Eco Living Japan. Deanna MacDonald
has always been modern.” For Taut, trained in the Bauhaus with its mantras of ‘form follows function’ and ‘less is more’, Japanese architecture was a revelation: “The form and shape are not so important; the relationship with the environment is a more singular factor.”
This structural modularity came to be based on the size of an average tatami mat (generally 90 x 180 cm, though there are local variations), considered the correct size for one person to sleep on. The size of a traditional room is measured by its number of tatami, for example, a six-mat room. Today, the floor area of modern houses is measured in tsubo, roughly the equivalent of two tatami mats. It was about the same time that Leonardo da Vinci was developing his system of human body-based proportion that the tatami mat and, by extension, the human body, became the standard for proportion and scale in the Japanese house.
This human spatial scale is part of Japanese architecture’s close relation to the landscape and nature. Often the best part of a property was reserved for gardens and the house built on the remainder. The house design offered a flexibility of space and function that allowed for a fluid relation to nature. Inside, fusuma (solid sliding doors) and shoji (translucent sliding doors) create layers of spaces that could be opened and closed at will. In fine weather, entire walls could be pushed aside, opening the house to the garden. Twentieth-century architect Antonin Raymond, who spent most of his career in Japan, wrote: “The Japanese house is surprisingly free … one opens up all the storm doors, the sliding screens and sliding doors and the house becomes as free as a tent through which air gently passes.”
The garden became part of the experience of the house, the very basis of the concept of shakkei, or ‘borrowed landscape’. An engawa corridor created an intermediary space between inside and out. On summer days, it is part of the exterior experience but in winter and at night, with doors closed, it becomes part of the interior.
Wood is the traditional building material and generations of craftsmen learned to draw out the intrinsic beauty of the material. Art historian Yukio Lippit suggests that Japan’s architectural history is closely related to its ecological history. Builders knew their forests intimately and what wood was appropriate for each task, be it structural support in a large temple or expressing the ideals of wabi sabi in the materiality of a teahouse. It is worth noting that the high point of Japanese sculpture is considered to be the medieval wooden sculpture of the Kei School, many of whose members were also builders.
And importantly, the traditional house, made of natural materials such as wood, mud, straw and paper, was 100 percent biodegradable and recyclable. Most items were reused and reshaped over time and everything, from the structural materials to tatami mats and shoji screens, would eventually become compost or fuel.
Architectural historian Azby Brown has studied the development in pre-industrial Edo Japan of multifaceted sustainable systems in everything from agriculture to house building. After a period of deforestation led to building timber shortages and erosion from clear-cutting in the early 1600s, deforestation was halted, agricultural practices were improved and conservationist policies implemented at all levels of society. Daily life was premised on a concept of ‘just enough’; nothing was wasted. Brown notes that Edo Japan’s practices presage most of the basic tenets of modern sustainable design principles: connecting design and the environment, considering the social and spiritual aspects of design, taking responsibility for the design effects throughout the entire life cycle, ensuring long-term value, eliminating waste, using natural/passive energy flows and using nature as a model for design.
This all began to change with the advent of industrialization in the Meiji era (1868–1914), which also marked the introduction of Western architecture in Japan. Government and public buildings began to be built in Western styles, though the home remained fairly traditional until 1945. Some early twentieth-century experimentation by architects such as Sutemi Horiguchi and Antonin Raymond created a few exceptional homes mingling traditional architecture with early Modernism, but at the end of the war few were interested in the forms of the past.
Cities were rebuilt quickly and apartment blocks rose. The goal was rapid, modern redevelopment. Even the traditional houses of historic Kyoto, spared from the bombs of the war, were mostly destroyed by shortsighted redevelopment that began with Kyoto Tower, part of controversial modernization leading up to the 1964 Olympics. Today, it remains a jarring site on the city skyline though it has been overtaken by ever-rising nondescript towers and the mammoth, controversial Kyoto Station, arguably the most unnecessary building in Japan, emblematic of the loss of the traditional built environment in the later twentieth century. That Japan, so famed for its architecture in tune with nature and beauty, should have completely turned away from its building traditions for cities of concrete and steel still surprises first-time visitors.
The play of light and shadow in Yasushi Horibie’s House in Tateshina (page 64).
The play of texture and surfaces in the House in Nara by Uemachi Laboratory (page 42).
The Present
A common adage is that Japan is a country of contradictions. Contemporary Japanese cities are a tangle of skyscrapers, characterless mid-rises, wires and raised highways, and yet they still manage to charm. There is enormous waste but intense recycling. There is a great love of nature but an even greater desire to control it. Tradition is celebrated but newness is highly prized.
House building in Japan today is also full of contradictions. Japan has more architects per capita than any other country, about 3.8 times the number of architects than the USA. There is also a huge demand for new homes in Japan. This is surprising when one considers that the population is shrinking and expected to decrease by 30 percent by 2060, and that today about 17 percent of Japanese homes are left vacant; 2015 estimates suggest there are at least 8 million akiya (empty houses) in Japan. Half of all houses are demolished before 38 years (compared to 100 years in the USA). This is closely linked to the fact that houses lose 100 percent of their value after about 30 years, condos after 40 years, because insurance companies will not insure older homes. Some studies put the full loss of value as low as 15 years. It is thus not surprising that contemporary Japanese homes have been called ‘disposable’.
Land costs play a large factor. Cass Gilbert, architect of the 1913 Woolsworth building in New York, called the skyscraper “a machine for making the land pay”. This is a lesson Japan has learned well. When a home is sold, it is really the land that purchasers are buying. Usually the house is demolished, even if renovations cost less than a new home. And often more profitable multistoried apartment blocks rise in place of the destroyed single-family home, assuming the plot is large enough.
As land prices are exorbitant, most landowners have small, irregular plots. Constantly divided and subdivided as it is sold or divided among each generation, every centimeter of land is valuable, and it is not uncommon to have plots only a few meters wide or in polygonal shapes. Local building regulations are often fairly permissive. Each individual plot is considered as an entity, not as a part of a neighborhood. So clients, knowing the house will not hold long-term value or pass to the next generation, build to their tastes. In these distinct circumstances, architects are often encouraged to create something unique. Houses can take on fantastic forms and whether practical, livable, sustainable or not, often feature in the pages of design and architecture publications worldwide. They can be beautiful, whimsical or daring, yet despite the effort and costs involved, even high-end design houses are rarely built to last. Most owners put in little to no maintenance once their house is built. Why invest in a structure that can only lose value? Thus, even in sought-after neighborhoods, houses are frequently left to rot.
How did this tatekae (scrap-and-build) culture come about? On the philosophical side, scholars will point to a love of the new as embodied in Japan’s principal Shinto shrine, the Ise Jingu, which has been rebuilt every 20 years since the seventh century. Its architectural renewal remains a potent symbol of spiritual purity. The Buddhist belief of the transience of all things is also cited as a rationale.