A Journey through Japanese Architecture, Old and Newby Abby Enscoe, MEng.

Preface

I received the SOM Foundation’s Structural Engineering Travel Fellowship in 2009. The fellowship allows recent structural engineering graduates to travel anywhere in the world to experience and study architecture. Through the fellowship, I spent two and a half months exploring Japan and studying architecture ranging from ancient temples and shrines to modern skyscrapers. Japanese architecture—both old and new—has long been my favorite, and I am deeply indebted to the SOM Foundation for the opportunity to experience these wonderful buildings in person.

All photographs and drawings are mine unless otherwise noted. Many Japanese buildings—particularly temples and museums—do not allow photography, and several prohibit drawing. This means that I have no visual record of certain buildings, especially interiors. I apologize for this omission.

The paper is organized around groups of key buildings, arranged by category and then roughly by age within each section. Short sections discussing elements of Japanese architecture appear throughout. Pictures of additional buildings are included at the end of the report with the same organization, without text.

Table of Contents

........................................................................................................................................Introduction! 1......................................................................................................Map of Japan with Cities Visited! 2

.................................................................................................................................Elements: Gates! 3

................................................................................................................................................Shrines! 4......................................................................................................................Elements: Rebuilding! 10

.............................................................................................................................................Temples! 11...............................................................................................................Elements: Wooden Joints! 16

..........................................................................................................................................Temples II! 17..........................................................................................................................Elements: Gardens! 23

..................................................................................................................................................Villas! 24...............................................................................................................................Elements: Wood! 27

..............................................................................................................................................Castles! 28....................................................................................................................Elements: Tatami Mats! 35

..................................................................................................................Residential Architecture! 36................................................................................................Elements: Layers, Detail, Materials! 41

..........................................................................................................Museums (and an Aquarium)! 42................................................................................................Elements: Competing for attention! 48

..............................................................................................................................................Modern! 49.......................................................................................................................................Tadao Ando! 60

........................................................................................................................Additional Buildings! 69..............................................................................................................................................Shrines! 70.............................................................................................................................................Temples! 75

..................................................................................................................................................Villas! 79........................................................................................................................................Residential! 82

..........................................................................................................................................Museums! 85..............................................................................................................................................Modern! 90

.....................................................................................................................................Tadao Ando! 100

Expanded Table of Contents

........................................................................................................................................Introduction! 1......................................................................................................Map of Japan with Cities Visited! 2

.................................................................................................................................Elements: Gates! 3

................................................................................................................................................Shrines! 4Ise Jingu! 5

Itsukushima Jinja! 7

Fushimi Inari! 9

......................................................................................................................Elements: Rebuilding! 10

.............................................................................................................................................Temples! 11Horyu-ji! 12

Todai-ji! 13

T"-ji (Ky"-"-gokokuji Temple)! 15

...............................................................................................................Elements: Wooden Joints! 16

..........................................................................................................................................Temples II! 17Byodo-in! 17

Sanjusanjend" (Renge"-in Temple)! 19

Kodai-ji! 20

Nishi Hongan-ji! 21

..........................................................................................................................Elements: Gardens! 23

..................................................................................................................................................Villas! 24Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa (Katsura Detached Palace)! 25

...............................................................................................................................Elements: Wood! 27

..............................................................................................................................................Castles! 28Himeji-jo! 29

Matsumoto-jo! 33

Matsue-jo! 34

....................................................................................................................Elements: Tatami Mats! 35

..................................................................................................................Residential Architecture! 36Sanmachi district! 37

Kakunodate samurai district! 38

Traditional Farmhouses (Open air museum of old Japanese farmhouses, Hida-no-Sato)! 39

................................................................................................Elements: Layers, Detail, Materials! 41

..........................................................................................................Museums (and an Aquarium)! 42Tokyo Sea Life Park! 43

Nima Sand Museum! 44

Gallery of Horyuji Treasures! 45

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art! 46

Suntory Museum of Art! 47

................................................................................................Elements: Competing for attention! 48

..............................................................................................................................................Modern! 49Nakagin Capsule Tower! 50

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices! 51

Shin Umeda Sky Building! 52

Tazawa-ko Station! 53

Kyoto Station! 55

Prada! 56

Tod#s Omotesando! 57

Christian Dior Omotesando! 58

Mikimoto Ginza 2! 59

.......................................................................................................................................Tadao Ando! 60Church of the Light! 61

Water Temple! 63

Garden of Fine Arts! 65

Sayamaike Museum! 66

Chichu Art Museum! 67

........................................................................................................................Additional Buildings! 69..............................................................................................................................................Shrines! 70

Izumo Taisha! 71

Sensoji! 72

Kasuga Shrine! 73

Meiji Jingu! 74

.............................................................................................................................................Temples! 75Yakushi-ji! 76

Kiyomizudera! 77

Daitoku-ji (Koto-in subtemple)! 78

..................................................................................................................................................Villas! 79Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavillion)! 80

Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavillion)! 81

........................................................................................................................................Residential! 82Buke Yashiki Samurai Residence! 83

Otaru Warehouse District! 84

..........................................................................................................................................Museums! 85Peace Memorial Museum! 86

Ukiyo-e Museum! 87

Tepia Science Pavillion! 88

Pola Art Museum! 89

..............................................................................................................................................Modern! 90Former Hokkaido Government Office Building! 91

Izumo Taisha Former Train Station! 92

National Gymnasium! 93

Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Systems Building! 94

Asahi Brewery! 95

Tokyo International Forum! 96

Matsumoto Performing Arts Center! 97

National Art Center! 98

Naoshima Ferry Terminal! 99

.....................................................................................................................................Tadao Ando! 100Museum of Literature! 101

Minami-dera! 102

International Library of Children#s Literature! 103

21_21 Design Site! 104

Introduction

First, an argument in favor of travel.

Visiting buildings in person differs fundamentally from studying plans or looking at photographs. A visitor can stumble upon unexpected views and watch her perspective shift as she walks forward. The feeling of passing through a mighty gate or of emerging from a low-ceilinged corridor into an open room is not easy to understand from a distance. It is nearly impossible to predict in advance how a building will feel. Planning this trip, I looked forward to experiencing structures in all their three-dimensional, dynamic glory.

It’s even better than that.

The buildings taught me again and again to appreciate my senses. The sound of falling water changes the experience of a place. So does the feeling of running your hand along a smooth, polished concrete wall. Or a rough stone wall. A shrine built over water smells different from a shrine built over land, and the light on the water shrine dances continuously as the water ripples below. Walking across wooden castle floorboards in bare feet, feeling irregularities smoothed by years of use, is not the same as walking the same path in boots. The sounds of clapping hands and coins falling into collection boxes are fundamental elements of Shinto shrines. The smell and the feel of tatami mats are fundamental elements of Japan.

Even from a single vantage point, our eyes make observation a rich experience. Where a photographer must pick an exposure setting, losing detail in the light and dark parts of the picture, our eyes can continually readjust to reveal a wealth of subtleties in bright and dark areas. A place that looks uniformly black in a photograph is actually many different grays and browns. An exterior wall the same color as the sky does not actually blend into the sky when you see it in person. The time it takes our eyes to adjust is part of architecture too: walking into a sunlit room from a dark corridor is completely different from walking into a sunlit room from a sunlit corridor.

I have tried to record these impressions, and to let my experience of the structures guide this report. I have enjoyed studying the history of Japanese architecture, and will include history, construction details, and structural information whenever it makes sense. I hope to convey here a little of the feeling of walking through these places, with the time to linger on the details.

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Final Itinerary (chronological):   Building (Architect)  City  Prefecture 

Senso‐ji  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Tod’s Omotesando (Ito)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Christian Dior Omotesando (SANAA)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Prada (Herzog and de Meuron)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

National Gymnasium (Tange)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Pola Art Museum (Nikken Sekkei)  Hakone  Kanagawa 

Design Space 21‐21 (Ando)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Suntory Museum of Art (Kuma)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

National Art Center (Kurokawa)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Tepia Science Museum (Maki)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

International Library of Children’s Literature (Ando)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Gallery of Horyu‐ji Treasures (Taniguchi)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Tokyo Sea Life Park (Taniguchi)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Nakagin Capsule Tower (Kurokawa)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Systems Building (Tange)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Mikimoto Ginza (Ito)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Tokyo International Forum (Vinoly)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices (Tange)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Meiji Jingu  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Asahi Brewery (Starck)  Tokyo  Tokyo 

Byodo‐in  Uji  Kyoto 

Katsura Detatched Palace  Kyoto  Kyoto 

To‐ji  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Garden of Fine Arts (Ando)  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Himeji Castle  Himeji  Hyogo 

Kyoto Station (Hara)  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Nishi Hongan‐ji  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Ise Jingu  Ise  Mie 

Yakushi‐ji  Nara  Nara 

Horyu‐ji  Nara  Nara 

Kasuga Shrine  Nara  Nara 

Todai‐ji  Nara  Nara 

Sanjusanjendo  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Fushimi Inari  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Kinkaku‐ji  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Daitokuji—Koto‐in subtemple  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Kiyomizudera  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Kodai‐ji  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Ginkaku‐ji  Kyoto  Kyoto 

Shin‐Umeda Sky Building (Hara)  Osaka  Osaka 

Sayamaike Museum (Ando)  Osakasayama  Osaka 

Himeji Museum of Literature (Ando)  Himeji  Hyogo 

Church of the Light (Ando)  Ibaraki  Osaka 

Open air museum of traditional Japanese farmhouses  Toyonaka  Osaka 

Peace Memorial Museum (Tange)  Hiroshima  Hiroshima 

Nima Sand Museum (Takamatsu)  Nima  Shimane 

Buke Yashiki Samurai Residence  Matsue  Shimane 

Matsue‐jo  Matsue  Shimane 

Izumo Taisha  Izumo  Shimane 

Izumo Taisha old train station  Izumo  Shimane 

Chichu Art Museum (Ando)  Naoshima  Kagawa 

Naoshima Ferry Terminal Building (SANAA)  Naoshima  Kagawa 

Minamidera Art House Project (Ando)  Naoshima  Kagawa 

Benesse House Museum (Ando)  Naoshima  Kagawa 

Water Temple (Ando)  Awajishima  Hyogo 

Itsukushima Jinja  Itsukushima  Hiroshima 

21st Century Museum of Art (SANAA)  Kanazawa  Ishikawa 

Hida‐no‐sato  Takayama  Gifu 

Sanmachi district, Takayama  Takayama  Gifu 

Matsumoto Performing Arts Center (Ito)  Matsumoto  Nagano 

Ukiyo‐e Museum (Shinohara)  Matsumoto  Nagano 

Matsumoto‐jo  Matsumoto  Nagano 

Tazawa‐ko Station (Ban)  Tazawa‐ko  Akita 

Kakunodate District  Kakunodate  Akita 

Odate warehouse district  Odate  Akita 

Former Hokkaido Government Office Building  Sapporo  Hokkaido 

Map of Japan with Cities Visited

2Map outline from www.worldatlas.com

Elements: Gates

Exploring Japanese architecture means passing through gates. Every shrine, temple, castle, and villa has one or more gateways, ranging from simple stone torii outside neighborhood shrines to elaborate wooden temple gates that feel like buildings in their own right and take several seconds to pass through.

Temples, castles, and villas feature wide entry gates, often with several columns, complex roof systems, and intricate wooden joints. These gates often lead to courtyards enclosed by thick walls and covered corridors. Several layers of gates sometimes separate the outer world from the most protected area.

Gates make you feel transitions. Walking under a wide gate takes time and feels powerful, as if you have crossed a significant barrier and entered a world separate from the one you left a few seconds before. As you walk under the gate you often cannot help but look up; watching thick wooden beams pass over your head conveys a sense of time passing, the world turning, progress being made. The fierce guardian statues that reside in some temple gates heighten this effect.

Torii, the ubiquitous gates that form an integral part of every Shinto shrine, vary impressively in terms of both size and effect. Made from stone or wood, left unfinished or painted bright orange, they are typically constructed from two cross-beams spanning two cylindrical columns. Though commonly built at a scale that comfortably fits a person, they range from miniature torii placed on shrines by worshippers to mighty structures such as the 24 meter tall torii of Heian Jingu, which precedes the main shrine by a long city block and towers over a wide, traffic-filled street.

Torii signify the entrance to sacred space. Crossing under torii, however, feels much less momentous than passing under a mighty temple gate. It is almost possible to walk under the narrow torii without noticing. Perhaps because they stand alone rather than forming an opening in a wall, they feel natural, marking off the world without demanding much attention. Passing through layers of torii in large shrines calms you, subtly separating the inner shrine from the bustle of everyday life.

