Ethnographic architectural photography: Futagawa Yukio and Nihon no minka

Abstract

Within the tradition of photographically illustrated architectural books, one particular genre stands out. The ethnographic architectural history is a subgenre of history book in which photographs (sometimes with supplementary graphics) are used to categorise or diagnose the cultural constitution of a population. Wooden Houses in Europe, Houses in Northern Europe, and Houses in Southern Europe are all examples of such photographic ethnographies. The architectural photographer Futagawa Yukio produced these books in the 1970s. Yet his documentation of European vernacular architecture at this time is suspended between past precedents and future work. The previous decade included Futagawa's stunning ethnographic histories of Japanese architecture, but by the 1970s a vast publishing empire was also growing beneath his feet. That empire resides under the main title Global Architecture, but includes a large family of related publications as well. Here we consider Futagawa's early photographic books, in particular his first and extraordinary Nihon no minka publications of the late 1950s. This ten-volume series was co-authored with the Japanese architectural historian Itō Teiji and its contents appeared in numerous other photographic essays including the English-language books The Roots of Japanese Architecture (1963) and The Essential Japanese House (1962/1967). We reflect on the transposition that occurred within Futagawa's body of work by examining the broader context of post war Japan and its ethnographic traditions, in the light of his later role as a shaper of global architectural commerce.