SALONE NEWS in Milan
by Masayuki Kurokawa

SALONE NEWS 2007 in Milan vol.12
KUMA and HARAKENYA

2007/04/22
KUMA’s work is very close to the very Japanese itself. He is making use of Japanese esthetic sense to almost excessive extent. But it’s good. Though it’s my belief that true estheticism should be the expression of the sense of beauty that an individual finds through introspection of his or her own mind and that holds good in the modern society, KUMA’s work seems to go on the verge of falling into pop and vulgar cultural concept of Japan. Such a method as this he uses seems to have been well familiar to us.
The stone basin of HARA KENYA is good. While he named it Tsukubai ( a small stone basin usually placed at the entrance of Japanese tea room), it doesn’t excessively assert its Japan-ness.
With the use of bamboo, it may have been possible to find more modern methods of expression or like the works of Tokujin, I’d prefer using some material completely different from ordinary Japanese straws to make a Japanese space without clear divisions by solid walls. To express amazing estheticism of Japanese is such a hard task.