Japan Japanese

From the Publisher. “The quiet beauty of things Japanese. It is the foreign forms, the foreign sounds which are so fascinating. The unmistakable, monotone Sutra recitation of Buddhist monks. The windy, mystical sound of the shakuhachi bamboo flute. The delicate, thin sound of the who mouth organ in the music of Gagaku and Bugaku.

“It is a fine world which exists despite the noise of the time. A world, which does not come forward, but one which invites to enter.

My curiosity having been aroused by Utamaro’s erotic lines and inspired by Emil Ruder, I landed naive and experienced at the age of twenty-four in Japan.

“Once in Osaka I received a letter from Rudolf Hostettler, editor of the Swiss journal Typografische Monatsblätter. He invited me to write contributions about Japanese forms and objects from typographer’s viewpoint.

“I called the series ’Japan Japanese’ because I intended to show my own understanding of Japan: a Japan that existed and still exists, yet one that needs to be discovered. After more than 40 years the TM articles are being given a new life (with minor changes and with additional texts).”

—Helmut Schmid