The essentiality of the shapes, the extreme attention to detail, the originality of each piece despite the continuity of tradition, combined today with technological and engineering research that develops new materials and the recycling of waste materials, are peculiarities that make the design Japanese an international icon.

The exhibition “ORIGIN of SIMPLICITY. 20 Visions of Japanese Design” is a transversal look between design and craftsmanship to understand the origins of the concept of simplicity, now declinable as emptiness (ku), space or silence (ma), sometimes readable as poverty (wabi) and consumption linked to use over time (sabi), others such as asymmetry, non-definition and imperfection, concepts that have roots in various philosophical thoughts belonging to this culture: from Zen Buddhism to Shinto animist thought, almost opposite to Western rationality.

An unpublished research conceived by the curator Rossella Menegazzo, an expert in art history and Japanese culture from the University of Milan, with a graphic and installation project by the Japanese designer and curator Kenya Hara, who conceived the exhibition itinerary as a forest where to walk. Each tree groups together the works that are an expression of the same quality, original combinations of works by different designers and artisans, through which the theme of simplicity is expressed by assigning key words that aid reading.

On display there are over 150 works, many never before presented in Italy, designed by the most representative names of modern and contemporary design, who have marked the history of Japanese design starting from the 1960s, but also exponents of the latest generations, less known to the international public. All the objects chosen underline the artisanal knowledge, which has traditionally combined techniques, materials and shapes with design handed down from generation to generation, through workshops, historic laboratories and masters considered "living national treasures", an intangible heritage.

A centuries-old wisdom that reveals a predilection for natural materials - wood, paper, metal, ceramic and textiles - and a sensitivity towards the characteristics of each of these, making the distinction between a design or art product fluid, "simplicity is born precisely from a profound adherence of forms to nature, almost an attempt to preserve that sacredness inherent in every element that Shinto animistic thought brings with it, laying the foundations of Japanese culture" comments the curator Rossella Menegazzo.