3Torii at Meiji Jingu, Tokyo

Shrines

Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion, emphasizes the worship of the natural world and the Kami—deities or sacred forces—who inhabit it. Shinto practice often focuses on sacred rocks, trees, or mountains. Practitioners also visit shrines to worship the Kami who reside inside the shrine buildings. Most people in Japan practice Shinto, often alongside Buddhism; the two religions have come to coexist quite peaceably.

The first Shinto shrines were probably small and portable—similar to shrines carried in traditional festivals today.1 Today, larger stationary shrines vary widely in style, but generally contain torii and one or more sanctuaries. Visiting Shinto shrines involves a series of ritual acts: visitors first purify themselves at the entrance by pouring spring water onto each hand, and then approach the main shrine, throw coins into the donation box, clap their hands twice, bow, pray, and bow again.

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1 Kazuo Nishi and Kazua Hozumi. What Is Japanese Architecture? Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.

A fountain at a shrine entrance with ladles for

ritual purification

Ise JinguDate: 4 C.E. (claimed, Naiku), 477 (Geku), ritual rebuilding starting in the 7th centuryLocation: Ise, Mie Prefecture

Shinto shrines were traditionally dismantled and rebuilt every several years in order to preserve spiritual purity and renewal. The great expense associated with reconstruction in modern times has stopped this practice everywhere but at Ise Jingu, Japan’s most sacred Shinto shrine. Two shrine complexes—Naiku (Inner Shrine) and Geku (Outer Shrine)—contain the main shrines, over a hundred secondary sanctuaries, and a bridge leading to the Inner Shrine complex, all rebuilt every 20 years since the 7th century. The 62nd rebuilding will be completed in 2013.

Each modern reconstruction costs millions of dollars and takes several years to complete. Carpenters construct the building using the original methods, passed down from generation to generation of builders. The 20 year interval allows trained carpenters to instruct new generations in building techniques that are not practiced anywhere else. Through constant reconstruction, the shrines are both ancient and new—physically new but also physically connected to the buildings that preceded them many centuries ago.

Each structure stands in one of two identical adjacent lots that lie to the East and West of each other. The second lot remains empty except for a small wooden hut called an Oi-ya, built around a short Shin-no-mihashira, or heart pillar.

The heart pillar must remain hidden at all times. During reconstruction, carpenters build the new sanctuary around the Oi-ya, deconstructing the hut only after completing the building around it. On the first site, an Oi-ya is constructed around the heart pillar inside the sanctuary before the sanctuary itself is disassembled. Priests transfer Kami and other treasures to the new sanctuary in nighttime ceremonies, renewing them during the transfer.

Ise’s buildings are constructed in the Shimmei architectural style, famous for its simplicity. The main shrine buildings, hidden behind a tall fence, are considered too sacred for public viewing—only the Emperor can enter them. Subsidiary buildings follow the same architectural style, however, and thus give visitors a chance to see how the main buildings look. Two free-standing columns, the munamochibashira, lean slightly inwards and support the roof beam. 2 Joists at the gable ends extend

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2 Ibid

Rebuilding the Uji bridge, seen from the existing bridge

A sanctuary in the Geku complex

A sanctuary in the Geku complex

above the miscanthus thatched roof, and katsuogi—roof billets—line the ridgeline.3 Columns run directly into the ground. Wood is unpainted and unfinished, adding to the impression of unadorned simplicity and calm. Simple wooden torii lead into the complexes as well as to individual sanctuaries.

Ise Jingu feels deeply connected to its surroundings. Sanctuaries lie nestled in the forest that fills the expansive shrine complexes amidst fog, ponds, dripping water, and bird calls. Tree branches and folded paper strips indicate sacred spaces throughout the forest, and from time to time an important rock or tree is roped off for protection. Damaged trees are patched with bark. Even full of visitors traveling along a broad gravel path, the forest feels wild compared to the controlled, consciously designed gardens that fill Japan’s temples and cities. The buildings look well-made, with careful, tight-fitting joints and wood cut at exact angles, but also purposefully simple and unadorned. They create a place to stop

and contemplate the forest, and life, without drawing attention to themselves.

In addition to housing statues of Kami, Shinto shrines allow people to worship the natural world. In some, including Nara Prefecture’s Miwa shrine, a mountain replaces a building as the main focal point, emphasizing the importance of nature above the physical shrine.4 At Ise, thousands of visitors pad calmly through the forest along gravel paths, pausing to pray at numerous wooden sanctuaries before reaching the gate outside the main Inner Shrine. The buildings’ simple lines and bare wood allow them to blend into the forest; moss growing on torii and bamboo and paper on trees further blend the division between nature and the built environment. The sanctuaries call people to stop and notice their surroundings, breathing in the wildness of the forest.

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3 Ibid

4 Ibid

The Naiku complex

Visitors walking up stairs to the main Inner

Shrine

Bark patches on a tree

Itsukushima JinjaDate: probably 9th century, rebuilt in current form 12th century, rebuilt 16th century (Noh Stage rebuilt 1875)Location: Itsukushima (popularly known as Miyajima), Hiroshima Prefecture

Legend claims that Itsukushima Jinja was constructed over water to accommodate commoners, who were not allowed to set foot upon the deeply sacred island of Itsukushima. At high tide, they could pass through the otorii—the ‘o’ at the front of the word signifies particular respect—and approach the shrine on boats. Taira no Kiyomori, the powerful head of the Taira clan, transformed the original shrine into its current form in the 12th century, but kept its walkways and otorii over water.

Water and location make the shrine magical. A long, bright orange walkway guides visitors over the bay, past the central shrine and a Noh stage, and onto the shore at the other side. A steep, green mountainside rises from the island behind the shrine. Water adds the smell of wet wood, the ripples of light dancing on the ceiling beams, the sound of waves splashing, and the impression that the pathway is swaying slightly. The air feels fresh and clean. The Noh stage extends out from the shore into the center of an open rectangle of corridor. Watching performances across a small stretch of water must have been amazing.

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The otorii seen through the main shrine

The main shrine

Corridors in the main shrine

Far out in the bay, the mighty 16 meter otorii stands solidly in the flowing water. The two twisting, tapering tree trunks that serve as its main columns give the impression that it grew there of its own accord and has roots that reach deep into the earth. It looks powerful, ready to withstand whatever destructive forces will come its way.

As the tide goes out, mud surrounds the corridor and stage, and the water stands knee deep around the otorii. Shoes line the spit of mud that juts towards the mighty gate. People wade out towards it, startled at its size now that they can see it up close. Joints that looked small from a distance actually contain wedges a foot wide; the column bases are perhaps six feet in diameter. The otorii stands immutable in the midst of tidal changes that completely transform its surroundings and people’s relationship to the shrine, adding to the impression of its might.

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The otorii at high tide

The otorii at low tide

The main shrine at low tide

Fushimi InariDate: 8th centuryLocation: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

Fushimi Inari Shrine, dedicated to Inari, the Shinto deity of rice cultivation and business success, is famous for a winding path through thousands of bright orange torii. At times tightly packed and at times irregularly spaced and several yards apart, the torii lead visitors on a 4km hike up, along, and down a steep hillside past an assortment of smaller sanctuaries. Worshippers place small orange torii onto the stone sanctuaries, creating a warm contrast with the gray stones.

As I walked along the path, the flow of gates overhead created a nearly constant feeling of progress, not unlike driving through farmland and watching rows of crops sweep by outside. In the beginning, where the torii were packed closely together into a tunnel, I found myself covering a great deal of ground without much thought. The torii continually divided the long space, drawing my attention to the sequence of columns and beams and the patterns of light and dark.

Later, as the torii spread out, the outside world returned. My feeling of progress continued, but my attention focused on the forest that I had entered almost without noticing.

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Torii in the forest

Tightly packed torii

Large torii in the pathway and small torii placed on stone shrines

Elements: Rebuilding

Perhaps the most striking thing about traditional Japanese architecture is the degree to which buildings have been rebuilt, starting in ancient times. Stories of temples reconstructed several times over the centuries abound, as do examples of buildings which burned down soon after construction, over a thousand years ago, only to be rebuilt immediately.

Far from being a modern response to tourism and historical preservation, rebuilding is an intrinsic part of Japanese architecture. Buildings can continue past their original lifespans. Reconstructions sometimes preserved the original form, sometimes included modifications, and sometimes changed the building’s form entirely, and some modern reconstructions go so far as to model intricate wooden structural systems with concrete. Regardless of the specifics, people saw and continue to see reconstructed buildings as fundamentally connected to their predecessors. People often say a temple is as old as its original buildings, even if all those buildings were destroyed and reconstructed centuries later.

Shinto shrines no doubt influenced this view of reconstruction. Shrines such as Ise Jingu were traditionally rebuilt at regular intervals to ensure purity and continuity of construction knowledge. Thus, shrines could be ancient and new at the same time. This view of age reaching back past the age of individual buildings created a precedent for rebuilding unintentionally destroyed structures throughout Japanese architecture.

The predominance of wood as a building material perhaps made a strong tradition of rebuilding inevitable. While certain buildings are breathtakingly old—Horyuji temple contains wooden structures dating to the late 7th or early 8th century—wooden buildings are vulnerable to disaster. Even those Horyuji buildings, the oldest wooden buildings in the world, are themselves reconstructions of the originals, completed in 607 and burned down in 670.5 Fires account for the vast majority of buildings destroyed, with earthquakes, war, and political turmoil playing roles as well. The Japanese tradition of reconstruction serves well in a country with both an abundance of fragile building materials and a rich architectural history.

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5 Ibid

Buildings reconstructed at different times at Yashukuji temple outside Nara

Temples

Buddhism first arrived in Japan from Korea and China in the 6th century. Temple architecture was imported at roughly the same time, and the first Buddhist temple complex was probably Asukadera, constructed between 588 and 596 and no longer standing.6 Developments in China continued to influence Japanese Buddhist architecture for centuries. Complexes contain a variety of arrangements of pagodas, halls, and roofed corridors with wide gates passing through them. Historically, rulers and Buddhist sects invested great time and money into temple construction. As a result, temples generally showcase the most elaborate construction techniques and ornamentation of any traditional Japanese buildings.

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6 Ibid

Kuromon Gate, at a temple in TokyoYashuki-ji temple complex

Horyu-jiDate: 607, burned 670, rebuilt late 7th or early 8th century, some parts destroyed and rebuilt sinceLocation: Nara, Nara Prefecture

First built in 607, Horyu-ji burned down in 670 and was reconstructed in the late 7th or early 8th century. The temple’s Five Story Pagoda (Gojū no Tō), Golden Hall (Kondō), Inner Gate (Chūmon) and much of the Corridor (Kairō) have survived since then, and are now the oldest wooden buildings in the world.7

Sitting just inside the main gate, surrounded by these buildings, I found it hard to comprehend wood so old. Wood is vulnerable to fire, water, and insects, not meant to last forever. Traveling in Japan offered example after example of the material’s susceptibility to destruction. Yet these buildings have lasted.

Patches fill sections of columns that had suffered insect damage, and surfaces look deeply weathered, yet the buildings have survived countless earthquakes and 14 centuries of use. Exploring the complex, I had a hard time not thinking of them as delicate, in need of protection.

The existing buildings display Asuka era (552-710) architecture, including slightly convex columns and cloud pattern brackets.8 The buildings look less adorned than newer temples, with simpler joints and fewer flourishes. The huge cloud pattern brackets—bigger than a person—are striking. Builders must have invested great effort in carving out the cloud pattern from inside the mighty beam,

demonstrating an impressive commitment to aesthetics. Dragons represent water in Japan, and curl around the Golden Hall’s columns to protect it against fire.

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7 Ibid

8 Ibid

The Chūmon Gate

A patch on a column

Rafters supported by cloud pattern

bracketsThe corridor

A cloud pattern bracket and rafter

Todai-jiDate: 760, destroyed 1180, rebuilt late 12th century, Great Buddha Hall rebuilt identically around 1700Location: Nara, Nara Prefecture

Todaiji’s Great Buddha Hall, or Daibutsuden, the largest wooden building in the world, was originally fifty percent larger. The mighty Nara era complex also originally included two 100m pagodas, far taller than any that exist today. The scale today astounds visitors; the original temple must have demanded awe.

After Todaiji’s wartime destruction in 1180, the priest Chōgen, who had travelled to China several times, convinced the shogun to rebuild the temple in the Chinese Song style. Constructed by Japanese and Chinese sculptors and carpenters, Todaiji’s architecture became known as the Great Buddha Style for the 15m tall Buddha inside the main hall. The Great South Gate, or Nandaimon, holds two fierce guardian statues that date, with the gate itself, to the late 12th century.

