Muji’s global success can be seen as a triumph of modern design values, rising above Japan’s own feudal past

Japan’s ‘no brand’ mega brand

Muji’s global success can be seen as a triumph of modern design values, rising above Japan’s own feudal past

 

In the euphoria of international lifestyle chains vying to enter India, there has been complete silence as far as Asian business interests in India go. The Indian market has been quick to recognize European and North American brands; and it was interesting, therefore, to see the long lines—and endless phone conversations to swing last-minute invitations—to a talk at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in Delhi last month by Kenya Hara, iconic designer and chief design adviser at the Japanese lifestyle chain Muji. Those from the Indian design community present were asking one crucial question: How has a retail company with no marketing effort or advertising become one of the most visible, followed and perhaps fashionable Asian labels in the world today?
Hara appeared, a man with a quiet disposition, in a simple natural indigo-dyed kurta sourced from an Indian designer duo. He read out from a carefully written script, illustrated with stunningly minimal black and white drawings. He drew a trajectory through historical symbolism in Japanese culture, linking this to Muji’s design ethos. Steeped in the ancient philosophy of “emptiness”— the awareness of infinite creative potential present in nature, a celebrating of subtleties—it guides the use of basic materials, recycling, ordinary shapes and forms that facilitate efficient storage, ingenious detailing that borders on the invisible, and a no-logo policy.

In present modes of consumption, which necessitate the manufacture of newness and change, the application of such aesthetics in Muji products defies even the concept that the “classic” occupies in today’s markets. They also transcend the most clichéd suggestion of luxury today, time. In a visual and material language that resonates universally, where cultural specificities dissolve into addressing “basic” needs, do we see such motivations as a premise for a global cosmopolitanism, an attempt to be relevant in markets everywhere, as the ultimate concert of spirituality and artistic endeavours, or as plain sharp business vision? The name Muji is short for the company’s name Mujirushi Ryohin, the first word meaning “no brand”, and the latter meaning “quality product”. It was started in the early 1980s as part of the supermarket chain Seiyu. By the mid-1980s, it had started its international operations. And by the early 1990s, it had its first independent store abroad, in London.

Cutting across every product category from stationery, kitchen appliances, garments, cosmetics, electronics and furniture to even modular architecture now, the company presents a repertoire of around 7,000 products in more than 390 stores worldwide, with at least 285 stores in Japan itself.Its fans are a tribe of their own! They include perhaps the widest range of consumers, being provided with the most functional array of everyday objects not providing any other satisfaction: By buying Muji, they do not acquire any identities of time, space, history, price or status, which is integral to the sale of brands today. Instead, they choose to be free of these shackled narratives, revealing the heart of Muji’s vision: aspirational, without ever bringing up associations of “low cost”, “mass” or “affordable”. This could be further seen as a triumph of modern design values, rising above Japan’s own feudal past.

For a more intimate gathering in New Delhi the next day, Hara and Muji president Masaaki Kanai trekked the city’s by-lanes with other board members, to a meeting with a few young Indian designers. They arrived 10 minutes earlier than scheduled, and the often-told stories that bring handcrafts alive to foreign enthusiasts were futile; they responded spontaneously, almost in a childlike manner, by establishing immediate tactile connects. They held light cottons in their palms, consumed by their softness. They bypassed the motifs of finely woven grass mats to explore their gossamer qualities of passing light by holding them against the sun. They playfully picked up the most mundane of plastic table coasters to enquire about their material composition. In a surprisingly warm gesture, Hara reciprocated by showing the group a project he had been working on with vacuum cleaners, as he referenced the shared Indian and Japanese obsession with cleanliness inside homes, and the ritual of removing footwear outside. Kanai shared more on Found Muji, new stores set up by Muji in 10 cities around the world to retail handcrafted techniques that are increasingly rare today, and their plans to explore sourcing from India.

At first, such interests can be seen as part of an innate Japanese aesthetic thread—to push the limits of the latest scientific technology in mechanization, while preserving the finest handcraftsmanship. Some might say it is even expected of Japanese design thinking. A response to a joke inviting a franchise in India—which I jumped to volunteer for—also revealed a sound analysis of Indian retail infrastructure at present, and how it would have to be slightly different for Muji (senior curators from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, shared later that evening that it took Muji three years to decide whether to open a store at the museum or not). And how, by focusing on the North American market recently, they were hoping to influence markets in South America and India eventually. Yet, such sharing seems to come more from a deeper need to sense what makes India work at a day-to-day level, and less from the usual precincts that create business validity.
In a sense, this comes full circle. The concept of Shunyata—the Buddhist concept of emptiness— travelled to Japan from India, getting embedded in Japanese rituals and codes through an introspective process in the country’s isolation from the rest of the world. The austerity that emerged was from a further process of severing through the uncertainties of geographical realities— extremes of climate and susceptibility to earthquakes. On the other hand, India’s openness to absorption and amalgamation of different influences through millennia has made it a largely jugaadu (resourceful) culture that improvises constantly. Japan has developed a way of containing its resolutions while India has found a way of adapting these through external interactions. I sense that it is from an understanding of such instincts that the presence of Muji in India will be envisaged.