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Katsura Imperial Villa: A Brief Descriptive Bibliography, with Illustrations
There are three imperial residences in Kyoto: Gosho (京都御所), rebuilt in 1855 and used for formal affairs even today; Shūgakuin1 (修学院離宮), a summer retreat on mountain slopes built in the mid-seventeenth century; and Katsura Imperial Retreat (桂離宮), slightly older than Shūgakuin. Upon the death of the Hachijō imperial line in 1881, Katsura came into the hands of the reigning household; shortly afterward, the Imperial Household Ministry was formed and took responsibility for the care of such sites. Sometimes grouped with the other residences, Nijō Palace was originally built not for the imperial household but for the warriors who effectively ruled Japan from the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century; today, it too is managed by the Imperial Household Agency (the scope and name of the Imperial Household Ministry having changed at the end of World War II). Of these four, Katsura, with its extensive grounds and esteemed teahouses in addition to a large, shoin-style residence, is best known of all, used both at home and abroad to illustrate arguments about architecture and national tradition. Yet even so, much remains to be said about the complex, as demonstrated by this brief descriptive bibliography. [End Page 469]
The first extensive documentation on Katsura was a set of loose-leaf folios, published by subscription under the auspices of the Imperial Household Ministry and dedicated to Baron Hideo Higashikuze, who oversaw artisans in the building trades department of the ministry between 1924 and 1931.2 The folios were explicitly not for sale, but for study and research, a point made repeatedly in a variety of ways throughout the folios. Today, the folios are quite rare; as a result, they have seldom been referenced in subsequent publications.
Granted an unusual level of access by the ministry, Kawakami began conducting surveys in autumn 1927, less than a year after the beginning of the Shōwa era. The first of the folios released (which was, for reasons still not clear, actually the eighth in the series) included an invitation to the elite subscribers—leading industrialists, tea enthusiasts, academics, and architects—to tour another of the imperial residences in Kyoto, the Gosho, in late April 1928, or to arrange for a group tour in May. In 1932, as the folios were completed, the text noted that there were only a few dozen more than two hundred subscribers.
Editor Kunimoto Kawakami extended gratitude to faculty and students from the architecture departments of Tokyo and Kyoto Imperial Universities, including thanking Kyoto Imperial University students for their assistance in surveying, although he seems to have done much of the drawing and photography himself. The extensive documentation for these folios vastly increased the source material available for serious study, especially where Katsura was concerned. (Of the 573 sheets of photos and measured drawings of the four imperial residences—the shogunal Nijō Palace was included—232, or 40 percent, involved Katsura. And of the 130 measured drawings produced for the folios, 56, or 43 percent, also involved Katsura and its grounds.) The great attention to Katsura, often involving careful documentation of the smallest details, underscored that the complex was an important part of the nation’s architectural heritage and worthy of more consideration than it had been given in Japan’s modernizing era.
Today, Bruno Taut is generally credited with “discovering” Katsura in 1933, shortly after the folios were completed (figures 1A and 1B, 2A and 2B, 3A and 3B). In addition to a published sketchbook, which focused exclusively [End Page 470]
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on Katsura, Taut included Katsura in several general-interest works. Using materials from the Kawakami folios, he presented the complex as the penultimate example of Japanese domestic architecture in the concluding chapter of his Houses and People of Japan (1937) and in a lecture to the Society for International Cultural Relations, which was later published as a small booklet. Taut inaccurately ascribed authorship of Katsura’s gardens and painted surfaces, but his more important contribution was to focus greater attention on the complex in lectures and books published in Japanese, German, and English. His reputation as a modernist led many to believe that the seventeenth-century structure justified modernist approaches to architecture, although Taut did not hold this position, fretting, “I had a conversation with some advanced architecture students of aesthetics in the Imperial University of Tokyo, who . . . knew nothing of the existence of Katsura—and the penetration of modern business into all the pores of Japanese culture menaces these last remains with a final death.”3
Photographs and measured drawings (plans, sections, and elevations) of four significant buildings under the care of the Imperial Household Agency were released by subscription for educational and research purposes. In total, thirty-six folios were produced over four years (figure 4). Individual pages were titled in Japanese only for drawings, and in Japanese and English for photography.
