Mr Suguru Iino (1943-2022) was a bon viveur and entrepreneur, who appreciated the arts, loved good food and had an eye for the cutting edge.

Always restless for adventure, in his youth in the 1960’s he had a spell in the merchant navy during the Korean war.

His curiosity meant he always dreamt of living abroad so he saw his chance in the 1970’s and moved his family from Tokyo to Amsterdam and then to Nottingham via his corporate employment with a large Japanese company.

 His maverick nature did not suit corporate life so in the early 1980’s he fulfilled another dream. He moved his family finally to London where he entered the antiques business. He started in Portobello Road, and soon progressed to Bond Street Antiques Market and finding a home in Gray’s Antiques Market, where he had a space for several years trading as Iino Antiques. He specialised in Chinese blue and white porcelain, silk paintings and Japanese antiquities from inro, netsuke, decorative screens, and porcelains. 

In the mid 80s he concurrently imported Japanese stationery and desk gadgets which he helped to popularise in the UK. One of the gadgets was a hand- held copier called the “Copy Jack” which Mr Iino had on the BBC programme “Tomorrow’s World” presented by Judith Hann, as an example of the marvels of miniaturised technology!

Mr Iino saw a market for Japanese fast food, namely yakitori and sushi, and he brought in machines that would automate the laborious process and it came at a timely boom in the popularisation of Japanese food in the 1990’s until today.

In the early 2000’s he was approached to have his head cast by the prop maker of the film “The Last Samurai” starring Tom Cruise for a key battle scene. The props team presented him with a silicone model as they made several copies to have it strewn across the battlefield!

He spent the last years developing his own restaurants and collecting antiques on his travels to Japan. He is survived by loving his wife, daughter, son, two granddaughters and his faithful dog Yukio.1967.

Written by a close family member