Feature: Brand New Lessons from Ancient Japan

This article started with the a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto working on a lifestyle brand inspired by Ancient Japan. My client wanted me to see with my own eyes this enigmatic culture revered the world over for its power and its mystery. The article is now up on BrandChannel with a bit more of a branding twist than it started out with (original article below).

FRESH BRAND THINKING FROM ANCIENT JAPAN

By Chauncey Zalkin

Japan, the land of paradoxes.  From the start a collectivist society, Japan has always had a devout reverence for nature, a hardened understanding of what is now the biggest buzzword of our time, social responsibility, and yet a derring-do where only the brave, most visionary, and sometimes slightly wacky, need apply. These qualities, with all their distinctly Japanese nuances, couldn’t be more relevant to today’s branding challenges the world over.

Historically, In a simpler time before the jet age, Japan was physically isolated, surrounded by treacherous seas, formidable fault lines, and land three-quarters covered in mountains. The entire population clustered inside the land left – a constant reminder of nature’s strength and the need to adhere to a manageable social order. Their history of isolation led to a respect for nature and an emphasis on the group over the individual. The result was an enviable system of organization and ethos of constant improvement that gave rise to innovative brands and services.

As China and Korea look to transcend their reputation as efficient manufacturers and get into the branding game, they look to Japanese standards as a beacon. Brands like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Sony and smaller progressive brands like Muji and Uniqlo hold cues to the future for these emerging markets.  “For us, ’Made in Japan’ means quality”, says a Korean marketing MBA interviewed for this article and an employee of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto in Paris. While other east Asian countries are still finding their capitalistic identity mostly by westernizing, she explains “the Japanese dare to be themselves.” After the Beijing Olympics, Reuters reported that a new game was under way, ‘telling China’s economic future by reading the tea leaves of Japan’s past’.  By all accounts, China yearns for Japanese standards of style and hospitality.

Superb craftsmanship, strict standards and attention to detail are what makes Japanese corporations the envy of all the rest. But it’s the deeper cultural differences long embedded in Japanese society that are hyper-relevant to living and branding in a new, more accountable world.

The consumer perception of Toyota is that the perfect car is possible which is as much a part of their brand as it is their internal workings.  On the other end of the spectrum, Comme des Garcon’s creator Rei Kawakubo and her stable of designers are known in the industry for pursuing the ultimate form of creation. Its this combination of pushing the limits with a particularly Japanese brand of restraint, that is most ingenious.

LESSON 1: CONSIDERATION OF THE GROUP

In ancient Japan, once someone did even a small favor for a stranger, for example, picked something up off the street that you dropped, you had to reciprocate. The ancient word for a social obligation that must be repayed was an ‘on’. One could wear an ‘on’ their whole life if they did not or were not able to reciprocate. In ancient Japan, it was considered by many to be a burden. Even now, every individual is strongly linked to every other individual in Japanese society.

There is no literal translation for the phrase “kuuki wo yomu” in English but it means to ‘read the air’, essentially to get a sense of the feeling of the room or the group. In a recent social experiment, Japanese and Western participants were shown an individual standing in front of a crowd and asked to describe what the individual was thinking. The Japanese test takers ‘read the air’ when assessing the situation. They considering the facial expressions of the group behind the individual, whereas westerners focused solely on the expression of the individual in the foreground.

The fundamental principle at Toyota is kaisen or ‘continuous improvement’. Another is genchi genbutsu or ‘mutual ownership of problems’. When Toyota CEO Yuki Funo was asked if he might star in a Toyota ad (as the American president of General Motors had), he said something along the lines of, ‘there’s not one single hero, we all are.’ The ability of a brand to be socially conscious and consciously expansive are crucial. Social responsibility is now inexorable to a company’s reputation.

LESSON 2: RITUAL AND RESTRAINT

One set of slippers is for the house. Another, for the bathroom.  Sake comes before, not during, the meal.  After a Japanese meeting, it’s time for karaoke and raucous good times. The working day is done.  Each experience has its place, and for that time, every other experience is put aside.

Japanese patterns and rituals have the ability to clear the senses, to reorder what the mind takes in.  Interiors are marked by clean, minimal lines and stripped to their bare essence.  Nature is controlled in Zen gardens or the pruning of a bonsai tree.  Each object in the landscape is distinct and pure.

‘Shibui’ means inobtrusive beauty.  ‘Wabi Sabi’ is the reflection of inner perfection, simplicity, the rustic and the unembellished. Muji, for example, employs top designers whose names are absent from all packaging and merchandising.

In the hospitality and service industry, the flashy boutique hotel with its disco lobbies has had its day.  Luxury now is about time and space, superior construction, and escape from the ordinary.

LESSON 3: REVERENCE FOR NATURE & THE HUMAN TOUCH

Number five of Toyota’s fourteen guiding principles is “Be reverent, and show gratitude for things great and small in thought and deed.”

There’s been a shift in the U.S. collective consciousness — green is no longer an issue marginalized to fanatical environmentalists; nearly all Americans display green attitudes and behaviors versus a year ago.

-WPP, 2007

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation.

-New York Times referring to Japan’s “single-minded dedication to reducing energy use”, 2008

“Custom-made and one-of-kind are rising above the mass-produced.”

-Head of Trend Research, JWT, 2007

(Luxury consumers) are looking for unique handcrafted things that can’t immediately be reinterpreted at every level of the marketplace.”

Brand Media Week, 2008

Japan is known for sci-fi style innovation but also for employing nature’s materials.  Japan’s ancient Shinto religion is based on reverence for nature and the power of the spirit of animals.  Zen Buddhism pays homage to nature in the form of pristinely preserved rock gardens and an abundant use of natural materials.

From Maison Objets in Paris to Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan to PCBC show in California, design and building news is dominated by natural and renewable materials.

In all communities, even in our post-industrial individualistic society, we’re tribal in some aspects and isolated in others.  The values of social responsibility, respect for nature, and a distinctly more modest and subtle luxury are extremely relevant in a saturated environment of strident individualism, materialism, waste, and social alienation.

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