No. 10
Why Doesn't Admiration Turn into Buying?
The strange fact the numbers show
The data behind this series contains some eighty thousand comments written by people abroad about Japanese craft. From them, I counted, by category, voices of admiration ("beautiful," "amazing") and voices of purchase ("I bought," "where can I buy?").
Something strange emerged: the volume of admiration and the volume of purchase do not correspond at all.
The least bought was woodwork. The virtuosity of kumiko and joinery gathers more than two thousand expressions of praise — by far the most in its category. Yet the rate at which that praise turned into "I want to buy" or "where can I buy?" was strikingly low. Urushi is the reverse: though its total volume of praise is lower than woodwork's, the share that led to purchase reached roughly three to four times woodwork's. Praise and purchase do not correspond at all. Why such a gap?
"I just stood there, staring"
The clue lies within the words of admiration themselves.
The comment that drew the most agreement for woodwork was this: "A kumiko screen in London. Apparently the master spent over a year on it. I spent ages just staring at how beautiful it was." Another wrote, "I don't know why, but just watching this is so satisfying," and another, "so therapeutic to watch."
What these share is that the emotion is complete within the act of looking. Amazing, beautiful, soothing — the feeling is real. But it is satisfied within the experience of looking, and never advances to the next stage: welcoming the thing into one's own life. In other words: admiration is not necessarily desire. We often assume that if people are moved, they will buy. But much admiration is satisfied by admiration itself — especially when it is "virtuosity made to be beheld."
Is there a "vessel" to catch the emotion?
So why is urushi bought?
Among the praise for urushi, words like these appear: "I use it every day," "I keep it on my desk," "even with my small hands, I chose a size I can use daily." Here is the decisive difference. Urushi's emotion has a vessel to catch it — the pen. Someone moved by the urushi process can welcome that emotion into their life as a pen held every day. It can be started at $300, deepens in luster with use, and can be added to at the milestones of a life. The emotion has somewhere to go.
The emotion of kumiko, by contrast, has no receptacle. A screen made over a year costs hundreds of thousands of yen and demands a place to put it. Even when moved, one finds no way to land that emotion in one's own life. So it is completed within "beholding," and ends there. Whether admiration becomes purchase is not decided by the strength of the admiration. It is decided by whether a reachable, real object is prepared to catch it.
Between the "doorway" and the "summit"
From here, a structure comes into view.
Crafts that are bought share, in common, a continuous staircase from doorway to summit. The urushi pen has an unbroken price ladder, from mass-produced pieces of a few thousand yen to maki-e of millions. So a person who is moved can set foot on the first step. And then climb.
Crafts that are not bought lack this staircase. Either there is no affordable everyday object at the entrance, or a gap yawns between doorway and summit. A person who is moved cannot find the first step, and can only look up at the summit and walk away. If you wish to turn admiration into purchase, what is needed is not to move people more. It is to prepare the first step — usable daily, within reach, yet with a summit visible beyond, to climb toward. Whether each craft can have such a "doorway" is the one bridge that lands emotion in life.
To sell is to build a bridge
In this series, I have followed a road "from concept to object." At the end of that road, what has come into view is that the same distance lies between admiration and purchase.
Admiration resembles a concept. Light, strong — yet, on its own, it does not enter into life. To turn admiration into purchase is to give the concept of admiration a landing point in the real. Not "making them think it's even more amazing," but "making that emotion into a form that can rest in the palm of a hand." To sell is not to inflame emotion. It is to build a bridge between emotion and life. And that bridge is an everyday doorway product, a ladder to climb, and a translation without lies.
The most admired craft is the least bought. This paradox is not a sad fact. It is also a hope — the admiration is already there. All that remains is to prepare the first step, by which that emotion can descend.
Next (Chapter 3, No. 11, finale)
"What the West Lost, and Japan Kept"
The final installment. People abroad speak of Japanese inheritance in contrast to the decline of Western craft. Is the inheritance of craft Japan's problem alone — or a question of cultural preservation for the whole world? Closing the entire series under one larger vantage.
