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 Archive

Yanko Design

5 Glass Homes Where the View Is the Room

October 5

Transparent living has evolved from a futuristic idea into a defining feature of contemporary architecture.

Read at Yanko Design ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

5 Glass Homes Where the View Is the Room

More from Yanko Design on Hakken

PlayStation 5 compatible Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited Gaming Controller Shows Off A Built-in Screen Yanko Design

These Glass Vases Look Better Empty, and Nobody Questions It Yanko Design

Every K-Cup You’ve Brewed Is Still in a Landfill, and Keurig Has a Fix Yanko Design

5 Gadgets Gen Z Actually Wants to Own Right Now Yanko Design

The Selfie Camera on Your Phone Has Always Been in the Wrong Place Yanko Design

Nike Actually Made Sneakers That Look Like Grandma’s Couch Yanko Design