Modern Japonisme

Why it's so much more than a trend; which is why it will be eternally timeless. Plus the five Japanese concepts you absolutely need to know...

In the popular imagination, Japonisme is all shoji screens, tatami mats and a single Bonsai tree placed just so on an ornately-carved, black-lacquered console. Certainly when I conjure visions of 'Japanese style' I picture Zen simplicity, exquisite ceramics, artful calligraphy and an extreme sense of stuff sophistication that we in the West don't seem to be naturally inclined towards.

No doubt there are Japanese people with terrible hoarding habits and I’m aware the above is a sweeping generalisation that rides rough shod over the richness and breadth of an entire country’s history, politics and culture. And yet, arguably, despite the last 100 years of intense change and the rise of the digital age, Japan has retained a tremendous sense of stylistic self; a unique way of marrying modernity with tradition, that I feel offers a lot for us to learn from today.

Then again a love affair with the East is nothing new; the term Japonisme was coined by French aesthetes to describe an emerging craze for all things Japanese in the 19th-century; and the concept of East meets West has long been a popular interior design mantra. However, I think Japonisme resonates particularly today precisely because it is so much more than just a superficial style.

Unfortunately, many so-called ‘trends’ today are profoundly one-dimensional. They lack substance. By contrast, Japonisme has been consistently founded on five timeless core principles: