Lecture: Ms. Junko Sakai,
The Linguistic Capability of Attracting People
An essayist Ms. Junko Sakai has been highly appreciated for her linguistic capability. The appreciation has been built through her many writings started her high school age in series of columns for women’s magazines. To date, sixty-nine books were published and being awarded the award of the Kodansha Essay Award, and the Fujin Koron Literature Award.
For designers, the language is important as a tool conveying the design in attractive and correct manners. It is not an exaggeration that the words would value the design. However, designers do not know well of the way honing the linguistic capability. So we asked Ms. Sakai, whose profession is to think of language and to write every day, giving us a lecture about “The Linguistic Capability of Attracting People.”
The lecture was conducted in a dialogue style with Ms. Maki Imoto, an editorial deputy of Kodansha. Ms. Sakai talked about her thoughts and their formation in short words taking the theme from the titles of her books published to date. Ms. Sakamoto, who is an editor and a self-claimed fan of Ms. Sakai, vividly raised the dialogue from her views of an editor and a reader.
Attended GK members seemed to feel freshly the atmosphere that Ms. Sakai structured by the simple and well-examined words. The lecture was a very precious opportunity reminded us many points might work for our future activities.
Junko Sakai:
1966: born in Tokyo. Essayist. Started writing a column since high school age, as graduated from Rikkyo University, became a freelance writer after worked for an advertisement agency. Being awarded the Kodansha Essay Award and the Fujin Koron Literature Award for the essay “the Howl of an Underdog.” Recent writings are “Happy to be in Behind,” “Even Middle Aged is Living.”
Maki Imoto:
Graduated from the department of economics at Tokyo University. After joined Kodansha in 1992, editorial department of Friday magazine, Bungei Tosho Publication dept. 2, publication department of the new library of knowledge, from June 2015 to date, deputy editor of Shukan Gendai. In charge of editorial works of “Recommendation for Ambition” by Mariko Hayashi, “The Guilt of Yumin,” “The Trap of Olive” by Junko Sakai.