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.
