# Researchers and Designers to Know Before Discussing the Philosophy of Design: Comparing Who Carries the Debate Worldwide and in Japan

- Author: Shuichiro Ogawa (Design Researcher / Design Consultant), https://jamjet-iqbal.com/
- Published: 2026-10-24; updated: 2026-10-24
- Canonical (HTML): https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/philosophy-of-design-key-figures/
- Japanese version: https://jamjet-iqbal.com/notes/philosophy-of-design-key-figures/ (Markdown: https://jamjet-iqbal.com/notes/philosophy-of-design-key-figures.md)
- Language: en
- Keywords: philosophy-of-design, design-theory, design-research, philosophy-of-technology, japan, design-science, general-design-theory, kansei-engineering, mingei, designers-writing, key-figures, literature

> This note lists the researchers and designers a reader should know before joining a discussion of the philosophy of design, divided into the world and Japan, and compares who carries the debate in each. Worldwide, the figures fall into five positions: the design methods movement and its critics (Alexander, Jones, Archer, Rittel, Simon), the self-understanding of design research (Schön, Cross, Buchanan, Krippendorff), philosophy of technology and STS (Kroes, Houkes and Vermaas, Latour, Verbeek), entries from philosophy and aesthetics (Flusser, Parsons, Vial, Love, Galle), and critique and justice (Papanek, Maldonado, Fry, Dunne and Raby, Manzini, Escobar), with venues such as the Design Studies special issue, Design Philosophy Papers, and the reader edited by Willis. In Japan, the carriers fall into six lineages that do not cite one another: Yoshikawa's general design theory, Mukai's basic design studies, Nagamachi's kansei engineering, Yanagi's mingei, the writings of Hara, Fukasawa, and Kurokawa, and entries by Sasaki, Kashiwagi, and Monnai. The comparison shows that in Japan, entries from philosophers are thin, engineers and designers take the philosophical role, and the reception of Simon, Schön, Norman, Krippendorff, and Alexander was carried by engineering, education, cognitive science, and designers' associations. 127 references (78 newly added and 49 inherited).

A reader who opens the literature on the philosophy of design meets names before arguments.
Simon is said to have been opposed by Schön, Latour and Verbeek are cited, and Japanese essays bring in Hiroyuki Yoshikawa and Shutaro Mukai in separate contexts.
Without knowing who said what from which position, the reader cannot follow the thread of the debate.
This note lists the researchers and designers worth knowing, divided into the world and Japan, and compares who carries the debate in each region.

Three criteria governed the selection.
First, a principal work by the person can be confirmed.
Second, a secondary source (a survey, a review, or a reception history) that positions the person as a philosopher of design or as a designer who wrote about design thought can be confirmed from its abstract or full text.
Third, that positioning does not conflict with the earlier surveys on this site ([What Is the Philosophy of Design? (Academic Research)](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/philosophy-of-design-literature/), [The Genealogy of Design Research in Japan: Three Origins, and the University That Passed the Presidency Around](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/japan-design-research-genealogy-literature/)).
People for whom only a bibliographic record of a secondary source could be confirmed appear by name only in the closing section on what could not be confirmed.
The note does not rank or evaluate the people it lists.

## Worldwide, the carriers fall into five positions

Philosophers of design worldwide fall into five positions according to their home discipline and the direction from which they look at design.
The five overlap, and one person may belong to two.

| Position | Representative figures | What they brought in |
|---|---|---|
| The design methods movement and its critics | Alexander, Jones, Archer, Rittel, Simon | The attempt to treat design with scientific methods, and the awareness of its limits |
| The self-understanding of design research | Schön, Cross, Buchanan, Krippendorff, Dorst, Redström, Nelson and Stolterman | The claim that design practice has its own knowledge, and its theorization |
| Philosophy of technology and STS | Kroes and Meijers, Houkes and Vermaas, Winner, Akrich, Latour, Ihde, Verbeek | What an artifact is, and how artifacts shape action |
| Entries from philosophy and aesthetics | Flusser, Parsons, Vial, Galle, Love | Attempts to define design as a subject for philosophy |
| Critique, justice, and the outside of human-centeredness | Papanek, Maldonado and Bonsiepe, Fry, Willis, Dunne and Raby, Manzini, Escobar, Costanza-Chock, Forlano, Giaccardi and Redström | The question of for whom, and which world, design makes |

For the **design methods movement**, Bayazit's forty-year review takes the 1962 Conference on Design Methods in London (Jones and Thornley) as the turning point and calls Alexander's doctoral thesis, *Notes on the Synthesis of Form*, the first doctoral thesis in design methods (Bayazit 2004).
The same review opens with Archer's definition of design research as systematic inquiry whose goal is knowledge of the configuration, composition, structure, purpose, value, and meaning in man-made things and systems, and follows Simon in calling the whole of design research "the sciences of the artificial."
Cross 2001 quotes Alexander, a pioneer of the movement, as later saying that he had dissociated himself from the field of design methods, and places Simon at the peak of the scientization of the 1960s (Cross 2001).
Rittel and Webber 1973 named the limit of that scientization with the concept of wicked problems, which have no definitive formulation.

The **self-understanding of design research** was opened by Schön's *The Reflective Practitioner* (1983).
Bayazit writes that Schön opened a new paradigm in design research, and Cross 2001 follows Schön in holding that design practice has its own intellectual culture (Bayazit 2004, Cross 2001).
Buchanan 1992 argued that design has no subject matter of its own and is a new liberal art of technological culture, and in 2001 placed design research within changes in how people think and learn (Buchanan 2001, abstract).
Krippendorff discussed design as making sense of things in 1989 (Krippendorff 1989, abstract) and collected the argument in *The Semantic Turn* (2006).
Vihma 2012 criticized this language-based approach for underrating visual qualities (abstract).
Dorst 2011 on the core of design thinking, Redström 2017 on making design theory, and Nelson and Stolterman's *The Design Way* (which Denton 2003 reviewed as an attempt to describe design as a culture of inquiry and action, abstract) belong to the theorization of this self-understanding.

