発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

← Hakken 週ごとのアーカイブ

Wallpaper*

Six generations in, this Japanese bolthole is shaping a new chapter in ryokan design

10月21日

Hanamurasaki is a traditional Japanese ryokan – with a fresh modern twist. Wrapped in nature, the family-run hotel overlooks the drama of a river flowing through a gorge in an ancient hot spring…

Japan-inspired

Wallpaper*で読む ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Six generations in, this Japanese bolthole is shaping a new chapter in ryokan design

関連する記事

The latest chapter of ‘MaisonMargiela/folders’ is a deep dive into the house’s pioneering Tokyo store Wallpaper*

From young boxer to big-hitting architect, Tadao Ando’s life packs a punch: here’s his memoir Wallpaper*

DESIGNART TOKYO 2026 celebrates 10th anniversary across the city Visual Atelier 8

This Japanese Notebook Has Lines That Seem to Disappear as You Write Yanko Design

Selbstbewusst als Kreative: Auftreten, verhandeln, Grenzen setzen PAGE online

KI professionell nutzen & rechtlich auf der sicheren Seite bleiben PAGE online