Interviewed by Sophie Coureau – staff writer at Chinriu Honten Limited

What is NIHON ICHIBAN about and why did you start it?

Japan is a country with a very rich heritage and abundance of great food, craft and design products.  But knowledge about these original products is very low and it also is very hard to purchase authentic products for most foreigners.

Sushiro (スシロー) is one of the largest restaurant chains for belt sushi in Japan with about 200 outlets. Being a national player they are running commercials in TV. They developed a new aesthetics for Sushi commercials giving it a delicious but modern style. Sushiro’s commercials are also called Sushi Rap due to the quick change of pictures and the rap like music, which is using traditional Japanese instruments such as shamisen.

Riusuke Fukahori was born 1973 in Aichi prefecture where he also graduated at a design university in 1995. It is on 2002 that Riusuke started using acrylic and resin to meticulously draw goldfish layer by layer to achieve a 3D effect close to a sculpture. The result are very realistically looking goldfishes frozen in time swimming in all kind of containers ranging from wooden tubs in all sizes, shells, metal boxes or bamboo.

In Japan Sakura tea is a popular drink for celebrations such as weddings or other special occasions. It is made with sakura cherry blossoms pickled in salt – a very traditional Japanese ingredient. In Japanese Sakura tea is called “sakura cha – 桜茶” or “sakura yu – 桜湯”.

The stereotype of the Japanese salaryman is well known all over the world. A groups of 7 young men is dancing and singing as a group of Japanese salarymen moving in synchronized slow motion. They mostly feature situations very familiar to the Japanese salaryman. The group is lead by Genki Sudo who is a retired Japanese martial arts and wrestling champion, writer and now performance artist. World Order combines its music and the choreography  to create amazing music videos.

Japanese Kimono and Obi-belts are known for their rich designs and represent the heart of traditional Japanese culture. African designer Serge MOUANGUE who works and lives in Japan saw an analogy to African traditional patterns and initiated the WAFRICAproject to bring these two worlds together. The word WAFRICAcombines the Japanese word WA 和, which means Japanese, and the word Africa. This perfectly represents the marriage of Japan and Africa intended from the WAFRICAproject.

This is a video about cool and not so cool facts about Japan by graphic designer Kenichi Tanaka. It received a lot of attention by Japanese and foreign media and got translated in many languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese. Tanaka says: “I created this information graphic motion piece as my final thesis project. My objective is to make Japanese people think about what is happening in their own country, and that some aspects of Japanese culture are not that normal. The English narration offers a point of view on Japan that isn’t usually considered by Japanese people, and therefore conveys a ‘foreign’ perspective. I hope audiences will learn about some of the weird aspects of Japanese culture.”

Kami Fusen, the traditional Japanese paper Balloons

These are Japanese paper balloons – or kamifusen. Made of sturdy waxed paper, these cute little balloons ship flat and can be inflated (and reinflated when needed) with a simple puff. Kamifusen were actually originally designed as toys for children and used for a casual sort of volleyball, but nowadays also are used for decoration purposes.