From a single grain of wheat

Minagawa

Thank you for joining us today for our live event with Shigesato Itoi.

[Audience claps]

Itoi

Thanks for having me.

Minagawa

About once a year or so you treat me to lunch and we talk about things that I later really go over a lot in my head. They’re really important to me, and I’d like to share those same things with everyone here today. I’ve also got some things I want to ask you, myself.

Itoi

Sure.

Minagawa

You’ve allowed us to work with you and the Hobonichi staff every year for the past few years, but the Hobonichi Techo was first released in 2002, correct? So it’s in its 15th year.

Itoi

Right.

Minagawa

We also attended that meeting the other day at Hobonichi to participate in the group discussion with all the different companies and people involved in the Hobonichi Techo. There was everything from creators and designers to sellers.

Itoi

And shippers.

Minagawa

Yes, even the companies involved with fulfillment. It was every single group that works with Hobonichi on the Hobonichi Techo. It was a lot of fun, and the event even included a magic show!

Itoi

We receive an immense amount of help with the Hobonichi Techo, and every year we want to take advantage of the opportunity we have in that gathering to get everyone excited about what we’ve accomplished.

Minagawa

How many books did you sell in the very beginning?

Itoi

I believe it was about 12,000 books.

Minagawa

And that number has since grown to over a half a million. Normally, products that grow in number and scale like that become streamlined and shaped into a cut-and-dry product that makes work on it rather dull.

Itoi

Yeah.

Minagawa

But the Hobonichi Techo is like the opposite—it gets more fun to work on every year and it feels like the possibilities are always growing. And the meetings are fun when we look at what sold the best, and so on.

Itoi

(To audience) We announce the sales data at the meeting.

Minagawa

That sense of fun I get from these meetings also feels to me like a sense of hope. It’s more than just the thought, “We want to make the Hobonichi Techo.” It’s the combination of “Who do we make it with and how?” “In what ways do we deliver this to the customers?” All those aspects make up the Hobonichi Techo. When you first started the techo 15 years ago, where did you envision it going?

Itoi

I’m not really one to look forward to the future, and I’m not very good at judging what we should do now based on where we want to be later on. I was freelance for such a long time that I feel like a performer. If there’s a stage, I’ll go up and dance.

Minagawa

Yeah.

Itoi

Around the time we first released the techo, I’d been focused on doing what I found interesting. The Hobonichi Techo was something we personally wanted, and that’s all it took for us to get started.

Minagawa

Interesting.

Itoi

But once we started, we realized it was a product we’d have to continue making. We couldn’t just drop it and leave everyone hanging right when they were looking forward to using it again.

Minagawa

Yeah, it is a planner, after all.

Itoi

Our young team members weren’t experts or anything, but nevertheless they visited the big important department stores and asked if they would sell our book. Apparently the people at the stores ended up lecturing them on taking planners more seriously. And they were right when they told us, “You’re signing yourself up for many years when you make a planner.” It was discouraging to hit a wall like that, but they were spot on.

Minagawa

Yeah.

Itoi

But at the same time, we felt a little defiant about it, and decided to just go ahead with it.

Minagawa

Did your resolve to continue making it strengthen when they made those comments to you?

Itoi

I’m not sure. I figured we had the right to make a planner as long as we resolved to continue it, so we basically decided to make it whether it sold well or not. We weren’t worried about how it sold in its first or second years. We just wanted to know that there were people out there using it.

Minagawa

I see.

Itoi

There was one more reason we went forward with it. From the very beginning, the techo has always had thread-binding to allow the book to open completely flat. At our Hobonichi Techo release party, one of the people who had worked on the thread-binding told us, “You know, these books might fall apart after using them for a year.”

Minagawa

Yikes, what timing to tell you something like that.

Itoi

Right when everyone was so excited about finishing the product. Dictionaries, for example, totally fall to pieces when you use them constantly. The person probably told us that as a compliment, that it would be a good thing if the users loved their books enough to reach that point. But we were just shocked by it. We know that dictionaries tend to fall apart, but if a planner of all things started to fall to pieces, it’d be a huge problem.

Minagawa

Yes, it would.

Itoi

We actually rushed to make them all over again. We asked them to make the books in a way that would prevent them from falling apart. Because the book was only for sale on the Hobonichi website, we sent a new book to every single person who had bought one.

Minagawa

That’s amazing.

Itoi

So we actually made way more than we needed in the very first year. It was a lot of trouble in many ways. That might have been what strengthened our resolve to keep going.

Minagawa

So it’s not a personal project, but one that comes from your feelings and spirit as the overall maker of the product to really step up to the plate.

Itoi

Yeah. With personal projects, I’ve turned them down before, or even pulled out from halfway through the project. Kind of like that rascal fishmonger character Isshin Tasuke throwing a big tuna over his shoulder and leaving as he says, “I’m outta here!”

Minagawa

[Laughs]

Itoi

But at some point I got serious about working as a team. It was sometime before we released the techo for the first time. I wonder why? I guess I just changed. Well, I suppose people change when they take on new roles. I can’t imagine you’re the same person now that you’ve always been.

Minagawa

I think I’ve changed. Parts of the old me are still inside me somewhere, but the moment I started minä perhonen, I feel like I became the “Minagawa from minä perhonen.”

Itoi

I only started thinking ahead once I realized, “Wait a minute. I’m going to die.” It only really hits you that you won’t live forever once you’re reminded of it by your surroundings. If you’re under the impression that you’ll live forever, then you’ll treat every match like you can just settle it with a sudden death round. It’s like saying, “If I lose at the bottom of the ninth inning, I can just turn the game around in the tenth!”

Minagawa

Yeah.

Itoi

But there are times when a game ends in the 12th inning. And when I realized that, I started to think about being strong as a team. When we created the Hobonichi Techo, I didn’t think, “this is our final shot,” but I also didn’t feel as much as others did that a do-over was something we could even rely on getting.

Minagawa

I find myself starting to feel that same way.

Itoi

Huh? But you’re still so young.

Minagawa

Before I knew it, I’d already found myself thinking that way…

Itoi

So you’re old at heart. [Laughs]

Minagawa

I was just told that the other day.

Itoi

You’re not at the age to think ahead, yet you’re already doing it.

Minagawa

But after hearing what you just said, I feel like that’s okay.

2016-12-06-Tue

Part 2 | NEXT