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The End of Architectural History and Reports of Its Demise

Topic Chair WAYNE MICHAEL CHARNEY, Kansas State University The End of the World as They Knew It: Architectural History and Modern Japan DON CHOI, California Polytechnic State University

Piranesi’s Rejection of the Critical History of Architecture GREGOR KALAS, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Fix the Car, Save the City: An Alternative Approach to Architectural History MARK KESSLER, University of California, Davis

A Way Through History With Frank Lloyd Wright SIDNEY K. ROBINSON, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture 736 SEEKING THE CITY

The End of the World as They Knew It: Architectural History And Modern Japan

DON CHOI California Polytechnic State University

“So how does all of this have anything to do with tory. The fi rst shift occurred in the middle of the the world ending?” An innocent question. nineteenth century with the aggressive adaptation “Accurately speaking, it isn’t this world. It’s the of Western concepts of architecture and history. world in your mind that’s going to end.” The second began at the end of WWII with the de­ “You’ve lost me,” I said. struction of cities and the discrediting of imperial ideology and continues to shape contemporary vi­ Haruki Murakami, sions of history. Sandwiched between these two Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World watersheds was the development of architectural Contemporary architectural visions of Japan stray history as a fi eld, as well as the maturation of the between antipodes of stasis and ephemerality. At modern fi eld of architecture in Japan. one pole are depictions of the post-millennial city without history, for instance the dystopias of an­ In Japan, the fi eld of architectural history devel­ ime fi lms such as Ôtomo Katsuhiro’s Akira or the oped in tandem with concepts of modern archi­ transient images that fl ash across Tokyo’s giant tecture on one hand and historical preservation video screens. Murakami Haruki, Japan’s most on the other. Through the mid-nineteenth cen­ renowned contemporary writer, creates realms tury, there was no fi eld of architectural history in separate from history and conventional time, such the European sense; only during the Meiji period as the world within the mind of the protagonist (1868-1912), when Japan attempted large-scale in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the modernization and Westernization, did European World. modes of architectural history take root. However, in Japan architectural history stemmed from a At the other pole are stereotypes of traditional unique set of motives and precedents. To exam­ Japanese buildings and gardens, which are often ine the development of architectural history dur­ seen as products of an ancient and timeless cul­ ing the Meiji period fi rst requires a glance at Japa­ ture. In either vision, time and history in Japan nese perceptions of historical architecture during appear to differ from American and Western Euro­ the mid-nineteenth century. pean norms. Both tableaus suggest a lack of the teleological narrative that has formed the basis THE END OF HISTORY CIRCA 1868 of the typical architectural history survey in the United States. To examine the question of the The Meiji Restoration of 1868 marked the political “end of architectural history” in Japan is thus to transition from the early modern period (ca. 1600­ step outside the Western tradition to see how one 1868) to modern Japan. In the following years, infl uential architectural culture has imagined time the Meiji state emphasized the development of and history in the modern age. modern technical, social, and political institu­ tions. Although the state had little explicit interest Between 1850 and 1950, Japan experienced two in historical architecture, its early policies show endings to architectural history. These endings carryovers of earlier perspectives on the role of were seen both as ends to a historical period and historical architecture. Through the 1860s, there as ends to a particular mode of architectural his­ was little interest in buildings as physical objects ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND MODERN JAPAN 737

