Men Who Hang 'Business Cards' on Walls

The most absurd impulse purchase I made while traveling was a pegboard I bought over a decade ago in a narrow alley across from Nakameguro Station in Tokyo. It wasn't about the price. Even though I bought the smallest size, as a tourist, carrying and bringing back a wide wooden board was cumbersome. But at the time, as I prepared to move, I felt a shiver akin to standing before a museum piece while facing rows of pegboards that filled the walls of an interior shop. This impulse was a man's instinct. Today, pegboards are easily found at IKEA or quaint accessory shops. They are familiar as items to 'decorate' spaces. A colleague even decorated a partition in their office with a pegboard. However, pegboards were never meant to be showpieces. In the early 20th century, they were materials for organizing tools like saws, wrenches, and drills in rugged male-dominated workplaces. A portmanteau of 'peg' (nail) and 'board' (plate), the pegboard became popularized in the 1950s when it entered American households' garages and basements. Men hung their favorite tools on pegboards. But this differed from the grammar of the SNS era, where personal tastes are expressed and broadcast to the public. It was a deeply personal act of communicating with owned objects. The exhibitor and the audience were one and the same. That's why a pegboard is invariably attached to one wall of a so-called 'man cave.' Similarly, production teams of action content like *John Wick*, *Seal Team*, and *Agent Kim Reactivated* display firearms appetizingly in male private spaces. In reality, storing items away is far more efficient and reduces cleaning. Yet, the act of deliberately hanging them out stems from the comfort provided by their physicality. In American films, rows of drivers and drills of varying sizes lined up in a garage, or the fishing rods and gear hung on one wall of actor Lee Tae-gon's house, are not lists for showing off but rather business cards that explain the man. A pegboard is a mirror of recovery, confirming taste, achievement, and ability. Anyone can have at least one wall in their home, if not an entire man's cave. A wall where one faces oneself daily—a man needs such a wall.