This conference of the global body ICOGRADA was the first and only (to date) to be held in Asia, and the preparatory materials required not only translation, but additional explanation to the ICOGRADA leadership. Japanese is a vague language, and in many creative situations defies the logical arrangement of statement-argument-support-statement so familiar in English. Both I and my partner in Takumi, Yukiko Naito, also worked the event, helping to write the independent Japanese and English summaries presented in the event’s daily newspaper. ICOGRADA now goes by the name ICoD (International Council of Design).

2003, International Conference of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA)

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With the Haptic project and exhibition, Kenya Hara found a subject that allowed him to engage a wide variety of designers with Takeo's range of exquisite and high-quality papers, while helping them produce often humorous products.

2004, Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo)

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Designer Kenya Hara and architect Shigeru Ban were behind this exhibition, held in Paris's Cité des Sciences et de l’industrie and London's Science Museum. It was inspired by a small newspaper column written by Issey Miyake in 2003 asking when Japan would have a design museum. The Japan Car exhibition was an inaugural project for a museum still unbuilt. This was one of our first long translation projects with Kenya Hara, whose inclusion of conversations and diverse perspectives is one of the most exciting aspects of working with him.

2004, Design Platform Japan

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This is the catalog of the 2004 Takeo Paper Show. While the subject of the exhibition was physical filing, the goal was not order for the sake of neatness, but chaos management. The book was edited and designed from the same viewpoint. This was put into practice through a right hand-page index, photos arranged in a grid and rational editing for bilingual textual information.

2005, Senden Kaigi (Tokyo)

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The 224-page hard cover catalog included three creators’ symposia as well as introductory text, profiles and captions. The goal was to introduce to an international public the new relationships among people, fibers and the environment, with a focus on artificial “intelligent” fibers that respond to the environment and reshape it with new technologies. Exhibitors ranged from Honda’s R&D department to architect Shigeru Ban and installation and interactive media artist Toshio Iwai. Translating this material was a learning process; how do you describe the concept behind Marukko, designer Kenmei Nagaoka’s giant ball made of fake fur, or explain how architect Takuya Onishi’s Aero Space Suit is to be worn and then used as a shelter?Fabulous photography with meaningful captions certainly helped us meet the goal.

2007, Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo)

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I met my translation partner on a project for IdcN, and translating this summary catalogue together brought our many years of work to that point into focus, in addition to helping IdcN, a valuable global collaborative design education institution, reach a deserved wider audience. This 216-page publication chronicles International Design Center Nagoya’s activities in the decade 1992-2007. The opening of the IdcN building was in 1997, and has proven an important resource for Japanese designers in the Chubu region, whose exposure to international events had previously been limited to those held in the metropolitan centers of Tokyo and Osaka. Takumi has been instrumental in forging IdcN’s international conversation on design.

2007, City of Nagoya & International Design Center Nagoya (IdcN)

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This is one of Kenya Hara's most important books, and the one with which , to my mind, he really began to elucidate his design philosophy, his understanding of the responsibility of designers, and his theory of design as it reflects historical change. With 474 pages and an unflaggingly researched and edited set of illustrations, Designing Design is written for a non-Japanese audience, and fulfills its duty by explaining such Japanese aesthetic concepts as emptiness, while also having loads of fun with the results of some of Hara's less serious projects such as Haptic, which yielded geta sandals covered with moss, among dozens and dozens of other illuminating and amusing products that push design to the limit of its purpose.

2007, Lars Müller Publishers (Zurich)

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Translating the outlines, registration materials, coursework explanations and then participant reports from this annual was an enjoyable perennial project; The young, internationally educated participants express an uplifting interest and excitement in learning more about their fields and one another through this vital experience, and we are proud to have been part of the conversation, through translation.

Annually, 2007-2009, City of Nagoya & International Design Center Nagoya (IdcN)

Translating MUJI’s essay-like ads is an enlightening exercise in cross-cultural description and conveyance. MUJI’s audience is international, and largely made up of those who are as attached to the concepts behind the products as they are to the products themselves. MUJI’s copywriters strive to make each essay a meaningful deliberation on a concept, and we work to make sure that each sentence relates genuinely to the larger point while staying true to the author’s intention. We have continued to translate for MUJI over the years, and for Kenya Hara, its art director, on his personal projects.