to be preserved. For instance, the fi rst preserva­ only a minor place in the world of offi cial institu­ tion regulations in Japan, the 1871 Koki kyûbutsu tional architecture. Moreover, the indigenous un­ hozonhô (Ancient objects and articles preservation derstandings of the buildings of the past also would law), targeted thirty-one categories of objects at come to an end as Western-infl uenced theories of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples but did not architecture became dominant. In these ways the include buildings themselves. Three years later, Meiji Restoration of 1868 marked the beginning of the government stopped funding Buddhist tem­ the end for traditional understandings of historical ples and began to allocate to Shinto shrines mon­ buildings, and thus the end of one kind of archi­ ies for construction, maintenance and other ex­ tectural history. penses. However, as the historian Nishimura Yukio has noted, the basic aim of these policies was to MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND HISTORY guarantee the health of the shrines as institutions rather than to preserve buildings per se.1 In other In 1877, the Japanese government hired Josiah words, buildings continued to be seen as settings Conder, a young English architect, to teach ar­ for institutions and objects rather than as histori­ chitecture at the Imperial College of Engineering cal objects themselves. (ICE). This university, the fi rst modern technical college in Japan, was founded in 1873 to educate This perspective was rooted in the historical rela­ Japanese engineers, scientists and architects. Al­ tionships among painting, architecture and sculp­ though the ICE emphasized pragmatic subjects, ture. In contrast to post-Renaissance Europe, in Conder taught architecture through architectural Japan buildings were seen as qualitatively differ­ history. Like other British architects of the day, he ent from objects such as paintings, sculptures, believed that historical precedents served as the ceramics and other objects produced by skilled basis for modern design. To teach architecture, craftsmen and artists. With a few exceptions, then, meant to inculcate the history of architec­ buildings were generally designed and constructed ture into the Japanese students. In other words, by master builders who had little connection with architectural history entered Japan as part of the painters, potters, and other artists. Thus although desire to modernize. Because architectural history Japan boasted a long history of connoisseurship was tied to European architecture, and because in the arts, architecture itself was not part of the European architecture was seen as the modern same discourses of collection, interpretation and model to emulate, the future of Japanese architec­ evaluation. Moreover, since monumental buildings ture was tied to the European past. The buildings in Japan were constructed from wood, no build­ of the Western past became an integral compo­ ing of great age retained all of its original materi­ nent of the architecture of the Japanese future. al—the periodic replacement of tiles, timbers and other damaged elements ensured that buildings Because of his belief in history as the basis of ar­ were continually modifi ed. For this reason, build­ chitecture, Conder hoped that the history of Japan ings tended to be seen as objects of the present also would be incorporated into modern architec­ as well as creations of the past. ture in Japan. In describing the architecture course at ICE, he wrote, “great notice will be taken of the After 1868, though, these perspectives on histori­ principles and beauties of the Architecture of the cal architecture would change as the government Country, with a view to encourage the retention of pursued modern Western engineering and archi­ the best characteristics of the National Architec­ tecture. For example, in the fourth of fi ve articles in ture in future building, so far as is consistent with the 1868 Charter Oath, the Meiji emperor pledged, stability and security of construction, and with all “evil practices of the past shall be abandoned, and modern requirements.”2 However, both the meth­ actions shall be based on international usage.” Al­ odology and specifi c buildings of the architectural though the state and emperor took relatively little history familiar to Conder were derived from the interest in the buildings of the past, their sponsor­ nineteenth-century European context and thus had ship of modern technology led to new paradigms little to do with the buildings of Japan. For instance, of architecture based indeed on modern Europe James Fergusson’s A History of Architecture and rather than on historical Japan. For the next two Alfred Rosengarten’s A Handbook of Architectural decades, traditional Japanese buildings would take Styles, the two textbooks used by the Japanese 738 SEEKING THE CITY