**Philosophy of technology and STS** sit on a different shelf when seen from design.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries that map the philosophy of technology cite Simon, Winner, Latour, Verbeek, Houkes and Vermaas, and Kroes, and do not cite Schön, Cross, Buchanan, or Rittel (Franssen et al. 2026, Preston 2022).
The tools on this side are the dual nature of technical artifacts (Kroes and Meijers 2002), the use-plan theory of functions (Houkes and Vermaas 2010), scripts (Akrich 1992), delegation (Latour 1992), the four human-technology relations (Ihde 1990), and mediation (Verbeek 2006).
Verbeek's 2005 book *What Things Do* was reviewed as a work that discusses how technologies mediate human action and proposes a way to bring ethics into the design of artifacts (Waelbers 2007, abstract).
In a 2008 keynote to the Design History Society, Latour started from the observation that the word design had grown in both comprehension and extension and stated that the modernist division between grasping an object through its intrinsic materiality and grasping it through its aesthetic or symbolic aspects was fading (Latour 2008).
Yaneva 2022 wrote a book that introduces Latour's key concepts to architects (abstract).

**Entries from philosophy and aesthetics** announced themselves around 2000 in *Design Studies*.
Love 2000 distinguished Philosophy of Design, a field parallel to philosophy of science and philosophy of technology, from design philosophy, which had been tied to the study of design methods.
Galle 2002 wrote in the editorial to the special issue that the field was young and that most of its writers were "half amateurs" trained in only one of philosophy and design.
Vermaas and Vial 2018 hold that design is a new subject for philosophy but that there is not yet a shared set of questions or an established discipline (abstract).

Three examples show the entries from the side of philosophy.
Flusser's collection *The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design* appeared in English in 1999, and Manzanares et al. 2018 compare Flusser and Latour as two approaches that show why design deserves philosophical attention (abstract).
Parsons's *The Philosophy of Design* (2015) was reviewed by Gal 2017 as a contribution to analytic aesthetics, and Galle 2017 gave its definition a critical analysis (abstracts).
Vial's *Being and the Screen* appeared in English in 2019 (abstract).
Vial also asked in 2015 whether design can be an object of science and traced the attempts at scientization since the 1960s in the international and the French-speaking literature (Vial 2015, abstract).

On the side of **critique, justice, and the outside of human-centeredness**, the writings of practitioners and of theorists mix.
Papanek's *Design for the Real World* (1971) is the subject of Clarke's 2021 biography, which traces the history of the social design movement through Papanek's life and disputes the view that it grew out of the counterculture of the 1960s (abstract).
Maldonado of the Ulm School of Design took a critical position toward environmental design in *Design, Nature, and Revolution* (1972; Medina Warmburg 2017, abstract), and Bonsiepe redefined industrial design around the concept of the interface (Meyer 2019, abstract).

Fry coined the term defuturing (Kalantidou 2016, abstract) and, in *Design Futuring* (2009), argued for a new practice that answers ethical, political, social, and ecological problems (abstract).
Willis 2006 on ontological designing, Escobar 2018 on the pluriverse, Costanza-Chock 2020 on design justice, and the questions beyond human-centeredness in Forlano 2017 and Giaccardi and Redström 2020 were treated in [What Is the Philosophy of Design? (Academic Research)](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/philosophy-of-design-literature/).
Dunne and Raby's *Speculative Everything* (2013) is the subject of Tonkinwise's 2014 review essay, which examines the claim of design that speculates on possible futures beyond the frame of the market and criticizes the framework of "shopping" that underlies it (abstract).
Manzini 2015 distinguished diffuse design by non-experts from expert design (abstract).
Tonkinwise himself argued in 2004 that virtues have no place in a material culture made for comfortable and individualistic lives (abstract).

A single edited volume surveys these five positions: *The Design Philosophy Reader*, edited by Willis (2018).
Its table of contents has eight parts and collects texts by about forty authors, including Latour, Fry, Tonkinwise, Winograd and Flores, Dilnot, Stiegler, Heidegger, Borgmann, and Simondon (publisher's description and table of contents; the text was not confirmed).
Dionne 2019 reviewed the editor's introduction, which positions design as a ubiquitous human activity worth examining (opening of the abstract).

## In Japan, the carriers fall into six lineages

In Japan, the philosophical discussion of design has been carried by six lineages: engineering design theory, design studies at art universities, kansei engineering, the aesthetics of mingei and craft, the writings of practitioners, and entries from philosophy and cognitive science.
Entries from philosophers are the thinnest of the six.
That the lineages do not cite one another was recorded in the section on theoretical lineages in [The Genealogy of Design Research in Japan: Three Origins, and the University That Passed the Presidency Around](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/japan-design-research-genealogy-literature/).

| Lineage | Representative figures | What they brought in |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering design theory | Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, Tetsuo Tomiyama, Yoshiyuki Matsuoka | General design theory, which formalizes design with axioms and theorems; design science |
| Design studies at art universities | Shutaro Mukai, Kimimasa Abe, Masaru Katsumie | Semiotics and morphology from Ulm; the problem of "the loss of design philosophy" |
| Kansei engineering | Mitsuo Nagamachi | Engineering that turns kansei (sensibility) into a technology of product development |
| The aesthetics of mingei and craft | Sōetsu Yanagi, Sori Yanagi | The relation between use and beauty; the unknown craftsman |
| The writings of practitioners | Kenya Hara, Naoto Fukasawa, Masayuki Kurokawa | A vocabulary of emptiness, the unconscious, and Japanese aesthetic sensibility |
| Entries from philosophy and cognitive science | Masato Sasaki, Kiyokazu Washida, Hiroshi Kashiwagi, Teruyuki Monnai | Affordance, the philosophy of clothing, design criticism, environment and meaning |

The center of **engineering design theory** is Yoshikawa's general design theory.
The 1979 "Introduction to General Design Theory" derives a formulation of design and theorems on its process from three axioms about human concepts (Yoshikawa 1979, abstract), and the 1987 exposition places axiomatic general design theory, built around a topological model of human concepts, as a problem of human intellectual processes rather than of CAD alone (Yoshikawa 1987).
Kakuda and Kikuchi 2001 related an abstract design theory based on channel theory to general design theory in a journal of the philosophy of science (abstract), and Reich 1995 criticized the assumptions of general design theory in an international journal.
Yoshikawa argued in 2007 that a view of artifacts guides how they are used and made and so shapes the future artificial environment (Yoshikawa 2007, abstract), and published *General Design Studies* in 2020.
Koga 2019 calls Yoshikawa's work a pioneering achievement in "the science of design" and sorts out the confusion in which the term design science refers to three different things: Yoshikawa's design science, Simon, and the design science research of Hevner and others in information systems (Koga 2019).
*Design Science*, edited by Matsuoka (2008), is a recent book in this lineage (bibliographic record only).

