The Tectonics of Japanese Style: Architect and Carpenter in the Late Meiji Period

Art Journal

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 1994, Pages 28-37

  Wendelken, Cherie ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84959956464     PISSN: 00043249     EISSN: 23255307     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00043249.1994.10791643     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. For a review of the changes in architectural design in the late Meiji period see Inagaki Eizö, Nihon no kindai kenchiku: Sono seiritsukatei (The formation of modern Japanese architecture) (Tokyo: Kajima Shuppankai, 1979), vol. 1; and Fujimori Terunobu, Nihon no kindai kenchiku (Modern architecture of Japan) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1993), vol. 1.
2. See Muramatsu Teijiro, Kindai wafü kenchiku (Modern Japanese-style architecture) (Tokyo: Kajima Shuppankai, 1988), 152–53.
3. Stewart, Making of Modern Japanese Architecture, 33–62, discusses the introduction of the Queen Anne and other European revival styles to Japan; Fujimori, Nihon no kindai kenchiku, vol. 1, chap. 8, reviews the yöshiki ronsö, the critical debate over architectural style in late Meiji.
4. In the late Meiji period the notion of Japanese style in architecture was specifically linked to the historicist notion of an architecture based on “ancient shrines and temples” (koshaji). By the 1920s the prototypes for Japanese style had secularized and broadened to include references to castle and tea architecture. Through the 1930s, Japanese style in architecture and the decorative arts was discussed using the term Nihon shumi (Japanese taste) that referred, among other things, to the ferroconcrete-based teikan yöshiki (Imperial Crown style) discussed in Stewart's Making of Modern Japanese Architecture, 111–12. Today the most widely used term to describe Japanese-style architecture is stylistically the most nonspecific, wafü kenchiku, a term that also originated in the 1920s in the context of hybridized residential design.
5. For a study of the role of religious and moral traditions in the emergence of nationalist ideology in late Meiji, see Carol Gluck, Japans Modern Myths: Ideology in Late Meiji, esp. 102-56.
6. Carpentry practices were handed down in manuals that outlined a complex system of structural proportioning, in conventions for the detailing of complex joinery, and in pattern books for the design of interiors and building elements. William Coaldrake discusses kiwarihö in The Way of the Carpenter: Tools and Japanese Architecture (New York: Heibonsha, 1989), 23-28; the subject is treated in detail in Waga kuni daiku. no kösaku gijutsu ni kansuru kenkyu (Research on the building techniques of the carpenters of our country) (Tokyo: Rödö Kagaku Kenkyujo Shuppanbu, 1984).
7. The details of Kigo Kiyoyoshi's career were unclear until his heirs’ donation of Kigo's personal library, drawings, and other family records to the Tokyo Municipal Library in the late 1980s. Architectural historian Inaba Nobuko, now of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, has researched and curated the collection; see Inaba Nobuko, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi no Teikoku Daigaku (Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku) jugyö ni okeru Nihon kenchikugaku ni tsuite” (A study of Kigo Kiyoyoshi's lectures in Japanese architecture at the Imperial University), Nihon Kenchiku Gakkai Keikakukei Ronbun Hökokushö (Research Journal of the Architectural Society of Japan, Planning Division) 374 (April 1987): 111–21.
8. The reconstruction of the Kyoto palace, with emphasis on the paintings used as sources, is discussed in Chino Kaori's “Kenchiku no naibu kükan to shöhekiga: Seiryöden no shöhekiga ni kansuru kösatsu” (Interior space and murals: a consideration of the murals of the Seiryöden), vol. 16 of Nihon bijutsu zenshü: Katsura Rikyü to Töshögu (Survey of Japanese art: Katsura Villa and Toshögu) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1989), 158–65.
9. The series of proposals for the Meiji palace is documented in Onogi Shigekatsu, Meiji Yöfu Kyütei Kenchiku (Meiji Western-style palace architecture) (Tokyo: Sagami Shobö, 1983), 44–52.
10. Ibid., 21–23., Onogi Shigekatsu, Meiji Yöfu Kyütei Kenchiku (Meiji Western-style palace architecture) (Tokyo: Sagami Shobö, 1983)
11. See Hashimoto Fumio, Architecture in the Shoin Style: Japanese Feudal Residences (Tokyo: Ködansha, 1981), for a discussion of grand residential architecture prior to Meiji.