students, included no buildings from Japan. More­ most renowned fi gures were Okakura Kakuzô, over, although Fergusson included examples from later famous outside Japan as an exponent of the China, these buildings were placed outside the ma­ Japanese tea ceremony, and the American Er­ jor narrative of his architectural history. nest Fenollosa. In 1888, the Imperial Household Ministry (Kunaishô) established the Rinji zenkoku Nonetheless, many of the students attempted to hômotsu torishirabekyoku (Extraordinary depart­ address the question of historical Japanese build­ ment for the national investigation of treasures). ings. These students, the fi rst of whom graduated This action was the culmination of efforts by in 1879, were the fi rst Japanese trained in Western Okakura and others to create a comprehensive modes of architecture and became the most influ­ national inventory, and over the next decade this ential architects in late-nineteenth century Japan. agency catalogued over 215,000 items. Architec­ Several students attempted to outline the devel­ ture, though, played only a minor role in this new­ opment of Japanese buildings in their graduation found interest in the Japanese past. For instance, theses. For instance, Kuru Masamichi, an 1881 when Fenollosa unveiled the famous Guze Kan- graduate, titled his thesis “History and Theory of non statue in the east precinct of Hôryûji in Nara, Japanese Architecture,” but noted that the lack of he had little interest in the Yumedono, or “dream systematic works on the subject made research hall,” that housed it. Fenollosa, who had become diffi cult. Even as they attempted to uncover the the non-Japanese spokesman for traditional Japa­ roots of Japanese architecture, Kuru and his col­ nese art, viewed paintings, sculptures and other leagues drew their methodology of architectural objects within a framework of connoisseurship, a history from Conder, Fergusson and Rosengarten. perspective ill-suited to architecture. (In fact, the From these fi gures the Japanese students ad­ Yumedono is inarguably one of the most impor­ opted an evolutionary model of architectural form tant early Buddhist artifacts in Japan. Constructed and decoration that posited climate and customs in 739, it is one of the oldest wooden buildings as architectural determinants. in the world and part of the most complete early Buddhist complex in Japan.) In this way, the beginnings of architectural history in Japan were tied to both the Western tradition The other major development in the nascent field and to historical Japanese buildings. However, be­ of architectural history was the introduction of tra­ cause the standard model of architectural evolu­ ditional Japanese architecture into the education tion assumed a linear chronological development, of architects. At the Imperial University (Teikoku Japanese buildings could not fi t into the Western Daigaku), the master builder Kigo Kiyoyoshi began model: Japanese architecture had no place in the teaching courses in Japanese architecture in 1889 progression that began with Egypt and continued (by this time Tatsuno Kingo had replaced his men­ through Greece, Rome and Western Europe. Ja­ tor Josiah Conder as professor of architecture).3 pan thus lay outside the fundamental narrative of Although Kigo was not a historian, he was trained architectural history, and the prevalence of this as part of a long lineage of elite builders who de­ Western model was one reason for the difficulties signed and constructed buildings in conventional in establishing architectural history in Japan. An­ Japanese modes. Through Kigo, students at ICE other reason was simply the lack of related schol­ who previously had been exposed only to Western arly fi elds. In Europe, architectural history had modes of architecture learned alternative ways of developed along with art history and archaeology, planning and building. but in the technology-oriented Japan of the 1870s, these latter disciplines as yet had no place. Kigo also conducted surveys of historical architec­ ture for the government.4 For Kigo, though, the TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURAL distinction between historical and contemporary HISTORY buildings was artifi cial; his knowledge of contem­ porary design and construction derived from tra­ In the 1880s, two sets of developments furthered ditional Japanese structures. For earlier architec­ the maturation of architectural history in Japan. ture students, such as Tatsuno Kingo and Kuru First, in 1882 the Meiji government began to Masamichi, who were trained in contemporary sponsor surveys of historical art objects. The two Western architecture, traditional Japanese build­ ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND MODERN JAPAN 739

ings had appeared as relics of the past. For Kigo, though, these buildings suggested a different kind of history, one that remained alive through the continuity of construction and design techniques. Kigo’s classes at the university and his work for the Meiji government made him the crucial link between the realm of traditional building practices and the offi cial world of Westernized architecture. It was in this gap between the two that architec­ tural history in Japan matured.