These folios were executed with a level of scholarly care rare even now. Each set also included a Japanese-language explanatory page with a contents list and genial correspondence from the editor. The seventh release included a small pocket book, with text suitable for an educational tour of each site. The collected material was to be bound into books after final short texts and a table of contents were sent to subscribers when documentation for each building was completed; the publication title is thus cataloged inconsistently [End Page 473] in collections and bibliographies. However, even accounting for variation, I was able to identify only a handful of complete collections in archives and libraries around the world.
A Japanese translation of the original German-language, accordion-style sketchbook with handwritten notes dating to 1933 and 1934. Shinoda edited a three-volume set of Taut’s work, adding commentary; the 1942 publication was the first volume. (An earlier, 1934 edition of Taut’s sketchbook may have been published by Meiji Shoin.) The publisher Iwanami Shoten produced two boxed facsimiles of the sketchbook in 1981 (a limited edition of eight hundred copies that retails today for two to three thousand dollars) and [End Page 474] again in 2004. Iwanami’s extensive archive on Taut is held by the private Sōzō Gakuen University in Gunma Prefecture.
Occupied Japan and the Immediate Postwar Era (1945–1959)
Because of its rich architectural legacy, Kyoto, Katsura’s home, was spared the devastating fire bombing most Japanese cities experienced. During the U.S. occupation that followed the war’s end and the subsequent Cold War, Japan’s traditional arts were used as a basis for international exchange on both sides of the Pacific; Kyoto’s architecture was understandably employed to this end. Katsura’s story—a retreat for a young prince who had been a pawn between the shogunate and the imperial household—resonated. Teiji Itō’s 1956 article, “The Katsura Villa: A Flower Out of Season,” contrasted Katsura with Nijō Palace, a strategy also seen in Tetsurō Watsuji’s writings on Katsura.4 The trajectory culminated in Naomi Ōkawa’s 1964 comparison of Katsura and the shogunate mausoleum at Nikkō; Ōkawa described the two complexes as representing divergent architectural traditions: Katsura, a setting for Japanese gentility; the shrines at Nikkō, “Chinese.”5
An approach that might be considered related elided questions of class or historical hierarchies, simply presenting Katsura as a visual feast, with minimal discussion: three books (and two pamphlets by Teizo Niwa, associated with the Imperial Household Ministry) followed the model established in the Kawakami folios, relying heavily on photographic documentation and measured drawings with bilingual captions, and adding only abbreviated foreign-language text.
Increasing interest in traditional Japanese culture both at home and abroad was evident in the number of texts on Katsura published in the post-war era: eight books were produced between 1945 and 1959 by leading figures in the fields of architecture, photography, and philosophy—with at least two of these books, the Mainichi newspapers and the Chūō Kōran, involving publishers with political concerns. Another respected German visitor, Harvard’s Walter Gropius, offered his endorsement of Katsura’s importance in a short Japanese-language text for Osamu Mori.
Sutemi Horiguchi’s 1953 volume was the first to balance two very different audiences, with left-handed binding for the English text and a traditional right-handed binding for the Japanese version, allowing two front covers of [End Page 475] equal weight. Horiguchi originally developed this strategy before the war, for German-Japanese monographs on his own work, but it was subsequently adopted by others writing for both audiences on Katsura.
In Japanese only. Extravagantly illustrated with large photographs; a few foldout measured drawings of the complex appear to be from the Kawakami folios. This book, like many subsequent publications in the immediate aftermath of World War II, was inclined to mythologize both the history of Katsura and its value to foreign experts; the very first paragraph remarked on the interest foreigners demonstrated toward the complex. Fujishima was a professor at what was then Tokyo Imperial University and published elsewhere with Kunimoto Kawakami, editor of the folios that head this bibliography.
Delicate letterpress printing on Japanese washi paper underscores the emphasis on tradition over industry. In Japanese with an English précis and informative English-language captions, this was the first book designed to appeal to both Japanese and non-Japanese readers—understandably, as it was printed during the U.S. occupation of Japan.
In Japanese only, with a bibliography, a first for publications on Katsura. Mori became one of the twentieth century’s authorities on Katsura. His lengthy, unillustrated article published in 1942 in the journal Kenchikushi (Architectural history), “Katsura Gobetsugyō no Ki ni Tsuite/桂御別業 之記について” (On the rural retreat Katsura) surveyed archival materials [End Page 476] on Katsura’s construction and featured a précis of major architecture and landscape architecture elements. The book also included detailed plans and unusual diagrams, such as those showing the azimuth of the rising moon on certain dates; the use of climate to justify architectural differences was seen in both Japanese and German twentieth-century discourse.