The center of **design studies at art universities** is Shutaro Mukai.
Drawing on his study at the Ulm School of Design, Mukai opened the Department of Science of Design at Musashino Art University in 1967 (Mukai 1985).
His 1986 editorial in the journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design carries the English title "On the New Paradigm of Design Philosophy."
It stated that the greatest problem of contemporary design was the loss of design norms, which was the loss of design philosophy, and it called for a reappraisal of the period in which the collapse of the philosophy of modern design had been discussed (Mukai 1986).
His 2017 keynote to the society, "The Philosophy of Design: Toward the Awakening of Life-Knowledge," defined design as the formation of the lifeworld, took 1960 as the watershed of modern design, and set the awakening of life-knowledge as the task (Mukai 2017).
The keynote was followed by a panel, "The Philosophy of Design: Rethinking Richness," with speakers from the Society of Tool Studies, the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering's neighbor the Japan Society for Design Science, the Japan Industrial Designers' Association, and the Japan Society of Design (Omoya et al. 2017, bibliographic record only).

Yaegashi et al. 2023 quote Kimimasa Abe asking in *Design Thinking* (1978) whether a "science" of design can exist at all or whether design is at most "applied art."
They also quote Mukai citing in 2008 "an awareness of the absence of design theory" as the foundation of the department.
From these quotations they hold that the problem of "the absence of a science of design" has been raised repeatedly since the 1960s (Yaegashi et al. 2023; the originals by Abe and Mukai 2008 are cited at second hand).
Katsumie's *Introduction to Contemporary Design* (1965) is a book on the side of design criticism, and Katsumie headed the Japanese Society for the Science of Design from the 1960s to the 1980s (bibliographic record only; the list of presidents is in [The Genealogy of Design Research in Japan: Three Origins, and the University That Passed the Presidency Around](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/japan-design-research-genealogy-literature/)).

**Kansei engineering** is one of the few methodologies from Japan that circulated in international journals.
Its starting points are Nagamachi's 1989 book *Kansei Engineering* (bibliographic record only) and his 1995 English paper (Nagamachi 1995), and Lévy 2013 argued in the *International Journal of Design* that kansei engineering should not be reduced to the whole of kansei research and proposed a "kansei design" connected to Kitaro Nishida of the Kyoto School and to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception (Lévy 2013).
Teasley et al. 2017 state that within academic design research in Japan the concept of kansei design is often linked to historical Japanese culture and values (abstract).

**The aesthetics of mingei and craft** begins with Sōetsu Yanagi.
On the "beauty based on utility" of *The Way of Crafts* (1928), Irie 2015 analyzed the structure of Yanagi's concept of utility around the criticism by Kado Sugita.
Irie 2008 took up the contradiction between taking "innocent beauty" as the essence of mingei and asking artist-craftsmen to guide its production, and read it not as an error of method but as an unavoidable paradox in which non-modern beauty is realized under a modern gaze (Irie 2015, Irie 2008, abstract).
In English, Kikuchi 1997 argued that the "Oriental" character of mingei theory was a hybrid product that served the East-West dichotomy of Japanese nationalism (abstract), and Marquet 2012 positioned Yanagi as a thinker rather than an academic art historian and noted that recent studies reread the movement from the perspectives of nationalism and colonialism (Marquet 2012).
Fujita 2003 argued that Yanagi sympathized with William Morris mainly in his way of life and judged Morris's view of crafts too close to fine art (abstract).
The writings of his son Sori Yanagi are collected in *Sori Yanagi: Essays* (2003), and the society's journal introduced him in the special feature on the pioneers of design (Takanashi 1993, bibliographic record only).

**The writings of practitioners** circulate in Japan as books before any secondary literature positions them.
Kenya Hara's *Designing Design* (2003; English translation 2007) and Naoto Fukasawa's *The Outline of Design* (2005) were confirmed only as bibliographic records, but Cieśliczka 2022 introduces the two through emptiness, "without thought," and the idea of MUJI, and discusses their influence on the design of everyday life (abstract; peer review not confirmed).
On Masayuki Kurokawa's *Eight Japanese Aesthetic Senses* (2006), a review in the journal of the Japan Society of Design took up two points: Kurokawa's observation that the language ordinary Japanese use had been a slave to the Western worldview, and his analysis of Japanese aesthetic sensibility through words such as *ki*.
The reviewer noted that the method of analysis bears the marks of his experience as a product designer (Sakakibara 2007).

**Entries from philosophy and cognitive science** are thin compared with the world.
Masato Sasaki's *Affordance* (1994) is a book from the side of cognitive science, and the design society's journal published an interview with him in 2006 (Sasaki et al. 2006, bibliographic record only).
Kiyokazu Washida's *The Labyrinth of Fashion* (1989) is a philosopher's essay on clothing, but no secondary source that positions Washida in the context of design was found this time (bibliographic record only).
Hiroshi Kashiwagi writes design criticism and history, and the review of *The Politics of Tools* (1985) presents Kashiwagi as a critic with books such as *The Thought of Modern Japanese Industrial Design* and *The Design Thought of Everyday Goods* and describes the book as a collection of his contributions since 1980 (Watanabe 1985).
Monnai 2005 argued that the design that led the industrial society of the twentieth century brought environmental destruction and explored the possibility of environment-friendly design from the perspectives of meaning and life (abstract).
As a statement from the side of aesthetics, Masao Yamamoto said in a 1987 keynote to the design society that he expected the development from design theory to a science of design "from the standpoint of aesthetics and the science of art" (Yamamoto 1987).

