Japanese & Anime Desk Mats

How to choose your Japanese desk mat

Two very different things live in this collection: quiet Japanese line art, and full-colour anime. Here's which is which.

Minimalist and zen

Beige, black and white, a lot of empty space. Bamboo drawn in a few lines, clouds over a mountain, a single sunrise. These are the ones that work in an office where you'd rather nobody asked about your desk mat. Start with the bamboo line art or the zen clouds in black and white.

Mt. Fuji and classic imagery

The images people picture when they think of Japan: the red sun behind Fuji, a wooden house at the foot of the mountain, the Great Wave off Kanagawa. Bold shapes, few colours, reads clearly from across a room. See the red sun Mt. Fuji and the Great Wave, the best-seller in this collection.

Koi, sakura and botanicals

Fish turning in dark water, cherry blossom against a pale sky. Softer than the Fuji designs and the group most people pick when the mat has to sit in a bedroom rather than an office. The koi yin-yang and the minimalist sakura.

Anime landscapes

Skies that glow, forests lit from somewhere off-frame, temples at dusk. This is anime as background art rather than characters, which is why it suits a desk you work at all day. Look at the anime temple and the anime fantasy forest.

Samurai and gaming

Figures on ridges, mountains behind them, the most cinematic things here. Built for a gaming desk and best at the widest size, where there's room for the whole landscape. The samurai gaming desk mat and the mountain and samurai landscape.

Zen or anime: how to decide

It comes down to what else is on the desk. If you already have a lot going on — cables, monitors, figures, lights — the minimalist and line-art designs give the eye somewhere to rest. If the desk is bare and you want it to be the thing people notice, the anime landscapes and samurai scenes are the ones that carry a room.