Some or all of the photography was by Kenzō Shiose, but is uncredited. Mori further developed the text for the 1955 Katsura Rikyū no Kenkyū / 桂離宮の研究 [Research on the Katsura Imperial Retreat]. Tokyo: Tōto Bunka Shuppan Kabushiki Kaisha/東都文化出版株式會社, 1955. Photography by Kenzō Shiose/汐瀬謙藏, published in Japanese with an English-language synopsis, and strategically employed the English-Japanese back-to-back format that took advantage of the directional differences in writing systems to avoid prioritizing either text. The 1955 book also included a single-page introduction in Japanese, written by Walter Gropius while in Kyoto in June 1954, implicitly recalling the late Bruno Taut’s enthusiasm for Katsura and using international appreciation to argue for the importance of Japanese tradition. Gropius would later write for a 1960 book on Katsura involving architect Kenzo Tange and photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto.
A numbered, limited edition of two thousand copies, printed by a major newspaper (figures 5 and 6). This seems to be the earliest book on Katsura that specifically acknowledged a photographer on the title page, a practice that soon became the norm; Satō’s photography was also used in a 1961 book involving the former editor of Japan Architect (新建築), Noboru Kawazoe.
Japanese with English synopsis by Jiro Harada/原田二郎. Hori guchi, an internationally acclaimed modernist architect, sat out World War II in isolated retreat, studying Japan’s teahouse traditions and shunning practice. The book is scrupulous in addressing conflicting perspectives on Katsura’s history and attempting to sort myth from fact (though this is not evident in the English synopsis). One of Horiguchi’s key contributions is a brief section on the authorship of the building and its parts, which soon concerned Tetsurō Watsuji, who relied on Horiguchi for advice. The English-language [End Page 477]
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synopsis is brief, but the photographs and maps all have bilingual captions and keys, making them equally accessible to readers in Japanese and English.
Niwa was a garden scholar, part of the Tokyo Imperial University faculty in the early Shōwa period. These two slim booklets painstakingly surveyed ornamental landscape elements, described in Japanese with an English synopsis. The first booklet included an essay titled “The Garden-Lanterns in the Katsura Palace” and exhaustively illustrated each lantern in the garden. The companion volume surveyed each stepping stone, with detailed maps of some sections, and tallied the numbers of stepping stones in specific areas.
In Japanese only. This text was loosely structured, organized as if Watsuji were strolling through the gardens with the reader, pointing out aesthetic features and historical resonances along the way. A leading scholar on Japanese ancient culture in the early twentieth century, Watsuji had been a strong supporter of the imperial system before the war; this was written shortly after he published a postwar criticism of Japanese isolation by the shogunate. Notably opening with the pairing of shogunate buildings at Nikkō and Katsura, Watsuji rejected the ornate characteristics of the former and praised the more moderate architectural approach of the latter. In writing these books, Watsuji relied on Sutemi Horiguchi (a highly regarded modernist architect) for measured drawings, and on the esteemed Yoshio Watanabe for photography. [End Page 479]
When Tokyo University professor Hirotarō Ōta, a prolific and respected scholar in his own right, offered a thorough criticism of the 1955 book in the journal Kenchikushi Kenkyū/ 建築史研究 (Architectural history research), Watsuji went on to make significant revisions to his earlier work in order to address the architectural issues raised. It was republished under the title:
In Japanese only. The first bound book on Katsura explicitly described as being a collection of photography; most effective at presenting architecture and landscape as integrated.