## Who has carried the debate in the two regions

When the two tables are placed side by side, the difference appears in who has carried the debate.

First, the thickness of **entries from philosophers** differs.
Worldwide, Love 2000 and Galle 2002 announced Philosophy of Design as a field parallel to philosophy of science and philosophy of technology, and venues followed: the *Design Studies* special issue, the journal *Design Philosophy Papers*, *She Ji*, the volume edited by Vermaas and Vial, and the reader edited by Willis.
In Japan, the society lecture and panel that carried "the philosophy of design" in their titles were Mukai's 2017 keynote and the panel that followed (Mukai 2017, Omoya et al. 2017), and the carriers were a design scholar from an art university and speakers from the design societies.
The confirmed record of a philosopher taking the podium is Yamamoto's 1987 keynote from the standpoint of aesthetics, and no secondary source placing Washida in the context of design was found.

Second, the place of **engineering design theory** differs.
In Japan, Yoshikawa's general design theory formalized design with axioms and theorems and was developed further in a journal of the philosophy of science (Kakuda and Kikuchi 2001).
The society's president in 2004 positioned the science of design as a "transdisciplinary science" that crosses fields and stated that in Japan it had developed as an extension of crafts and fine art (Harada 2004).
On the world side, the attempts to make design a science were Simon's science of design and the design methods movement, which Cross 2001 placed as objects of reflection.
As Koga 2019 points out, the same term design science refers to different things in Yoshikawa's design science, in Simon, and in information systems research (Koga 2019).

Third, the weight of **the writings of practitioners** differs.
Worldwide, the books of Papanek, Maldonado, Dunne and Raby, and Manzini are accompanied by biographies, review essays, and intellectual histories.
In Japan, the books of Hara, Fukasawa, and Kurokawa are widely read, but the secondary sources that position them are limited to a review in the journal of the Japan Society of Design (Sakakibara 2007) and an introductory essay from abroad (Cieśliczka 2022).
No study in a peer-reviewed journal that discusses their thought was found in this search.
In Japan, the thought of practitioners circulates as books before the academic side takes it up.

Fourth, the paths of **reception of foreign work** differ.
Simon's *The Sciences of the Artificial* was translated in 1969 by Diamond as *Shisutemu no kagaku* (The Science of Systems).
When the new translation of the second edition (1981) appeared in 1987, an editorial in the design society's journal noted that the original had long gone untranslated and introduced the chapter on the science of design (Yoshida 1990, Simon 1999).
The Japanese translation of Schön's *The Reflective Practitioner* appeared in 2007 from the side of education, and a journal of education reviewed it (Fujiwara 2008, bibliographic record only).
The reception of Norman was carried by cognitive science (Nojima and Shingaki 2001, abstract).

For Krippendorff and product semantics, the journal of the Japan Industrial Designers' Association ran a special feature in 1987 to which Mukai contributed, and *The Semantic Turn* was translated in 2009 (Kawama 2002, Krippendorff 2009).
Kawama 2002 records that Butter, Lannoch, and Krampen, who developed product semantics, were educated at Ulm, and that product semantics was a theory that took up the Ulm tradition critically rather than as its extension (Kawama 2002).
An abridged translation of Jones appeared in 1969 and the full translation of Alexander's *Notes on the Synthesis of Form* in 1978 (Jones 1969, Alexander 1978), and Alexander's later theory and the manuscript of his thesis are being reread in journals of architecture and of design (Nagasaka 2013, Furukawazono 2025, abstracts).
The reception was carried by engineering, education, cognitive science, and designers' associations, and no carrier from the side of philosophy could be confirmed in the sources used here.

These four differences overlap with what Yaegashi et al. 2023 called "the absence of a science of design" and what [Was the 'Absence of a Science of Design' Asserted Three Times? Rereading the Observations of 1978, 2008, and 2023 in Their Sources](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/design-discipline-absence-literature/) reread.
In Japan, the role of questioning design as a subject of philosophy has been taken by engineers and designers, and people trained in philosophy appear only rarely in the sources used here.
The condition that Galle 2002 described for the world, that most writers are trained in only one of philosophy and design, appears in Japan in a form skewed to one side.

## In what order to read

Six people from each region are listed with the work to read first.
The order starts from the works whose way of posing the question became the premise of later debate.

| Order | World | Japan |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Simon 1969, *The Sciences of the Artificial* (with the account in Cross 2001) | Yoshikawa 1979, "Introduction to General Design Theory" (with the sorting in Koga 2019) |
| 2 | Schön 1983, *The Reflective Practitioner* | Mukai 1986, "On Design Norms," and the 2017 keynote |
| 3 | Love 2000 and Galle 2002 (the announcement of Philosophy of Design) | Yaegashi et al. 2023 (the rereading of "the absence of a science of design") |
| 4 | Kroes and Meijers 2002 (the dual nature of technical artifacts) | Sōetsu Yanagi, *The Way of Crafts* (with Irie 2015 and Kikuchi 1997) |
| 5 | Verbeek 2006 (mediation) and Latour 2008 (steps toward a philosophy of design) | Lévy 2013 (from kansei engineering to kansei design) |
| 6 | Willis, ed., 2018, *The Design Philosophy Reader* (the map) | Kurokawa 2006, *Eight Japanese Aesthetic Senses* (with the review by Sakakibara 2007) |

## What could not be confirmed this time

- Kazuo Kawasaki, Kanji Ueda, Kohei Sugiura, Isamu Kenmochi, Shigeru Uchida, Yusaku Kamekura, Ikko Tanaka, Takashi Sugimoto, and Akiko Moriyama: the bibliographic records of their principal works were confirmed, but no secondary source positioning them was found, so they do not appear in the tables.
- Takeshi Sunaga's *The Wisdom of Design* (2019) and *Design Science* edited by Matsuoka (2008): bibliographic records only, and no secondary source was found.
- No secondary source placing Washida in the context of design, no independent essay connecting Kitaro Nishida with design (the reference to the Kyoto School in Lévy 2013 is the closest), and no work on the philosophy of design by Kotaro Naganuma were found.
- The originals by Abe 1978 and Mukai 2008 could not be obtained; the note relies on the quotations in Yaegashi et al. 2023.
- On the world side, only bibliographic records of secondary sources could be confirmed for Jonas, Vermaas, Tonkinwise himself, Buchanan, and Manzini.
- No essay that directly discusses who has carried the philosophical discussion of design in Japan was found. The comparison here places statements by the carriers (editorials, lectures) beside records of reception, and it is not exhaustive.

