But technologically-driven style is not everything. “Italian design and Japanese engineering are important,” says Yutaka Eto, director of MEW-BME, “but price is more important!” Therefore building materials from high-volume high-quality production areas such as northern Italy have the quality sought by Japanese consumers combined with a reasonable price.

With differing quality requirements for products in Europe and Japan, MEW-BME has introduced new techniques in Italian production in order to comply with sometimes stricter Japanese standards. European environmental standards, on the other hand, are often more stringent than in Japan. The resulting end products satisfy the world’s most exacting standards. Eto points to this exchange as one of the most important contributions the company has made.

He compares it to different ways of playing football, a sport he has understandably come to enjoy living in a country obsessed with it. “Japanese and Italians are like two different kinds of football player,” he notes. “We Japanese play as a unit, while the Italians tend to play more individually. Together, we can win.”