1965–1980 Japan

Neighbours on Longitude 135° was the backslappy motto of Australia’s presence at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. An accompanying graphic showed longitude 135°E pleasingly spanning the middle of Australia and the expo’s location of Kansai still regarded by many as the heart of Japan. Many Japanese thought the Australian pavilion reminded them of Hokusai’s famous woodblock print Great Wave off Kanagawa, the best known of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. I thought this a happy accident. I didn’t know the post-modern era had begun.

By 1979 when I arrived in Japan there had been an oil shock or two and the expo party was well and truly over. My first three months were spent at the Osaka University of Foreign Languages, a short bus ride from Kita-Senri station on the Hankyu Senri Line that passed by the former expo site at Senri Hills. From the train into Osaka I could glimpse the symbol tower that’s now the centrepiece of the Expo ’70 Commemorative Park. I never went there because, from the time Expo ’70 was first announced, I had eagerly followed all news and already imagined myself there. I wasn’t interested visiting a place something amazing had happened ten years prior.

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I didn’t care about the Expo ’70 theme of Progress and Harmony for Mankind. My only interest was the pavilions and, aged 13, I agreed with Kenzo Tange that the only really irritating one was the Matsushita Pavilion [centre above]. Tange articulated his objection better than I could when he said “History is like a millstone around our necks. Our task is to smash it apart and reassemble it”. Or something like that. (It was 1968 or so.)

But of course Tange would say that – he was on the Metabolist side of the fence, and Metabolists were famous for having ideas about the future, whether founded in history or not. If one purposely excludes The Constructivists, then Koolhaas and Obrist were correct to identify the Metabolists as the first “movement” of non-Western architects to make an impression on the architecture of the Western world and, as with Expo ’70 itself, there was nothing the Japanese wanted more than create an impression on the Western world. Tange was clearly the man for the job.

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My interest in Japan’s modern architecture had begun with me reading a Reader’s Digest article introducing Kenzo Tange. It had a photograph of the Yoyogi Stadia. The year was probably 1966–7. 1974-1978 were my undergraduate years and, on the same library shelf as DOMUS and CASABELLA, I discovered Japan Architect and buildings by architects such as Takefumi Aida, Mozuna Monta, Artata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Hiroshi Hara and Kazuo Shinohara. [c.f. The New Japanese House, Kazuo Shinohara’s Houses, Madame Butterfly] It was the houses that fascinated me. Here’s Takefumi Aida’s 1972 Annihilation House. It’s an inhabitable object. I still believe that’s all a house is meant to be.

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Kazuo Shinohara may have thought of houses as inhabitable objects but for him they were primarily objets d’art. In 1962 when he wrote “A house is a work of art.” he was creating as well as stating a position vis-à-vis The Metabolists who always thought themselves cut out for bigger things such as cities. Shinohara was not the first architect to carve out a niche for himself but he did set the tone for how his buildings would be regarded. What’s more, it still holds, despite there never having been any discussion of in what sense Shinohara’s houses are art, or whether or not they are good art. [1] And how would anyone know anyway? Surely only the artist would know whether their work was a success or not. And artists, like anyone else, can be creative with the truth.

An Anatomy of Influence

An Anatomy of Influence is a very handsome book by Thomas Daniell, Professor of Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism at Kyoto University. It covers Japanese architecture over the period 1965-1980, a period with many memories for me. Its beginning was the time of the ‘economic miracle’ leading up to Expo ’70, and the middle of it was the downturn brought on by the Oil Crises. The entire period was pre-internet and, as everywhere else, architectural ideas were presented and propagated by magazines that were readily available yet specialist in nature. Having buildings published was perhaps the most important means of self-promotion. [2]

This system of specialist magazines was not unlike the system of journals that had existed since the 1920s across Europe and the USSR. A position expressed in an article might be countered after much thought and discussion by another article by someone else a month or two later. No such intellectual landscape exists today anywhere in the world and this is our loss. [c.f. Need to Know] A self-critical piece such as Kiyonori Kikutake’s thought on his just-completed 1975 Pasadena Heights is today unthinkable. [c.f. Honorary Architecture Misfit: Kiyonori Kikutake] I’m all for an architecture that’s less elitist, but don’t see why criticism, relevance and self-control had to be the first casualties. As with people most everywhere, the Japanese live their lives largely untroubled by architecture.

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A forum of one’s peers didn’t stop architects of all persuasions having opinions on how everyone else should live whether in house, city or both. What Daniell’s book brings to the table is an oral history gleaned via interviews with various protagonists, and for which edited transcripts were reviewed, sometimes amended, and subsequently approved by the speakers. Daniell can vouch that all these things were said. The veracity of the things said is another matter, for memories can be hazy, recollections muddled and both facts and emphasis can shift as things get said to “set the record straight”.

The recollections of the eleven architects Daniell interviewed don’t always concur and this is where it gets interesting. Daniell calls this The Rashomon Effect. Rashomon is a 1950 movie by Akira Kurosawa in which a samurai is killed and his wife supposedly ravished by a bandit but the accounts of wife and bandit differ, and we also begin to suspect the narrator is unreliable. An important early text I wish I’d read 40 years ago stands in for an interview with Shinohara who died in 2006. A living Shinohara would definitely have contributed more lines to read between, but would also have shaded the recollections of Arata Isozaki, Itsuko Hasegawa, Kazunari Sakamoto, Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Seijima …

Legacy

Daniell explains that he chose the final eleven interviewees from architects over 60 “so that their career arcs were clear [ouch!] and their historical significance beyond question, then selected 12 individuals who occupy positions within the field as far away from each other as possible”. This is as good as any other method. The qualification “within the field” is important because it includes architects on the fringe but excludes outliers who, by definition, aren’t in the field. I confess to not remembering Masaharu Takasaki’s name but Googling cosmic architecture Japan pulled up an image of his most memorable building in one. Even in the seventies I found it a bit too cosmic. I wonder what he did after, and is doing now. There’s a whole other book out there.

But there are still plenty of stories, and more to them than we will ever know. Daniell’s interviews don’t just reveal the people behind the buildings – the also reveal who they are now as well as then. We don’t need to be told what Arata Isozaki has been doing for Arata Isozaki & Associates is a huge practice doing the usual things, getting press, collecting awards, etc. Tadao Ando we know about and, if he didn’t make the final twelve, it is because we can comprehend his buildings via those of the others. I missed not seeing Takefumi Aida but then, I can see how he could be comprehended in terms of Ito plus or minus a bit of someone else. I never much cared for his Toy Block House series but I’m pleased he’s still around.

An early draft of this post was titled Under The Influence.

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[1] These questions were tossed around last year in the four posts ART IN SPACE!, Houses as Art, Living as Art, and Art as Houses, and recur in an article of mine titled A Shinohara House is a Work of Art, in Issue 45 of LOG magazine.

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[2] Issue 46 of LOG magazine includes an article by Thomas Daniell titled Finding a Voice, accompanying a translation of Tadao Ando’s first foray into the world of architecture article writing and position-making.

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