## Related notes

- [What Is the Philosophy of Design? (Academic Research)](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/philosophy-of-design-literature/): what the philosophy of design is (definitions, origins, currents)
- [The Genealogy of Design Research in Japan: Three Origins, and the University That Passed the Presidency Around](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/japan-design-research-genealogy-literature/): the genealogy of design research in Japan (institutions, societies, theoretical lineages)
- [Was the 'Absence of a Science of Design' Asserted Three Times? Rereading the Observations of 1978, 2008, and 2023 in Their Sources](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/design-discipline-absence-literature/): rereading the problem of "the absence of a science of design"
- [Does Design Need Its Own Epistemology, and Can Philosophy Be Done by Design? (Reading Two 2026 Texts)](https://jamjet-iqbal.com/en/notes/designerly-epistemology-debate-literature/): does design need an epistemology of its own

## Unverified items

No unverified statement remains among the main claims.
Sources confirmed only from an abstract or a publisher's description are marked "abstract" or "bibliographic record only" in the citation, and the note states only what lies within that range.
For books whose original text could not be obtained (Simon 1969, Alexander 1964 and 1977, Papanek 1971, Maldonado 1972, Bonsiepe 1999, Flusser 1999, Parsons 2015, Dunne and Raby 2013, the reader edited by Willis 2018, Yoshikawa 2020, Mukai 2009, Hara 2003, Fukasawa 2005, Sōetsu Yanagi 1928, Sori Yanagi 2003, Kurokawa 2006, Sasaki 1994, Kashiwagi 1985 and 1992, Washida 1989, Nagamachi 1989, Katsumie 1965, Abe 1978, Mukai 2008), the note states only how other sources whose text was confirmed, or reviews, position them.
The scanned issues of Japanese society journals (Mukai 1986, Mukai 2017, Yoshida 1990, Kawama 2002, Harada 2004, Yamamoto 1987) and the reviews in the journal of the Japan Society of Design (Sakakibara 2007, Watanabe 1985) were checked by searching the text layer of the PDFs, which contains OCR errors.

## References

### World: design research

- Simon, Herbert A. 1969. *The Sciences of the Artificial*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (the DOI is for the 2019 reissue of the third edition). https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12107.001.0001
- Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. 1973. "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning." *Policy Sciences* 4 (2): 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730
- Schön, Donald A. 1983. *The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action*. New York: Basic Books (the DOI is for the 2017 Routledge reissue). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315237473
- Cross, Nigel. 2001. "Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline versus Design Science." *Design Issues* 17 (3): 49–55. https://doi.org/10.1162/074793601750357196
- Buchanan, Richard. 1992. "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking." *Design Issues* 8 (2): 5–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511637
- Bayazit, Nigan. 2004. "Investigating Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research." *Design Issues* 20 (1): 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1162/074793604772933739
- Krippendorff, Klaus. 2006. *The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design*. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780203299951
- Dorst, Kees. 2011. "The Core of 'Design Thinking' and Its Application." *Design Studies* 32 (6): 521–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006
- Kimbell, Lucy. 2011. "Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I." *Design and Culture* 3 (3): 285–306. https://doi.org/10.2752/175470811X13071166525216
- Redström, Johan. 2017. *Making Design Theory*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11160.001.0001

### World: philosophy of design and philosophy of technology

- Love, Terence. 2000. "Philosophy of Design: A Meta-Theoretical Structure for Design Theory." *Design Studies* 21 (3): 293–313. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X%2899%2900012-5
- Galle, Per. 2002. "Philosophy of Design: An Editorial Introduction." *Design Studies* 23 (3): 211–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X%2801%2900034-5
- Kroes, Peter, and Anthonie Meijers. 2002. "The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts: Presentation of a New Research Programme." *Techné* 6 (2). https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v6n2/kroes.html
- Houkes, Wybo, and Pieter E. Vermaas. 2010. *Technical Functions: On the Use and Design of Artefacts*. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3900-2
- Galle, Per. 2017. "Self-Knowledge by Proxy: Parsons on Philosophy of Design and the Modernist Vision." *She Ji* 2 (4): 322–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.05.001
- Vermaas, Pieter E., and Stéphane Vial. 2018. "Towards a Philosophy of Design." In *Advancements in the Philosophy of Design*, 1–12. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73302-9_1
- Franssen, Maarten, Ibo van de Poel, Michael Klenk, and Filippo Santoni de Sio. 2026. "Philosophy of Technology." *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* (Fall 2026). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/technology/
- Preston, Beth. 2022. "Artifact." *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* (Winter 2022). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/artifact/
- Secomandi, Fernando, and Peter-Paul Verbeek, eds. 2026. *Design Philosophy after the Technology Turn*. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350494480

### World: artifacts shape action

- Winner, Langdon. 1980. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" *Daedalus* 109 (1): 121–136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652
- Akrich, Madeleine. 1992. "The De-Scription of Technical Objects." In *Shaping Technology/Building Society*, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, 205–224. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/474299249
- Latour, Bruno. 1992. "Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts." In *Shaping Technology/Building Society*, 225–258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/474299249
- Ihde, Don. 1990. *Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth*. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2979/3108.0
- Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2006. "Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation." *Science, Technology, & Human Values* 31 (3): 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243905285847
- Winograd, Terry, and Fernando Flores. 1986. *Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design*. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA00073700
- Suchman, Lucy. 2007. *Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions*. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808418