The Great Buddha Style streamlined construction for the incredible scale of Todaiji’s buildings. Identical blocks and increasingly long brackets stack on top of each other, making connections simpler and allowing for mass-production of individual parts. Stacked brackets also let loads transfer back to the columns without exerting much pressure on the lateral ties that span the length of the buildings. Fascia runs under the edge of the roof, removing the need for an additional layer of adornment. Open ceilings simplified construction even further. The well-organized exposed brackets and

beams provide architectural flourish not through irregularities or adornment but rather by forming structural systems that are very small compared to the overall buildings. The difference in scale makes the orderly rows of brackets and blocks appear intricately detailed in themselves.

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The Daibutsuden (Great

Buddha Hall)

The Daibutsuden Nandaimon Gate

The Great Buddha Style of architecture on

the Nandaimon Gate

In person, the Nandaimon gate is impressive. Huge columns extend to the roof. Every other bracket arm in the almost endless stacks of brackets reaches back through the supporting column and across the building; the alternate bracket arms end at the far side of the thick columns. The guardian statues loom high above visitors, looking dangerous. It takes several seconds to walk under the wide gate; the experience encourages visitors to feel small.

The Daibutsuden is enormous, far bigger than I expected. Looking up at the ceiling captures the feeling of the spires of stone cathedrals and of redwoods in an old growth forest. It seems almost natural rather than man-made. It is dazzling that it reaches so high, that the space inside is so big, but it leaves the impression that it could have somehow grown there on its own, over time. The Buddha, too, is impressively large and weighty. It makes the large braces that fill the hall look tiny and intricate, like frills or icing on a cake.

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Guardian statue in the Nandaimon Gate

Bracketing inside the Daibutsuden

The Great Buddha Columns inside the Daibutsuden

Tō-ji (Kyō-ō-gokokuji Temple)Date: 794 and onwards, most recently rebuilt 1644 (pagoda), 1603 (Kondō), 1596-1615 (Kōdō), 1380 (Miei-dō)Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

At first glance, Kyoto does not feel like an ancient capital. A modern and for the most part not particularly attractive city, it tends to confuse foreign visitors who expect geishas and tea ceremonies and temples to sweep them away from the start. Emerging from the train station, a visitor finds gray buildings, convenience stores, modern restaurants, and not a temple or a patch of green in sight.

Instead, the ancient parts of Kyoto are nestled deep into the modern chaos. The effect is disconcerting, the transitions aggressive, and the sense of discovery, upon unexpectedly wandering into an ancient shrine, magical.

Sitting on the front steps outside Tōji temple, I looked across weathered stones, a murky Koi pond, and a four lane street at closed store fronts and a King Pachinko parlor, complete with flashing neon lights. The first sight of the greenery that stretched over the walls behind me felt like finding an oasis in the middle of the surrounding south-of-the-station grunge. Music drifted through the gate to mingle with the sound of traffic.

Tōji’s famous five-story pagoda, the tallest in Japan at 187 ft, has burned down four times from lightning strikes since its initial construction in 826. The most recent reconstruction took place in 1644. In person, it rose dramatically above a graceful

garden and turtle pond. Along with every other temple pagoda on the trip, it was unfortunately closed to the public and could only be experienced from the outside.

The Kōndo, or Main Hall, smells wonderful—dry and woody, with a light breeze drifting in between wall boards. The huge open room, tall columns, and detailed ceiling latticework make entering the hall a calming experience. The carved Buddha and attendants inside look majestic but approachable; the room matches them in scale.

Inside the Kōdō, or Lecture Hall, rows of columns separate an outer corridor from a higher-ceilinged inner area that fills much of the hall. Twenty-one Esoteric Buddhist statues sit on a raised stage in this middle area. A vertical wooden boundary extends a meter or two down from the ceiling between the interior columns, marking the interior as sacred and important but letting the corridor areas feel like places in their own right. Less intricate detailing and bright orange paint make the sense of open space far less dramatic than in the Kōndo.

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Bracketing on the five-story pagoda

Lotus plants outside the main

complex

The Kōndo (foreground) and Kōdo

(background)

Elements: Wooden Joints

Elaborate bracket systems support temple roofs. Supports are composed of beveled bearing blocks (masu) and bracket arms (hijiki) joined in varyingly complicated arrangements. Bearing blocks on top of columns are called large blocks (daito) and those on top of bracket arms are called small blocks (makito).9 In the simplest temples, beams rest directly on brackets, while in the most complicated, dizzying layers of blocks and brackets extend in several directions from supports.

The outward complexity, however, doesn’t begin to do justice to the internal complexity of the joints. Bracket arms, blocks, beams, columns, and railings are largely held together without nails by intricate wooden connections, hidden from view inside the individual members.10 Blocks connect to supports through notched tenon joints. Railings notch into columns before being secured with wedges. Beam-column connections can become almost unbelievably complex. A desire to keep connections vertically aligned meant fitting joints inside columns, a complicated task when four large beams arrive at a column together.11

The immensity of the carpentry skill required to build temples astounds me. Constructing a temple complex such as Todaiji, even with streamlined fabrication methods, meant carving out the notched interiors of hundreds if not thousands of blocks and notching columns to tightly hold layer upon layer of bracket arms in several directions at once. Everything had to be completed by hand, with chisels and hand saws. Beams and columns were so large that even the simple task of checking fit would have been difficult. The end result is a giant temple held together against gravity and earthquakes by the strength of wooden members notched against each other. Each block and bracket arm fit tightly together. Each intricately notched beam-column connection balances joint strength against the necessity of keeping the reduced members large enough to withstand seismic forces and displacements.

16

9 Ibid

10 Zwerger, Klaus. Wood and Wood Joints: Building Traditions of Europe and Japan. Basel: Birkhauser, 2000.

11 Ibid

Wooden connections in a temple

in Tokyo

Methods for connecting blocks

to bracket arms (from Zwerger,

according to Bunkazai)

Column-bracket connections at Todaiji

(from Zwerger, according to Bunkazai)

Temples II

Byodo-inDate: Phoenix Hall, 1053Location: Uji, Kyoto Prefecture

Pure Land Buddhism emerged in Japan during the Heian period, growing in popularity so much so that the monk Honen founded an official Pure Land sect in the 12th century. In contrast to other forms of Buddhism, which emphasize the extreme difficulty of attaining enlightenment, Pure Land Buddhism asserts that anyone can achieve rebirth in the Western Paradise—a land full of Boddhisattvas from which it is much easier to attain enlightenment—simply through the devoted repetition of Amida Buddha’s name. Offering, in a sense, a shortcut to enlightenment and a more accessible form of Buddhist practice, it spread widely and is now the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan.

Pure Land Buddhism first gained popularity among the nobility. Rich families began to convert their villas into Pure Land temples and gardens to make Amida’s image continually accessible.12 One such temple, Byodo-in, was constructed by the powerful Fujiwara clan for this purpose. The most famous building in the complex, and the only to survive fires in the 14th century, is the Hōdo, or Phoenix Hall. The Hall contains a large cypress statue of Amida, surrounded by paintings of the Western Paradise and by 52 carved Boddhisattvas floating on clouds. The bright, sumptuous colors that originally covered the now faded structural members were designed to evoke the Paradise as well. In plan, the hall is designed to resemble a phoenix, with corridors extending from the main room representing wings and a tail.

17

12 Kazuo Nishi and Kazua Hozumi. What Is Japanese Architecture? Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985

A wing of the Phoenix Hall

The Phoenix Hall roofLotus plants in front of the Phoenix Hall

Roof detail

From the outside, the Hōdo has a huge, dominating presence. It instantly taught me, on my first day outside Tokyo, how utterly different it feels to see an ancient building than to see a recent reconstruction of an ancient building. More than simply conveying great age, its weathered wood, faded paint, and open corridors make it look fierce and tough. I could picture it surviving as all the buildings around it burned down, a mythical beast looking out stolidly from behind its pond and bracing itself for the future.

Inside the hall, Amida fills the room, glowing golden. Jocho, a master carver, built the Buddha from several pieces of wood, covering joints with cloth and lacquer to make it look like a single form. As I stood just inside the door in the midst of a swarm of visitors, Amida’s expression first looked impassive, as if he might grant us salvation but did not care much either way; after several minutes of gazing up at him, he seemed to smile slightly. The room feels deeply focused on contemplating the Buddha. He is too big for the room, too big to walk in the door, and the space around him appears small from the inside. It gives the impression that the hall was built around him as he meditated calmly.

18

The Phoenix Hall, seen from across the pond, where members of the Fujiwara clan sat to contemplate Amida Buddha

Sanjusanjendō (Rengeō-in Temple)Date: 1164, rebuilt 1266Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

Sanjusanjendō, or the Hall with 33 Bays, stretches roughly 120 meters long and holds 1001 statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon. One thousand standing life-sized Kannons fill the hall on ascending steps, facing forward across its narrow width. Hand carved out of Japanese cypress, they look almost identical but vary slightly upon closer inspection. One larger than life-sized Kannon sits calmly in the middle of the hall. Each statue has 40 carved arms, and each arm can save 25 worlds, representing the real deity’s thousand arms. A Thunder God, Wind God, and 28 guardian deities accompany the rows of Kannons.

Columns divide the long, symmetrical hall into two outer corridors and a larger central area that all run lengthwise. The top row of Kannons reaches nearly to the ceiling and separates the back corridor from the rest of the room. A peaked roof over the central section connects to shallower roofs on the sides. The hall smells of old wood and feels immensely long and narrow. An archery tournament used to take place along its length, and the thought of hitting a target at the distant far end sounds impressively daunting.

Huge cross-beams separate the bays, and encourage a visitor to look sideways at the Kannons rather than ahead down the length of the hall. The beams are an excellent architectural nudge, as looking at the Kannons is a stunning experience. The hall goes on for so long, and so many calm Kannons look out over your head at the outer wall as you slowly pass in front of them. One thousand feels like an immense number. The audacity of the carving project impressed me deeply, as did the idea that each deity has the power to save 1000 worlds.

The entire hall is built on layers of clay and sand, isolating it against earthquake damage. During an earthquake, the sand layers provide a flexible horizontal surface while the clay layers provide vertical stability, much like a modern base isolation system. Signs also point out that the wooden joints were intentionally designed to be flexible to prevent earthquake damage.

19

Roof detail

The length of the hall

Moat around the layers of sand and clay

under the hallThe front of the hall

Kodai-jiDate: 1605Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

A thatched moon-viewing pavilion rests calmly above the pond in Kodaiji’s stroll garden. Further uphill, the Garyoro, or Reclining Dragon Corridor, curves dramatically down a steep slope. Gold-plated lacquer-work decorates structural elements in the sanctuary enshrining Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Kita-no-Mandokoro, Hideyoshi’s wife, who founded the temple after his death. Careful joints and details fill the more recently reconstructed main hall, including an intricate wooden ceiling lattice and open walls on three sides to allow visitors to contemplate the garden.

Two tea houses reportedly designed by Sen-no-Rikyu, the master of tea ceremony art and architecture, stand on top of a steep hill above the rest of the temple. The tea houses, Kasa-tei and Shigure-tei, were moved to Kodaiji from Kyoto’s Fushimi castle in the 17th century. Rikyu prepared and served tea in small tea houses designed to enhance appreciation of the pure, natural elements of tea ceremony. In both of Kodaiji’s tea houses, well-crafted details and sections open to the outdoors give the relatively small spaces a feeling of calm. Kasa-tei features a steep roof with a beautiful bamboo ceiling said to resemble a traditional Japanese sun umbrella. The combination of its raised floor, steep, overhanging roof, and angled shutters direct an occupant’s view down the steep hillside. Sitting inside, high above the temple but also solidly connected to the ground, must feel simultaneously liberating and comforting.

20

Kasa-teiʼs bamboo ceiling

The Reclining Dragon Corridor, from

above

Kasa-tei

Moon-viewing pavilion in the stroll garden

Nishi HonganjiDate: 1591, Goeido (Founder’s Hall) rebuilt 1636 and Amidado (Hall of Amida Buddha) rebuilt 1760Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

The head temple of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition, Nishi Honganji dazzles with opulence. The glamour builds slowly as you walk in the large front gate. An elaborate golden lantern glows in front of the dark wood. Delicately carved wooden panels and metalwork decorate the gate’s surfaces. Outside the two large halls, curved beams, intricate connections, and gold-plated lacquer-work offer a taste of what will follow. A raised walkway connects the Founder’s Hall and the Hall of Amida Buddha. Structural members end in carved flowers and elephant heads.

