He studied industrial ceramics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, inspired by a visit to the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in 1938, where he encountered mingei philosophy, and its objects, for the first time.

If any man of his owne heade and without leaue, walke out of his precint and boundes, taken without the princes letters, he is broughte againe for a fugitiue or a runaway with great shame and rebuke, and is sharpely punished.

The witness looked up and down at his usual wristwatched arm, which now was without a wristwatch, […]

He had no lady with him, and his excuse for being in the ladies' room was, the gentlemen's room was too filthy. The little room into which he had gone was the ladies' water-closet... There were signs plainly printed on the doors, showing which rooms were for gentlemen and which for ladies and over the entrance to the little room, from which appellee was ejected, is printed the words: Ladies' Private Room.