### World: ontological design, critique, and justice

- Willis, Anne-Marie. 2006. "Ontological Designing." *Design Philosophy Papers* 4 (2): 69–92. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871306X13966268131514
- Rego, Marina. 2023. "What Does Ontological Design Do? And Does It Do Enough?" In *Proceedings of EAD 2023*: 1011–1020. https://doi.org/10.5151/ead2023-5gla-12full_ontologicaldesign_rego
- Escobar, Arturo. 2018. *Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds*. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371816
- Bardzell, Jeffrey, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2013. "What Is 'Critical' about Critical Design?" In *Proceedings of CHI 2013*: 3297–3306. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466451
- Irwin, Terry. 2015. "Transition Design: A Proposal for a New Area of Design Practice, Study, and Research." *Design and Culture* 7 (2): 229–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2015.1051829
- Forlano, Laura. 2017. "Posthumanism and Design." *She Ji* 3 (1): 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.08.001
- Costanza-Chock, Sasha. 2020. *Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001
- Giaccardi, Elisa, and Johan Redström. 2020. "Technology and More-Than-Human Design." *Design Issues* 36 (4): 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00612
- Wakkary, Ron. 2021. *Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/13649.001.0001

### Japan: design theory, basic design studies, and kansei engineering

- Yoshikawa, Hiroyuki. 1987. "General Design Theory" (一般設計学). *Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence* 2 (3): 273–279 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11517/jjsai.2.3_273
- Tomiyama, Tetsuo, and Hiroyuki Yoshikawa. 1986. *Extended General Design Theory*. CWI Report CS-R8604. Amsterdam: Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica. https://ir.cwi.nl/pub/6306
- Yoshikawa, Hiroyuki. 2020. *General Design Studies* (一般デザイン学). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (in Japanese). https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b496842.html
- Mukai, Shutaro. 1985. "The Thought of Environmental Formation and Future Issues: On the Ulm School of Design" (環境形成の思想と今後の課題：ウルム造形大学をめぐって). *Journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 1985 (53): 9–12 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.1985.9_3
- Krippendorff, Klaus (translated by Akiyo Kobayashi et al.). 2009. *The Semantic Turn* (意味論的転回：デザインの新しい基礎理論). Tokyo: SIB Access (in Japanese). https://www.hanmoto.com/bd/isbn/9784434130335
- Nagamachi, Mitsuo. 1995. "Kansei Engineering: A New Ergonomic Consumer-Oriented Technology for Product Development." *International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics* 15 (1): 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-8141%2894%2900052-5
- Lévy, Pierre. 2013. "Beyond Kansei Engineering: The Emancipation of Kansei Design." *International Journal of Design* 7 (2): 83–94. http://www.ijdesign.org/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1097/581
- Koga, Hiroshi. 2019. "The Genealogy and Issues of Design Science Research" (デザインサイエンス研究の系譜と課題). *Journal of the Japan Society for Information and Management* 38 (4): 36–56 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.20627/jsim.38.4_36
- Yaegashi, Kazaru, Mika Isobe, and Haruhi Miyoshi. 2023. "Current Issues in Design Research" (デザイン研究における今日的課題の検討). *Design Science Research* 2: 51–68 (in Japanese). https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/rcds/file/2023/6_rcds_2_yaegashi_isobe_miyoshi.pdf

### Japan: mingei, reception, and history

- Irie, Shigeki. 2015. "What Is 'Utility'? On the Structure of 'Beauty Based on Utility' in Yanagi Muneyoshi's Mingei Aesthetics" (〈用〉とは何か：柳宗悦の民藝美学における〈用即美〉の構造をめぐって). *Design Theory* 66: 17–30 (in Japanese). https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/repo/ouka/all/56359/jjsd66_017.pdf
- Jones, J. Christopher (abridged translation edited by the Crafts Foundation and the Osaka Design Promotion Council). 1969. *Design Methods: Abstracts of the Papers of J. Christopher Jones* (デザインの方法論) (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB03643675
- Alexander, Christopher (translated by Takeshi Inaba). 1978. *Notes on the Synthesis of Form* (形の合成に関するノート). Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing (in Japanese). https://kajima-publishing.co.jp/books/sd-books/jtn9nqjbb4/
- Teasley, Sarah, Ignacio Adriasola, and Jilly Traganou. 2017. "Design and Society in Modern Japan: An Introduction." *Review of Japanese Culture and Society* 28: 1–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/roj.2016.0021

### World: the design methods movement and the writings of practitioners

- Alexander, Christopher. 1964. *Notes on the Synthesis of Form*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3923609W
- Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. 1977. *A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction*. New York: Oxford University Press. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3923600W
- Dawes, Michael J., and Michael J. Ostwald. 2017. "Christopher Alexander's *A Pattern Language*: Analysing, Mapping and Classifying the Critical Response." *City, Territory and Architecture* 4 (1): 17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-017-0073-1
- Steenson, Molly Wright. 2016. "The Idea of Architecture, The User As Inhabitant: Design through a Christopher Alexander Lens." In *Proceedings of DRS 2016*. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.127
- Jones, J. Christopher. 1992. *Design Methods*. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley (first edition 1970). https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Design+Methods%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9780471284963
- Archer, L. Bruce. 1979. "Design as a Discipline." *Design Studies* 1 (1): 17–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694X%2879%2990023-1
- Maldonado, Tomás. 1972. *Design, Nature, and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology*. New York: Harper & Row. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL961510W
- Medina Warmburg, Joaquín. 2017. "El mundo como artefacto. Tomás Maldonado en el foco del diseño medioambiental." *Ra. Revista de Arquitectura* 19: 25–38. https://doi.org/10.15581/014.19.25-38
- Bonsiepe, Gui. 1999. *Interface: An Approach to Design*. Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Akademie. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6972338W
- Meyer, Roland. 2019. "From Artefacts to Interfaces: Gui Bonsiepe and the Redefinition of Industrial Design." *Interface Critique* 2: 235–242. https://doi.org/10.11588/ic.2019.2.66996
- Papanek, Victor. 1971. *Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change*. New York: Pantheon Books. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8366020W
- Clarke, Alison J. 2021. *Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9370.001.0001
- Norman, Donald A. 2013. *The Design of Everyday Things*. Revised and expanded ed. New York: Basic Books (first edition 1988). https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/don-norman/the-design-of-everyday-things/9780465050659/
- Tenner, Edward. 2015. "*The Design of Everyday Things* by Donald Norman (Review)." *Technology and Culture* 56 (3): 785–787. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2015.0104
- Krippendorff, Klaus. 1989. "On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition That 'Design Is Making Sense (Of Things)'." *Design Issues* 5 (2): 9–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511512
- Vihma, Susann. 2012. "Design as Language: A Misconception?" *FormAkademisk* 5 (1). https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.372
- Buchanan, Richard. 2001. "Design Research and the New Learning." *Design Issues* 17 (4): 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1162/07479360152681056
- Nelson, Harold G., and Erik Stolterman. 2012. *The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World*. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9188.001.0001
- Denton, Howard. 2003. "*The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World* (Review)." *The Design Journal* 6 (3): 56–57. https://doi.org/10.2752/146069203789355246
- Manzini, Ezio. 2015. *Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9873.001.0001
- Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. *Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17435876W
- Tonkinwise, Cameron. 2014. "How We Intend to Future: Review of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, *Speculative Everything*." *Design Philosophy Papers* 12 (2): 169–187. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871314X14159818597676

