The Japanese House: Practice and Materiality

The Japanese House: Architecture and Life after 1945 brochure

Last week I visited ‘The Japanese House: Architecture and Life after 1945’ at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Having seen its incarnation in London, I found the differences in curation and content particularly interesting in terms of what was emphasised and what was omitted; highlighting differences in linguistics, understandings and promotions of Japan and 'Japan-ness' in architecture (Isozaki, 2006).

The exhibition sits appropriately within the field of human geography, attentive to the literature on geographies of home (Blunt and Varley, 2004), to how visual culture and ideas circulate and become branded (Iwabuchi, 1998), to how space and the body co-relate (Merleau-Ponty, 1964), highlighting the relationship between place, identity and society.

The touring exhibition displayed the same content of 75 houses, plans and models, yet the Tokyo version used a schema focusing on 'genealogies' as themes for the exhibition. These included Earthy Concrete, Play, Work of Art, From Closed to Open, Family Critiques, Vernacular: Ecology of Living, Lightness, Sensorial and Houses that Shape Cities. Rather than curating by chronology or themes alone, the schema cleverly showed the interplay between ideas, styles, history and societal context. 

Genealogies

Chart of Genealogies

The term 'genealogies' is illustrative of the complex linguistic meaning attached to the word house. When considering what house (家, ie) means in Japan, it not only expresses a masculine identity with a history of subordinating women, much like in British history (head of household often being a man). It also promotes patrilineal descent, embodying 'the notion of a genealogical line extending from the past' (Lebra, 1976). In English, the idea of home tends to be constructed around literatures of belonging, of relations and practice whereas house denotes the physical structure and materiality. In the Japanese language, there isn't such distinction with the word 'ie' pronouncing 'both the materiality of homes and the family relations within' (Ronald and Alexy, 2017). In such a way, domestic life can be ‘considered in terms of practice and materiality (Sand, 2005). 

Despite the breaking down of such dichotomies linguistically, the London exhibition was arguably more focused on geographical understandings of the home. The Barbican dedicated a room to the works of Yasujiro Ozu who has a distinct visual and thematic style focused on family relations, the home and the tension of a modernising Japan (Phillips, 2007). Of course, this makes sense to retract from the Tokyo iteration as it would be equivalent to a room dedicated to playing The Royale Family or Ken Loach films (although I would like to see such an exhibition).

Moriyama House Model, The Barbican Centre

The greater focus on practice was further evident in the full-scale model of Moriyama House, accompanied by the documentary film by Beka and Lemoine, detailing the life of it’s occupier: Yasuo Moriyama. He commissioned SANAA Architects to design 8 connected buildings with a part of this recreated at the Barbican Centre; with plants, books, music and objects to mark the uses of the home. The film documents the practices of Moriyama and his eccentricities: his love of noise music, and the various ways his body interacts with space – perching in unusual voids, laying on the floor, reading and sleeping in different rooms. Moriyama is somewhat of a hikikomori (shut-in); ’a 79-year-old modern hermit, who has never flown, taken a ship or indeed left Tokyo’ (Moore, 2017). Because of his inability to conform to common Japanese societal standards such as being a salaryman and having a family, he is considered other and perhaps as a result embodies space in a way inside the home as a reflection of the rejection he receives outside of the home. 

House NA, Sou Fujimoto

Moriyama house displays how the body co-relates to the space of the home and how this in turn plays on societal relations. In English homes, spaces are largely permanent and purposeful. A living room and a bedroom have placeholders such as beds and sofas that differentiate space. In Japan, sliding doors, tatami and futon have kept spaces as transient. This architectural impermanence sits in contrast to the quest for permanence in architecture common in Europe (Isozaki, 2006). Despite it being a feature of traditional architecture, this philosophy is retained in contemporary architecture that exhibits fluidity and breaking with established boundaries. This is well expressed in one of Japan’s most famous pieces of architecture, House NA. Here, the relationship between the body and space are confused. Unlike rooms with clearly defined walls and ceilings, the body is no longer confined to being in one space at a time, but can cut between spaces and be seen within spaces. In such a way, the body is not within space but inhabits, creates and embodies it (Ingold, 2009). This fluidity of space is further encapsulated through the use of material: glass that allows a two-way relation of seeing between in and out, blurring such dichotomies. 

