PUBLISHED 10/13/2006
If Nike is steeped in the tradition of American entrepreneurialism, and Adidas reflects a heritage of Teutonic engineering, then Asics is a brand born and bred of Japan's commitment to perfection. In Japan, uncompromising values exist everywhere, from white-gloved taxi drivers who can't keep their cabs too immaculate to young mothers who meticulously prepare school lunches. Companies like Toyota constantly labor to improve their existing products, which is one reason why Japanese cars are perennial favorites.
At Asics every product is tested, quantified, and improved on at a concrete R&D building nestled in Kobe's western hills, a dozen miles from the corporate headquarters. The Asics Research Institute of Sports Science is set amid tennis courts, a grass playing field, and a two-lane running track. Despite the surroundings, the subdued, 16-year-old facility is more about business than pleasure. For starters, the 350-meter track runs directly into an industrial garage situated on one side of the building.
"Let me introduce some machines," says a smiling Tsuyoshi Nishiwaki, as he enters the dark and cold ground-floor space. "Waki" (pronounced "wacky"), as he's known around the building, is a tall, thin 42-year-old with disheveled hair and pants pulled up above his waist. As the company's good-natured manager of R&D, Waki spends most of his time in this windowless lair, happily inventing things like stretchy panels for shoe uppers and using computer models to suss out the performance characteristics of some new rubber cooked up by the scientists upstairs. "Here's a system to assess ground-reaction forces," he says enthusiastically. "Over here is a motion-capture system," he adds, walking over to where the track runs through the room.
If Waki feels at home among these gadgets and computers, it's in part because he spent about two years wedded to them as he developed the underfoot technology for the Kinsei. He was busy evaluating the doomed all-Gel midsole prototype when Senda came to him with an entirely new challenge: Engineer a flexible and lightweight midsole that used an unprecedented amount of Gel while providing even more cushioning and support than the mostly foam midsole of the Gel-Kayano. This way, the two shoes would be different enough and yet still occupy the same stability-shoe category. A very tall order, but prototype number four was underway.
Waki started by focusing on the heel area, where a running shoe's midsole endures the greatest impact and requires the most cushioning. He tested (and retested) one concept where thick, oval-shaped tubes of Gel were encapsulated by a modest layer of foam. With each test, though, the design failed to provide enough cushioning.
Then, late one night in 2003, Waki was at home working when "it came to me quickly," he says. "This lambda structure." The Greek letter lambda features an angled leg that, in Waki's eyes at least, could serve as a cantilever of sorts. He figured that by strategically placing enough lambda-shaped structures underneath the foot, a runner would have sufficient support. Waki envisioned a series of lambda structures?--filled with Gel to help disperse impact?--extending from heel to toe and completely replacing the traditional foam midsole.
Again, easier said than done. "With foam, the only design parameters concern the material's hardness," says Waki. "But this structure had many parameters. What's the Gel hardness? Where is the best position for the Gel?" He would refine the concept over several more months, manipulating the lambda structures to operate as a kind of independent suspension, using Gels of different hardness to deliver a cushioned but stable ride that would be in step with a runner's gait. He used a less firm Gel mixture on the outside of the midsole to provide a soft landing, and a firmer mixture on the inside to better support the arch and reduce overpronation.
When Waki ultimately took his concept for a digital test-drive, the computer model had a heel with virtually no foam and 150 percent more Gel than any other Asics running shoe. His computer crunched the numbers and found the virtual shoe would provide cushioning and stability that improved upon the latest version of the Gel-Kayano.
When asked later about his breakthrough moment, Waki answers in typically proper Japanese fashion. "I was most pleased," he says, "that my idea would be produced at the highest level."
