KEIFU 002

Two Gifts

Yudai Tachikawa ── Traditional Craft Director, Representative of t.c.k.w, Founder of AMUAMI

From the 1990s through 2005, he made repeated trips to the Salone del Mobile in Milan, the world's foremost furniture and design fair. During his stays there, he spent his time with a close friend living locally, the designer Kosei Shirojo. Because Shirojo was looked after by two great designers often called the conscience of Italian design, Achille Castiglioni and Enzo Mari, he was fortunate enough to join them, at their studios and in their homes.

He had actually been selling both designers' products in Japan, so conversation came easily. And in the midst of that time, he received a rebuke that would shake the course of his life.

Castiglioni told him, "Stop swallowing whole the common sense everyone else accepts." Mari said, "Don't become a slave to the consumer economy — devote yourself instead to reforming society and culture." Busy with life in Tokyo, he remembers being caught off guard by advice that struck at a kind of essence he rarely stopped to consider. What also stayed with him was how deep a respect both men held for Japanese culture.

In 1999, driven by those words, he became independent at the age of 33 and founded t.c.k.w Co., Ltd.