Japan in the World (1960–1980)
By the late 1950s, Japan began to revive its international tourism industry; the volume of overseas visitors would grow rapidly through the early 1970s, boosted first by the 1964 Olympics and then the 1970 Osaka International Exposition. Publication on Katsura flourished, reflecting this expanding international interest in Japanese traditions: a 1961 folio published by Bijutsu Shuppansha (美術出版社), with color plates tipped in, was captioned not in English, but in French; the first commercial guidebook in English on Katsura was published in 1962 (as well as a separate Japanese-language edition); and in 1970 a volume published in Spain included text in four Western languages (unconvincingly uniting Katsura and Daitokuji). Of the fifteen primary texts published in this period, all but one incorporated a Western language or was published in a separate translation. [End Page 480]
One of the most important books in this period was the 1960 Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture, a collaboration between the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange and a young Japanese American photographer, Yasuhiro Ishimoto. It was the first to be published in separate Japanese and English editions, the latter from the prestigious Yale University Press. However, the opening lines (“This book does not tell everything there is to tell about the Katsura Palace. It is neither a definitive introduction nor a historical study.”6) demonstrated that, even here, graphic information took precedence over scholarship, with a polemic that contributed to the book’s success. Its photography and book design emphasized a powerful modern-ist abstraction, effectively marrying Katsura’s architecture to a twentieth-century Bauhaus-inspired aesthetic, and suggesting modernism to be timeless, too (figure 7).
The book was an exception for the period; in fact, it might have been produced at the last possible moment when the use of black-and-white photography would not appear affected. Most volumes from this time exploited the increasing economic accessibility of color photography and offset lithography, which, together, allowed for the production of sumptuous, full-color “art books” by publishers focusing on the sector: Zōkeisha (造形社), Bijutsu shuppan-sha (美術社), Heibon-sha (平凡社), and Shōgakkan (小学館). Geared to the mass market, these books proffered lush photography printed in overscaled formats, incorporating often-perfunctory text. Publishers also produced multivolume encyclopedias surveying Japan’s most important architectural heritage, naturally including Katsura and its gardens. The pinnacle of this lavish approach was a 1970 book that returned to the larger grouping of imperial residences surveyed by Kawakami half a century before, Imperial Gardens of Japan: Sento Gosho, Katsura, Shugakuin finished in purple silk and gold leaf, and including essays by some of Japan’s most respected authors. While Katsura’s architectural beauty and fall foliage provided ample reason for the use of color photography, the increasingly opulent character of these volumes also seemed to underscore Japan’s growing economic confidence and reemergent comfort with its imperial history.
In the two-and-a-half pages of text Tange actually dedicated to Katsura, he referenced two scholars, Tetsurō Watsuji and Osamu Mori; oddly, the esteemed Dr. Mori’s name is written as “Atsushi Mori.” This underscores Tange’s strange and sketchy scholarship, but the book was a blockbuster; [End Page 482] it went into seven printings and is often found in the libraries of leading architects around the world a full five decades later. In a recent interview, Ishimoto claimed that Sutemi Horiguchi also offered behind-the-scenes translation support for Tange’s 1960 volume. Jointly released in Japanese and English, both publishers were listed in each language’s edition. The English text was likely translated by Charles S. Terry, as it is fundamentally the same as a later edition that credits him. Revised in 1971, the Tange book had less graphic punch. Gropius, oddly, was also cut from the new volume, with no explanation other than a reference to his recent demise.
Released in English as:
In Japanese; synopsis in English titled “The Katsura Imperial Villa,” by Kiyoshi Yokoi. Umesao, a cultural anthropologist, placed Katsura within the context of Kyoto’s other residences, but he also followed several tropes shared by architects writing on Katsura, lengthy historical discussion mirroring Taut’s concern with creative architectural will. The clean graphic character of the Tange volume seems to have influenced the photography here. (It is possible that Umesao’s ideas regarding cultural evolution influenced Tange’s otherwise peculiar discourse on ancient history published earlier.) [End Page 483]
In Japanese with very limited captioning in French. Color plates tipped in, the earliest use of color printing on Katsura; the book was also numbered. Yanagi repeated a position others, like Horiguchi, made, arguing that his ability to fully appreciate Katsura emerged only after he had spent time abroad. An English-language supplement, translated by George Saito and edited by Walter E. Morgan, was included in a slipcase for the international market.
In Japanese, with an English essay entitled “Katsura Detached Palace” and English-language captions. Used a back-to-back English-Japanese format. Mixed monochrome and color photography; also included a number of axial diagrams and analyses of the arrangement of stones or other garden and architectural ornaments. The extensive text on composition and visual relationships seems precociously concerned with applying fine arts analysis to Katsura.
