Kenya Hara (born 1958) is a Japanese graphic designer and curator. He is a graduate of Musashino Art University.
Hara has been the art director of Muji since 2001 and designed the opening and closing ceremony programs of the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998. He published Designing Design, in which he elaborates on the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design. In 2008, Hara partnered with fashion label Kenzo for the launch of its men's fragrance Kenzo Power.
Hara is a leading design personality in Japan and in 2000 had his own exhibition “Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century”.
In pursuing design as one’s practice, it is necessary to question the role of design, the identity of the ‘designer’ and the various values and belief systems associated with the term.
Back in 2006, Kenya Hara and Masayo Ave, visited each other’s homes in Japan and Berlin and recorded the respective conversations that occurred between them. Hara and Ave, both Japanese designers with one based in Japan and one in Europe, pores over matters of design over the length of the book from the design of kitchen products to accommodate the differences between cultural cuisine to gushing over bespoke Italian furniture and design. What I found central to the theme of the book is 1) the subject of “the role of design” and 2) the East-West paradigm.
In their examinations of everyday designed objects to the role of design in society, their views aptly reflects Japanese (and broadly speaking, Eastern) intonations, even if Ave has practised and taught in Europe for many years. References to haptic senses, a body-centric perspective, and harmony through design - though many of these remarks are made by Hara. Behind these ideas there is a certain sense that this genealogy of thought is above all a socially driven tool, in contrast to the Western tendency of rethinking traditionalism as the default mode of operation.
Culture, history and society form a great part of the discussion as factors in design as intrinsically linked and as a reflection to the cultural formation of the time. For one, depending on one’s cultural origins, the products in one’s kitchen including the types of pots, cutlery and containers carry great varieties (and as explained by Hara, is also why kitchen products don’t achieve great sales in foreign lands). But the more interesting parts are Hara’s observations on how history, economy and society has shaped the attitudes of its people into their particular epochs. These musings are short but speaks volumes about what design is informed by and what informs design.
What I did find most insightful and lingering in my mind are the analysis pertaining specifically to the role of design itself. Communication, in Hara’s words, are an exchange and not a transfer of an idea. It delivers an idea from one to the other, and from that point on continues to evoke and stir up new thoughts.