Inside the Amidado, or Hall of Amida Buddha, the detail is too much to take in all at once. Layer upon layer reveals itself as you sit and gaze about the hall. The altar area, taking up almost a third of the room behind a row of gold-plated columns, glows golden. Adornment covers each part of each intricately constructed element. Ridges embellish nail cover plates; paintings line the wall. The back and sides of the room are much simpler. White panels form the top half of the walls; rice paper on dark wooden lattices fills the space below, partly as sliding doors. Columns around the edge of the hall are smaller and more frequent than those in the middle.

21

View from the Amidado towards the Goeido

Kuro-mon Gate

The walkway between the two halls

Lacquerwork on the Amidado

Front gate detail

Tatami mats line the floor, making the room smell wonderful. Large columns divide the hall into three sections, each with a large golden lamp casting a glowing circle of light on the tatami mats below. Nearly everyone praying kneels in the large central circle.

Entering the hall feels something like stumbling upon a clearing in a forest to discover a festival in full swing and sitting down inside the clearing to watch. The front glows so elaborately that the walls behind and to the side almost disappear. Your focus is directed forward, but you are included in the festivities as well through the circle of light that surrounds you. Entering doesn’t feel momentous, but once you are inside, the hall wraps you up and the outside world at your back fades away.

22

Front hallway of the AmidadoInside the Amidado, back wall

Worshippers inside the Amidado

Elements: Gardens

Japanese gardens taught me the value of exploring without regret. Paths fork, change directions, and curve back into themselves continuously, making systematic exploration impossible. Walking along meandering stepping stones, you find yourself choosing between a path that curls uphill towards a tea house and one that leads down to a stone bridge over a pond. Exploring the edge of a stream means missing an ancient pine tree. An attempt to cover every path in a large stroll garden would both make a person crazy and ruin the experience from the start.

Instead, the intricate gardens are best wandered quietly, impulsively, and with a willingness to experience the garden’s beauty as it unfolds. Designed for long term contemplation, these gardens have much to show visitors willing to walk slowly, focus on the path at hand, and stop from time to time to examine the moss or a rock in a stream. They capture a more tightly wound version of nature than nature itself would ever create, perhaps a bonsai version of nature. Intricate details layer on top of each other. Symmetry is aggressively avoided. Stone paths never provide steps that make it clear where you should put your feet. The gardens tame the natural world into something more detailed, without the natural moments of open space: a clearing around a tree, an empty pond, or a meadow filled with dry grass.

The combination of intricacy and divergent paths fills garden exploration with a heightened sense of discovery. If you pay enough attention you stumble upon unexpected details. A tree branch dips down to touch the path. The water from a spring turns pebbles red as it trickles toward a pond. A heron alights on a rock. Garden architecture complements these experiences, letting the unexpected sight of a gracefully curved rafter or a tiny shrine or a window that frames tree branches feel like a rare discovery.

23

The garden at Kinkaku-ji villa in Kyoto

Villas

Rich families often invested vast resources in designing and constructing elaborate villas, both for private use and for business. Upper class Japanese families tended to value high quality architecture and had the means to make lofty architectural concepts a reality. They also built structures to last. As a result, their villas serve as some of the best-preserved and most fully realized examples of past architectural eras.

24

Ginkaku-ji villa in Kyoto

Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa (Katsura Detached Palace)Date: 1615-1650s or 1660s, probably remodeled sinceLocation: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

The Sukiya style perhaps best captures popular images of traditional Japanese architecture. In Sukiya, tatami mats, shōji screens, and rough wooden members create an intricate yet understated living space, presenting carefully planned views of the outside world. Developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, Sukiya melded formal Shoin residential architecture and tea ceremony art and architecture into the design of elegant places for the nobility to spend their daily lives.

Many see Katsura Imperial Villa as the finest example of traditional Sukiya architecture. Built in the 17th century as an alternate residence for the Hachijonomiya family, it consists of one main structure—which includes the Old Shoin, Middle Shoin, Music Room, and New Palace—five tea houses, and an intricate pond, all nestled into a formal garden. The tea houses have appropriately whimsical names: Tower of Moonlit Waves (Geppa-ro), Pavilion of the Lute in the Pines (Shokin-tei), Pavilion of Admired Blossoms (Shoka-tei), Hall of the Garden Forest (Onrin-do), and Hut of Smiling Thoughts (Shoi-ken).13 Meandering paths guide visitors along irregular stepping stones and present ever-changing views of the garden and pond.

While slow rambling and contemplation would best suit the villa, regimented tours—which must be arranged in advance—are required. Visitors cannot pause between official tour stops or walk on any but the designated path. The continual sense of visual delight makes it hard to accept the impossibility of exploring at your own pace.

25

13 Ibid

A teahouse and bridge in the garden

Bamboo roof detail

View from a room in the main building

Lovely details fill the spaces. In one tea house, although the roof beam is supported at its ends, a curved branch stretches to the middle of the beam as if providing structural support, giving the impression of lightness. Another room is designed so that windows on adjacent walls present two completely different views, one of water and one of land. At the end of a path that extends into the pond, a large pine tree deliberately blocks the view, preventing visitors from seeing the entire villa; the tree ensures that people will discover the views gradually as they explore.

The tea houses have open walls, and feel more like places to stop and contemplate the garden than buildings separate from it. Construction details—thatched roofs, wooden joints, and stone bridges—combine with the detail of the surrounding garden to make nearly everything appear intricately layered. In the midst of this beauty, the windows and doors of the buildings frame views of their own, providing an additional layer of experience.

26

A curved branch makes the ceiling look light

A pine tree intentionally blocks a complete view of the

garden

View of the garden from the main building

Elements: Wood

Wood and related products—paper, straw, and bamboo—have pervaded Japanese architecture since ancient times. While stones and similar materials played a dominant role in architecture throughout much of the world, in Japan they served largely as foundations. The importance of wood accounts for the frequency of destruction as well as the feasibility of repeated rebuilding projects. Wood grows, ages, burns, and grows again. Tatami mats are replaced at regular intervals. Shōji screens do not last forever. The presence of the wooden products themselves matters deeply as well. Rooms feel warm and light even without windows. The details of tatami mats, trellises, and shōji screens add a calming layer of texture to traditional buildings.

Wood favors certain structural forms and construction techniques over others. The simplest wooden buildings have column and beam structural systems, which serve as the dominant system in traditional Japanese architecture. The lack of load-bearing walls associated with these structures allows for great openness and adaptability of space, with moveable shōji screens and wall panels in turn dividing and opening rooms.14 Wood does not lend itself to arches or circles; buildings tend to follow rectangular forms, both in plan and elevation. Rectangular tatami mats and shōji screens complement this tendency, adding a sense of coherence to Japanese rooms. As a material, wood’s adaptability encourages the intricately notched joints and tight connections that fill Japanese buildings as well as the carvings and lattices that adorn them.

Cross-bracing is notably almost entirely absent from traditional Japanese architecture. Instead, columns and beams act as elaborate moment frames, carrying lateral loads solely through rotational stiffness in notched wooden joints. The resulting flexibility of the structures reduces forces and accelerations in the buildings during earthquakes.

The natural shapes and sizes of wooden materials have a large impact on Japanese construction as well. Mighty trees become columns which run the entire height of castles,

pagodas, and halls, holding the structures together during earthquakes. Beams that naturally curve upwards accommodate vertical deflections and provide architectural flourish. Buildings often incorporate uncut, meandering branches into their structure, adding a welcome irregularity and connection to nature to otherwise orderly structural systems. Bamboo and straw add intricate detail that would not emerge naturally in stone buildings.

Nowhere did I feel the presence of wood more deeply than in Japanese castles. Wood fills the buildings—columns, beams, floorboards, trim, wedges, panels—oiled and dark and smooth. Rough-cut beams complement carefully notched window trim. Columns reach mightily between floors. The memory of trees is kept alive in the larger members, which retain much of their original shape and structure. The size and pervasiveness of the wood that fills castles makes their rooms warm and sturdy and soft in a way that stone castles could never achieve. This style of architecture will probably never happen again, but it is wonderful to experience.

27

14 Ibid

A naturally curved member acts as both a

column and a beam

Inside Himeji castle

The natural upward camber of Horyujiʼs roof

beams makes them ideal supports for vertical

loads

Castles

Castles existed in Japan at least as early as the 8th century, and wartime structures were constructed even earlier.15 Site conditions evolved over time. Initially, castles were built on mountaintops for defense, but trade considerations eventually led feudal lords to construct castles in open areas, either on a hill above a plain or on the plain itself.

Shogunal control declined rapidly in the 15th century as provincial families fought each other and became increasingly powerful. Civil wars swept the country from the mid-15th to 16th century. Daimyo, or local feudal lords, ruled over their own territories without outside control. They also built castles, which spread across Japan during this time; close to 100 significant castles were built between 1596 and 1615 alone.16

The three ambitious men credited with unifying Japan ruled successively during this period. Oda Nobunaga, famous for his ruthlessness, took over Kyoto in 1568, installed a shogun as a figurehead, and ruled behind the scenes, expanding his realm of power for the next several years.17 After his death in 1582 one of his generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, successfully maneuvered to rule behind an infant shogun. Hideyoshi continued to increase central control through battles and alliances until his death in 159818. After a power struggle, he was succeeded as behind-the-scenes-ruler by one of his advisors, Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose family ruled Japan for the next two and a half centuries. In 1615, the year before he died, Ieyasu introduced laws prohibiting new castle construction,19 allowing only one castle per domain (requiring the destruction of others),20 and requiring shogunal approval for castle repairs.21 This effectively halted castle construction outside the capital.

28

15 Ibid

16 Coaldrake, William H. Architecture and Authority in Japan. London: Routeledge, 1996.

17 Henshall, Kenneth G. A History of Japan. New York; St. Martinʼs Press, Inc., 1999.

18 Ibid

19 Ibid

20 Kazuo Nishi and Kazua Hozumi. What Is Japanese Architecture? Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.

21 Henshall, Kenneth G. A History of Japan. New York; St. Martinʼs Press, Inc., 1999.

Matsumoto castle

Himeji-joDate: 1609Location: Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture

Himeji, known as Shirasagi or White Egret Castle for its white plaster walls, is often referred to as the most magnificent or most elegant of the surviving Japanese castles. Four elaborate towers, a maze of gates and corridors, and elaborate ornamentation argue the point. A visitor could easily spend days exploring the winding paths, gazing out windows, running a hand along the smoothed wooden windowsills, and ducking into dark corners. I found myself wanting to stay for months.

Fortresses have existed on the site—an important travel route during the medieval era—since the 14th century, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi built a castle there in 1581. After assuming power, Tokugawa Ieyasu installed his son to rule there, partly to weaken Hideyoshi’s son’s connections to rulers in western Japan; Ieyasu’s son destroyed the existing castle and reused its materials in Himeji-jo’s construction from 1601-1609.

29

The main donjon

The five story (plus a sixth floor below ground) main donjon rises 31m above a 45m hill, overlooking three smaller towers, numerous corridors, gates, and turrets, and a surrounding moat. Two huge central columns—one built from a single tree trunk—run through the tower, echoing the central columns found in pagodas and tying the castle together for defense against earthquakes. Originally, high-level residences, a second moat, additional residences, and a third moat extended out from the existing complex.

The castle grounds are designed for defense. Circuitous routes force invaders to travel far further than would be expected before reaching the main donjon and provide ample opportunities for defensive action. Ni No Maru Gate, for example, offers a large, reassuring entryway and then bends in the middle, forcing attackers into a narrow exit space and leaving them crowded and vulnerable.22

30

22 Coaldrake, William H. Architecture and Authority in Japan. London: Routeledge, 1996.

The main donjon, roof detail

Foundation detail

The main donjon

At the same time, the castle was clearly designed as a symbol of power as well as a fortress, and flamboyant details fill its towers and corridors. The gun and arrow holes that line the walls have shapes that alternate between squares, circles, rectangles, and triangles. Ornamented gables and windows and the white plaster that covers the castle give an overall impression of refinement. Decorative metal plates cover nail heads in the main Donjon, and are gold plated at the top level.

Himeji was my first Japanese castle and my first wooden castle. It bowled me over. I visited in the rain, and padding through the long residential corridors in bare feet, carrying my shoes and umbrella in plastic bags, combined the comfort of drinking hot chocolate with the excitement of entering an imaginary world. I trailed my hands along the dark walls, felt notched wooden joints, slid window panels, watched thick beams curving over my head, and walked into room after dark room, smelling the rain through the barred windows. Outside, the roof tiles shot rainfall directly into perfectly placed tile gutters embedded in the ground along the side of the path.

