MUJI was born in 1980 as a result of a fusion of ideas from two men: Seiji Tsutsumi, one of the leading figures in the retail industry at that time, and graphic designer Ikko Tanaka. Mr. Tsutsumi proposed eliminating waste from the retail process in order to provide good products at low prices to the consumers, and Mr. Tanaka responded with the idea of adding a simple kind of beauty that is more appealing than opulence. In an age when consumption was considered to be the symbol of wealth, the 40 MUJI product items that had been perfected through process inspections, material studies, and packaging simplification truly delivered a powerful awakening to society.
Kenya Hara took over the art direction for MUJI from Ikko Tanaka in the summer of 2001, six months before Mr. Tanaka’s sudden death. Mr. Tanaka is said to have told Mr. Hara, “The MUJI work was so much fun I could not sleep at night.” Among the materials he delivered to Mr. Hara was a book titled “MUJI Book.” Even today, the original of a fax that Kenya Hara had sent to Ikko Tanaka remains tucked inside the front cover of this book. The fax contained notice that after much thought Mr. Tanaka had decided to accept the position on the MUJI Advisory Board and the work for MUJI art direction, and also that he had developed an idea for “World MUJI.”
Beginning in 2003, MUJI began declaring its vision for each year in newspaper advertisements. With each running to approximately 1,600 characters in length, they were rather wordy for newspaper ads. Although they were somewhat unsophisticated, they were written with the intention of prioritizing contents that would clearly communicate the thinking of the company each time, making it possible to chart the course of the brand from the ads of past years. The ad for the first year, 2003, contained two pieces. One was “The Future of MUJI,” which described the history of MUJI from its birth more than 20 years earlier and its direction for the future. The other was “MUJI on a Global Scale,” which was based on the “World MUJI” concept described in the fax that had been sent to Ikko Tanaka.
The visuals were Uyuni Salt Lake in Bolivia and the horizon from a Mongolian plateau. These locations were selected because they are two places on the globe where one can see a flat horizon for 360° in all directions. The photographer was Tamotsu Fujii. When the photos were blown up to large B0 two-sheet panoramic posters, their simple compositions produced representations of the earth in a symbolic form that could not have been clearer.
