One might say that, traditionally, the Japanese are a patterned people. They live in a patterned country, a land where the exemplar still exists, and there is a model for everything. It is, more than most, a place where the shape of something may be as important as its content, and where the profile of the country depends on the contour of living.
This profile still exists. To think of Japan, even now, is to think of form, of design. Patterns are made for eyes, names are remembered only if read. It is home of the calling card, country of the forests of advertising. One might call this appreciation natural, except that in Japan the natural is never enough.
Woodlands become parks, trees are dwarfed, cut flowers are arranged and called living. Yet the Japanese designer does not go against nature. Rather, advantage is taken of it. Nature is only potential, still necessary is the shaping, the smoothing, the embellishing.