The first guidebook on Katsura in a “modern, European” language; a pocketsize volume written for cultured visitors, reviewing the architecture and history of Katsura. Photography by the author. Wada made the point that it was only after repeated visits to Katsura with students that he was allowed a photography permit, highlighting the privilege Ishimoto enjoyed in the postwar climate, when he had been able to photograph Katsura for a full month. Published the same year in Japanese as:
Original in Japanese only. Not as strange as some pairings: Katsura and the Tōshōgū mausoleum in Nikkō were built around the same time and were for a time thought to have involved some of the same elite artisans. This post-war text used the two structures to represent an imperial household in quiet retreat during the Edo period, when the nation was dominated by samurai warriors, suggesting a similarly passive role during World War II (figures 8 and 9). Later published in English as: [End Page 485]
The book’s careful scholarship and excellent photography evolved from a version published serially in an internationally oriented English-language magazine on Japanese architecture:
Photography was credited to Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Yukio Futagawa, both under the employ of Japan Architect. The same measured drawings were used in the book and in the articles.
In Japanese and English. A slim pamphlet whose most notable characteristic is that it was used to promote a new color film and was, for the first time since the Kawakami folios, published by the Imperial Household Agency.
In Japanese with captioning in English. Large-format book, a visual feast, integrating architectural detail into an unusually large-scale context. Used plans very effectively to discuss specific sections of the book with a sense of intimate knowledge. A Japanese-only pocket book, based on the same material, was released four years later:
In Japanese, with few illustrations. A scholarly overview that carefully described Katsura’s architecture, with reference to its literary and historical background. Takeshi Nishizawa spent five years photographing Katsura, and Naitō first surveyed it from 1961 to 1965. With an emphasis on social [End Page 487] and cultural history, it is a very readable and richly illustrated book, which incorporated measured drawings and a large foldout plan of Katsura as an insert. Later published in English as:
In Spanish, English, French, and German. A Kyoto temple compound and Katsura made an odd combination, but this was not a scholarly book. (It, and the following volumes from the same year, may have been intended to take advantage of the many foreign tourists expected to visit Kyoto during the 1970 Osaka Expo.) Photographs were by one of Japan’s leading architectural photographers, Yukio Futagawa.
Later published in Japanese as:
Ishikawa headed the Imperial Household Agency’s Kyoto offices and chaired the board of directors for the Association of Kyoto Traditional Culture Foundation. The organization keeps in print a pamphlet developed later from this material, on Katsura only; it can be ordered over the Internet for five hundred yen (a bargain!) at http://Kyoto-dentobunka.jp/brochures.html. [End Page 488]
Compiled and translated from a three-volume set published only in Japanese:
Gorgeous, oversized book, finished in silk and gold. In addition to Itō’s architectural descriptions, three novelists each described an experience in an imperial garden, avatars for the reader; Mishima’s, on Sentō Gosho, was particularly fine. No expense was spared in the production of this book, which went into five printings in English.
In Japanese and English. Tall and fat, full of photographs, but not finely printed. Likely intended as a souvenir for the large number of international visitors who would be drawn to the region by the Osaka International Exposition.
In Japanese only. Large format, with color printing, but formulaic.
Renewal (1981–2001)
Although the Imperial Household Ministry attentively maintained Katsura from the 1880s forward, maintenance was piecemeal and reactive. In 1976 [End Page 489] (Shōwa 51), the ministry began an extensive renovation of Katsura’s large residential structure, Goten, that ended in 1982; renovations of the smaller teahouses in Katsura’s gardens began three years later and continued until 1991 (Heisei 2). Thus, great attention would be given to Katsura throughout the long period of Emperor Shōwa’s reign.
Documentation laying the ground for these renovations began in 1972; the following year oil prices jumped, initiating a global economic downturn; this is likely one reason Katsura’s renovations proceeded discretely. The economy also affected architectural practice in this period, and the field turned inward, emphasizing drawing over construction. Architects and scholars working with the leading professional journal in the field (Japan Architect/ 新建築), squandered an opportunity offered by these renovations: resulting publications featured extensive measured drawings of spaces in an obscure axonometric style fashionable at the time, with only limited attention to the careful preservation or to craft involved in the work. Unlike in the previous era, there was less concern for the international market.
