“Asthetics are a Form of Respect”

Small bridges lead over miniature hills and winding paths. In the background, the glass façades of modern skyscrapers reach into the sky. A Shinkansen glides by silently – the bullet train with its distinctive nose. Above all, there is silence here in Shiba-Rikyū Garden in the heart of Tokyo. No traffic noise, no sirens, no raised voices. Laid out in 1678 during the Edo period, this landscaped garden in the central Minato ward embodies what is so typically Japanese: perfection not as spectacle, but as the shaping of space and time. Everything seems incidental – yet nothing is left to chance.

Our eyes follow a gardener bent deeply over a precisely trimmed azalea bush, searching leaf by leaf, blossom by blossom, for signs of decay. Daisuke Seeberger has chosen this place carefully – just like every stop we will make in the coming hours. Together with MÜHLE CEO Andreas Müller, we have travelled to Tokyo to meet the man who, people at the company say, “Without Daisuke, we wouldn’t be who we are.” We want to understand how the 47-year-old has changed the brand, and what makes his view so unmistakably Japanese. To that end, Daisuke is taking us to places that, in his eyes, tell much about Japanese craftsmanship, culture, and the pursuit of perfection. 

Daisuke, to me this bush looks flawless. What is that man doing?

Much here is about devotion to detail. First impressions matter. You see it in the presentation of food, in packaging, in the design of gardens – or in the care of an azalea bush. Aesthetics are a form of respect. Good, thoughtful design is not an end in itself but a gesture of consideration. We want to do things well. This comes from the Buddhist Zen tradition, where mindfulness is a high value. The pursuit of perfection is, in essence, a mindfulness practice. 

It was in early 2010 that Daisuke Seeberger directed this mindfulness toward the MÜHLE brand. That had to do with his father, Hans-Jörg Seeberger – a businessman with German roots. During Daisuke’s childhood, the family lived for several years near Darmstadt. “Too short to remember the language,” Daisuke says, almost apologetically, “but long enough to feel a bond with the country.”

When Daisuke set out on a new professional path in 2009 and was looking for suitable products for his newly founded distribution company, he recalled his father’s morning ritual of shaving – focused in front of the mirror, equipped with brush and razor. A routine still vivid decades later – but not a typically Japanese one. Quite the opposite.

In a country that places great emphasis on tea ceremonies or the arrangement of bentō boxes, shaving plays a surprisingly minor role – even though a clean-shaven face is often considered obligatory. When Daisuke realised that, despite strong demand, there were hardly any luxury shaving products on the Japanese market, he knew he had discovered a niche.  

Did you set out with the ambition of introducing shaving to the Japanese as a pleasurable ritual? 

In Japan, shaving is only about getting rid of stubble. Many people don’t even know what a shaving brush is – they think it’s a makeup tool. I saw an opportunity to turn shaving into something people want to do, not something they have to do.

And how do you achieve that? 

The Japanese love good stories. In searching for German brands that offered shaving products and had a compelling story, we quickly landed on MÜHLE. Well-designed products with tradition, handcrafted by a family business with an 80-year history – people here value that. When I travelled to the Ore Mountains in summer 2008, saw the production firsthand, and met the people, I was thrilled.  

And yet you still initiated some changes. 

It was clear to me that to introduce something new like brushes and razors in Japan, it might help to start with skincare. I felt that care products would be a good fit for the brand – something everyone can relate to. At MÜHLE, there were hardly any in the range at the time. So I suggested expanding the segment.

For MÜHLE, this suggestion became the inspiration for the Organic line – today, the company is increasingly perceived as a brand for natural cosmetics. What else did you address? 

Back then, MÜHLE’s packaging was purely practical. I knew that would not be enough for Japanese expectations. I explained this to Andreas and Christian, who then developed new packaging – high-quality paper, embossing, unified design. 

That was in the late 2000s, when Christian and Andreas Müller, the third generation, had just taken over the family business. “At the time, we weren’t fully aware of the potential,” recalls Andreas Müller. “I remember Daisuke telling us that the brand could really take off and gain appreciation in Japan.”

In the years that followed, Andreas Müller regularly traveled to Japan to visit Daisuke Seeberger – both for inspiration and, as he says, “because I was able to learn a great deal there about the Japanese obsession with detail.” This, he adds, helped them to become even more precise in their brand building. “I realized: a good product can only come from a good place” – a place where employees feel comfortable and enjoy coming to work. That is also why, in recent years, MÜHLE has sought to reflect the kanso principle of clarity and simplicity in its renovation and new building projects. Today, a large Japanese bonsai greets visitors at the company’s headquarters in the Ore Mountains.

Our journey continues, to the south of Tokyo. In the small harbour town of Kamakura, we meet Hideo Oka, a traditional Urushi painting master, who introduces us to the millennia-old Japanese lacquer craft, famous worldwide for its deep red and black shimmering surfaces. The Urushi master works in a secluded house.The title is the highest honour in the craft – earned only after an astonishing 35 years of practice. Achieving perfection simply takes time. “You really have to love this craft, otherwise it will drive you crazy,” Hideo says with a laugh.

He tells us about the complex processing of plant-based Urushi lacquer, obtained from the tree of the same name. More than 100 steps are required before the objects dry for months and can finally be polished. With a steady hand, he mixes pigments into the sticky Urushi resin before brushing it onto two bowls.

We could watch him for hours – visiting his workshop feels like entering another world, far removed from the pressure of constant self-promotion. “Opportunities to see craftsmanship like this firsthand are becoming rare. Yet it still plays an important role in our culture. People like Hideo Oka are highly respected,” Daisuke says.

We move on to our next stop. Ukai in Tokyo-Shiba is a fine dining restaurant specialising in tofu. In Europe, tofu – sometimes dismissively called bean curd – is still seen as a meat substitute, bland and boring. In Japan, tofu is considered a delicacy. That may be because tofu in Europe comes from a universal soybean variety, whereas Japan has around 300 different types. Some of these are served to us today: crispy fried with miso, silky-soft like pudding in a soy milk soup prepared at the table, and sweet as matcha flan.

Seven courses later, we know that every serious restaurant specialises in a single dish or ingredient –
whether soba noodles, sushi, yakitori skewers, or tofu. While in Japan every aspect of daily life, from eating to visiting the restroom, is perfected down to the last detail, there was still one gap in the otherwise generous bathroom amenities of our hotel: among the many beautiful paper boxes containing cosmetics, hair ties, sewing kits, tissues, toothbrushes and hairbrushes, only one thing was missing –
a shaving set.

This article has first been published in the printed edition of 30 Grad in autumn 2025.