By 1890, then, government interest in historical Figure 1: Itô Chûta, “Architectural Dialogue,” ca. 1892. art and offi cial support of traditional Japanese ar­ chitecture began to create a context in which his­ torical Japanese buildings could be seen as worthy was the fi rst extended treatment of a historical analogues of works from the Western tradition. In Japanese architectural site. Earlier students had the following decades, the crucial fi gure in the es­ attempted brief histories of Japanese architec­ tablishment of architectural history as a fi eld was ture, but Itô was the fi rst to author a rigorous Itô Chûta. analysis of a single site. His ambitious essay ex­ amined the buildings themselves and then placed ITÔ CHÛTA AND THE CREATION OF A them in an extended chronological and geographi­ JAPANESE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY cal matrix. He argued that Hôryuji terminated a line of architecture that extended back to the em­ Among Kigo’s students at the university was Itô pire of Alexander the Great. He wrote, “this style Chûta, who graduated in 1892 and became the clearly keeps the appearance of the Chinese style, most vocal and perhaps the most infl uential ar­ faintly preserves the old traditions of India, and chitect of his generation. Unlike earlier architects furthermore retains vestiges of the Greek style.”6 such as Tatsuno Kingo, Itô questioned the hege­ He claimed that the architecture of ancient Greece mony of Western architecture. In 1894 he com­ spread east through Alexander’s empire and then plained that Europeans and Americans “disregard infl uenced architecture in India; those buildings the architecture of Japan” and that they were un­ in turn infl uenced Chinese architecture, which Itô der the misconception that “in Japan there was no saw as one of the origins of Japanese architec­ art (geijutsu) that should be called architecture ture. Itô adduced the entasis of the columns as (kenchiku).” Itô emphasized both that Japan was evidence of the vestiges of Hôryûji’s far-removed an island that had “preserved the fundamental Greek origins. character of the national polity” and that its archi­ tecture was linked to China, India, and Greece.5 In other words, Itô added an alternate branch to In other words, he attempted to establish both the traditional linear narrative of Western archi­ Japan’s uniqueness and Japan’s position within a tectural history. He argued that the story forked larger historical framework. In order to gain le­ westward from Greece to Rome, but also east­ gitimacy for Japanese architecture, Itô had to in­ ward from Greece to Asia. By adopting the frame­ corporate Japan into the standard Western view work of Western architectural history and using of architectural history. As one of the cartoons his knowledge of traditional Japanese buildings, from his student-era notebooks suggests, Itô was Itô was able to place Japan in a position analo­ searching for a dialogue between Western and gous to that of the cultures of modern Europe— Japanese architecture (fi gure 1). namely, heir to one of the two great currents in the historical development of architecture. This For Itô, Hôryûji, the Buddhist complex in Nara positioning of Japan at the end of a long chrono­ comprising the oldest extant wooden buildings in logical development can also be seen as part of the world, became the site that joined Japan and the larger redefi nition of Japanese civilization. As the West. Itô’s famous 1893 essay “Hôryûji ken­ a number of historians have noted, Japanese con­ chikuron” (A theory of the architecture of Hôryûji) cepts of civilization through the mid-nineteenth 740 SEEKING THE CITY

century took China as the center of civilization.7 Once the overwhelming military and technological superiority of Western nations became evident, though, Japanese fi gures came to view the degree of civilization not in regard to China, but in rela­ tion to chronological development. Nations such as England and the United States were seen to have achieved the most modern state of civiliza­ tion, the level to which Japan aspired. Itô’s work provided a variation on this theme: rather than claim that Japanese architecture had attained an identical state to that of the West, he argued es­ sentially that Japan’s achievements were separate but equal, and that Japan’s modern civilization would necessarily differ from the West’s.

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

As noted above, the original motive for architec­ tural history in modern Japan derived from the European nineteenth-century belief that historical architecture provided the roots of contemporary design. During the 1880s architects had already begun to develop eclectic buildings that incorpo­ rated both Japanese and Western sources; this shajiyô, or “shrine and temple style,” was perhaps the fi rst uniquely Japanese style in modern Japan. As Itô and others pursued a viable native archi­ tectural history for Japan, designers began at­ Figure 2: Dendôin (1912) designed by Itô Chûta. tempting deeper syntheses. Itô himself took this path, designing such works as Dendôin, a building for Tokyo Imperial Museum stipulated that entries for the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto. (fi gure 2) must be in an Eastern style (tôyôshiki) based on Here Itô’s free use of historical elements is visible Japanese taste (nihon shumi). This requirement in the Mughal-inspired window frames, quasi-Jap­ was related both to the nature of the commis­ anese brackets, vaguely Islamic dome, and Victo­ sion–the purpose of the museum was to exhibit rian English brick-and-stone polychromy. the art collection of the Imperial Household–and to growing nationalist sentiments in Japan. Wata­ Itô’s work in this idiom culminated in Tsukiji Hon­ nabe Jin’s winning entry used roofs and decorative ganji, a Buddhist temple in Tokyo completed in details derived from historical wooden temples to 1934. Since Buddhism had been one carrier in the provide the necessary Japanese fl avor to what transmission of architecture from India to China was in fact a steel and concrete structure. (figure to Japan, this project served as an embodiment of 3) Many other entries took the same strategy, one the phylogeny of Asian architecture.8 It was also a that had been used in buildings such as Nagoya statement of Japanese nationalism during an age City Hall. of military expansion. In contrast, architects of a modernist bent argued In fact, by the 1930s historical Japanese architec­ that buildings that combined the forms of ancient ture had begun to take on new meanings through timber constructions with modern ferro-concrete its relationships with nationalist ideology on one structure in fact violated the principles of histori­ hand and modernist architecture on the other. For cal Japanese design. As Jonathan Reynolds has instance, the 1930 guidelines for the competition observed, the modernist architect Maekawa Kunio ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND MODERN JAPAN 741

