日本设计大师荣久庵宪司在日本设计史上占据举足轻重地位的人，改变了不止一个领域的设计面貌，让更多人享受到了现代工业设计带来的所谓优越生活。Kenji Ekuan, a master designer of great importance in design history of Japan, has changed the design features of more than one field and offered for more people access to the so-called decent life brought by modern industrial design.
荣久庵早年曾就读于海军兵学校，后来进入东京艺术大学图案科学习。1957年，荣久庵创立了GK工业设计研究所（日本最大工业设计公司GK工业设计集团的前身），并任所长。在战后日本社会中，他曾倡导任何人都能接触到优美设计的“物品民主化”和“美的民主化”。Mr. Kenji Ekuan once studied in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and then entered into the Department of Design of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. In 1957, he founded the GK Industrial Design Institute, predecessor of Japan's largest industrial design firm GK Design Group, and served as director. In the post-war Japan, he used to advocate “Democratization of Goods” & “Democratization of Beauty” for exquisite designs available to everybody.
在荣久庵宪司之前，日本的酱油都是装在容量为1.8 公升的瓶子里，看起来十分笨重。在经历了近百种瓶口设计的尝试后，荣久庵宪司终于找到了避免倒酱油时瓶口可能出现的滴漏问题，将瓶嘴内侧稍微向内倾斜，方便人们拿取、摆放，并轻松优雅地倒出增添食物风味的酱油。Before Kenji Ekuan, all of the soy sauce bottles in Japanese market are 1.8-liter and look extremely clumsy. After almost 100 attempts of bottleneck design improvement, Kenji finally found the solution to the dripping problem which may occur while pouring the soy sauce. He made a slightly slanting bottle top to make it more convenient for people to handle, put away and elegantly pour out the soy.
在当时的日本社会，简单俐落的设计，让这款酱油瓶不仅普及至日本社会大大小小的餐桌，甚至与龟甲万酱油和日式料理画上等号，成为日式调味料中最具代表性的容器。粗体的酱油瓶标识与红色的瓶盖一时间风靡全球，每年产量高达 2.5 亿瓶，现已被收藏至纽约现代艺术博物馆。Back then, the simple and neat design made this bottle not only popular in Japan’s dining tables but also a symbolic container for Japanese seasoning. It was even considered as exactly the same to Kikkoman Soy Sauce and Japanese Cuisine. The bold logo and its red cap were popular all around the world with an annual output of 250 million bottles. The bottle is now held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
当然，除了这个令设计师声名鹊起的酱油瓶，荣久庵宪司一手创办的 GK 设计集团还参与设计了广岛快速列车、成田特快、山手线列车、秋田子弹列车、东京市徽、雅马哈摩托车系列等各种日本工业设计领域的代表之作。Sure, besides the iconic soy sauce bottle, the GK Design Group Kenji Ekuan founded has also engaged in a wide diversity of masterpieces of industrial design in Japan, including Hiroshima Express train, Narita Express train, Yamanote Line train, Akita bullet train, city emblem of Tokyo and Yamaha motorbike series, to name just a few.
在战后的日本，荣久庵宪司积极倡导做让任何人都能接触到的优美工业设计，让美好的物品和美好本身都变得民主起来，这也成为了后来日本设计文化的一个重要部分。在1960 年，荣久庵还与日本建筑大师黑川纪章等人结成“新陈代谢派”，倡导用新技术解决问题，强调城市和建筑并不是静止固定的，而是动态的。后来的伊东丰雄、妹岛和世等人，就漂亮的继承了这一观点，并为全球设计文明的发展起到积极作用。Kenji Ekuan had been an active advocate of elegant industrial design available to each and every one, thus making beauty itself democratic, which later became a vital theory of design art in Japan. In 1960, Kenji Ekuan partnered with Kisho Kurokawa, the master architect, set up the School of Metabolism, calling for solutions with new technologies and stressing that cities and architectures were dynamic instead of standstill. His successors, Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, etc. have smartly carried forward his ideas and been making active contribution to global design art.
“设计如何能改善生活，如何让人类社会和平与协调，如何可以解决社会问题？”这是荣久庵宪司穷尽一生在思考的问题，也是一个叫做“为世界设计”的组织的理念。荣久庵宪司正是这个组织的主席、背后的大神。“How would designs facilitate personal wellbeing? How would it bring peace and coordination to human society and solve social problems?” These are the questions Kenji Ekuan had been pondering throughout his lifetime and the motto of Design for the World, an organization chaired by Kenji Ekuan, mentor behind the scenes.
