.

If they are less "starisés" than in the West, the designers of the archipelago more export. Example, Naoto Fukasawa, the creator behind number of Muji products, who signs as seats for Thonet and B & B Italia as well as furniture of kitchen for Boffi. Or Shin Azumi LEM, a bar in the world, stool is about to achieve the notoriety of the famous Butterfly of Sori Yanagi. Created in 1956, he reached a perfection formal, consistent with the tenets of the movement Mingei launched in the 1920s by the father of his creator Soetsu Yanagi, who wanted to reconnect with the simplicity of popular crafts.

In the "icon" category, difficult to do better as Isamu Noguchi, sculptor and designer, son of a Japanese poet and a mother American writer. His famous table low figure in all good design anthologies. Its Akari lamps, light sculptures, remain to this day the most beautiful example of marriage between modern aesthetics and traditional manufacturing (to base of bamboo and Mulberry bark). "Unusable in Japanese interiors due to their large volume, they were perfectly in phase with the minimalism in vogue in the post-war Western apartments," notes Pierre Romanet, host of Sentou which distribute in France.

This artisan heritage is ever more topical. "The ancestral know-how are erected to the rank of true art," recalls Frédéric Winkler, founder of the publishing DCWE companies. He noted, he also, how many "design at the Japan is never placed under the sign of failure." He enrolled instead in the continuity and transmission. "Eschewing the effect of mode, it avoids also the risk of obsolescence. It is this mixture of traditional skills, the need to preserve, and contemporary creation, the idea of the exhibition-sale Japan Brand is party to the cheap. Designed by the creative culinary Mariko Ueno, she presents a selection of 150 pieces representative of a craft of excellence revisited: lacquer applied Urushi on (cheaper than wood) plastic dishes, Shiburi embossed textiles traditionally used for making here diverted pillowed kimono or these Kotori lamps manufactured by the last producer of umbrellas of Kyoto.

Similarly, the venerable manufactures teapot Kikuchi Hojudo (its creation dates back to 1604) appealed to the car designer Ken Okuyama to reinterpret some of its models cast iron. The latter, who worked for Pininfarina, Ferrari and Porsche, has managed to reduce the weight while maximizing their shape and facilitate the infusion of tea. Epuré, functional and as proud of its heritage: the object down to him only the essence of the Japanese design.

Japanese objects in images on lesechos.fr/slideshows