architecture. This era can be seen as a second end to architectural history in Japan. It also serves as one of the roots of current images of Japanese cit­ ies as places without pasts.

Since the 1950s, when Japan fi rst emerged as a prominent producer of avant-garde architecture, Japanese architects from Tange Kenzô to Isozaki Arata to Ban Shigeru have addressed architectural history in countless ways, but rarely as a coher­ ent linear narrative. For instance, in his 1960 Plan Figure 3: Tokyo Imperial Museum (1937) designed by Watanabe Jin. for Tokyo, Tange imagined a new city based not on historical building types and planning but on argued that his own abstract, modernist design growth and movement. He argued for “a new ur­ better fi t the principles of historical Japanese ar­ ban spatial order which will refl ect the open orga­ chitecture. He claimed that in pre-modern Japan nization and the spontaneous mobility of contem­ as in ancient Greece or medieval France, building porary society.” Modern transportation systems, design had grown from technology and materials. he claimed, “represent a superhuman scale, which Indeed, Maekawa made few distinctions between in no way harmonizes with the architecture of the the principles of historical Japanese buildings and late nineteenth century and the fi rst half of the 11 historical Western ones.9 Trained in part in the ate­ twentieth century.” Tange then proposed a new lier of Le Corbusier, Maekawa sought not to divide city of 10 million organized around large-scale, history into two currents, as Itô had done, but to linear transportation systems. This new Tokyo fi nd universal historical principles. would have served as an alternative city, built not on land but on Tokyo Bay, and housing no sign of At the close of the 1930s, then, architects could historical buildings. argue for alternate readings of Japanese history. Watanabe, at least in his museum design, sug­ Utopian plans by Tange and other architects pro­ gested that Japan’s architectural history was dis­ vided one source for the dystopian images cre­ tinct and unique; Maekawa, versed in European ated in the late twentieth century. In the recent modernism, argued for a certain unity of historical past, even as Japanese architects continue to be architecture.10 recognized for individual buildings, many of the most compelling images of cities and buildings A SECOND END TO ARCHITECTURAL have been created by writers, directors, and other HISTORY figures outside the field of architecture. These fig­ ures often draw on the same events that changed At any rate, it was not architectural debate that architects’ attitudes towards historical cities and led to the demise of these models of architectural buildings, especially the devastation of WWII, the history; rather, it was Japan’s failure in WWII and rapid the 1960s economic boom, and the “bubble the subsequent discrediting of much of the na­ economy” of the 1980s. For instance, in Akira, tionalist and imperialist culture of the 1930s. In Ôtomo Katsuhiro imagines a future in which Tokyo addition, all of Japan’s major industrial cities were has experienced not only WWII, but also WWIII, heavily bombed late in WWII; incendiary bombs a war that starts with a massive explosion remi­ obliterated the centers of Tokyo and Osaka, the niscent of the WWII atomic bombs. Ôtomo’s Neo- two largest cities, and atomic bombs devastated Tokyo, like the new Tokyo of Tange’s 1960 plan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With its cities in ruins exists not within historical Tokyo but on artificial and its ideology obsolete, Japan faced the Ameri­ land in Tokyo Bay. Neo-Tokyo thus occupies an al­ can occupation as a nation whose buildings were ternate space as well as an alternate time. destroyed and whose recent history was no longer valid. Moreover, in the aftermath of the war there In contrast, the characters in novels by Murakami was little economic or intellectual surplus avail­ Haruki often move back and forth between the able for the immediate reconstruction of historical everyday world of Tokyo and alternate environ­ 742 SEEKING THE CITY

