Abstract
This text is based on a section from the author’s dissertation titled Japan and Modern Architecture, 1945–1970. Discourse in the mid-20th-century Europe, examining the ideas about Japanese architecture in Western, mainly European discourse between 1945 and 1970. The dissertation maps the discourse on Japan from a comparative perspective. Building on sources from different countries, it identifies the main topics that were associated with Japan in the architectural context and shows their broader significance in the global architectural debate. It deals with the image of another culture: the focus is on both the history of ideas and visual representations, mainly photography. The sources are mostly printed media: architectural magazines and books on architecture in Western languages: English, German, French, Italian, Norwegian and Czech. What follows are excerpts from chapter II.6. of the original dissertation thesis. They introduce the change in perception of Japan that followed after 1960, and a case study of the writings on Japan by Bernard Rudofsky.
Highlights
The 1960s brought profound changes in the perception of Japan[2]
Ústav dějin umění AV ČR; Technická univerzita v Liberci on.hojda@gmail.com. This text is based on a section from the author’s dissertation titled Japan and Modern Architecture, 1945–1970
Building on sources from different countries, it identifies the main topics that were associated with Japan in the architectural context and shows their broader significance in the global architectural debate
Summary
The 1960s brought profound changes in the perception of Japan[2]. While looking the pages of international architecture magazines, the biggest change we can observe from around the year 1960 is the sheer rise of presence of presence of Japan in the architectural media: many more projects were presented than before, and the range of subjects connected to Japan expanded radically. The newly acquired international status of contemporary Japanese architecture meant, that it could be subject to criticism, losing the protective shield of exoticism. Since Japan was seen as a place future is already happening, some visitors embraced it, others, for the same reason, saw it as a threat Authors such as Günther Nitschke – in his extraordinarily long articles – and others such as Peter Güller connected this interest in general principles with urbanism and landscape, trying to reveal even deeper formative forces. First of his articles appeared in the Italian Domus already after, his first Japanese sojourn in 1956, and largely expanded in his 1965 book, The Kimono Mind
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