2007-present, MUJI.com

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We were hired to translate editor Kiyonori Muroga's foreword on the work of Swiss typesetter/typographer Swiss Emil Ruder (1914-1970). As Muroga states, "Ruder worked within the bounds of technical constraints to create typography that functioned as a consummate information communicator and was truly beautiful." IDEA magazine was one that I began reading as a child in my dad's offices in various universities where he taught typography and graphic design, so this assignment felt like a return home, to some extent.

2009, Idea magazine (Tokyo)

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Kenya Hara, designer and author, promoted Designing Design internationally. Takumi translated his lectures and presentations, and I assisted by promoting the book and arranging for the lectures in the United States. I have been translating Mr. Hara’s spoken and written work since 2001, when I met Hara to interview him for a profile for Graphis magazine. Takumi has been translating Hara’s work since its formation in 2003.

2009, Hara Design Institute, Nippon Design Center

Takumi translated various materials for the City of Nagoya to support its bid to become a UNESCO Creative Design City and join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, essentially creating the international voice for the City of Nagoya in this capacity. Takumi handled the Japanese-English translation of the text, and the English-Japanese translation of Mr. Wood’s keynote address, Towards a Synergy-of-Synergies.

Commissioned in 2009 by Nagoya, UNESCO City of Design

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From the Publisher: “This fascinating monograph provides an unprecedented view into the inner workings of Muji, one of the most influential brands leading sustainable design. A prescient advocate of sustainable consumption and the matchless utility of good design, Muji’s founding principle was to develop new and simple products at reasonable prices by making the best use of materials while minimizing their impact on the environment. From a humble inaugural line of eight products nearly three decades ago, the brand now sells nearly seven thousand different products in hundreds of its own stores in Asia, Europe, and North America.”

2010, Rizzoli International Publications (New York)

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This was a small, self-published book by photographer Seizo Terasaki and designer Masami Uehara, a close friend of mine. I thoroughly enjoyed translating Uehara’s lighthearted and personalized captions describing two weeks imbibing the life of Bengali Tola, an alley in the city of Varanasi on the Ganges. Uehara’s thorough knowledge of the area and easy use of Hindi helped him capture and relate the context of these small but integral shops and their proprietors.

2010, intense.inc. (Tokyo)

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Between 1983 and 2003, Illustrator Takahiro Nagino made about 80 posters for Studio Alta, a retail high-rise in the center of Tokyo’s Shinjuku area. A selection of his Alta posters are presented in this volume. My partner in Takumi Translation, Yukiko Naito, and I translated the praise of several of Nagino’s colleagues and other admirers, as well as the artist’s statement and captions.

2010, Robundo, Inc. (Tokyo)

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We strove to replicate in English the fanciful writing of art director Chie Morimoto as she described her worldview, her memories, her connections, attractions and attachments.

2010, Seibundo-Shinkosha (Tokyo)

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Yukiko Naito and I translated the design concept of this exhibition and catalog, and as we did, I remember thinking, "only in Japan", and "only Kenya Hara". The sense of humor evident in this project, which is constant, but not overwhelming, did not dissuade architects like Kazuyo Sejima, Atelier Bow-Wow (!) and Kengo Kuma from participating. This ability of Hara's to build entire projects on a single idea, such as, "the interests and activities of both the fans of architecture and dogs can intersect on a global scale" has certainly played a part in bringing him international renown. As of today, only the "Wanmock" kit is available from the project.

2013, TOTO Publishing (Tokyo)

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Editor Mansoureh Rahnama, a trained economist, found herself moved to connect creators around the world to consider the environmental and social fallout of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima and beyond that was instigated on 3-11-2011. International and intercultural collaboration was the foundation, goal and result of this literary and visual presentation and production.

2013, DruckVerlag Kettler (Bönen, Germany)

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Translating the full-length catalogs for Kenya Hara's exhibitions is like yoga, concentrating the practitioner's focus, with the goal being to maintain balance, breath, and strength throughout the process. Hara himself maintains the highest aesthetic standards, and over the years has continued to find collaborators among a wide range of creators and supporting institutions. The bond between Hara and the historically powerful Takeo Paper Company has led to many fine exhibitions and catalogs. This is just one of those.