ments in which space and time are structured in hôkokushû 413 (July, 1990): 151-158. unconventional ways. The protagonist in Muraka­ 5. Itô Chûta, “Nihon kenchikujutsu kenkyû no hitsuyô mi’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the oyobi sono kenkyû no hôshin ni tsuite,” Kenchiku zasshi World realizes that the second world he inhabits 92 (August, 1894): 228. is not, in fact, an exterior universe, but one that 6. Itô Chûta, “Hôryûji kenchikuron,” Kenchiku zasshi 7 exists within his own mind. Within one world (the (November 1893). Quoted in Ôta, Kenchikushi, 14. realm of daily existence) there is another universe 7. See for instance Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing that possesses a different history and time. That Japan: Time Space Nation (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, interior world, he fi nds out, will come to an end. 1998): 24-30; and also David Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California, 2005): 156-58. Any particular paradigm of architectural history also can be seen as a kind of interior world, albeit 8. For an analysis of the relationship between the Jôdo shinshû sect and Itô’s building, see Cherie Wendelken, one created by historians, architects, and various “Pan-Asianism and the Pure Japanese Thing: Japanese other fi gures. In the nineteenth century, and then Identity and Architecture in the Late 1930s,” Positions again in the middle of the twentieth century, the 8 no. 3 (2000): 822-25. world of architectural history in Japan reached an 9. For Maekawa’s position, see Jonathan Reynolds, end. In the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst centu­ Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Mod­ ry, there is no dominant paradigm that relates the ernist Architecture (Berkeley: University of California historical architecture of the past to the architec­ Press, 2001): 92-101. ture of the future; visions of ephemerality appear 10. In fact, neither of these architects was as doctri­ to have superseded images of permanence. naire as their competition entries might imply. Hara de­ signed buildings in modernist styles, and during WWII Maekawa produced a competition entry for the Japan- In fact, though, demographic and economic shifts Thailand Cultural Center that drew heavily on historical in Japan (for instance the declining population) Japanese residential architecture. suggest that the wholesale reconstruction of the 11. Tange Kenzô, “A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Japanese built environment engendered by the Structural Reorganization,” in Joan Ockman, Architec­ destruction of WWII and the economic booms of ture Culture 1943-1968 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993): the 1960s and 1980s will not be repeated. In oth­ 330; Ibid., 334. er words, the age of rapid turnover of buildings and disruptive urban change that helped spawn late-twentieth century architectural visions may give way to a period of architectural renovation and reuse. If this is the case, than historical ar­ chitecture—now mainly of the second half of the twentieth century, may become the foundation for a new framework that relates historical buildings to the contemporary city.

ENDNOTES

1. Nishimura Yukio, “Kenzôbutsu no hozon ni itaru Meiji zenki no bunkazai hogo gyôsei no tenkai,” Nihon ken­ chiku gakkai keikakukei ronbun hôkokushû 340 (June 1984): 105. 2. Calendar (Tokei [Tokyo]: Imperial College of Engi­ neering, 1877): 54. 3. For an examination of Kigo’s classes at Imperial Uni­ versity, see Inaba Nobuko, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi no Teikoku Daigaku (Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku) ni okeru Nihon kenchi­ kugaku jugyô ni tsuite,” Nihon kenchiku gakkai kei­ kakukei ronbun hôkokushû 375 (April 1987): 111-120. 4. See Inaba Nobuko, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi ga Meiji nenkan ni shûshû•sakusei shita Nihon kenchikugaku kanren shiryô,” Nihon kenchiku gakkai keikakukei ronbun