31

Gun/arrow holes in the castle wall

The first floor of the main donjonA gun hole

In the main Donjon, steep, thick staircases led us from the dark, wide lower levels to increasingly broad views of the smaller towers and the surrounding landscape. Stone-dropping holes and hiding places for soldiers fill the wall spaces between sturdy columns; open interiors provide room for people and goods. The tower has few interior walls, and each level acts largely as a giant open room. I could picture armies and ammunition packed into the lower levels, but it felt comforting despite the image. Huge, dark wood surrounded me, feeling warm and smooth under my feet.

32

Inside the main donjon: large window ledges provide shooting platforms as well as

hiding places below

View from a window in an upper level of the main donjon

View of Himeji-jo from across the courtyard

Matsumoto-joDate: c. 1596Location: Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture

Only twelve original castles survive in Japan today. The oldest, Maruoka-jo, was constructed in Fukui Prefecture in 1576. The second oldest, Matsumoto-jo, dates to circa 1596 and stands in a flat plain with a view of the Japan Alps.23 A three story tower, two story turret, and moon-viewing pavilion connect to the five story main donjon, all sharing one stone foundation.24

Matsumoto-jo is built using distinctly older construction methods than those of later castles. Small, closely spaced columns, infrequent windows, and irregular, exposed roof beams suggest a more practical, less showy approach to castle construction. Columns show the dappled marks of adzes rather than smoothly finished surfaces. The stone foundation has a shallower slant than later castles. The exterior features flourishes clearly designed to impress, but the interior feels straightforward and functional. Perhaps because the castle stands on a plain rather than a hill, upon reaching the top you find yourself exactly as high as you expected to be.

33

23 Kazuo Nishi and Kazua Hozumi. What Is Japanese Architecture? Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.

24 Ibid

View from across the moat

Inside the main donjon

An adze-marked column The stone foundation

Matsumoto-jo

Matsue-joDate: 1611Location: Matsue, Shimane Prefecture

Entering at the base and winding up through several wide, dark, largely windowless castle floors made emerging from the staircase into Matsue-jo’s top floor an exhilarating experience. Newcomers grinned, blinked, and called out in surprise. Big open windows line the sides, and the relatively small floor area makes it impossible to ever feel far from a window. Sunlight and a breeze filled the space. It was startling to realize how far above everything we had come, and how bright and beautiful the world was. Matsue-jo felt like the ultimate tower, carrying us from the solid ground below to an open room far above a hill that itself rises far above the surrounding city.

Below, the castle felt warm and wood-filled and dark, with an appealing combination of rough-cut and smoothly finished components. Extensive use of metal ties set Matsue-jo apart from Himeji-jo and Matsumoto-jo. Many large interior columns were built from several smaller columns tied together with metal brackets and straps, a creative approach to obtaining members large enough for castle construction.

34

Matsue-jo behind a castle wall

Metal straps tie smaller

members together to

form a large column

The top floor of the tower

View from the top floor

A curved beam in a lower story

Elements: Tatami Mats

Perhaps more than anything else, tatami mats filled my experiences of Japanese buildings. I spent hours walking and sitting on them, sleeping on them, and staring at them while thinking about something else. They filled temples, villas, tea houses, restaurants, ryokans, and hostels. They change the tone of rooms and the way people enter buildings: visitors leave their shoes at the entrance and pad forward softly in socks or bare feet.

Tatami mats brighten floors and add soft lines as well as the deep colors of their fabric borders. They mark off space, dividing floors into sections of regular sizes. In Shoin and other formal architecture, tatami mat dimensions—roughly 1m by 2m—dictate room sizes and column spacings, tying rooms together with a sense of coherent proportion. Today, many rooms still conform to tatami dimensions, and people discuss room sizes in terms of the number of tatami mats they contain.

They also add a sensual element to the experience of being in a room. Their give and slight softness and the feeling of their woven surface beneath bare feet makes walking and sitting on them a pleasure. They smell amazing. Entering a room can feel like being suddenly surrounded by fresh straw: clean and comforting and invigorating. Of all the smells in all the rooms I have visited, this is the one I would most like to have filling my own home.

35

Tatami mats at Daitoku-ji temple in Kyoto

Residential Architecture

Aside from rich families’ villas, little traditional residential architecture remains in Japan. Middle class and poor families’ houses were not intended to last many centuries, and the vast majority has been destroyed over the years. A few preserved districts and houses, however, offer glimpses of the daily life of merchants, samurai, and farmers.

36

Sanmachi districtDate: Late 16th-17th century Location: Takayama, Gifu Prefecture

The preserved Sanmachi district provides a glimpse of what the castle town of Takayama must have felt like 400 years ago. Water flows through stone drainage channels along each side of the streets, covered at times by small walkways and bridges. Buildings are similar in form—dark wood, long storefronts, shōji screens, bamboo shades, and wooden lattices—but unique in detail. Members of the flourishing merchant class, officially ranked lower than daimyo, samurai, and government officials, were prohibited from having two story storefronts in order to prevent them from looking down on higher ranked citizens.25 Overhangs that extend above the first story and above an open roof area, however, give the buildings the illusion of having two stories. Morning glories climb the trellises, their purple flowers and green leaves contrasting beautifully with the dark wood.

37

25 Young, David. Introduction to Japanese Architecture. Singapore: Periplus, 2004.

Wooden storefronts and stone drainage channels

Straw balls designate sake breweriesTall single stories with an extra overhang at mid-level let merchants show off their wealth without breaking a

law prohibiting them from building two story structures

Kakunodate samurai districtDate: 17th centuryLocation: Kakunodate, Akita Prefecture

A 17th century castle town, Kakunodate moved from a slightly more northerly site to its present location after numerous floods, fires, and other inauspicious events. Its beautiful samurai district was perhaps the greenest neighborhood I visited in Japan, with lush gardens and trees spilling high over dark wooden fences and gates.

The samurai residences are designed to be adaptable. Wooden doors slide across porches, wooden blinds prop open, and shōji screens can transform interior spaces. Smooth tracks for sliding walls and panels fill the houses. Rooms can change smoothly from enclosed, subdivided interior spaces into breezy open areas with only a roof overhead.

Layering creates an engaging visual environment. Tatami mats cover most floors, wooden floorboards others. Rooms, doorways and openings are offset, creating a complicated display of lines which slide past each other as you walk by. The dominance of rectangular forms and dimensions based on tatami mats provide a sense of coherence. It would be a pleasure to live in such a place.

38

Kakunodate

Samurai house, with sliding wood panels

Samurai house interior

Traditional Farmhouses (Open air museum of old Japanese farmhouses, Hida-no-Sato)Date: 17th-19th centuriesLocation: Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture and Takayama, Gifu Prefecture

Two outdoor museums have collected and restored Edo-era farmhouses for the purpose of historical preservation. The Open-Air Museum of Old

Japanese Farmhouses, outside Osaka, contains structures from throughout Japan, while Takayama’s Hida-no-Sato features houses from the surrounding mountainous region. Both keep traditional fires burning in many of the houses, and in Hida-no-Sato, volunteers perform traditional tasks such as splitting wood to make shingles. Visitors can wander through the immaculately preserved houses, imagining life in an earlier time.

Design varies according to region. Weather, terrain, and livelihood dictate both large scale layout and construction details. An L-shaped floor plan for a horse-breeding family in Iwate Prefecture was designed to allow the family to watch the horses—stabled across a dirt floor but under the same roof—from the central fire. A house

constructed along a mountainside in Shiiba, Miyazaki Prefecture has windowless back walls with wooden siding to protect against falling rocks and landslides. In Akiyama, Nagano Prefecture, thatched walls protect against the cold. The difficulty of obtaining and constructing wooden walls and the fact that mud walls would become soft as snow melted in the spring made using easily replaceable thatching the most effective option. A takakura, or elevated granary, from Kagoshima Prefecture stands far off the ground to protect against humidity and mice.

39

Farmhouse

Roof interior

Siding detail

Thatched walls protect a Nagano Prefecture house from cold

weather

In Gifu Prefecture, certain families had large, steep-roofed attics above first-story living quarters to accommodate silkworm production. This style of roof is known as the gassho-zukuri, or hands-in-prayer, style, as it resembles the steep peak of hands held together during prayer. Inside the roof area, huge half-round braces span diagonally across the roof trusses from the outer corners to the center of the ridgeline. Rope and thick vines tie members tightly together at all connections. Since the big members are constructed from tree trunks, they taper towards the top of the roof, nicely echoing the structural demand. Unlike many of the dark living areas, these huge roof spaces feel airy and refreshing despite having windows only at the ends.

Most houses have thick thatched roofs, cut off cleanly at the lower edge, but some Gifu Prefecture houses have shingled roofs. Shingles are piled rather than nailed onto the roofs in layers, overlapping from above. Wooden slats tied to roof beams lie on top of the shingles, and large stones sit untied on top of the upper slats for protection against the wind. From a structural engineering perspective this raises obvious earthquake-related concerns: either the stones will fall off dangerously during an earthquake or they will increase the seismic demand on the rest of the structure.

Central, slow-burning fires warm the houses, protect against insects, and act as stoves below hanging pots. They fill the rooms with a smoky haze. Dark wood and limited windows make the rooms away from doorways extremely dark. Houses are often tied rather than nailed together, demonstrating great adeptness at using rope, vines, and notched wood to construct tight, durable connections. Elaborate bamboo grids fasten to the roof framing to provide a solid base for thatching.

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A gassho-zukuri house from Gifu Prefecture

Roof interior of a gassho-zukuri house

Interior, with hearth and cooking pot at left

Roof detail

Stones line a roof to hold down shingles

Elements: Layers, Detail, Materials

Traditional Japanese construction demonstrates an extremely high level of craft and attention to detail. Wooden brackets fit tightly together without visible gaps. Raised castle floor beams notch around columns at both ends. Bamboo under a thatched roof is installed so that natural joints align. This results in well-made architecture that works both when you first walk in the door and as you study the details.

This tradition flourishes in modern Japan. In high-end construction projects, developers appear extremely willing to invest in high quality craft and materials. Exposed joints look beautiful. Concrete cuts off smoothly half an inch back from all sides of an x-shaped steel column. Glass façades connect to concrete columns with appealing, well-oiled steel bolts. Welds all but disappear. Concrete can be strikingly more beautiful in Japan than anywhere else I have visited. Perfect formwork and a soft, polished finish make it possible to feel warm and comfortable when surrounded by concrete walls.

As a result, structural systems are often highly visible in Japanese buildings. In traditional buildings, “decoration tends to embellish rather than disguise basic construction.”26 Newer buildings have continued this tradition: exposed joints and bolts add to the architectural experience, welds do not need to be hidden from view, and concrete frequently and successfully serves as façade as well as structural system. Echoing the wooden structures of traditional buildings, steel and concrete members act as both structure and architecture. This simplifies construction by reducing the need for non-structural façades and adornments. It also lets the structural systems show off their own beauty.

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26 Kazuo Nishi and Kazua Hozumi. What Is Japanese Architecture? Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.

Exposed bolt at Tazawa-ko Station

Steel column and concrete ceiling at the Pola Art Museum,

Hakone

Museums (and an Aquarium)

Museums fill Japanese towns and cities. In addition to art, science, and archeological museums, interested visitors can find a Tobacco and Salt Museum, a Coal Mine Museum, a Ramen Museum, and a Japanese Overseas Migration Museum, among others. This abundance presents excellent opportunities for architectural innovation. Museums, aquariums, and other public works can incorporate unusual architecture with a strong impact on visitors. People can explore museums that intentionally make them feel strange, overwhelmed, or dazzled and then return to the calmer residential and work spaces where they spend much of their lives. For the most part, the modern Japanese museums I visited lived up to this potential splendidly.

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Tokyo Sea Life ParkArchitect: Yoshio Taniguchi Date: 1989Location: Tokyo

Walking from the train station to the site is an integral part of experiencing Tokyo Sea Life Park. The entry dome peaks above trees and buildings, and glimpses of Tokyo Bay generate excitement at what is to come. This finally culminates in a splendid moment walking up the steps to the plaza in front of the dome to find wide pools of churning

water surrounding it, almost blending in with the bay behind them. It is difficult not to grin and happily anticipate seeing and learning about a multitude of sea animals. Tents stretched on a lower level behind one of the water pools look like sails on the water, adding to the sense of fun.

