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Architectural History and Modern Japan

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Architectural History and Modern Japan 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 infl u- 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
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