WINDS Autumn 1988

As you stroll the steamy summer streets of Tokyo, or any town in Japan, keep your eye out for what strikes most non-Japanese as odd, even repulsive items to build a pet business on. And keep your mind open. For the insect industry, like nearly everything in this country except perhaps Mickey Mouse and pizza, has a long history, a meaning reaching far beyond mere words, and a truly devoted following whose memories and sense of mission motivate them more than cold cash ever could. But whether the kabutomushi, or stag beetle, can continue as the most popular summertime attraction in the intensely urban world of modern Japan, worries insect auctioneers sick.

Photos by Robert McLeod

Renowned designer Takenobu Igarashi asked me to write the story of his work with some of Japan's oldest local industrial workshops in 1990. I was interviewing him for a Graphis profile, and felt I ought to decline, since I was pregnant with my first child. Months later, when I was in the US, just a short while after giving birth to Hannah Jane, he called me and asked me once again if I would travel around Japan meeting and interviewing the CEOs of small but hopeful companies whose traditional markets-for lacquerware, cast iron, stainless steel and ceramics--had dried up in Japan's continuing Westernization. And so Hannah and I discovered the countryside of Japan, and the great time-warp between it and the cities. More...