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FEBRUARY 2013
Thus HE Was, Thus HE Spoke :
PRABUDDHA JIVAN
MUJI
Last night I was having dinner with a few friends and our conversation revolved around my favourite topicJapan. We discussed the usual aesthetics, sensibility, sakura till we started discussing shopping in Japan, especially at Muji and it suddenly made me just so happy so I had to share Muji, the concept and the ah....simplicity and beauty of everything that is Muji. Muji was founded in Japan in the year 1980 as an antithesis to the habits of consumer society at that time. In the eighties Japan saw the rise of two parallel realities -one of high quality European luxury brands and on the other low quality low priced products. Muji was born out of this dichotomy, with a purpose to restore a vision of products that are actually useful for the customer and yet maintain a fine aesthetics that Japan is so known for. Muji's philosophy was connected to the Japanese aesthetic of 'su'- meaning unadorned - The idea that simplicity is not merely about minimal or frugal but about the essential, which could sometimes be more appealing than luxury. The founders of Muji started with a goal to combat extravagant consumerism and give the customer an understanding and happiness in moderation. Jasper Morrison, one of the chief product designer for Muji shared-'Stripping things down, reducing form and colour, how can Muji be good for you?Generally speaking, things are not good for us. Too many or too valuable and we are corrupted. But we all need some things. (Even Gandhi, (the best example of a frugal existance had a pair of spectacles, sandals, a bowl, a dish and a pocket watch). The Muji concept is to make things as well and cleverly as possible at a reasonable price, for the thing to be 'enough' in the best sense of the word, and this kind of 'enough' is good for you precisely because it removes status from the product/ consumer equation and replaces it with satisfaction. The kind of satisfaction one can have when the money we exchange for a thing is proportional to the value which we receive from that thing, and the product itself is good
at being itself without any pretension of being anything more special.'
Naota Fukasawa - another product designer sums it up by defining Design as a factor to induce excitement
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into our daily lives.
MUJI is a design ideology that occurred naturally as a form of resistance to an age where everything is chaotic and overflowing with stimulation. MUJI carries a sense of comfort that can only be felt when we suppress a desire or a longing. It is the feeling you get when you are able to recover a little calm after being in the frenzied state drive by desire, and look around to find a collection of objects that are both reasonable and suitable to daily life, waiting quietly for you. Kenya Hara, a man whom I immensely look upto and is my master when it comes to design, describes MUJI as an empty vessel.The products fit into the context of every lifestyle, regadless of wether a person is old, young, male, female. It's essence lies in acceptance, not assertion. There is a Japanese aesthetic that sees the utmost richness in what is extremely plain. It is an infinite flexibility that accepts each and every concept and adjusts to any purpose. (I am sure the Japanese tradition must have had some Anekantvad philosophers influence).
The originality of Muji comes from the fact that in their work, the logic of capitalism is surpassed slightly by that of humanity
Coolly observing people among people, and life Integrating optimal materials and technologies, Investigating low cost while maintaining high quality, Considering nature and the environment, This is what happens naturally.
I will end with two simple, yet profound quotes that have touched me -
As we simply our life, the laws of the universe will become simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.-Thoreau
and
'Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.' - Chopin
☐ RESHMA JAIN
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