Kenji Ekuan

Kenji Ekuan (榮久庵 憲司, Ekuan Kenji; September 11, 1929 – February 8, 2015) was a Japanese industrial designer. He is best known for making the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle.

Life

Kenji Ekuan was born in Tokyo, Japan. He lived in his youth in Hawaii.

At the end of World War II, he was a student at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in Etajima (Hiroshima Prefecture). While the atomic bombing of Hiroshima happened, he was on his way home on train to visit his family. His little sister died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. His father, who was a Buddhist monk, died a year later of the radiation.

After the war, he studied to become a monk. But after seeing the destroyed city of Hiroshima, Ekuan wanted to make useful things. He started to study design at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1950 and graduated in 1955. From 1956 to 1957 he studied at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.

After his graduation he founded the design company GK Industrial Design Associates. In 1961, Ekuan designed a small soy sauce bottle for Kikkoman. He got the idea from his mother, who poured soy sauce from a large bottle into a smaller one. It took 3 years and more than 100 prototypes for the design of the bottle.

For me it represents not the new Japan, but the real Japan. The shape is so gentle. Of course, during the war, we were forced into acting differently. But for a long time, some 1,000 years, the history of the Japanese people was very gentle.

— Kenji Ekuan, The New York Times (June 2012)

Kikkoman sold more than 300 million bottles worldwide and it became part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art.

Ekuan died in a hospital in Tokyo on 8 February 2015. He was 85 years old.

Honors

• 1979: Colin King Grand Prix – International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
• 1995: Sir Misha Black Medal
• 1997: Ordre des Arts et des Lettres – French Minister of Culture
• 2000: Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette – Emperor of Japan
• 2003: Lucky Strike Designer Award – Raymond Loewy Foundation
• 2004: Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland – President of Finland
• 2011: DFA Lifetime Achievement Award – Hong Kong Design Centre

• 2014: Compasso d'Oro – Associazione per il Disegno Industriale

Publications

• Ekuan, Kenji (1998). David B. Stewart (ed.). The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-05055-5.

References

Other websites

• Media related to Kenji Ekuan at Wikimedia Commons
• Kenji Ekuan at GK Design Group website