A Message from the Director
For emotional support in emergencies
Most people have never actually experienced a life-changing disaster. Yet all of us have seen the awesome destructive force of tornados, floods, and earthquakes in photographs and news accounts on television and the internet.
No one who sees the images recorded in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake will ever forget them. Those images set my mind in motion. I wanted to discover the types of package designs people could most readily use in actual disasters.
What kind of designs should we prepare for the emergency goods we keep on hand? How can our designs help people confront disasters effectively and appropriately? How can they keep people calm when trouble strikes? In our search for answers, we at the museum have compiled a collection of various proposals by designers from the Japan Package Design Association.
Please let us know your impressions when you finish exploring the exhibition.
Koichi Kabayama
Director
Printing Museum, Tokyo
Director's Profile
Koichi Kabayama
Director
Printing Museum, Tokyo
Born in Tokyo in 1945. Graduated from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo in 1965, and after completing the masters degree course at the university became a research assistant at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University in 1969. Became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo in 1976, and later became a professor. Served as the Director-General of The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo from 2001, becoming Director of the Printing Museum, Tokyo in 2005, a position he still holds. His fields of specialization are Western history and Western cultural history.