To understand this it is necessary to go back to the first ground swell of dis­content with the prevailing “international style” of Graeco-Roman classical architectural forms that occurred in the early nineteenth century. Certain thinkers and workers, notably the British architect Pugin, the critic Ruskin, and the designer William Morris were prominent in sensing the growing conflict between human values and the ugly tendencies of the Industrial Revolution, and devoted themselves to a search for the constructive forms of a more whole­some social and visual environment. It was inevitable in the confusion of those times that a clue should have been sought in historical precedent, and these men came to regard the Gothic age as the one embodying the symbolic forms whose spirit they felt had the most meaning for their own. The immediate and superficial result of this strongly felt impulse was eclecticism: only a symptom of the struggle, but at least an indication of broadening horizons. Perhaps the first example of the inclusion of the Japanese idiom within this eclectic orbit is seen in the interiors that the British architect Edwin Godwin designed for his own home, in 1862, only a few years after Japan became generally accessible to the Western world.

 

But the real fruit took longer to ripen. One of the indirect consequences of the activity of Ruskin and Morris was the art nouveau movement, which arose in Belgium in the 1880’s. Called the first non-historical architectural style, it was characterized by the use of asymmetry and flowing decoration based on plant forms; like much of the advanced art work of the times it showed direct Japanese influence.

 

The impetus of Ruskin and Morris carried on beyond art nouveau, and was an essential factor in the development of the Deutsche Werkbund, a German arts­and-crafts movement significantly oriented toward mechanical production. This culminated in the work and teaching of the architect Walter Gropius, whose Bauhaus, established in Germany in 1919, provided one of the clearest and most influential programs for the unification of art and industry with the objective of achieving a meaningful contemporary expression. And Gropius, in writing of the Japanese house, says: “the restrained order of the standardized building parts appealed to me as the hallmark of a deeply rooted culture adaptable to any new development.”

 

In America, Morris’ influence was felt in the “craftsman” movement, forn1u­lated in the interest of simple, direct workman-like usage of local materials, chiefly wood. For this reason it is easy to understand why the Craftsman, an organ of this movement, would publish in 1904 an enthusiastic review of a book on Japanese domestic architecture by the eclectic architect Ralph Adams Cram. But even before this, in 1888, Edward S. Morse published his Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, a sympathetic and detailed account tracing the inter­connections between the native tools, materials, and philosophy.

 

A significant body of domestic work, chiefly on the West Coast of America, re­sulted from the combined influence of this movement, these books, and an exist­ing familiarity with wood construction. Among those responsible are Bernard Maybeck, and the brothers Greene and Greene. The latter studied manual train­ing prior to their architectural education at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech­nology, and it is interesting to note in their work many examples of Japanesque detailing, in some cases almost tending to a caricature.

 

Japanese architecture also became known through a number of expositions. 1’he Philadelphia Centennial of 1876, for instance, contained two Japanese pavilions; and contemporary records are extensive and respectful in their ac­counts of the process of construction, and of the final appearance. In 1893 the “World’s Columbian Exposition” at Chicago included a Japanese pavilion among its splendors of the past ages; this fair was attended by an estimated twenty-eight million people. Frank Lloyd Wright, who was familiar with this pavilion, wrote in An Autobiography of 1900 ” … I found that Japanese art and architecture really did have organic character. Their art was nearer to the earth and a more indigenous product of native conditions of life and work, therefore more nearly modern as I saw it, than any European civilization alive or dead.”

 

It is the romance and nature-inspiration of Japan which appealed to Wright; while Gropius, on the other hand, found the implication of adaptable standard building components particularly suggestive. Recently returned from a visit to Japan, Gropius also spoke of the existence there of “positive factors, holding dynamic potentialities for the West,” and of the “sublime, mature solutions of problems of space and scale.”

 

In the summers of 1954 and 1955 the New York Museum of Modern Art placed on view in its garden a newly built “residential complex” of a samurai of the sixteenth to seventeenth century. In a supplement of his book, published in conjunction with this event, Mr. Drexler states that this house ” … was chosen to illustrate some of the characteristics of buildings considered by the Japanese to be masterpieces, and considered by Western architects to be of continuing relevance to our own building activities.” These relevant characteristics are indicated as being: ” … post and lintel skeleton frame construction; flexibility of plan; close relation of indoor and outdoor areas; and the decorative use of structural ele1nents.”

 

It is perhaps also characteristic of our Western outlook that this otherwise noteworthy book should see the “relevancies” in so narrow a compass. These characteristics are all material aspects, and the book seldom penetrates beyond them to their symbolical essence. Antonin Raymond, a Western architect who has practiced in Japan since the 1930’s puts the issue this way: “The Japanese does not wallow in matter for the love of it. It is at all times subservient to an idea. For him matter exists only as a symbol of spiritual truth and to use it un­conscious of the truths which it expresses is what constitutes bad taste.” And further: “A Japanese house resembles the evolution of a natural form. At every point it is related to an inner motive for which it has found an exact and fitting solution, not only practical but expressive of a profound understanding of the real values of life.”

 

In dealing with contemporary Japanese work Mr. Drexler makes a curious reference to the “perhaps superficial” resemblance of the architecture of Mies van der Rohe to traditional Japanese building. In failing to comprehend the absolute identity of spirit and significance of the symbolical structural clarity, and the feeling for n1aterial, between the Japanese traditional work and Mies’ work, the author again suggests the superficiality of his understanding.

 

for it is in fact a comprehensive although cursory primer of the exterior aspects of Japanese architecture, describing in three sections the cultural background (notable for extensive photographic coverage of the Ise Shrine), structure and design, and traditional and contemporary masterpieces of both public and private building. Since the book is really a reference work, it is a pity that it does not offer an index.

 

Mr. Carver’s book takes over from where Mr. Drexler’s leaves off. Presuppos­ing some familiarity with Japanese architecture, it presents page after page of photographs of a variety of traditional buildings; many of which illustrate in­credibly rich examples of rhythmic articulation. The text is kept to a minimum, but the Introduction is notable in that it is concerned with the creative discipline of visual order, and thus touches the heart of the matter. Subsequently there is some able comment on the role of asymmetry in relation to the dynamic life­processes of growth and change. The book becomes a little fuzzy in the remarks on “space”; some reference to the spatial devices of perceptual psychology would have helped here. But this is a small fault in a book which sings with such poetic visual images.

 

Mr. Yoshida’s book is a revision of the 1935 German edition, Das Japanische Wohnhaus, translated into English with a revised text, renewed illustrations, and supplemented with a chapter on gardens. In contrast with Mr. Drexler’s book which covers the whole panorama of Japanese architecture, public and private, traditional and contemporary, Mr. Yoshida is concerned with only the house and garden, including contemporary work in the traditional style. In exchange for breadth he offers depth; and with what one suspects is Germanic thoroughness he provides whole pages of different types of house plans, tolwnoma, tana, shoin, baths, window details, wood joints, and so on. There is also a chapter on the physical and visual properties of the Japanese building timbers. The only com­parable work with a similar wealth of detailed information is Morse’s earlier book, mentioned above. This book includes an index of Japanese terms, and both an English and Japanese bibliography.

 

 

Journal Article

Review: Japanese Influences on Western Architecture

Reviewed Works: The Architecture of Japan. by Arthur Drexler; The Japanese House and Garden. by Tetsuro Yoshida; Form and Space of Japanese Architecture. by Norman F. Carver, Jr.

Review by: Philip Thiel

The Journal of Asian Studies

Vol. 16, No. 2 (Feb., 1957), pp. 271-274