2014, Takeo Co., Ltd. (Tokyo)

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We were approached by Leonard Koren, author of Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers to translate this classic on the Japanese aesthetic, from English into Japanese, then to help him find a publisher in Japan who would welcome and disseminate this "foreigner's" exposition of what many Japanese consider unapproachable by the rational mind and even the fluid Japanese language. We were successful in both, and are happy to have been of service. My partner, Yukiko Naito, did the lion's share of this work, as is appropriate to a subject so central to Japanese culture.

2014, BNN (Tokyo)

This hardcover catalog for an exhibition at the Milano Triennale was a word-lover's book, and yet (therefore?) also a translator's headache. As the publisher explains, "Exist, orient, store, inebriate, measure, exchange, recite, write, think, navigate, love – for Neo-Prehistory, designer Andrea Branzi and art director Kenya Hara selected one hundred verbs and connected them to one hundred design objects. All the texts in the book are in English, Italian and Japanese."

Once again, Kenya Hara helped bring to life a project with meaning, and also humor.

2016, Lars Müller Publishers (Zurich)

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The way Nippon Design Center put it, "This is a record of teaching complied over 10 years in the Department of Science of Design at Musashino Art University, where Hara Kenya is the department head. “Ex-formation” refers not to “making things known”, but rather to “making things unknown”. This is a communication design method that is based on the new concept of determining how to make people aware of what they do not know." For me, it was like being back in my dad's design classroom, asking students to find out what they know by forcing them to present the familiar through novel methods and media. What fun!

2018, Lars Müller Publishers (Zurich)

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This was one of Kenya Hara's most direct statements concerning Japan as a source of inspiration, as well as a design problem. In it, he lays out some of his familiar categories, like movement, simplicity, and the home, and even hints at the Teikuhiko (High Resolution Tour), a blog Hara began in 2019 to explore Japan's natural features, architecture, and culture of hospitality, which he takes together as Japan's future resources. It was both fascinating and difficult to translate, as we were trying to stay as close as possible to Hara's original structure and intent, while maintaining clarity in the English language. Not an easy task, since Hara's philosophy is its own hydra.

2019, Lars Müller Publishers (Zurich)

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A 2020 ad campaign for MUJI celebrating cleaning and cleaning tools around the world became a photography-heavy small-scale 504-page book covering 16 categories of cleaning activities defined by simple verbs like, "scrub", "wipe" and "remove". It was surreal to work on this global project in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when no one was going anywhere. With all of the amazing photos gathered for this campaign from around the world, one of the most intriguing to me being a mechanical straw broom carousel cleaner in China, MUJI then created a small but thick book of the same title, which we also translated.

2020, Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. (Tokyo)

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This is a very long blog series we've been translating, one Kenya Hara began in 2019, and continued into 2020, as the pandemic hit. Asking himself why we travel, and what Japan's long, deep cultural history of hospitality means today, Hara builds a picture of an archipelago full of what he calls a "national resource", defined by the geography, geology and cultural integrity maintained over thousands of years in his native country. In 2022, Hara turned the series into a book, which we also translated.

2019-, by Kenya Hara

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After 40 years, MUJI is still relevant, and this second book shows why. Developed as an anti-consumer "no-brand" brand in 1980, MUJI built an ideology based on "a condensation of material selection, process inspection and packaging simplification" which in the end "expanded the boundaries of modern lifestyle aesthetics." In other words, the no-brand, anti-consumer brand ballooned into a behemoth producing way more products than it originally intended to. The 2020 MUJI BOOK doesn't do much soul searching about this, instead pointing to its move into other aspects of daily life: housing, hotels and transportation. The brand continues to develop efficient ways of producing and solutions for a modern lifestyle, but it is definitely now a brand-brand.

2021, Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd (Tokyo)

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After spending the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic exploring Japan's culture of hospitality and sharing his journeys with readers of his blog series, Kenya Hara turned the project into a hard cover book. My partner in Takumi Translation, Yukiko Naito, and I translated new material and updated blogs with new information. Once again, Kenya Hara proves he is on the forefront of design thinking, focusing our attention on a millennia-old tradition and re-envisioning it as a national resource. Though we have translated it for publication, this book is yet to be published in English.

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