Critical design in Japan

This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today. The practice communicates a form of visual and material protest drawing on the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s notably feminism body politics the politics of identity and ecological anti-consumerist and anti-institutional critiques as well as the concept of otherness. It also presents an encounter between two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde<i>. </i>The book challenges the definition of design as the production of unnecessary decorative and conceptual objects and the characterisation of Japanese design in particular as beautiful sublime or a product of 'Japanese culture'. In doing so it reveals the ways in which material and visual culture serve to voice protest and formulate a social critique.