#03 | Society from a Manufacturing Perspective
Society and the Discomfort with the “Invisible Mold”
To me, society is a “totality of relationships” in which people form connections, and countless lines overlap to shape a single order. It is like an invisible web, born into, living within, and unconsciously functioning as a part of it.
Society exists in small communities such as families, schools, and workplaces, each with its own rules, values, and order. People are given roles within them and play their part. But at times, this structure can feel stifling. Since childhood, I have felt a certain discomfort with the “invisible mold” that flows through society.
My family was quite ordinary, and our household income probably fell around the median. My parents kept telling me that “going to a good university is the absolute condition for success in life.” But I always felt uneasy about those words. Why was it important to go to a good high school and a good university? I grew older without ever being convinced by that reason.
At the time, it was taken for granted that you should listen to your parents, and in school, solidarity in communal living and the values formed there were dominant. I felt as though I would be cast out of the community if I did not accept those values. Although I had doubts and could not accept them, I had no choice but to remain within that system.
This state of mind continued until I entered society.
Encounter with Design and Self-Formation
I originally hated studying. Or rather, I could not find any meaning in it. As a result, I failed to meet my parents’ expectations, failed my university entrance exams, and gave up on higher education. By the standards of the time, I was probably considered a failure of a child.
For the next year, I simply had too much time on my hands. My parents, who still considered it a given that I should go to university, tried their best to make me study, but I remained listless and spent my time aimlessly. As that time passed, impatience began to grow within me. I became afraid of the thought that nothing would happen if I kept getting older like this. When I imagined my life beyond that point and saw nothing, I felt terrified. It was then that I first began to think about looking at my own life.
When I thought about what I wanted to do for work, I found that I should start by unraveling the things I had been passionate about. I spent my formative years in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when Japan’s economy was booming and there was an abundance of entertainment. Heavily influenced by mass media such as magazines and television, I was undoubtedly surrounded by objects and constantly stimulated by them. Encouraged by this culture of consumption, I developed desires for various objects and was influenced by them. Among them, what I was most interested in at the time was “design.” I was struck by the fact that such objects, which stimulated my desire to consume, were imbued with design—and above all, that design was an important element to me. Gradually, I became deeply interested in design. Whether it was interior design, audio equipment, or sneakers, designed objects truly fascinated me.
With the desire to work in design, I ended up attending a vocational school specializing in design. This was the first time I ever “studied seriously.” After two years of study, the time came to start looking for a job, right in the middle of what was then known as the “employment ice age.” But the reason I was able to remain optimistic despite such social circumstances was that, while I looked down on myself for not being able to go to university, I also felt that “simply being able to work was lucky.”
In that environment, I felt that any design company that would hire me would do.
After that, I was fortunate enough to work at a product design studio. Even though the environment was what we would now call “black” (extremely exploitative), I was able to do the design work I loved as my job, and the sense of participating in society by earning a salary through labor somehow enabled me to work with fulfillment even in such harsh conditions. In my design work, my goal was something extremely pure and straightforward: I wanted the products I had worked on to be released to the world. For a designer, seeing the design you created displayed in the stores you visit every day is a kind of goal and aspiration. I was someone who held such a feeling. Fortunately, the studio I belonged to provided me with many such opportunities, and I was able to see the products I had worked on in various places.
For me, who had previously been living in the small worlds of family and school, harboring doubts and finding myself in situations I could not accept, these experiences were incredibly stimulating and fulfilling. They gave me a real sense of having actively participated in society through my own actions.
However, as these experiences and feelings of fulfillment repeated over time, I began to see a different landscape.
Questions About the Structure of Manufacturing
Economic market principles exist in society.
Companies form systems of collaboration and division of labor to generate sales (profits), competition is added to that, and society as a whole tends to move strongly in the direction of capitalism. In that world, new products and services are created every year to compete with other companies for market share. It is an extremely efficient, rational, and fast-paced world. Naturally, at the company I belonged to, we continued to propose designs to win that competition based on materials provided from client product planning and marketing. We proposed designs for the materials presented every year and moved on to the next project without a moment’s rest. Before we knew it, the next model of the same product was required. This cycle was an unavoidable structure for the continued growth and development of the company, as well as for competing with other companies in the same industry.
However, I gradually found myself unable to help but feel uneasy about the very act of product design that I had initially admired.
The legitimacy of that cycle was correct only within the framework of economic market principles, and it felt somewhat different from what humans naturally need. It was also unclear to what extent design actually functioned within the overall process of manufacturing. I had no way of knowing what kind of results my designs were producing in the market. Even when company representatives told me, “You created a great design,” or “Thanks to you, sales have increased,” the results were born from the combined efforts of many people in planning, sales, production, distribution, and other areas.
Of course, products do not sell on design alone. So, what does it mean for something to “sell on design alone”? It was difficult to find the answer from my position. Even so, I believed in the possibilities of design. I wanted to throw a stone into the pool of the unease I had described earlier. I think I wanted to find my own form of “right manufacturing” through design.
The 2000s, when I was working, was a time when Japanese manufacturing was reaching its peak while also transitioning into a new era. From analog to digital, from hardware to software. The emergence of Apple’s iPod made this shift full-scale. Furthermore, after the Lehman shock and the Great East Japan Earthquake, changes began to occur in Japan’s manufacturing industry. At the local manufacturing sites where I was involved, companies unable to adapt to the wave of globalization began to stand out, and their former momentum gradually faded away.
Around that time, I had left the company I worked for and was working as a freelancer. I continued to take requests from clients and make a living through design, just as before. Fortunately, my work was going well, but on the other hand, I was exploring “what I could do in this changing world as an individual.” That is when I took a step while working as a freelancer. I decided to start my own brand and actually sell products.
In April 2011, I launched the sneaker brand blueover.
