A letter to and from Naoto Fukasawa

Japanese has a word that stems from the Taoist doctrine and means "simply sitting". Shikantaza is the state of mind that comes to you (ta) when simply (shikan) sitting (za). It is a concentration exercise, training for a true understanding of sensations and feelings , without repressing them and without pursuing them. Shikantaza is a practice of immediate action that goes back to being and simply sitting.

I received a letter from Naoto Fukasawa a few days ago telling us that he would not be participating in the Salone this year. His office, his family and his friends are fine but he does not want to leave Tokyo: "There is not much I can do for my country as an individual but the least I can offer is my presence here, close to my family, children, schools, work and, above all, close to my city. Stay here and prepare ourselves for the unknown that might happen."

Of all the reactions to the tragedy that struck Japan on 11 March last, all the mobilisations, communications and actions that have followed near and far, that of Naoto is a silent, immobile and absolute response. Indeed, it is a non-response, corresponding precisely and in advance to a non-question. Fukasawa's absence is the one that should be mentioned amid all the guests and events that will animate this bright Salone; the knowledge of a presence elsewhere prepared for what "might happen".

There is a word in Japanese that means "without thought". One of Naoto's favourite expressions is: "thinking takes time; feeling is immediate. Focusing on immediacy which does not require the act of thinking is the essence of design". "Without thought" is different from "thoughtless". We are accustomed to thinking that all the work of Fukasawa and many of his colleagues and Japanese masters is played on absence, the void, the anonymous, the essence, the "without" (mu-ji) and white. This is normal. But, as a practice, design occupies a boundary that never coincides with zero but revolves around it; it triggers a correction, a "plus", that is indefinably precise. That is more than normal. Like this letter. When I visited his office in Tokyo, Fukasawa was working on the idea of "outline" as the perimeter between the design and its observer, between the inside and outside of an object, a boundary. If there is a design that pushes the boundaries, that contains habits, practices and traditions and bypasses the officials, one that everyone likes, it is this Japanese design and the Western one, which most closely resembles it. Naoto is likeable in the true sense, as a person, as a designer and as a Japanese master and you instinctively warm to all his fellow countrymen affected by this tragedy. Now, that the Furniture Fair is, for a week, turning Milan into a city with no frontiers, the outline blurs and is redesigned as an eccentric perimeter drawn in the image of all kinds of design consumers. Naoto Fukasawa's letter, as never before, seems to come afar, it destroys archi-centrism, shifts the axis of thought to the East and, while remaining "simply (shikan) sitting (za)", you are struck by (ta) the no-frills delicacy of its sender.