Skip to content

Hakken 発見 /

Latest

Japan now

日本の今 · What's on view, what the Japanese-language press is covering, and this week's Japanese web — in English

On view

Japanese web this week from Responsive Web Design JP and MUUUUU

The wire AXIS and Japan Design Net, translated

How Japan designs in 2026 from Japanese studios' own trend reports

Sources

Fetched every six hours, linked to the original

About

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

Japan Design NetJapan

「TOKYO MIDTOWN AWARD 2026」グランプリが決定、受賞作品を11月8日まで展示

10.19

東京ミッドタウンが主催する、デザインとアートのコンペティション「TOKYO MIDTOWN AWARD 2026」の受賞・入選作品が10月16日に発表された。才能ある若手デザイナーやアーティストとの出会い、応援、コラボ

Read at Japan Design Net ↗

More from Japan Design Net on Hakken

JapanRYUICHI SAKAMOTO + SHIRO TAKATANI Japan Design Net

JapanBrighton & Hove Albion FC公式ライセンス商品化へ、「DESIGNERS COLLECTION – EDITION #001」が作品募集 Japan Design Net

Japan2026年グッドデザイン大賞は、ヤマハの「専用マイク付きドラム拡張モジュール EAD50」に決定 Japan Design Net

Japanミッドセンチュリー期の名作デザインが集う「TOKYO MODERNISM SHOW 2026」、過去最大規模で開催 Japan Design Net

Japan機械式腕時計のメカニズムをクリエイターが独自解釈、インスタレーション展「からくりの森」が開催 Japan Design Net

Japan創刊50周年記念LaLa原画展～魅惑のクリエイション～ Japan Design Net

More from Japan Design Net on Hakken.