For someone who had only ever worked in the world of product design until then, it was a bold challenge, but it was born from a desire to find some kind of answer to the issues I had always felt about the cycle of consumption and domestic manufacturing. It is not a lie to say that I also wanted to test the power of design, but I think that was secondary.
Looking back, although I had been freed from the oppression of family and school after entering society, I found myself trying to discover new questions through work. I find questions and issues in the phenomena I encounter in the process of living. It is probably because I do not force myself to think of them, but rather because when I compare them to my own way of life, I do not let the discrepancy end with the words “that’s just how society is,” but unconsciously ask why it is that way. And perhaps that is also part of who I am.
Throughout my life, I have been involved in manufacturing and have participated in society through my work. To me, making and selling products seems like something that has always been very familiar and natural. While products make our lives more convenient, the current structure of mass production and mass consumption continues to place considerable stress on both people and the global environment. I feel that mental exhaustion and the burden on the environment are two sides of the same problem brought about by an “excessive consumption structure.” I believe that the work I do must lead to an answer to this problem.
The first brand I launched, blueover, continues today as a purely Japanese sneaker brand. It is a brand that distances itself from the structure of fast consumption cycles, collaborates with regional shoe factories that operate under a division-of-labor system, and explores the sustainability of manufacturing. And in 2012, I launched WONDER BAGGAGE. This brand is also a bag brand positioned in the same way as blueover.
Both are categorized as fashion accessories and belong to an industry with the same nature of distribution. The brand plans and designs, collaborates with factories to make products, carries inventory, conducts promotion and sales promotion, and distributes them to the market as a wholesaler or retailer. It can be said that this is a style close to what is known as the SPA model.
Compared to typical large brands, our brands have longer development cycles and sell a single product for a long time. We also try not to hold excessive inventory. And the people who use our products continue to love them for many years, taking care of them and having them repaired repeatedly. It makes me very happy to feel that we can share the same feelings through products. Even so, the scale of our business is still small, and although we are somehow managing as a small business, I am constantly struggling between the ideal I aim for and reality. I continue to try different approaches to maintain the questions I have raised and my belief in finding solutions.
Brand and Response to Society
In the past, I always had questions and felt uneasy about the values of the small worlds of family and school, and even after working. To resolve those questions and unease, some kind of action is necessary, and each time I thought I had resolved them, they grew larger in another form and appeared as new challenges. Now that I have become a manufacturer who has gone from being a designer to starting a brand and selling products ourselves, the questions I had about “manufactured consumption,” which had strongly influenced me in the past, stand before me.
Society in manufacturing is powerfully driven by capitalism. A structure that produces products, establishes services through monetary exchange, and brings profits to companies. In recent years, I feel that neoliberalism brought about by capitalism is creating various negative consequences through its excessive competition.
I believe that even now, over a decade after I began to question the negative consequences of this excessive competition, they have fundamentally not changed. Rather, through technological innovation, not only products but also experiences and information have begun to be consumed in large quantities, and in addition to disposable income, there is now a competition over disposable time. In a situation where everything can be imbued with value and turned into a product, it seems that producers are also having their time endlessly taken away for financial incentives.
These excessive actions not only place a burden on the global environment but also exhaust people’s minds, making it difficult to maintain a healthy state of mind. As excessive neoliberalism progresses, as long as people continue to seek financial incentives, I wonder if we are not heading in the opposite direction of a healthy state of mind.
Even so, I believe that our work under this capitalist economy should aim for a human-like, healthy consumption cycle and a return to the spirit. For that, I think it is necessary for humans to acquire “knowledge” in this overly fast society. This is because I believe it is important to correctly perceive the situation we are currently in and become able to judge ourselves objectively. If we can do that, I believe we can maintain a healthy state of mind without losing ourselves even in this fast-paced society. I believe that each person regaining such a perspective will become an opportunity to reconsider ways of working and consuming that are bound only by excessive financial incentives. By doing so, I believe we can shift our gaze from financial incentives to improvements in the environmental burden. To me, work is a means of concretizing my inner beliefs about social structures and sharing them with others.
Society is formed by many human activities.
Through WONDER BAGGAGE bags, I hope that the people who carry them can get to know others through their work and, from that, know themselves. At the same time, I also hope they can come to understand themselves correctly and develop the sensitivity to accept change. For that, I believe it is important that our products are not temporary, excessively produced items designed to encourage consumption, but universal and beautiful products. We use durable materials that can withstand long-term use and leather that develops a patina over time. This is because we aim to create products that allow owners to gain the joy of ownership over time. I believe that people who use products made with such values can share the same values.
I also hope for a transformation of the business model in manufacturing, but the strong system formed by human solidarity is difficult to change. This is because no one can afford to gamble on uncertain possibilities even at the cost of abandoning the lives of those involved. In a world where everything—products, experiences, and information—takes on some value and can be exchanged for money, I hope people can find the value of “being oneself”—not monetary value, but the value of achieving their own happiness. As a result, I believe they will also begin to pay attention to the environment.
I want the things we make to be bags and shoes for that purpose.
And to create a “shift in perspective” and an “opportunity to know others” that cannot be fully supplemented by products alone, I decided to start this content. The purpose of this content is precisely to function as an opportunity to know others. I want to continue this content with the hope that the social and work perspectives of various experts will overlap with the values of the readers and become a source of learning.
Hitoshi Watari
Wonder Baggage Designer | Representative of BATON Inc. Develops the sneaker brand blueover, the bag brand Wonder Baggage, and others. Explores a way of being for products aimed at reducing the distortions of a consumption society that places excessive burdens on the environment and people due to excessive consumption. In a changing social environment, he considers the meaning of products and explores the possibility of continuing domestic production.
Illustration @Naoto Takamatsu