### World: entries from the side of philosophy

- Flusser, Vilém. 1999. *The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design*. London: Reaktion Books. https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/the-shape-of-things
- Tonkinwise, Cameron. 2003. "Designing Philosophically: Review of Vilém Flusser, *The Shape of Things*." *Design Philosophy Papers* 1 (6): 363–370. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871303X13965301486715
- Manzanares, Rodrigo Dias, Rafael Pontes Mattos, and Rita de Castro Engler. 2018. "Vilém Flusser e Bruno Latour: duas abordagens à filosofia do design." In *Blucher Design Proceedings (CID 2017)*: 783–795. https://doi.org/10.5151/cid2017-67
- Latour, Bruno. 2008. "A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk)." Keynote at *Networks of Design*, Design History Society, Falmouth. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/112-DESIGN-CORNWALL-GB.pdf
- Yaneva, Albena. 2022. *Latour for Architects*. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429328510
- Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2005. *What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design*. University Park: Penn State University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271033228
- Waelbers, Katinka. 2007. "Peter-Paul Verbeek, *What Things Do* (Review)." *Science and Engineering Ethics* 13 (2): 275–277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-007-9010-0
- Parsons, Glenn. 2015. *The Philosophy of Design*. Cambridge: Polity (reviews give 2016). https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21585690W
- Gal, Michalle. 2017. "Parsons, Glenn. *The Philosophy of Design* (Review)." *Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism* 75 (2): 214–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12369
- Vial, Stéphane. 2015. "Qu'est-ce que la recherche en design ? Introduction aux sciences du design." *Sciences du Design* 1: 22–36. https://doi.org/10.3917/sdd.001.0022
- Vial, Stéphane. 2019. *Being and the Screen: How the Digital Changes Perception*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10305.001.0001
- Fry, Tony. 2009. *Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice*. Oxford: Berg. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350036079
- Kalantidou, Eleni. 2016. "Futuring and Defuturing." In *The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design*, 59–60. London: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472596161-BED-D028
- Tonkinwise, Cameron. 2004. "Ethics by Design, or the Ethos of Things." *Design Philosophy Papers* 2 (2): 129–144. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871304X13966215067994
- Willis, Anne-Marie, ed. 2018. *The Design Philosophy Reader*. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21077063W
- Dionne, Caroline. 2019. "*The Design Philosophy Reader* (Review)." *Journal of Design History* 33 (1): 91–92. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epz053

