Honourable Mention.

At the highly competitive Swedish Design Awards ceremony on 9 September 2021 in Stockholm, Sweden, our Tenson Naomi Expedition Jacket earned “honourable mention”.

Design S – Swedish Design Awards is Sweden’s biggest and most comprehensive design award, backed by the entire design industry. The award is aimed at professional designers, architects, individual specialists, producers and companies that work with design in a broad sense.

The Swedish Design Award 2021 nomination for the Tenson Naomi Expedition Jacket was extra special to our team. This recognition gave us the opportunity to once again pay homage to Japan’s legendary explorer, Naomi Uemura, who was the first person from Japan to reach the Summit of Mountain Everest in May 1970. 

In 1981, Tenson sponsored Naomi Uemura and the 1981 Japanese Mount Everest Expedition team, which saw two climbers reach the world’s highest peak. During the 1981 climb, Uemura was a Tenson ambassador and wore Tenson’s trademark yellow expedition jacket, which has since become an icon in Tenson’s pantheon of legendary outerwear. Tragically, in 1984, Uemura disappeared a day after his 43rd birthday as he descended from his successful winter solo ascent of Denali (formerly Mount McKinley) in Alaska.

In addition to Uemura’s legacy as a global explorer - the first man to reach the North Pole solo, the first man to raft the Amazon solo, and the first man to climb Denali solo - his legacy ran much deeper. According to the Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum, Naomi Uemura was born and raised in Toyooka, Japan, surrounded by abundant nature. The museum’s website thoughtfully conveys Uemura’s endorsing legacy (lightly edited from a Google Translate website translation): 

”Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum was opened in 1994 as a base for passing on Mr. Uemura's ‘wisdom and technical skills’ and his ‘personlity and heart’ for posterity. Mr. Uemura's attitude, which was to always have a dream and to work hard toward that dream, continues to be loved by the people of the world and still teaches us how wonderful it is to challenge ourselves. And, in April 2021, Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum newly established the adventure experience facility, ‘Acorn Base’. Children learn the ‘Uemura Spirit’. It will be reborn as a place to support each person's ‘desire’ to try’. We hope that it will be a place to nurture children's ‘zest for life’ through adventure experiences.”