The japanese way: MARUNI

‘The rich are different’; companies rich in design, certainly are. they invest their trust and resources into creating products imbued with the value that only great design can add. ifj does a deep dive into the path that makes these companies different. we start in the far east, with maruni, japan.

Growing up in Miyajima, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, Takeo Yamanaka, was surrounded by the rich heritage of traditional, wood-based crafts. He was fascinated by the mysterious properties of wood and the way in which it had the magical capacity to assume any shape. The young Yamanaka went to university, where he specialized in mechanical engineering and became enthusiastic about applying the theory that he had studied, to wood as a material. Upon graduation, he formed the Yamanaka Research Institute with five other crafts specialists and later set up the precursor to Maruni Wood Industry, Showa Mageki Kojo (Showa Bentwood Factory), in 1928; focused to the technique of bentwood that was considered extremely difficult at the time.

The name of the company was changed to Maruni Wood Industry, Inc. in 1933, and with this came a new focus to the introduction of industrial methods to traditional Japanese artisan methods of furniture production, making Maruni a pioneer in the area. Continual R&D and learning saw the company developing their own machines and processes in the 1960s, finally producing high-class, classic Western-style furniture on a fully automated assembly line. The company achieved a production output of 2,500 items per month, something of a record at the time.