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■ We are featuring Stationery from Feb. 29 to Mar. 30.







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■ You have collaborated with artists and small-scale makers in Japan, and dealt with a lot of kinds of general goods. For diffusion of internet, today everyone has to compete against foreign makers in every sort of products. Now what is the meaning of small-scale production in Japan?

T: Consumers mostly desire to get products of good cost-performance. We can never rebel against the tendency itself. If you set great store by balance of price and quality, as an example of “UNIQLO” by Fast Retailing, the right answer is considered to be a low-price policy by production overseas. They don’t produce in Japan, do they?


■ They never. Moreover, the more technique grows up overseas like China and Vietnam, the more high-quality the products become.

T: Most of consumers long for the situation. No help for itself. However, it is true there are also some who feel sympathy and absorbed in the background of the products and sensitivity of the makers or the brand, although they might be very rare.



■ To the minority?

T: We’ve seen integration and abolishment of the printing companies many times. Many closed down or were combined by larger ones.


■ According to Statistical Charts on Industry, the company number in the printing field was 29,179 in 2010 although 43,693 in 1998. Namely, over 30 % decrease…

T: What will it bring to us? The unique paper which a small company used to produce is never going to be made after the M&A or the ruin. If the paper’s quality were nice as there were some fans, there is no one to produce it. That has a series and then, we can get nothing but undifferentiated ones that make us no excited.


■ That is just like the market in communism in a sense. It is so far from richness, because we can be rich when we have a lot of choices. Maybe since their instinct knows the dangerousness, carnivorous animals don’t eat up all small ones. We don’t use instinct on business and then, it often makes falling down together.

T: So I believe something based on sensitivity should lie in stores even if it were unnecessary or bad cost-performance. There are surely those who feel sympathy, get and become happy with obtaining the ones.


■ There is also another soil which sends sensitivity and ideas. The toil catalogs you have published are also working to send the readers the makers’ thoughts, are not they?

T: Early days, we had published usual ones with only the specification. Compositions have increased for telling the readers more and more. I wonder who buys paying money although it is lately usual we can get free catalogs in Internet.


■ It is considered some of them want the catalog as a magazine featuring general goods. Let’s call it a day, thank you very much.

T: Thank you very much.



How did it go? When you find something nice lying in a store, remember the good one is limited and there must be sympathy on the basis of the feeling. There is no correct answer to consuming. It is important that you save money. On the other hand, it is also important to listen to the inside voice, isn’t it? Our life is also limited and then, we are impossible to bring money to the afterlife.


Interview & Text by Misaka Youhei

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