Entering the dome and riding the escalator down into the aquarium feels like descending underwater; underneath, quite logically, are fish and other sea creatures. The route emerges outside below the entry

plaza, a reminder of the proximity of the real ocean. On the way out, a rambling exit path follows a stream and passes several ponds. Experiencing the change in perspective from looking down on the stream to entering a small building for a sideways view of the fish swimming inside, visitors cannot help but make the connection that the natural world surrounding us is full of excitement and discovery.

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Four pictures above: Approaching the entry dome

Tents behind the water pools mimic sails

Tents outside the aquariumʼs lower level

The entry dome, across water pools

Nima Sand MuseumArchitect: Shin TakamatsuDate: 1990Location: Nima, Shimane Prefecture

The Nima sand museum playfully tackles the subjects of sand, time, glass, and the scale of the universe. An hourglass—purportedly the largest in the world—times out yearlong intervals while suspended from the ceiling by an elaborate mechanical system that turns it over every New Year’s Day. Smaller hourglasses fill the museum, measuring out whimsical intervals such as the time it takes sunlight to reach the earth. A video demonstrates how sand was transformed into the glass in the mighty hourglass. Microscopes and samples allow visitors to examine the dramatic variety of sand around the world.

The architecture complements the fun and the educational themes. Six steel-framed, glass-plated pyramids rise out of the roof, letting in light and drawing visitors’ attention upwards. A sand-filled, circular exterior area greets visitors through a glass wall as they enter the museum. The pyramids, which struck me as potentially silly in advance, work well, albeit mostly symbolically. They straightforwardly evoke the Egyptian pyramids, massive limestone structures rising out of the desert. Instead of forming pyramids of rock, sand has been reformatted into glass for the Sand Museum’s pyramids. They still serve as an example of structure rising out of constituent materials in the surrounding landscape.

The ancient pyramids are a perfect symbol for humanity’s massive, lasting imprint on a landscape profoundly more massive and lasting. Over the course of time, they will eventually return to sand, and theoretically into glass as well.

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View of the pyramids from the approach to the museum

Year-long hourglass

Museum entrance

Sand-filled area outside the museum, with a view

of the Japan Sea

Gallery of Horyuji TreasuresArchitect: Yoshio Taniguchi Date: 1999Location: Tokyo

Japanese Buddhism and politics have historically had a tumultuous relationship. Early Emperors used Buddhism to spread their own power, while others saw politically powerful Buddhist sects as a threat. Buddhism’s political power in the Nara era probably contributed to the decision to move the capital to present-day Kyoto in 794. Oda Nobunaga, the first of the great Japanese unifiers, sought to stamp out uprisings by massacring Buddhist priests in the 16th century.27 Less than 100 years later, people were forced into Buddhism to prove that they were not Christians.

In the Meiji era, which began in 1868, the government sought to establish Shinto as the state religion, shoving Buddhism aside while pursuing a course of rapid

westernization and modernization. Many older buildings were destroyed, including Buddhist temples and monasteries. Horyuji temple, the oldest surviving temple in Japan, acted to protect its ancient treasures, donating them to the Imperial house in 1878. After over a century out of the public view, the treasures now have a permanent home in the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, part of the Tokyo National Museum complex.

After a walk across a wide, flat pool of gently flowing water, entering the museum involves entering three successive box-shaped spaces, all of which are visible from the outside. From the outside the building looks open and airy, with the outermost box an open roof that extends over the entrance area, supported by slender columns. Under this roof, the front door leads into a light-filled, open atrium. A final entryway leads to the galleries, which are kept extremely dark in order to preserve the treasures. The overall design makes the galleries and the treasures they contain feel protected and far from the outside world. High ceilings and extensive open space in the galleries add to the feeling of sacredness. The experience is that of finding a wide underground cave after tunneling through the earth for some time; a silence and dark stillness covers everything.

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27 Henshall, Kenneth G. A History of Japan. New York; St. Martinʼs Press, Inc., 1999.

Exterior, with three overlapping boxes

Exterior

Floor detail

Inside the atriumLooking out from the atrium

21st Century Museum of Contemporary ArtArchitect: SANAADate: 2004Location: Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture

Perhaps more than any other building, the 21st Century Museum made me appreciate the importance of seeing architecture in person. Photographs make the blocks rising out of the circular museum look abrupt, unconnected to the glass exterior, and make the glass itself look dark and reflective rather than ephemeral. Reading the museum’s website before the trip, I had trouble accepting the claim that the massive glass circle surrounding the galleries could “effectively mitigate the scale of the project and an overly grand presence common to large institutions.”28

In person, as I circled the museum on a gray-skied rainy afternoon, everything worked brilliantly. The rectangular gallery spaces that emerged through the roof looked soft and connected and moved past each other in interesting ways as I walked by. The transparent glass made the interior spaces outside the galleries an appealing transition space, offering a way to move another layer closer to the exhibits without feeling enclosed. The people inside the glass drew my gaze. They walked between two worlds, in the museum physically but outside visually. Inside the glass, the white walls of the exhibition spaces looked indefinite as well. The lack of sharp transition made the museum blend into the surrounding park, drawing the outside in.

Inside, the museum felt surprisingly spacious. The outer corridors reconnected us to the park, drawing our attention outwards. Inner corridors laced dramatically between galleries, offering views of interior gardens and ceilings open to the sky.

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28 http://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=35&d=1&lng=e

Exterior, with a view of people inside

Inside the glass circle but outside the

galleries

One of the museum entrances

An interior corridorAn open courtyard

between galleries

Suntory Museum of ArtArchitect: Kengo KumaDate: 2007Location: Tokyo

Repeating vertical wooden slats fill the entry area and much of the museum, covering walls and ceilings. They encourage you to look around, walk slowly. The effect of repeating narrow elements is lovely; above and to the side, thin wooden lines divide dark intermediate space, while in the distance the slats merge into continuous rows of wood. Oiled paulownia and oak make the museum warm and comfortable. A light-filled, open stairway separates dark galleries on two floors. The large open space and glowing wood surrounding the stairs make you feel almost as though you are walking outside before returning to the calm, protected museum once again.

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Outside the museum, looking in

Inside the galleries

Stairway between the galleries

Entering the museum

Elements: Competing for Attention

Buildings in Japanese cities—especially Tokyo—must compete fiercely to stand out. High building density and a general willingness to invest in flashy architecture raise the price of glory to impressive levels. Skyscrapers in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district begin to look normal, making smaller buildings appear insignificant. From above, lines of skyscrapers trace out busy streets across the jumble of gray buildings almost as if outlining gigantic city blocks. The city itself stretches to the horizon in almost all directions, only occasionally interrupted by a patch of green.

The most unique competition comes not from tall buildings but from the glitzy buildings that line Tokyo’s shopping districts of Ginza and Omotesando. Dramatic structures and shimmering facades begin to blur together. A huge rotating sign on top of a 10 story building remains inconspicuous. A tall, shining glass cylinder looks commonplace.

In this environment, it is often the odd and unexpected that succeed in standing out: a building with rounded windows rising like bubbles up a smooth concrete façade; another covered in diamond-shaped glass panels; and a cylinder rising from a pointed block at a busy intersection, extending cantilevered offices like tree limbs. When I visited Ginza, the most successful attention-grabber by far was a temporary aquarium tank set up outside the Sony building. The flashiness of the fish, and their placement at ground level in a tiny plaza, offered a striking change from the surrounding bustle of shopping and tall buildings. People caught their breath at the unexpected sight, and stopped to look.

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View of Tokyo from above

An aquarium outside the Sony building lures visitors

Modern

Japan’s vibrant modern architecture scene incorporates world famous architects, investment in innovation, and widespread collaboration between architects, engineers, and contractors. The highly seismic environment also makes Japan one of the most interesting places in the world to study earthquake engineering, both in academia and in practice. Japanese cities revealed a variety of modern architectural styles and an exciting array of innovative structures.

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Nakagin Capsule Tower Architect: Kisho KurokawaDate: 1972Location: Tokyo

In the Metabolist movement of the 1960s, several Japanese architects joined forces to grapple with Japan’s rapid urbanization. They sought to develop large-scale architecture that could respond organically to the continually evolving city of the future, changing as the city changed and adapting to future needs.

The Nakagin Capsule Tower epitomizes this vision. It is comprised of 140 identical, prefabricated, 2.5 x 2.5 x 4 meter capsules that cantilever in all directions from two reinforced concrete towers. Each capsule is designed as an apartment or studio and has built-in basic furnishings and a single round window. Kurokawa envisioned a society with many such towers. Instead of moving their belongings, people could move to a new location simply by disconnecting their capsule from one tower and plugging it into a

tower somewhere else. Each capsule is connected to the central tower with four high-tension bolts,29 making the removal and replacement of individual capsules possible.

The greater vision never took hold, largely due to the impracticality and expense of building towers and transporting apartments across the city. Recently, residents dissatisfied with living conditions in the capsules voted to tear down the building and replace it with a modern apartment complex, setting off disputes with those who favor its preservation.

Visiting the towers after seeing numerous pictures and descriptions, the capsules still shocked me. Even in a highly compact society, they seem aggressively small. In pictures they look almost rounded and soft, but in reality they are sharp little boxes. Grunge abounds. Drip marks stain the capsules and newspapers cover several windows. The immediate environment does not help; a highway slashes in front of the building, making access confusing and giving certain capsules views of nothing but passing cars. I cannot imagine living there.

As a symbol, or a sculpture, the building is fantastic. It not only exemplifies Metabolism through removable apartments, it looks like a living organism, perhaps a mutant organism. The capsules seem to bulge out wherever they can find room; the towers rise of their own accord out of the gray city like mushrooms.

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29 www.kisho.co.jp

View from the west

View from the west, with

highway

View from the south, with highway

Detail

Tokyo Metropolitan Government OfficesArchitect: Kenzo TangeDate: 1991Location: Tokyo

For the most part, I have not been much excited by tall buildings. As an engineer, I recognize them as impressive structural feats, but I have generally found that even dramatically designed tall buildings do not hold up well in person. The scale is too far from human scale, perhaps. They are very tall, but not so nice to find yourself in or around.

While its 48 stories certainly remove it from an approachable human scale, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building presents an appealing and dignified approach to large scale architecture. It splits over halfway up into double towers that look balanced yet formidable. The granite façade adds appealing layers of detail to the large structure. The structural system reveals itself without dominating. The tops of the towers, square in plan but offset 45 degrees from the main structure, provide another layer of visual interest.

Skyscrapers inevitably present engineering challenges in earthquake-prone Japan, and the Metropolitan Government building addresses these challenges with zest. The superframe structural system is quite flashy, and even earns recognition in a plaque in one of the top story observation floors. (The plaque boasts that the building is “strong enough to resist any external forces such as earthquakes”!) The super-structure consists of eight “super columns”—each made from four box-shaped columns joined with K-braces—and

“super beams” which take up a full story every ten floors. The giant frame reduces deflections and leaves the building’s interior as column-free as possible.

From the towers, Tokyo stretches out as far as the eye can see, broken visually only by Tokyo Bay. The city seems remarkably approachable when visited neighborhood by neighborhood between a series of subway rides, but from above, it looks alarmingly gray and endless, awe-inspiring and also somewhat terrifying. Pockets of green rise up between the buildings far less frequently than I had expected. Looking across the city from above, I could not shake the impression that if I tried to walk very far, the sea of buildings would swallow me up.

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Towers

View up the towers

Courtyard outside the buildingView of Tokyo from the towers

Shin Umeda Sky BuildingArchitect: Hiroshi HaraDate: 1993Location: Osaka, Osaka Prefecture

This 173m, 40-story landmark certainly deserves credit as an engineering feat. A circular observation level connects two otherwise separate towers at the top, presenting extensive earthquake engineering and construction challenges and making the building stand out dramatically in the crowded city. The towers are presumably very stiff to prevent large relative displacements, but even so the floors connecting them will have to resist massive forces and deformations. The form inevitably demands increased expense and materials compared to a single tower.

The building looks fairly ugly from far away and about the same as any other skyscraper from close by. I had hoped the observation level would make it all worthwhile, justifying the expense of tying two towers together by presenting a thrilling experience that a single tower could not provide. The ring-shaped observation floor allows visitors to look out at the city and inside at the ground between the two towers, which seemed potentially exciting. The visit more or less shattered my hopes.

A dramatic elevator and escalator ride gave the experience a nice introduction, and I would never turn down a dramatic view of Osaka at sunset, with buildings reaching out to distant green hillsides and an array of bridges spanning a river. If anything, however, it felt worse to be suspended between two towers than on top of a single tower. No one looked inwards, largely because not much could be seen there: escalators and treetops and the streets off to the side, but nothing at ground level directly below. To the outside, a square platform and four corner towers, presumably structural, blocked the view somewhat.

