Pots collector likes a lot on his plate

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 21

Pots collector likes a lot on his plate

From ALAN GOODALL, in Tokyo The pottery littering his Tokyo office floor Is car-bon-dated up to 4500 years old. The pipe he happily puffs behind his desk looks about the same vintage. Douglas Kenrick, aged 74, and softly spoken, could be your favourite uncle. Suddenly the avuncular image snaps. Mr Kenrick reaches into a desk drawer and produces a Bugs Bunny poster, bold and brassy. He chuckles as he zips Superman across the table. Charlie Chaplin and Little Grey Rabbit follow in quick succession. “Now,” he announces triumphantly, reaching into a bottom drawer, “here are the current favourities, the SmurfS.” This gentleman can obviously hold his own against the most comic-crazy teenager. One learns when interviewing unusual people in Japan to expect the unexpected, but this is ridiculous. This seemed like the wrong appointment. Wasn’t this supposed to be a run-of-the-mill trade story about a New Zealand trader? An importer-exporter is what Mr Kenrick is. He was the first to work in Japan from New Zealand, in fact, after World War 11, and is still running a business, Douglas Kenrick Far East, Ltd, with a $5OO- - turnover, while working as a director of another he founded in his home country, Douglas Kenrick N.Z., Ltd. He also happens to be ah authority on ancient Japanese pottery, is senior vice-president of

the Asiatic Society of Japan, for which he wrote a centennial history, and still manages to keep vigilant watch on those ever-changing cartoon and television animation characters that make billions of yen for Japanese advertisers of anything from beer to computers.

Character Merchandising, a department of his Tokyo company, gives licences to companies in Japan to use Warner Brothers-copyrighted

characters such a Tweety Pie, Sylvester the Cat, and Bugs Bunny. A foreign manufacturer trying to grab quick recognition with Japanese consumers could hardly do better than pay royalties via Character Merchandising to D. C. Comics Inc., for Superman, or to Bubbles Inc. for Charlie Chaplin, or to Margaret Tempest for Little Grey Rabbit

A company wanting to go upmarket in this sym-bol-crowded market can hardly resist the coats of arms of British universities, courtesy of Mr Kenrick.

“As a licensing company, we have to be very careful about who uses our characters and how,” he says. “The are powerful means of advertising. The royalties form only about 3 per cent of the retail price of goods sold. “We take great care to prevent exploitation of the logos. Our people check the stores to see if unscru-

pulous advertisers are infringing the rights. Stores co-operate because they do not want to be involved in infringement” The ever-popular (and thus consumer-drawing) logos are the American superheroes and funnies. Mr Kenrick does not hold rights to the all-time best sellers. The Walt Disney characters are recognised world-wide, and essential for every Japanese child’s school gear. He is unashamedly delighted to have the Smurfs, from Belgium, however.

While the Japanese must be the world’s most voracious consumers of comics, home-bred characters do not export well. Mr Kenrick is not handling for foreign advertisers logos from Japanese T.V. animation. “They change so quickly, every six months, with very few repeats. They are not so popular overseas."

Would he like to make the kiwi work in Japan for his country’s export industries? There would be a few problems, it seems, such as use of a generic symbol, a not exactly funny one that is virtually unknown outside the flightless bird’s habitat. Besides, cartoon characters sell consumer goods, not bulk commodities like wool and meat. Mr Kenrick has come a long way since he left his homeland to get higher degrees in Britain. He was born in Waihi, and

followed his father, into the Bank of New Zealand.

With a master’s degree in commerce from Auckland University, he enrolled in the London School of Economics, but was caught up in World War 11. One wartime duty, administering supplies to newly liberated Asian countries, took him to Hong Kong and later to Japan.

Lacking Occupation Forces status for buying rationed food, Mr Kenrick and his English wife Vivienne, found early postwar life rather trying. They liked Japan, however and stayed. Vivienne Kenrick is well known for her long-running personality column in the “Japan Times.” The Kenricks live in Tokyo’s Ikedayama, where the overflow of 800 pieces of unglazed, “primitive” pottery from the Akasaka offices are stacked. What Mrs Kenrick thinks about that priceless pile remains unsaid, although her husband unstintingly proclaims the way to happiness in life is a happy marriage.

Mr Kenrick is an Untiring collector of these pots and Haniwa figures dating

back thousands of years, and spends 30 hours a week writing a book about them.

As if running a trading company is not enough, Mr Kenrick decided to study for the Ph.D. the war made him miss. In his 60s he took up extramural studies with Columbia Pacific University in San Diego and, after the 30-year break, earned his doctorate on the thesis, “Competitive communism in Japan.”

Mr Kenrick takes down a second pipe from a desk-side rack, one of at least 100. He has cut the habit to four pipes a day. “But I cheat,” he chuckles, brandishing what is surely the world’s largest pipe. “Retirement?” he echoes incredulously. “I’m too involved to think of retiring. These days the world is so small that perhaps I will fly across to an ancestral house built in 1710 that I bought back into the family. “It took three days to ride a horse from London to that house in those days. Now I can fly to London in less than 24 hours.”

—Copyright, N.Z. Japan News.