Japanese designer of soy-sauce bottle dies at 85

RIP Ekuan-san. For the longest time I thought Kikkoman soy sauce was the ONLY soy sauce and the bottle's shape was a genius way to draw the customer's eye to Kikkoman and pass over the other brands.

The bottle should be done in stone for his grave temple

That bottle is iconic

A Buddhist monk and a celebrated designer, quite a combination. But he died of sinus problems? Has to be more to the story.

Upon seeing the headline,I was bracing myself for the first groaner of the day, most likely "iconic" , "icon" or other such cliche to make its ugly appearance, but it was sucessfully avoided by the rather clever use of "visual shorthand." My hat's off to the journalist who wrote this.

Unfortunately his work is complete in this world, but his work was great.

RIP. And yeah, his design made the product instantly recognizable in many places around the globe. Good job!

Has to be more to the story.

There is. He died of died of a heart rhythm disorder. Possibly the disorder was Sick sinus syndrome, which is an uncommon heart rhythm disorder.

Thanks, slumdog. A problem with the sinus of the heart obviously makes much more sense.

It's a bottle.

Brilliant designer. RIP.

I used an empty one filled with malt vinegar. Absolutely perfect for using on fish and chips.

Would work as a great storage jar for his ashes. The cap is perfect for pouring. Creative man.

Just curious as to why I would get a thumbs down for just reporting details?

Kenji Ekuan certainly led an interesting life.

I wanna know his all story.RIP.

I still remember this bottle as a kid, was very different from anything else on the supermarket shelf

GK has designed some of teh best bike designes for Yamaha over the years, Vmax, R1, SR500 etc....

I wouldn't say that his bottle design was famous worldwide. In the UK, most soy sauce (still is) synonymous with Chinese food, with Japanese food usually coming with those little plastic bottles shaped like fish.

I'd also say that Japanese food wasn't a worldwide food craze at the time if the bottle's inception, either (even though it's famous and somewhat popular these days).

Apparently, the story goes that Kenji Ekuan was ridiculed when trying to design the now famous bottle, to which he replied, "I'll show you!"

Haha!