Ever sat and wondered who designed the Kikkoman Sushi Bottle?
75 years ago this week, Kenji witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima, his family’s hometown, by the atomic bomb.
“Faced with that nothingness, I felt a great nostalgia for human culture. I needed something to touch, to look at. Right then I decided to be a maker of things.”
In his 20s, Kenji Ekuan won the soy sauce contract from Kikkoman.
It took three years and 100 prototypes to come up with a final design for his dispenser, which combined a curving form with a dripless spout.
Fast forward almost 60 years on and more than 500 million of the bottles have been sold.
Mr. Ekuan’s work included some of the products most closely associated with postwar Japan, including Yamaha motorcycles and bullet trains.
As a child, he wandered the streets of Hiroshima, and spoke of hearing the voices of ‘mangled streetcars, bicycles and other objects’, lamenting they could no longer be used.
“Objects have their own world. Making an object means imbuing it with its own spirit.”
“When we think of the evolution of design, we might imagine a world where robots are everywhere, but that’s not it. The ultimate design is little different from the natural world.”
“For anything humans use in their day to day life, they need design and it is a clear and concrete proof of the fundamental human right to live.”
“Just like a man is born, and becomes old, ill and dies… even in a factory things are born, they have very useful years, and then finally die. It’s all the same.”
WATCH: “Make Haste Slowly: The Kikkoman Creed”
This is a beautiful mini-documentary featuring Kenji Ekuan.