12. The design of the Ho-O-Den was based on the Höödö, the eleventh-century pavilion at the Byödöin in Uji. The Ho-O-Den is noted in the history of modern American architecture as a possible influence on Frank Lloyd Wright, the firm of Greene and Greene, and other architects in the late nineteenth century. A detailed description of the Ho-O-Den is found in Okakura Kakuzö's pamphlet, The Ho-O-Den (Phoenix Hall): An Illustrated Description of the Buildings Erected by the Japanese Government at the Worlds Columbian Exhibition (Chicago: K. Ogawa, 1893), passim.
13. Inaba, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi no Teikoku Daigaku,” 111–12.
14. Inoue Shöichi, in Höryüji-e no seishinshi (The moral history of Höryüji) (Tokyo: Köbundö, 1994), emphasizes the importance of the role that Ernest Fenol-losa and other foreign scholars played in the Meiji-period evaluation of Höryüji. Yet in Tsukurareta Katsura Rikyü shinwa (The constructed myth of Katsura) (Tokyo: Köhundö, 1992), he minimizes the originality of Taut's evaluation of Katsura in the 1930s.
15. For example, Ota Hirotarö, in Kenchikushi no sendatsutachi (The development of Japanese architectural hjistory) (Tokyo: Shökokusha, 1983), 9–19, mentions Kigo in passing, stating he did not teach architectural history, and focuses on the contributions of Kigo's well-known student Itö Chüta.
16. See Inaba, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi no Teikoku Daigaku,” 115–18.
17. Inaba, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi ga Meiji nenkan shüshü, sakusei shita Nihon kenchikugaku kanren shiryö” (Research materials on historic Japanese architecture compiled in the Meiji period by Kigo Kiyoyoshi), Nihon Kenchiku Gakkai Keikakukei Ronbun Hökokushö 413 (July 1990): 151–59.
18. A detailed inventory of the buildings Kigo and his students surveyed is found in Inaba, “Kigo Kiyoyoshi ga Meiji nenkan shüshü,” 153, 156.
19. Inoue, Höryüji no Seishinshi, 5–20.
20. See, for example, James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: John Murray, 1891), 709–10; and Ralph Adams Cram, Impressions of Japanese Architecture (1905; reprint, New York: Japan Society, 1930), 32.
21. See Inoue, Höryüji no Seishinshi, 5–69.
22. See Murai Yasuhiko, Zusetsu Heiankyö (The illustrated Heiankyö) (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1994), 38–41; a detailed analysis of the design process is given in Inaba, “Heian Jingu” (Master's thesis, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 1987).
23. See Inaba, “Heian Jingu,” passim.
24. For a collection of pre-Meiji carpenters’ drawings that include site plans, structural details, and building sections, see Kokuritsu Minzoku Hakubutsukan, Kozu ni miru Nihon no kenchiku (Japanese architecture seen in old drawings) (Tokyo: Shibundö, 1989).
25. See Muramatsu, Kindai wafü kenchiku, 152-53; and Fujimori, Nihon no kindai kenchiku 2:15–18.
26. See Nishimura Yukio, “Kenzöbutsu no hozon itaru Meiji zenki bunkazai hogo gyösei no tenkai” (Architectural preservation and the protection of cultural properties during the early Meiji period), Nihon Kenchiku Gakkai Ronbun Hökokushö 351 (May 1985): 38–47.
27. For a discussion of Oe's work at Nikkö and information about practices at other early restoration projects, see Ota Hirotarö, Rekishiteki fado no hozon (The conservation of historic landscapes) (Tokyo: Dai’ichi Höki, 1982).
28. For a description of kaitaishüri and a cultural history of the preservation program in Japan, see chap. 2 of my “Living with the Past: Preservation and Development in Modern Japan” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993).
29. See Takahashi Masao, in “The Development and Training Programme for Conservation of Wooden Architectural Monuments in Japan,” in Proceedings: ISCRP Wood Preservation (Tokyo: ICCROM, 1983), 231–40.
30. For a description of the reconstructions and restorations of the Great Buddha Hall, see William Coaldrake, “The Architecture of Tödaiji,” in The Great Eastern Temple (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago Indiana University Press, 1986), 33–47.
31. Nara Prefecture, “Tödaiji Daibutsuden shüri köji hökokushö” (Report of repairs to the Great Buddha Hall at Tödaiji) (Nara Prefecture, 1911).
32. A summary of Sekino's ideas and methods is available in English; Sekino Tadashi, ’The Conservation of Ancient Wooden Buildings in Japan,” in Proceedings: World Engineering Congress (Tokyo, 1929).
33. Hatsuda Toru, Kindai wafü kenchiku: Dento o tsutaeta sekai (Modern Japanese-style architecture: The transmission of tradition) (Tokyo: Kenchiku Chishiki, 1992), 142, 312.
34. See Okawa Mitsuo, “Shin Nihonshiki no kirameki” (The appearance of a new Japanese style), in Hatsuda, Kindai wafü kenchiku, 132, 141–45.