Mizunoe Tadaomi 水江忠臣 was born into a wealthy family from Oita. After graduating from the Department of Architecture at Nippon University, he started to work for the Maekawa Kunio Architecture Office. He later had to leave the office in order to serve in the military. After the War, he returned to Oita and began studying furniture design. In 1953, Maekawa asked him to join the office again. The following year, Mizunoe, along with Choh Daisaku and Matsumura Katsuo, worked on the furniture design of the International House of Japan in Roppongi, Tokyo.

Mizunoe's masterpiece was the redesign of the side chair T-0507N. His passion for this chair resulted in a beautiful design. It has been seen in the photographs of the private homes of many famous archi- tects, placed side by side with world famous masterpieces. Since he didn't work on many projects simultaneously, he concentrated all of his passion and his efforts on just one design. Even the manufacturer, TENDO Co.,LTD, lost track of which drawing was his most recent design. Mizunoe was killed in an unfortunate accident at the age of 56, yet his chairs show a high level of perfection.

Mizunoe, Choh, and Matsumura -all members of the same genera- tion- were provided with a great opportunity to build the International House of Japan in Roppongi, Tokyo. The International House was built when the house of Iwasaki the Mitsubushi Financial Organization joined funds with the Rockefeller Foundation. It was built in 1952 in order to promote cultural and scientific exchange between Japan and the international community. Nehru, the prime minister of India, and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Gropius, headmasters of Bauhaus in Germany, were among the frequent visitors.

For this project, some foreign architects residing in Japan expressed an interest in working on this project. Among them were Antonin Raymond and William M.Vories. However Murata Ryosaku, the chairman of the Art Department of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, insisted on letting Japanese architects work on it. So Sakakura Junzo, Maekawa Kunio and Yoshimura Junzo all submitted proposals of their own. In the end, a decision was made to foster "cooperation, not competition." Because of this policy, Choh, Mizunoe, and Matsumura were all asked to design the interior.

Although Mizunoe worked on this complicated project, the only thing that Choh can remember about him is that he was always talk- ing about chairs. I, myself, cannot remember him talking about any- thing else besides chairs. For him, chairs were everything.

When Mizunoe's design was introduced in the German magazine.

"New Furniture," it was placed on a spread facing a page of Hans Wegner's design. Mizunoe was so thrilled that he wrote a letter to Wegner. Wegner not only replied to Mizunoe's letter but began a friendship with him. There are many designers who can still remem- ber Mizunoe showing Wegner's Christmas card to his friends.

Mizunoe learned about the designer's spirit from Wegner, his most respected friend. The spirit of design must peel off and polish down a design to find the simplistic beauty and elegance that is hidden beneath decoration. It is unfortunate that he left us so early. I was hoping to see the second and third redesigns of T-0507N.