Japan is unique among Asian countries in that, despite its brief period of American occupation following the

Second World War, it has never been colonised and so has become modernised through learning and

incorporating Western and other Asian ideas itself. It has sometimes been a long and winding route from

source to the genesis in Japanese design. But now at the start of the new millennium Japan rightly deserves

to have the light shone on it and enjoy a moment of self-reflection with pride. As the work of the preceding

designers shows, there is a wonderful range of thought, theory and completed works in Japan that has not

always been given fair attention in the design press. Too often, publications on Japan have seemed to focus

on the quirky storyline or the High-Tech image. I have often felt that it was too much of what we think

we know about a distant culture and not enough investigative energy. It sometimes seemed there was an

equally long road from Japanese design back to us. I hope that by bringing you directly into contact with the

designers' words and thoughts it has brought alive a discourse on Japanese design. As I said at the

beginning, this book is a simple story of the diversity of design in Japan. A simple story, maybe, but I hope

very richly told. This book is a celebration of a unique culture and its experience with design. I hope that the

individual stories and the collective themes that have been introduced will stimulate greater interest in

Japanese design, in all its diverse forms.