Tea House, Barbican Exhibition

As much as House NA speaks to gaze, the exhibition programming can be further analysed through sight: both seeing and being seen. It is with an othering gaze that the everyday practices of the Japanese become interesting, but it is also an issue of self-branding and communication on how Japan wants to be seen. The London exhibition featured a tea house, accompanied by a scheduled tea ceremony and as such displayed the aesthetics of practice. Often it is such traditional symbols that will be on show in exhibitions, emphasising ideas of Japan-ness (Iwabuchi, 1998). These symbols of Japan, or self-manifestations are often prompted by foreign scrutiny (Isozaki, 2006). In such a way, the images of Japan can become sensational. It is often the quirky, adventurous buildings that merit such international attention and come to be seen as Japanese. However, having spent some time across Japan, one thing that is missing from this exhibition is mundane architecture. As you traverse the length of the country, you see many tiled houses, mass produced new builds that litter the landscape creating a genre of 'generic architecture' neglected in such depictions of Japanese houses (Worall and Golani, 2010).

I decided to audit the class ‘Introduction to Architecture’ as I loved professor Solomon Golani’s advanced class 'Special Topics in Design and Architecture' and wanted to further knowledge in this field.

The Introduction to Architecture class is based around The Japanese House exhibition. At the beginning of the course he lead us through architectural themes such as the architectural plan, scale, the site and features in a historical and theoretical context. The class then developed around the exhibition whereby each individual had to choose one house of the 50 in the exhibition to do an in-depth study of; firstly, presenting the history of the building to the class, then creating a to-scale model of the building, followed by further research and a further, more elaborate model.

Of course, this is an architecture class, but within the department of Liberal Studies, not in engineering or architecture so I found it quite compelling that the students were able to make, to conceive, to feel and grow attached to something through in-depth study and mimicking. Working from a contemporary framework with something tangible not only allowed a close reading of a piece of architecture but developed understandings of the societal context in contemporary Japan. 

When comparing this method to the UK education system, I noticed several differences. This style, although taught by an Israeli man, adopts an incredibly narrow but in-depth focus. It allows autonomy of the individual to conduct something personal whilst learning from other students. The knowledge each individual will obtain is limited to the reality of the architectural project. It is also highly focused on presenting ideas and Q and A’s. In the UK, the lecturer often, with or without their desire takes up the majority of the classes ‘space’. In this class, time was given over to the students. Working from an exhibition space however did remind me of how Jason Dittmer used the Wellcome Centre’s exhibition on health to look at theories of the body and how Jennifer Robinson took us to the West London to see the sights of regeneration projects. 

 References

Blunt. A and Varley, A., (2004) Geographies of Home, Cultural Geographies, 11, 1: 3-6.

Ingold, T. (2009) Against Space: Place, Movement, Knowledge. In P. Kirby (Ed.), Boundless Worlds: An Anthropological Approach to Movement, Oxford: Berghahn: 29-43.

Isozaki, A. (2006) Japan-ness in Architecture, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Iwabuchi, K. (1998) Marketing 'Japan': Japanese cultural presence under a global gaze, Japanese Studies, 18: 2 165-180. 

Lebra, T. S. (1976) Japanese patterns of behaviour. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.

Merleau-Ponty, M (1964) The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, Envanston: Northwestern University Press. 

Moore, R (2017) The Japanese House: Architecture and Life After 1945 Review - Sheer Imagination, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/26/japanese-house-architecture-life-after1945-barbican-review. Accessed 01.05.2018.

Phillips, (2007) Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, Abington: Routledge.

Ronald, R. and A. Alexy (2017) Home and Family in Japan: Continuity and Transformation, Abington: Routledge.

Sand, J. (2005) House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeous Culture, 1880-1930. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

Worall, J., and Golani Solomon, E. (2010) 21st Century Tokyo: A Guide to Contemporary Architecture: A Guide to Modern Architecture, Tokyo: Kodansha International.