9 progressive young Japanese designers you need to know from Designart Tokyo

Hojo Akira studied production design at Kanazawa College of Art and is now based in Tokyo. His creative process starts with questioning the user experience. His authentic solutions have resulted in accolades from the Tokyo Midtown Award, Red Dot Design Award and iF Design Award Gold. 

At Designart Tokyo 2024, Akira questioned the recyclability of mass-produced furniture. He designed a sofa at Tiers Gallery made from a single interlocking frame that can be easily dismantled. Instead of common upholstered polyurethane foam, the mesh-like seat is made from a recyclable polyethylene resin called Breathair that is used for the internal cushioning of Japan’s bullet trains and is usually covered with fabric. 

During the 2023 Milan Fair, Tokyo-based design collective Honoko Lab won the prestigious first prize at Salone Satellite with its Tatami Refab project. It uses 3D printing technology to create new products from recycled tatami mat fibre mixed with biodegradable plastic. At Designart 2024, Honoka Lab repeats its ingenuity. 

The Trace of Water exhibition showcased material from leading bottled water provider Aqua Clara from its bottle return programme repurposed to create new products. The resulting wall coverings, lamps, stools and bowls are evocative and beautiful, with their enigmatic blue colour and translucency. If one thinks about how many commercial spaces and institutions use large plastic water dispensers on a daily basis, the research from this project is highly impactful.

Since graduating from the Department of Industrial Interior and Craft Design at Musashino Art University, Takeshita has explored various ideas that include a wall shelf made from cutting and folding a single aluminium plate to reduce waste, and a standing shelf with stiff but lightweight board on rollers so that each layer can be pulled or pushed outward to adapt to different uses.   

For Designart Tokyo, she graced the public areas of Tokyo Midtown with touches of colour. The exhibit, titled Eeyo, experimented with exposing colour dye on chairs made from a variety of timber types to nearly 200-degree heat. The varying dyeing time and intensity of heat application resulted in an assortment of graphic colouration. For example, green turns to pink, and blue to red.

Raw silk refers to material from silk cocoons that has not been fully processed or refined. These include Kibiso, which is the rough outer layer of silk thread and degara cocoons – cocoons not ideal for traditional silk production but still have usable fibres. Hiroto Ikebe’s addresses the wastage of these less-desirable materials with the exhibit Cocoon Anatomy at Designart Tokyo.

He first subjects the cocoons to carding (separating and mixing the fibres from each material) before reweaving them into components. Finally, he patches them together with other materials to create nature-inspired wearable pieces like a dress and headpiece. Their texture, durability and versatility make them similar to leather. Hence, this may be a path to leather alternatives while reducing the discarding of cocoon shells in landfills. 

At Tokyo Midtown, Yusuke Wakata presented Re 47 Crafts—project upcycling waste from local fruits and food from Japan’s 47 prefectures into new products. Born in 1993, Wakata graduated from Musashino Art University in 2017 and enrolled at the Graduate School of Design at the Tokyo University of the Arts. 

Wakata is a multifaceted creative, dabbling in graphic design, corporate branding and UI/UX design; he is also an installation artist. The designer has won multiple awards, including the Asahi Advertising Award, ACC Young Creativity Competition Second Grand Priz, and the Tokyo Midtown Award Grand Prix.

Straft (an amalgamation of ‘straw’ and ‘craft’) is a creative duo comprising Tamaki Ishii and Kazuma Yamagami. Their exhibit at Designart Tokyo, titled Nest, is a discourse on using rice straw left over from the harvested rice. The material is typically used as roofing and wall material in traditional architecture, religious products or tools for daily life in Japanese culture.  

The new products made from woven straw include chairs, a bench, evocative clothing and a bird-like tori. Their agrarian expressions extol the beauty of the time- and effort-intensive craft process, as well as express a spiritual relationship with Mother Nature through farming. 

At Tiers Gallery, Masaya Kawamoto showcased the PF Chair series. PF (Press and Flat) refers both process and structure. The two chairs have intriguing profiles round piping that are flattened where necessary (the chair’s back) and left in their original shape at other parts. The chairs are designed for easy disassembly to allow for efficient packaging and setting up.  

The colouration is a beautiful by-product of scientific processes. Kawamoto soaks each chair in a salt bath, which oxidises the metal. Subtle rainbow gradients emerge in assorted gradients depending on the properties of the stainless steel used, material thickness and cooling speed.

Pulse is a trio of designers who exhibited at Tiers Gallery. Their designs represent a treasure-trove of creative techniques and material application. Daiki Mitsui uses the traditional ikkan-bari technique of layering Japanese paper over bamboo baskets and applying persimmon tannin or lacquer to create a leather-like effect. His version uses bottle cushioning, barbed wire, expanded metal mesh and tortoiseshell wire mesh as base materials.    

Rikiya Toyoshima and Shomu Taki created a series of home décor pieces from raw, carbonised sand that is a by-product of sand casting and is typically discarded. They also showcased Soumei – a collection of lamps made from decorative glass that was fashionable in the past and often used in Showa-era interior architecture.

Also at Tiers Gallery, Takeru Sato presented a poetic selection of furniture using Najio Washi. The technique mixes locally sourced clay with gampi fibres in the papermaking process, with the clay making the paper resistant to stains and discolouration from sunlight. The process is often used for high-end fusuma (sliding doors) for interiors but Sato has applied it to furniture. 

A French polish finishing technique (applying layers of thin shellac) produces a slight sheen and highlights the paper fibres and shades of the clay after drying. This project highlights the decline of paper mills after the decreased demand of washi paper following the Meiji era. The paper used here is from one of two mills that remain in Najio, Nishinomiya City in Japan.  

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