Japan-ness in Architecture (review)

The central problematic of my book takes form as a hypothesis, namely that the epitome of the creation of this something Japanese is encountered in the twentieth century—with the advent of certain architects who contrived to deal with the external pressures of modern architecture, responding with something unique. My essay "Japan-ness in Architecture" tackles their struggles; it is placed first in the book, but was written last. My aim was to trace their formative stance toward Japan-ness, up to and including my own personal involvement from the late 1960s. This essay is a sort of metacritique of what I had written about Ise, Chōgen, and Katsura and their discursive grounds. It attempted to trace the process through which Japan-ness itself was constructed as a discourse in Japanese modernity. (p. xiv)

–Arata Isozaki

The question of what is "Japan-ness in architecture" has preoccupied Isozaki Arata (1931– ) for more than two decades through a series of essays that are compiled and presented together for the first time in English in this 2006 book. Isozaki emerged in the 1960s as the leading designer and theorist of his generation as a student and as a collaborator of architect Tange Kenzō (1913–2005). Through his career, he has designed more than 450 projects that span the globe and has written more than 50 books. While noted internationally for projects such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1981–86), the Nara Centennial Hall (1992–98), and most recently the Turin Ice Hockey Stadium for the 2006 Winter Olympics, a majority of his writings that combine historical survey, critical analysis, and theoretical reflection have previously remained untranslated into English. In Japan-ness in Architecture, rather than theorizing his own designs, Isozaki interprets the great Japanese monuments of Ise Shrine (seventh century), Tōdaiji (twelfth century), and Katsura Imperial Villa (seventeenth century) as dynamic events and textual spaces and not merely as inert objects. In other words, Isozaki's book presents these landmarks as challenging discursive spaces, rather than as an exhaustive historical study or illustrated monograph, and thereby begs for further contextual background.

From the outset, the term "Japan-ness" is presented as a polemic counter to an essentialist understanding of "Japan" or "Japanese" (as an adjective, language, and race) and consequently a critique of works such as the German expatriate architect Bruno Taut's Fundamentals of Japanese Architecture (1936) and Kuki Shuzō's "Iki" no kōzō (Reflections on Japanese taste: the structure of iki) (1930). While the term "Japan-ness" may seem awkward as a newly constructed word, it is a translation of the phrase Nihon-teki na mono which literally means "things Japanese in character." As translator Sabu Kohso asserts, the English phrase embraces the heterogeneous adjectives of Japanesque, Japonica, and japonaiserie. Isozaki contends that Japan's obsession with Japanese-ness or Japan-ness is "due in the final analysis to Japan's mentality as an island nation" (pp. xiv–xv). "The Island Nation Aesthetic" is the title of Isozaki's previous pamphlet book published in 1996, which he begins by quoting Oscar Wilde's contention that "'Japan' or the idea of 'Japanese things' was purely an invention, an aesthetic fiction" and that "'Japanese things' (could) be found by studying the works of a certain Japanese artist in the comfort of one's home (with no need to go to Tokyo)."¹ Instead of rejecting such an outside perspective as inaccurate or misinformed, Isozaki embraces interpretations of monumental works such as Ise Shrine and Katsura Villa, both praised by Taut when he visited Japan in 1933.

Accepting that all notions of Japan, Japanese, and Japan-ness are fictive, whether perceived within or outside the nation's geographic borders, Isozaki argues that what is considered as emblematic of the Japanese aesthetic outside Japan "is far from the embryonic Japan-ness born in such critical moments of an earlier past as are here described" (p. xv). He...