As an experience, the building fails to offer anything beyond the standard 360 degree view that can be most efficiently provided by a single tower. It would have been far more architecturally coherent and exciting to construct the viewing area between the towers, presenting a view of the city in two opposite directions only, framed by the towers themselves. This would have emphasized the unique structure and changed people’s way of looking at the city rather that making the complicated structure feel gratuitous and somewhat in the way.

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View from some distance

Escalator

View from below Escalators connect to the observation floor

Tazawa-ko StationArchitect: Shigeru BanDate: 1997Location: Tazawa-ko, Akita Prefecture

From the first glance, the station glows warmly with wood. Laminated beams span the open building and extend out over an entry plaza. Plywood covers the ceiling. Structural members are exposed without flourish, but oiled and warm. Pre-cast concrete columns and a glass façade frame a dramatic view of nearby mountains on the town side of the station.

Upon closer inspection, the station fulfilled my expectations for Shigeru Ban’s scrappy, practical, structural approach to architectural problems. His simple, no-frills design conveys a sense of structure and also works architecturally. Using precast concrete columns saved time and money, keeping the construction time to a required seven months.30 The beams are pin-connected to the columns and constructed from a steel plate sandwiched between two laminated lumber sections.31 Lumber is spliced two or three times over the course of each side. The steel carries a large portion of the moment imposed by the roof, and the laminated lumber sections provide stiffness and prevent buckling. Inset wooden circles cover bolt holes and add to the project’s aesthetic success. Exposed bolted connections between the façade and the concrete columns contribute as well.

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30 http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/

31 ibid

The front of the station on the town side

Inside the station

A steel plate bolted between laminated lumber provides

additional strength

A narrow but warm building stretched across the boundary between the town and the train tracks, the train station serves as a lovely transition area. Large windows and an open interior connect the two sides visually, while the extensive use of wood creates a definite sense of place. People wait for trains inside the lobby, gazing at the mountains as sun falls into the station through the glass façade. Walking through the station towards the town, the clean lines and bright wood wake you up and encourage you to take a deep breath and appreciate the pretty mountain town you are about to enter.

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Interior view of the roof system

Interior

View of the mountains through the station window

Kyoto StationArchitect: Hiroshi HaraDate: 1997Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

Walking through this expansive, futuristic station, grumbling to myself about how buildings with flashy exposed structures never let visitors close enough to the structure to interact with it in an interesting way, I discovered the Skyway, a suspended path that guides visitors under the peak of the steel-framed roof. It quickly put an end to my complaints. Walking right next to a roof system after watching it soar far above you a few minutes before is a wonderful experience. Views of the city alternate with views along rows of framing elements, which look delightfully high tech.

Beyond the Skyway, the building offers a variety of interesting architectural moments to anyone who takes the time to explore it. Dramatic views emerge as you ride the escalators and wander the halls, natural light is used to excellent effect, and opportunities to watch people milling about above and below you frequently present themselves.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of visitors simply want to catch a train or find a restaurant, and do not experience the building in this way. Many appreciate the long, showy escalator ride, but the building looms too far above people walking on the lower levels to make an impact beyond that of any huge glass and steel structure. The overall scale—Kyoto Station is the second largest train station in Japan, after Nagoya Station—differs too dramatically from the scale of the interesting parts to completely succeed. An overall sense of grace is missing that the well-developed details cannot provide.

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Roof and sky at the east end of the station

View from the Skyway

View from the outside

Inside the station

PradaArchitect: Herzog and de Meuron Date: 2003Location: Tokyo

Emerging from the subway station onto glitzy Omotesando Avenue, a visitor is swept up into a crowd of well-dressed shoppers. Away from the main bustle and down the avenue, the Prada building soon catches the eye. A strange tilted plaza draws people off the street almost through the force of gravity, the building sparkles in the sunlight, and people inside wait to provide drinks and attentive service to serious shoppers.

The building’s structural system has achieved a rare level of publicity and glamour. An exposed, rational structure—a diamond grid of

steel tubes—covers the irregularly-shaped building, combining with diamond-shaped glass panels to present an extremely flashy exterior. Glass panels are varyingly flat, concave, or convex, reflecting the sky like jewels. The glass makes the idea of a building with all flat panels sound profoundly boring. While the gravity system in particular is not the simplest available, the absence of vertical members and the use of curved glass transform the building from a simple—albeit very high-end—commercial space into something remarkable.

Inside, the structure becomes even more visible. Steel members roughly a foot wide project into the space, outlining human-sized diamonds and tempting a visitor to curl into one to admire the view. The open floor plan and continuous walls of windows make the interior light-filled and open, while the circulation encourages shoppers to look outside at the broad view of the city below.

The architects intended the convex and concave glass to act as “an interactive optical device” which “seems to move as you walk around it.”32 While this certainly works on the outside, it has a slightly dizzying effect inside the building; from time to time, the floor feels as though it is moving beneath you.

The plaza outside the building, a much-discussed rarity in Japan, was empty when I visited. Perhaps throwing a European concept into a Japanese city is not as easy as one might think.

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32 http://architectook.net/prada-tokyo

Sun reflects off the glass panels

View up the irregularly-shaped

building

Entrance

Todʼs OmotesandoArchitect: Toyo ItoDate: 2004Location:Tokyo

Up Omotesando Avenue and towards Yoyogi Park from the Prada building, swarms of shoppers grow denser while stores are equally expensive and trendy. Bright signs and high-end storefront displays compete for attention as crowds stroll under rows of graceful Zelkova trees. Near intersections, sidewalks are packed full of people waiting for the traffic lights to change.

Tod’s Omotesando’s blocky, narrow storefront stands out against these surroundings. Concrete branches inspired by the avenue’s trees snake diagonally across its narrow façade, leaving inset windows to fill the remaining space. The building looks like an art project or a fantasy that could never become reality, a box with straps pulled across it and the gaps between them cut out and turned into windows. Happily, the concrete in the façade acts as a highly irregular but successful structural system, leaving the interior largely open. The concrete limbs become narrower towards the top of the building, nicely echoing structural demands.

Walking inside feels like a subtle version of entering a room of mirrors at a carnival, full of illusion and corners to explore. More than most buildings with dramatic façades, the interior directly reflects the exterior in a way that works for both. Angled geometric panels, unexpected windows, and irregular mirrors follow and extend the patterns of the exterior walls. Combined with a general lack of right angles, these features make the store seem to continue through mirrored panels in several places. Angles become even more irregular around the staircases, which curl you smoothly to the floor above.

The overall impression invites exploration, suggesting the possibility of finding hidden niches, windows, and perhaps even shoes.

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Storefront on Omotesando Avenue

Facade detail

Stairwell between the first and second floors Back wall

Christian Dior OmotesandoArchitect: SANAADate: 2004Location: Tokyo

A block up Omotesando Avenue from Tod’s, the Christian Dior building takes a subtler approach to luring shoppers off the busy street. A shimmery façade—curved acrylic screens behind glass windows—and very clean lines make the building’s exterior soft and alluring. The screens look almost watery, as if you can see through to multiple depths simultaneously. Very subtle glimpses of the inside appear at certain angles, but for the most part they are too fleeting for passersby to notice. The architects “aimed at a building in which the sizes and depths of the inner spaces can only be imagined,”33 and the façade works effectively towards this goal, in striking contrast to the glass window displays of nearby stores. A large open door unfortunately detracts somewhat from this impression by giving everyone who walks by a wide view of the interior.

As I was warned,34 the inside of the building feels starkly unrelated to the outside. Displays clutter the space and cut shoppers off from the outside edge, making the interior dark and sterile. The real tragedy of this hit me when I stumbled upon a small patch of exposed façade on the second floor. From inside, the façade is still shimmery but far more transparent than from the outside, letting you watch people passing by outside the building. Without the interior walls and clutter, the experience of walking into the building and seeing the walls around you transform from translucent to transparent would have been magnificent. The interior would have felt like a magical place, a secret world from which you could watch others without being seen yourself.

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33 “Space in Detail IV”. Japan Architect JA54 (2005).

34 http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/diortokyo/index.html

The facade reflects trees and largely

cuts off views of the interior

View up the side of the building

Facade detail

Mikimoto Ginza 2Architect: Toyo ItoDate: 2005Location: Tokyo

Mikimoto Ginza 2 stands out by looking different. In the middle of the jumbled chaos of Tokyo’s Ginza district, it cannot compete in size, motion, sheen, or drama, but it certainly manages to catch the eye nonetheless. From a block or two away, the first glimpse is delightful, making it appear almost silly compared to the serious buildings around it. Irregularly-shaped windows cover the smooth façade like champagne bubbles. Tourists stop and point.

Inside, the building successfully presents an exclusive, glamorous tone to such an extent that it is easy to feel sharply out of place. The column-free interior features natural light and bubble-shaped views of the outside world. The enticing round windows draw visitors to the outer walls to watch people walk by on the street below.

In a variety of projects, Ito exhibits great interest in structural innovation; Mikimoto is no exception. Two steel plates with 20 cm of concrete poured between them form the façade and structural system,35 allowing the relatively thin skin to carry seismic and gravity loads despite the abundance of holes. Holes are rounded to avoid stress concentration at corners.36 The ambitious detailing works towards Ito’s idea of the skin “as only a

single vast sheet with unusual glazing,” by setting the windows almost flush with the walls and eliminating traces of joints whenever possible.37 Unfortunately, joints do show through upon inspection, and despite carefully planned coatings occasional drips stain the smooth façade. The overall glamour remains despite these small lapses.

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35 “Japanese Architectural Scene 2006”. Japan Architect JA64 (2006).

36 ibid

37 ibid

View from the street View up a wall

A window wraps around the corner of

the building

Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando, one of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese architects, does not seem to fit in well with the other high profile architects in Japan. In an interview, he mentions his lack of formal schooling and the hegemony of the country’s two main architecture schools—Waseda University and Tokyo University—as a main reason for this lack of fit. Other architects imply that he is a bit of a showoff.38

His unconventional background certainly stands out in a profession with a typically straightforward career path. He worked as a carpenter and a boxer, among other things, and never attended college. Instead, he travelled extensively throughout the world in the 1960s, studying buildings in person and reading architecture books, before setting up a design practice in Japan.

His work undoubtedly has an element of showiness. His architecture tends to attract attention and strut about a little, making people notice its impact rather than affecting them subtly. His buildings are often dramatic, flashy, and very much his own style.

The appeal of Ando’s work comes from the combination of his experience-based design roots and this tendency towards flashiness. He uses his designs to proclaim big ideas. He brings a strong vision to each project, both in terms of the overall design—a dark church with a cross of light covering the front wall, or a temple that worshippers enter through the middle of a wide pond—and the way people experience it—turning a corner to find a broad concrete wall, or feeling the ceiling disappear overhead. He designs as an artist rather than as a philosopher or theorist, and his willingness to indulge the overall vision and to make the experience work makes his buildings deeply engaging. They affect you, directing your view, moving you from place to place, presenting strange situations, surprising and delighting you. The result is showy, but wonderful to experience.

Compared to the United States, Japan boasts an impressive density of modern architecture that impacts people powerfully. In Ando’s work, this tendency becomes even more pronounced. Visiting several of his buildings offered me a key lesson in what architecture can accomplish, if it dares.

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38 Knabe, Christopher and Joerg Rainer Noennig, Shaking the Foundations: Japanese Architects in Dialogue. Munich; Prestel Verlag, 1999.

Church of the LightArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 1989 (Chapel), 1999 (Sunday School)Location: Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture

The Church of the Light was one of the most intense architectural experiences of the trip, and also one of the best. It presents a strong, personal vision for what religion should be, one that aligns with the congregation’s request: “What we wanted is a simple building with sacred space which realizes Jesus Christ’s words, ‘…where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.’”39 The building is outspokenly unadorned, with simple, dark wooden benches and floorboards, black cushions, and smooth concrete walls. The floor slopes gently down to the front of the

room and the cross-shaped window that fills the front wall. The rectangular box form adds to the impression of austerity. The building demands a focus on worship without the potential distractions of adornment or flourish.

At first, the building feels warm and comforting despite the intense simplicity. The concrete glows softly; light from the side window moves slowly across the pews. As I stayed for some time, mostly alone, the austerity began to feel more intense, the lines of light and structure too sharp. Visiting the chapel when filled with people and song sounds wonderful, but spending long hours there alone would be a strange experience.

