Kenji Ekuan, the Japanese industrial designer who most famously crafted the Kikkoman Soy Sauce bottle – a teardrop shaped vessel that revolutionised the way soy sauce is packaged and now used the world over – has died in Tokyo at the age of 85.
Ekuan shifted career course following the deaths of his sister and father in the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, despairing for the wreckage the bombing raid caused, and immediately giving up a career in the Priesthood to pursue industrial design. In an interview with the city last year, Ekuan stated,
“Faced with that nothingness, I felt a great nostalgia for human culture. I needed something to touch, to look at. Right then, I decided to be a maker of things.“
The three year journey to redesign soy sauce packaging put GK Industrial Design Associates, the firm he founded, well and truly on the map. The now iconic design – featuring an easy to handle shape, and a flat cap dispenser that doesn’t drip – was inspired by seeing his mother struggle with old style soy sauce containers, which were large and cumbersome.
Kenji Ekuan’s career was long and extremely influential, and included the design for much larger vehicles such as the Yamaha VMAS motorcycle, the Komachi bullet train, and the Narita Express airport shuttle train. But it’s the Kikkoman Soy Sauce bottle that remained his masterpiece.
Makiko Tsumura, International Manager of the Japan Institute of Design Promotion explained the extent of Ekuan’s legacy.
“Soy sauce was already an essential part of Japanese cuisine, but it was always in large and heavy bottles. The president of soy sauce-maker Kikkoman asked him to develop a smaller bottle that would be easy to stock but also acceptable on the table of a home. Before his bottle, there was no concept of packaging design in Japan, but his creation was instrumental in making it common.“
So next time you’re out for a delicious plate of dumplings, maybe consider pouring one out of that perfectly designed bottle for the man who designed it.
So long, and thanks for all the sauce, Kenji. You absolute legend.
via The Telegraph.