The best volumes on the restorations were published in Japanese, often in limited editions that remain hard to find. The Imperial Household Agency initiated its own publications on the renovations: two volumes scrupulously documenting building conditions through photography and measured drawings, a few of which were deposited in major national archives and leading libraries. These also informed several other books highlighting the processes of construction and the unusual level of care taken in restoring Katsura. The best is a 1995 volume that extensively documented the changing state of each building during the restoration process, featuring essays by several authors with significant expertise, including Kakichi Suzuki, associated with the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and Yasunobu Tatebe, of the Institute of Traditional Japanese Architecture (日本建築専門学校).
The renovations took the better part of two decades, ending in Japan’s economically exuberant bubble era. Their completion produced a flurry of large, beautifully illustrated coffee-table books; the most commercially successful of these was also the earliest, coming out in 1983, shortly after the first stage of renovations. It involved Arata Isozaki, a leading Japanese architect, and Yasuhiro Ishimoto, the photographer who had produced the 1960 book with Isozaki’s mentor, Kenzo Tange. Ultimately published in English, French, Italian, and German editions, Isozaki’s text aggressively challenged [End Page 490] the two stories that had emerged around Katsura—the use of tradition, which had highlighted Katsura as a peaceful symbol of political retreat, and interpretations involving Taut and the Tange group that argued for the timeless nature of modernist aesthetics. Instead, Isozaki embraced Katsura’s rich materialism, in a clearly Oedipal stance. Goading Ishimoto to use color photography as a way to repudiate his earlier collaboration with Tange, Isozaki was the first author who consciously turned discourse on Katsura inward on itself. Kenji Miyamoto, in a similar spirit, would soon offer a close study of Taut’s time in the gardens.
A slim, unassuming hardcover mixing black-and-white photography from Ishimoto’s initial visit in 1954 and color photography from 1981 and 1982; thirty-six monochrome and thirty color photographs—Ishimoto’s best work—blended in a very casual manner. Nearly all the black-and-white images were also found in the 1960 volume with Tange and nearly all the color would also be included in a large 1983 volume published with Arata Isozaki. The book was likely intended as a souvenir, but the printing quality was higher than in either of the more expensive and elaborate publications. Elegant endpapers, front and back, featured additional monochrome images. A short accompanying essay in Japanese written by a leading historian modestly followed Ishimoto’s photographs.
The first comprehensive publication after Katsura’s extensive restoration, published by one of Japan’s leading architectural publishers. Very limited text, with discussion on the buildings and gardens that did not differ significantly from what had been written before the renovations; the focus was on the completed buildings, not the process or insights resulting from the extensive [End Page 491] renovations. Diagrams highlighted structural frames, interior shadow, and envelope opacity (translucent shōji or opaque doors), but the book was marred by excessive reliance on then-fashionable axonometric drawings (figure 10).
Later published in English as:
Then republished in a hardcover Japanese volume as:
Followed the conventions of coffee-table books.
After an absence of thirty years, Yasuhiro Ishimoto returned to Katsura twice, in November 1981 and February 1982, to document its extensive restoration [End Page 493] with color film. Isozaki’s essay highlighted the very aspects of Katsura that his mentor, Kenzo Tange, expunged, underscoring not only changes in architectural interest, but also the younger architect’s conflicted relationship with his teacher: “We shall eliminate any sort of Bauhaus-type analysis. We shall use those parts of the palace that have been neglected in former studies to illuminate our method. In particular, we shall take into serious consideration those brilliant, gorgeous, sometimes gaudy elements of taste and style . . . ” (3) (figures 11 1nd 12). Ultimately published in Japanese, English, German, French, and Italian. The English version was:
In Japanese. For anyone interested in the exacting restoration of Katsura, these volumes remain indispensable. They include extensive cataloging of the state of the structures before work was done; photographs of the buildings during restoration and some work in progress; and plans, sections, and details of the completed work. They also list the artisans involved in reconstruction and the specific materials and finishes used.
In Japanese. Following the extensive restoration of Katsura, Ōkawa’s book once again paired Nikkō’s buildings and Katsura. The texts, however, were more concerned with the buildings as an expression of the construction arts than as political symbolism. Essays started with a broad discussion of the shoin and sukiya styles by Kazuo Nishi, then moved into greater and greater detail: Shigeo Kawamoto on samurai residential planning, Kaori Chino on moving wall panels and interior space, Naoki Tani on carpenters’ expertise, and three essays more closely concerned with Nikkō’s carved ornament.