### Japan: principal works and positioning of the figures

- Yoshikawa, Hiroyuki. 1979. "Introduction to General Design Theory: An Axiomatic Method for General Design Theory" (一般設計学序説：一般設計学のための公理的方法). *Journal of the Japan Society of Precision Engineering* 45 (536): 906–912 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.2493/jjspe1933.45.906
- Yoshikawa, Hiroyuki. 2007. "A View of Artifacts" (人工物観). *Oukan (Journal of Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology)* 1 (2): 59–66 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11487/trafst.1.2_59
- Kakuda, Yoshinori, and Makoto Kikuchi. 2001. "Abstract Design Theory." *Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science* 10 (3): 109–125. https://doi.org/10.4288/jafpos1956.10.109
- Mukai, Shutaro. 1986. "On Design Norms" (デザインの規範について; English title "On the New Paradigm of Design Philosophy"). *Journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 1986 (56): 1 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.1986.1_3
- Mukai, Shutaro. 2009. *Science of Design: A Constellation of Thought* (デザイン学：思索のコンステレーション). Tokyo: Musashino Art University Press (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA91453646
- Mukai, Shutaro. 2017. "Keynote: The Philosophy of Design: Toward the Awakening of Life-Knowledge" (基調講演 デザインの哲学：生知の覚醒へ). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 24 (2): 3–8 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.24.2_3
- Omoya, Shinsuke, Takahito Saiki, Kazuo Tanaka, Haruhiko Fujita, Yoshiyuki Matsuoka, and Akiyo Kobayashi. 2017. "Panel Discussion: The Philosophy of Design: Rethinking Richness" (パネルディスカッション デザインの哲学：豊かさを再考する). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 24 (2): 38–41 (summary; the individual papers are on 18–37) (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.24.2_38
- Hara, Kenya. 2003. *Designing Design* (デザインのデザイン). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA64137701
- Fukasawa, Naoto. 2005. *The Outline of Design* (デザインの輪郭). Tokyo: TOTO Publishing (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA74648933
- Cieśliczka, Anna. 2022. "On Emptiness, Creating 'Without Thought' and MUJI Concept: Kenya Hara and Naoto Fukasawa Designing Everyday Life." In *Proceedings of DARCH 2022*. https://doi.org/10.46529/darch.202228
- Yanagi, Sōetsu. 1928. *The Way of Crafts* (工藝の道). Tokyo: Gloria Society (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA33964568
- Kikuchi, Yuko. 1997. "Hybridity and the Oriental Orientalism of Mingei Theory." *Journal of Design History* 10 (4): 343–354. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/10.4.343
- Irie, Shigeki. 2008. "The Structure of 'Contradiction' in Yanagi Muneyoshi's Theory of Mingei Production: Focusing on the 1920s" (柳宗悦の民藝生産論における〈矛盾〉の構造：一九二〇年代を中心にして). *Bigaku* 59 (2): 16–29 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.20631/bigaku.59.2_16
- Marquet, Christophe. 2012. "Yanagi Sōetsu and the Invention of 'Folk Crafts': A New Contextualisation." *Cipango: French Journal of Japanese Studies* 1. https://doi.org/10.4000/cjs.244
- Fujita, Haruhiko. 2003. "Arts and Crafts and the Transformation of Craft: On William Morris and Yanagi Muneyoshi" (アーツ・アンド・クラフツと工芸の変貌：ウィリアム・モリスと柳宗悦をめぐって). *Bigaku* 54 (1): 14–26 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.20631/bigaku.54.1_14
- Yanagi, Sori. 2003. *Sori Yanagi: Essays* (柳宗理エッセイ). Tokyo: Heibonsha (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA62657573
- Takanashi, Takao. 1993. "Sori Yanagi: Bringing the 'Origin' of Mingei to Design" (柳宗理：デザインに民芸の「源始」を). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 1 (1): 34–37 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.1.1_34
- Kurokawa, Masayuki. 2006. *Eight Japanese Aesthetic Senses* (八つの日本の美意識). Tokyo: Kodansha (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA78406619
- Sakakibara, Yoshiro. 2007. "Book Review: Reading Masayuki Kurokawa's *Eight Japanese Aesthetic Senses*" (書評 黒川雅之著『八つの日本の美意識』を読む). *Design Theory* 50: 192–193 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.18910/52822
- Sasaki, Masato. 1994. *Affordance: A New Theory of Cognition* (アフォーダンス：新しい認知の理論). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN10719104
- Sasaki, Masato, Makoto Okamoto, Miki Namatame, Tomohiro Uemura, and Ikuko Gyobu. 2006. "Affordance and Design for People with Disabilities: An Interview with Masato Sasaki" (アフォーダンスと障害者のためのデザイン：佐々木正人氏インタビュー). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 13 (3): 2–10 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.13.3_2
- Kashiwagi, Hiroshi. 1985. *The Politics of Tools (Media)* (道具（メディア）の政治学). Tokyo: Tojusha (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN00687613
- Kashiwagi, Hiroshi. 1992. *The Twentieth Century of Design* (デザインの 20 世紀). Tokyo: NHK Publishing (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN08328964
- Watanabe, Makoto. 1985. "Book Review: Hiroshi Kashiwagi, *The Politics of Tools*" (書評 柏木博著『道具の政治学』). *Design Theory* 24: 122–123 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.18910/52699
- Washida, Kiyokazu. 1989. *The Labyrinth of Fashion* (モードの迷宮). Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN03650212
- Sunaga, Takeshi. 2019. *The Wisdom of Design: From Information Design to Shaping Society* (デザインの知恵：情報デザインから社会のかたちづくりへ). Tokyo: Filmart-sha (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB28138548
- Nagamachi, Mitsuo. 1989. *Kansei Engineering: A Technology for Applying Kansei to Design* (感性工学：感性をデザインに活かすテクノロジー). Tokyo: Kaibundo (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN04095015
- Monnai, Teruyuki. 2005. "Symbiotic Design Theory for Human Environment" (環境親和型デザイン論). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 12 (4): 53–66 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.12.4_53
- Matsuoka, Yoshiyuki, ed. 2008. *Design Science: Six Perspectives for Creating the Future* (デザインサイエンス：未来創造の "六つ" の視点). Tokyo: Maruzen (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA88084086
- Katsumie, Masaru. 1965. *Introduction to Contemporary Design* (現代デザイン入門). Tokyo: Kajima Institute Publishing (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BN03279431

### Japan: statements by the carriers and the reception of foreign work

- Yamamoto, Masao. 1987. "Keynote: What I Expect from the Science of Design" (基調講演 デザイン学に期待するもの). *Journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 1987 (58): 6–9 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.1987.6_1
- Yoshida, Takeo. 1990. "A Conception of 'the Science of Design'" (「デザインの科学」の構想). *Journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 1990 (78): 1 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.1990.1_2
- Kawama, Tetsuo. 2002. "The History and Development of Product Semantics" (製品意味論の歴史と展開). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 10 (1): 30–38 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.10.1_30
- Harada, Akira. 2004. "Scientific Development of Designing Knowledge: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design" (デザイン学の学術的展開：日本デザイン学会創立 50 周年を迎えて). *Special Issue of Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 11 (3): 1–2 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssds.11.3_1
- Nojima, Hisao, and Noriko Shingaki. 2001. "The History of Cognitive Science Seen through Donald A. Norman: With Reference to the Reception and Influence of Norman in Japan" (Donald A. Norman に見る認知科学のこれまで：日本における Norman の受容と影響を手がかりにして). *Cognitive Studies* 8 (3): 275–286 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11225/jcss.8.275
- Nagasaka, Ichiro. 2013. "The Intellectual Background of Christopher Alexander's Later Theory: Whitehead's Cosmology and 'God'" (クリストファー・アレグザンダーの後期理論の思想的背景：ホワイトヘッドのコスモロジーと「神」). *Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ)* 78 (686): 925–933 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.3130/aija.78.925
- Furukawazono, Tomoki. 2025. "An Analysis of the Manuscript of Christopher Alexander's Doctoral Thesis (1960): The Birth of Pattern Language (5)" (クリストファー・アレグザンダー博士論文原稿（1960）の分析：パターン・ランゲージの誕生（5）). *Journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design* 71 (3): 31–40 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.71.3_31
- Fujiwara, Akira. 2008. "Book Review: *The Reflective Practitioner*" (書評 省察的実践とは何か：プロフェッショナルの行為と思考). *The Japanese Journal of Educational Research* 75 (3): 322–323 (in Japanese). https://doi.org/10.11555/kyoiku.75.3_322
- Simon, Herbert A. (translated by Motokichi Inaba and Hideki Yoshihara). 1999. *The Sciences of the Artificial* (システムの科学), 3rd ed. Tokyo: Personal Media (the new edition of 1987 translated the second edition; earlier translations: Diamond 1969 and 1977) (in Japanese). https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA4185035X