Japanese Influence

The Japanese influence on IKEA begins in 1973, when a young designer from Tokyo, Noboru Nakamura, arrives at the design department in Älmhult. Three years later POEM is released: a bentwood armchair in a light lacquer with a loose cushion, built on a principle Nakamura would later call comfort without weight. In 1991 POEM is renamed POÄNG, barely changing its silhouette, and becomes one of the longest-running pieces of furniture in the company’s history. With POEM came PLANKTON, NACKA, and later KLIPPAN: a sofa with proportions almost impossible to reach with a Scandinavian frame, but natural to a Western interpretation of the low Japanese stool.

The influence of this school is subtle and easy to miss, because it never tipped into literal quotation (no tatami, no shoji, no black lacquer). It is rather a reduction of proportion: low backs, long horizontal lines, no thick legs, no chunky armrests. The material remains Scandinavian (beech, plywood, linen), but the grammar is Japanese. This is wabi-sabi run through the Älmhult factory.

This style does not have its own decade because Nakamura worked for IKEA for nearly fifty years, until his death in 2023. His pieces sit in the catalogue next to TAJT’s pop explosion, JARPEN’s hi-tech, LEKSVIK’s allmoge, and they look unlike anything else the IKEA customer touches today. If you buy a POÄNG now, you are buying a piece of furniture that under the skin is nearly unchanged from 1976. It is the quietest position in the IKEA vintage archive.