In Japanese only, with pen-and-wash illustrations by the author. An idiosyncratic approach including analysis of proportional order, site axes and grids, and an argument for Christian influences on some elements found in the garden, all based on formal theories popular in the 1980s (figures 13A and 13B). This book was developed while the author completed his doctoral dissertation on the same topic at Tokyo Fine Arts University (東京芸術大学). In spite of these points, the author made an effort to write in an accessible [End Page 495] fashion. He later produced a second book that further developed the thesis and added comparison to the Tōshōgū at Nikkō:
In Japanese only. An inexpensive pocket book that might even be used during walks; it placed Katsura in the context of its surroundings, both urban and topological.
In Japanese only. Itō, internationally recognized as a leading postwar Japanese architectural critic, was involved in several publications intended for professional readers, in addition to his essay included in this volume.
In Japanese only. Somewhat speculative: line drawings pictured artisans as they might have looked when working on site at the time Katsura was first built.
In Japanese only, with bibliographical references. Text was an homage to Bruno Taut; it also paired some of Taut’s sketches with photographs to demonstrate axial ties and patterns (figure 14).
In Japanese. About a third of the volume was taken up with new photography of Katsura’s renovations, dealing more frankly (and positively) than most with the fresh state of newly laid finishes (figures 15 and 16). Conditions during construction were portrayed in equally rich color photography with brief descriptive captions in Japanese; a related text covered some of the same points as the Imperial Household Agency’s publications on the renovations. (However, there were no photographs of workers or tools, as in the Imperial Household Agency’s publications.) Also included sixty-four pages of measured drawings (mostly plans, sections, and elevations, but some details), the most complete set I am aware of since Kawakami. One of the finest recent volumes on Katsura: slipcovered, beautifully printed, in an oversize format (39 cm. tall) with many double-page photo spreads and delicate washi interleaves, the book underscored the intrinsic value of Katsura in its production. [End Page 498]
In Japanese only. Included construction photographs at various stages of work, with some measured drawings. The extensive text drew on the earlier materials produced by the Imperial Household Agency, but photographs seem to have been taken by the author during restoration. Written with a focus on process, the book even included a chapter on the temporary construction needed to protect buildings while work was under way, as well as a chapter on wood preservation, including the use of wood fillers and other modern materials to combat the effect of insects and rot. [End Page 499]
In Japanese only. Inspired by an earlier book on craftsmen in Kyoto, Kazuko Kasai focused here on artisans who had worked on the restoration of Katsura, including representatives from the contractor and the head carpenter (棟梁), as well as specialists who worked with traditional roofing materials (葺師), plaster, tatami, ornamental metalwork (錺師), and printed papers (唐紙師) and their mounting (表具師). The book was intended for a general readership and was very accessible. For example, one section was titled, “Why is it that every time I visit Katsura, Goten’s paper screens (shōji) are shut?” Included limited photographs of the elderly craftsmen and their tools.
The End of Tradition–Or a New Beginning? (2000–)
Ever since the 1960s, coffee-table books on Katsura featuring attractive photography and limited, pro forma text in English and Japanese have remained a staple, though publishing after the turn of the millennium did slow to a trickle relative to other decades. Two books listed below were brought out by newspapers, suggesting that the symbolic value of Katsura’s story remains strong in some circles. The final book on the list was explicitly offered as a photography collection celebrating Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s long, successful career as it draws to a close—although its format equivocated by including two brief essays (one in English and Japanese and the other only in Japanese) on the architecture and history of Katsura. Notably, the story told in each of these three books did not stray significantly from essays on the imperial retreat penned decades earlier.