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39 Letter to the visitors from Noboru Karukome, Minister of Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church

Chapel from outside

Inside the chapel

Light enters the chapel through a side window

The cross at the front has an entirely different effect than I had expected from pictures, in which it looks bright against a very dark background. In person, it glows beautifully, but the rest of the room has enough light to show up in full detail as well. Worshippers can also see things through the window—tree branches and a few telephone lines. As a result, the cross does not overwhelm but rather offers a warm focal point. The cross works because despite being technically complex—the side walls and roof must support the upper sections of the concrete wall without help from below—it looks simple, just two lines of empty space in the smooth wall. It matches the calm room and draws attention without dominating completely.

The Sunday School echoes the chapel’s rectangular form, but its plywood benches and desks, cedar floorboards, and cross appear light, both compared to the chapel and to its own concrete walls, which almost seem to fade away as a result. It feels warm inside, but hard also, a place for kids to sit still and think or talk but not to squirm. The wood and the light that enters along the back wall cannot quite soften the sharp, high-ceilinged form enough to make it feel comfortable. The building and the thought of being a small child inside it made me wish for tatami mats and floor cushions to ameliorate the sense of rigid open space.

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Inside the chapel

Sunday School, back wall

Inside the Sunday School

Top of the cross-shaped window, detail

Water TempleArchitect: Tadao Ando Date: 1991Location: Awaji-shima, Hyogo Prefecture

Uphill from the island’s main bus route, past rice paddies and through a cemetery, a path leads towards a smooth concrete wall with gray gravel sloping up to it. An open door cut out at the far end reveals a second wall, which turns the path right to curve softly between the high walls until opening up in front of a wide, circular pool, raised off the ground, full of lilies gently swaying in the rippling water. Reaching the pool offers visitors a moment to pause and contemplate the fields, the clouds passing overhead, the sounds of water and birds and cars far down the hillside. The world feels clear and fresh. The path then leads back along the side of the pool and, magically, down into its center, between the two halves of the pool and into the dark temple below.

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Counterclockwise from upper left: Entry sequence, from concrete wall with gravel to the staircase leading through the pool and into the temple

This lovely entry sequence calms and cleanses. The architecture guides visitors gently further and further from the bustle of the world below, creating a sense of distance and separateness that resembles reaching the top of a breezy, grass-covered hillside.

Inside, soft orange light fills the room. A square grid of columns, beams, and latticework extends across the circular temple area, surrounded by a wall and a circular corridor. Two tatami mats fill each grid space, separated by wooden floor boards. Vertical siding overlaps around both the inside and outside of the curved wall. Windows in the corridor’s inner and outer walls light the temple area from behind, and all wood is painted bright orange, making subtle light changes impact the interior powerfully. As I left the temple and walked around the corridor towards the back windows, orange light hit the concrete wall ahead, drawing me around the gentle curve.

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The gently rippling pond reflects the sky

Garden of Fine ArtsArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 1994Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

The Garden of Fine Arts offers a strange sort of oasis in the midst of Kyoto’s summer heat and humidity. Outside, cars rush by along a wide street, ladies evade the beating sun with umbrellas, and the asphalt radiates heat. Inside, the open-roofed garden surrounds visitors not with plants but with bright concrete: columns, walkways, walls cut out to create a maze of interlocking pathways, and panels adorned with tile reproductions of famous paintings. Alternating sun and shade create strong contrasts both visually and in

temperature, making the rectangular lines of the concrete members sharp.

The garden also surrounds visitors with water, which slides down walls in great sheets and ripples slowly across broad ponds. The breeze across the pools is refreshing and cool. The sound of waterfalls dominates the space and damps out sounds from outside, making the garden feel like a world entirely apart from Kyoto’s bustle. The smell of water on hot concrete fills the air.

A descending path cuts back and forth sharply but manages to feel casual and meandering nonetheless. Side paths entice

visitors to explore unexpected niches and reach out to touch the waterfalls. Benches provide interesting stopping points. Tile artwork appears around corners, from both above and below. At one point part of the path leads under a ledge that descends lower and lower until a person can no longer fit beneath it. Strolling through feels like a softer version of exploring a climbing structure for the first time. The architecture demands attention, but offers back a sense of fun and exploration as well as a way to make the hot city outside feel far away.

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Layers of walkways, walls, and water

Water detail

View from an upper pathway

The floor and ceiling end at a

sharp point behind a single

column

View from a lower pathway

Sayamaike MuseumArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 2001Location: Osakasayama, Osaka Prefecture

After turning a few corners, all while listening to the muffled sound of water, visitors enter a long corridor with a concrete wall on one side and a sheet of falling water on the other. The water is beautiful and startlingly loud. It makes conversation difficult, and demands that people stop to notice. Kids run around excited and adults grin, impressed. At the end of the corridor, the path turns back to lead along a pool and under the open sky on the other side of the water, which crashes down from two stories high. A final turn leads back through another concrete and water corridor. The feeling of such different materials at your sides is lovely, heavy in one direction and light and alive in the other. Over the minute or two it takes to walk the path, the building has successfully made visitors both excited about water and a little more aware of its power.

This seems perfect, as it leads to a museum about water engineering. The museum stands next to the Sayamaike Reservoir, the oldest irrigation pond in Japan, which has existed in various forms since the 7th century. The reservoir has made use of a wealth of approaches to control the immense power of water.

Inside the museum, exhibits range from sections of the reservoir’s ancient wooden water pipes to computer demonstrations of high tech water engineering projects worldwide.

After the final entrance corridor, an ascending path around a large circular courtyard spirals up to the museum entrance, pushing you to look at the wide sky. The museum’s interior feels like an underground space, focused on earth and stone and wood in strong contrast to the watery, airy entrance. The main building uses a 15 x 58 meter slice through the reservoir’s bank as an integral architectural element to create an immensely long, tall, narrow corridor.

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The entry sequence, outside the first wall of waterThe sky, through a circular courtyard

A concrete wall (left) and a slice of earth form a

tall, narrow corridor

Walking between water and concrete

Chichu Art MuseumArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 2004Location: Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture

The museum’s owners let Tadao Ando run wild with this design, and the stunning result stands up as art in its own right. Built entirely underground on a rounded bluff overlooking the Inland Sea, the museum dazzles, both in transition spaces and in the presentation of its permanent exhibits. Natural light fills the open areas. A deeply disorienting entrance and a flexible, undefined route make it feel like you are wandering a maze, exploring rather than trying to find a way out. It doesn’t quite feel underground, but more like an alternate world, far from the island that is itself far from the bustle of Japanese cities. An outdoor seating area below the café reconnects you to the ocean below before you plunge back into the world of the museum.

The showiest architecture occurs around a big, open-roofed triangular space. A concrete wall rises three stories to ground level, and a corridor circles outside the wall around two sides of the triangle, rising one story in the process. Along most of those two sides, a gap roughly a foot tall has been cut out of the wall slightly below eye level, following the slope of the corridor. The design is structurally audacious—perhaps the two stories of concrete above the gap are post-tensioned and hanging from ground level?—and architecturally wonderful. Looking through the gap next to you at the wall across the way, the first gap shines bright against a dark wall, while the second shines dark against a bright wall. This engaging visual effect comes alive as you circle the corridor.

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Gap in the wall around an open triangular space (Photo

by Telestar, courtesy of Creative Commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/)

The gap wraps around two walls, showing up light or dark according to location

(Photo by Telestar, courtesy of Creative Commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/)

Naoshima

The museum permanently houses artwork by Walter de Maria, Claude Monet, and James Turrell in galleries designed specifically for this purpose. A wide staircase, white walls and a high ceiling give the Walter de Maria gallery an expansive tone, a stylized movie version of the ascent to heaven. A polished stone sphere stands in the center of the staircase, reflecting the sky from a large rectangular skylight back to you at all times as you explore. Additional light enters softy around the edges of the large floating white ceiling, which ends a few feet from the walls.

A strange, amorphous entry room leads to the Claude Monet gallery. A white ceiling and walls, white floor tiles, white grout, and dim, diffuse light dull your senses somewhat, making the white gallery itself look bright. Sunlight enters around the edges of another hanging ceiling, filling the white, underground room with an impressive amount of light. The paintings glow on the bright walls with the only color in either of the two rooms.

James Turrell is perhaps the perfect artist to collaborate with Ando in designing the final rooms, as his work fits seamlessly into Ando’s focus on bringing light underground. Turrell’s skyspace—one of a series of projects worldwide that lets visitors sit on benches and stare at the sky through a depthless hole in the ceiling—completes the fantastic experience of visiting the museum. Through the ceiling, the sky looked like a painting and glowed brightly enough to hurt during my afternoon visit, making people wince and cover their eyes. Tiny wisps of clouds drifted across its surface, and the shade of bright blue changed ever so slightly as time passed.

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The sky over Naoshima

Additional Buildings

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Shrines

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Izumo TaishaDate: unknown, probably before 8th centuryLocation: Izumo, Shimane Prefecture

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Proposed model of original shrine buildings, long since destroyed and rebuilt

Roof detail

SensojiDate: 7th century, some buildings date to c. 1649, many were rebuilt out of reinforced concrete in 1960Location: Tokyo

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Main gate

Rocks in the temple garden

Main hall, interior

Roof detail

Kasuga ShrineDate: 8th century, rebuilt laterLocation: Nara, Nara Prefecture

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Stone lanterns line the path to the shrine

Front gate

Outer corridor

Meiji JinguDate: 1920Location: Tokyo

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Gate to the inner shrine

Door detail

Temples

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Yakushi-jiDate: 730, rebuilt laterLocation: Nara, Nara Prefecture

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Corridor roof

KiyomizuderaDate: 8th century, rebuilt laterLocation: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

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Elevated deck with supports

Daitoku-ji Date: 14th centuryLocation: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

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Entrance to Koto-in subtemple

Koto-in interiorWindow detail

Villas

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Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)Date: 1398Location: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

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Main building

A small shrine

Behind the main building

Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion)Date: late 15th centuryLocation: Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

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Sculpted sand cone in front of the main building

Residential

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Buke Yashiki Samurai ResidenceDate: 17th centuryLocation: Matsue, Shimane Prefecture

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Stones support the walkway

Otaru Warehouse DistrictDate: Late 19th to early 20th centuryLocation: Otaru, Hokkaido Prefecture

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Museums

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Peace Memorial MuseumArchitect: Kenzo TangeDate: 1955Location: Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture

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The cenotaph and Atom Bomb Dome are aligned perpendicular to the museum and framed by its columns

Ukiyo-e MuseumArchitect: Kazuo ShinoharaDate: 1982Location: Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture

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Tepia Science PavillionArchitect: Fumihiko MakiDate: 1989Location: Tokyo

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Pola Art MuseumArchitect: Nikken SekkeiDate: 2002Location: Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture

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Entry walkway

Atrium ceiling

Inside the atrium Connection detail

Modern

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Former Hokkaido Government Office BuildingDate: 1888Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture

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Izumo Taisha Former Train StationDate: 1924Location: Izumo Taisha, Shimane Prefecture

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National GymnasiumArchitect: Kenzo TangeDate: 1964Location: Tokyo

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Pylon

Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Systems BuildingArchitect: Kenzo TangeDate: 1970Location: Tokyo

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Asahi BreweryArchitect: Phillippe StarckDate: 1989Location: Tokyo

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Tokyo International ForumArchitect: Rafael VinolyDate: 1996Location: Tokyo

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Matsumoto Performing Arts CenterArchitect: Toyo ItoDate: 2004Location: Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture

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Inside the lobby

Inside the lobby

Wall detail

Wall detail

National Art CenterArchitect: Kisho KurokawaDate: 2006Location: Tokyo

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Entrance

Front wall

Front wall

Naoshima Ferry TerminalArchitect: SANAADate: 2006Location: Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture

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A mirror between columns

Tadao Ando

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Museum of LiteratureArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 1991Location: Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture

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View of Himeji-jo from the museum

South building

Inside the North building

Inside the North building

North building stairwell

North building exterior

Minami-deraArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 1999Location: Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture

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BathroomBathroom ceiling

International Library of Childrenʼs LiteratureArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 2002Location: Tokyo

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Entrance

Reading room interior

Behind the library

Behind the library

21_21 Design SiteArchitect: Tadao AndoDate: 2007Location: Tokyo

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Entrance

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The Zen Temple Ryoan-jiʼs rock garden, perhaps the most famous in the world, probably dates to the late 15th century. Five of the gardenʼs fifteen rocks are drawn above. The garden is designed so that it is impossible to see all fifteen rocks at the same time.