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One of Japan's leading architects examines notions of Japan-ness as
exemplified by key events in Japanese architectural history from
the seventh to the twentieth century; essays on buildings and their
cultural context. Japanese architect Arata Isozaki sees buildings
not as dead objects but as events that encompass the social and
historical context-not to be defined forever by their "everlasting
materiality" but as texts to be interpreted and reread continually.
In Japan-ness in Architecture, he identifies what is essentially
Japanese in architecture from the seventh to the twentieth century.
In the opening essay, Isozaki analyzes the struggles of modern
Japanese architects, including himself, to create something
uniquely Japanese out of modernity. He then circles back in history
to find what he calls Japan-ness in the seventh-century Ise shrine,
reconstruction of the twelfth-century Todai-ji Temple, and the
seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial Villa. He finds the periodic
ritual relocation of Ise's precincts a counter to the West's
concept of architectural permanence, and the repetition of the
ritual an alternative to modernity's anxious quest for origins. He
traces the "constructive power" of the Todai-ji Temple to the
vision of the director of its reconstruction, the monk Chogen,
whose imaginative power he sees as corresponding to the
revolutionary turmoil of the times. The Katsura Imperial Villa,
with its chimerical spaces, achieved its own Japan-ness as it
reinvented the traditional shoin style. And yet, writes Isozaki,
what others consider to be the Japanese aesthetic is often the
opposite of that essential Japan-ness born in moments of historic
self-definition; the purified stylization-what Isozaki calls
"Japanesquization"-lacks the energy of cultural transformation and
reflects an island retrenchment in response to the pressure of
other cultures. Combining historical survey, critical analysis,
theoretical reflection, and autobiographical account, these essays,
written over a period of twenty years, demonstrate Isozaki's
standing as one of the world's leading architects and preeminent
architectural thinkers.
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