A few books instead followed the trajectory suggested by Isozaki’s initial effort on Katsura, offering not a discussion of the site—its architecture, gardens, or construction—but a deeper reflection on the discourse of Katsura, with particular interest in the impact of Bruno Taut and of Kenzo Tange, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, and Walter Gropius. It is fair to say that there is not much further this approach might go: the book edited by Virginia Ponciroli, involving both Isozaki and Ishimoto, gathered up the story of Katsura in the world using facsimiles of many earlier editions and even added a tidbit [End Page 500] or two, such as a postcard from the French architect Le Corbusier to Walter Gropius. Nakamori effectively shed light on the story of Tange’s ambitions with charming personal detail. This descriptive bibliography, and a related review I recently authored on Ishimoto’s many contributions to publishing on Katsura, are also postmodern examples of publishing on publishing.7
But bibliographies also underscore opportunities. A book dealer would once have developed a bibliography to enhance the value of rare and little-known volumes (and therefore, before publishing on the Kawakami folios, I made an effort to identify any found in the open stacks of university libraries and notify the staff of their rarity and potential value). Katsura offers an ideal example not only of the architecture and construction craft possible in seventeenth-century Japan but also of the political uses of architectural tradition in the twentieth century. The Kawakami folios are little known at home or abroad, and it is even unclear who Kawakami was; the extensive effort at renovation has also not been addressed in English. With modern library practices, it is easier to identify the locations of publications that document this work, and it is my hope that this bibliography will encourage others to take a deeper look. As Japan again turns inward, goaded by its waning economic status in the world at large, its traditions will again increase in interest. Perhaps there are new chapters to be written on Katsura.
In Japanese only. Primarily photographic, but included a brief text on Taut and Gropius.
The most comprehensive of recent English-language books on Katsura, which included republication of landmark texts: the first two sections of Isozaki’s 1983 work, excerpts from Taut’s diaries and his Nippon: Japan Seen Through European Eyes (1934). Several essays incorporated full-page facsimiles of earlier, influential books. Dal Co offered intriguing new detail regarding reactions to Katsura by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Incorporates measured drawings, apparently “as-builts” following restoration; Matsumura’s photography is splendid.
Miyoshi’s extensive photographic survey of the four residences in Kyoto under the supervision of the Imperial Household Agency returned to the approach seen in Kawakami’s folios seven decades earlier. Nearly two hundred fine photographs of Katsura, which express seasonal change in a way most such collections do not. There is some abbreviated information in short essays, chronologies, and captions; one essay is by Kazuo Nishi.
A fine book, tied to an exhibition of Ishimoto’s photography at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, that took pains to acknowledge the success of the 1960 Tange-Ishimoto collaboration even in its layout and topography. The Japanese-born author Yasufumi Nakamori, a photography curator with the museum, began this work as a chapter of his doctoral dissertation; the text placed Ishimoto’s artwork within the larger body of photographic production on Katsura that proceeded it and the complete body of Ishimoto’s output, including the 1983 color photography published with Isozaki. Nakamori offered archival materials from the 1960 book’s development, including letters [End Page 502] and personal snapshots held by Tange’s descendants and a chronology that began with Ishimoto’s birth; overall, the book embodies a sweet sense of nostalgia for the postwar era when the original work was undertaken. The conclusion, arguing that Ishimoto’s work was altered by Tange to achieve the strong character that made the original a success, is not wholly convincing, but it does not in any way detract from the diligent scholarship.
A limited edition of only one thousand copies, published for the photography market and strongly abstract. Beautifully printed in black and white, with several never-before-published images. The abbreviated text covers established territories: a Japanese-only essay by retired University of Tokyo professor Tadashi Yoyoyama started with the story of the Hachijō family and went on to describe the physical organization of Katsura’s buildings and gardens. Architect Hiroshi Naitō offered a more poetic endorsement of Ishimoto’s importance, calling him “an aged monk with the pure heart of a youth” in the English version of his essay. Ishimoto, in another text offered in both English and Japanese, recalled his encounters with Katsura over the decades.
Dana Buntrock is professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. She would like to acknowledge and thank Jesson Go, for graciously assisting her in sorting out many of these texts and scanning files, and Keila Diehl, for her encouragement throughout this project and open-mindedness about its approach. Without their support, this little project would never have arrived at a point where it might inspire others.
Notes
1. Approaches to rendering Japanese names have changed over time. Names such as Shūgakuin or Kenzō were often published without macrons in the postwar period; Itō was written as Itoh. While macrons are used in the text, original macron-free forms are employed when they reflect source information.
2. Notably, Higashikuze was asked to remove himself from the House of Peers quite early in the U.S. occupation. [End Page 503]
3. Taut (1942, 213).
4. Itoh (1956). Included three small photographs by the author and four larger, more carefully composed photographs by Yasuhiro Ishimoto debuting the American-born photographer’s Katsura work.
5. Ōkawa (1975, 146).
6. Tange (1960, v).