The man who made Japan

Kenji Ekuan, Japanese designer created the form of the iconic red-capped, teardrop-shaped bottle for soy sauce maker Kikkoman Corp.; he was also known for having designed the Yamaha VMAX motorcycle, the Akita Shinkansen Komachi bullet train, and the Narita Express airport shuttle train. Ekuan declared that seeing the destruction wrought by the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of his family’s hometown of Hiroshima brought forth in him a desire to create beautiful material objects. He graduated (1955) from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and in 1957 founded the design firm GK Industrial Design Associates. In 1995 he was named chairman of the Japan Institute of Design, and he headed Design for the World (1998–2003), an international organization for the use of design to solve problems of the poor and dispossessed. Ekuan wrote several books on design, including The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox (1980; Eng. trans. 1998). In 2005 his soy sauce bottle entered the permanent collection of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.