Fudo: An East Asian Notion of Climate and Sustainability

Jin Baek

doi:10.3390/buildings3030588

Abstract

My paper discusses an East Asian notion of climate and its significance for sustainability. A particular reference is the environmental philosophy of Tetsuro Watsuji (1889–1960), a Japanese philosopher who reflected upon the meaning of climate, or “fudo” in the Sino-Japanese linguistic tradition. Watsuji sees fudo not merely as a collection of natural features—climatic, scenic, and topographical—of a given land, but also as the metaphor of subjectivity, or “who I am”. Furthermore, this self-discovery through fudo is never private but collective. By referring to a phenomenological notion of “ek-sistere”, or “to be out among other ‘I’s”, Watsuji demonstrates the pervasiveness of a climatic phenomenon and the ensuing inter-personal joining of different individuals to shape a collective sustainable measure in response to the phenomenon. My paper lastly concretizes the significance of fudo and its inter-personal ethical basis for sustainability by dwelling upon cross-ventilation in Japanese vernacular residential architecture. Cross-ventilation emerges only through what Watsuji calls “selfless openness” between different rooms predicated upon the joining of different ‘I’s soaked in hotness and humidity. Watsuji’s fudo thus offers a lesson that without considering the collective humane characteristic of a natural climatic phenomenon, any sustainable act is flawed and inefficient.

Highlights

This paper illuminates an East Asian notion of climate and its significance from the perspective of sustainability
The experiences Watsuji had en route to Berlin operated as mirrors against which he could reflect the climate of his homeland to discover its characteristics
Watsuji further demonstrated the inter-personal dimension of fudo, clarifying that the relationship between man and nature cannot be separated from the relationship between man and man

Summary

Introduction

This paper illuminates an East Asian notion of climate and its significance from the perspective of sustainability. A creative moment in Watsuji’s theory of fudo, comes with his claim that man and natural phenomena are intertwined in such a way that the phenomena operate as the metaphor for human subjectivity, transcending scientific objectivism. From this concrete intertwined state, or fudo, emerges man and nature as its two abstracted facets. Watsuji further demonstrated the inter-personal dimension of fudo, clarifying that the relationship between man and nature cannot be separated from the relationship between man and man With these preliminary observations in mind, the goal of this paper is first to elucidate Watsuji’s notion of fudo and in particular his unique view of fudo as the metaphor of human subjectivity. A particular example is the spatial configuration of machiya, a vernacular Japanese residential architecture of which Watsuji himself offered a profound insight into the occupants’ collective patterns of living

Fudo as the Metaphor of Human Character

Ethics of the Inter-Personal

Cross-Ventilation and Ethics of the Inter-Personal

Findings

Conclusions