International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing "Kokusai Kenchiku"

After World War I, architects around the world aspired to transcend national boundaries that had been devastated by conflicts. The result was a flurry of artistic creativity. In Japan, young architects strove to create an “international architecture,” or “kokusai kenchiku”, an expression of increasing international travel and communication, growth of the mass media, and technological innovation.

Ken Tadashi Oshima traces the many interconnections among Japanese, European, and American architects and their work during the interwar years by examining the careers and designs of three leading modernists in Japan: Yamada Mamoru (1894-1966), Horiguchi Sutemi (1895-1984), and Antonin Raymond (1888-1976). Each espoused a new architecture that encompassed modern forms and new materials, and all attempted to synthesize the novel with the old in distinctive ways. Combining wood and concrete, paper screens and sliding/swinging glass doors, tatami rooms and Western-style chairs, they achieved an innovative merging of international modernism and traditional Japanese practices.

Oshima explores the European-American sphere of influence that flowed in multiple directions among architects in Japan. Sadly, few of the buildings of Japan’s interwar period withstood the destruction of World War II and the wrecking balls of subsequent decades of development. Oshima uses a wealth of photographs to vividly capture the character of the burgeoning architectural media of those years and to illustrate the works and visions of these pioneering modernists.

 

Ken Tadashi Oshima is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches in the areas of trans-national architectural history, theory, representation, and design. He earned a BA degree, in East Asian Studies and Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College, M. Arch. degree from U. C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from Columbia University. From 2003-5, he was a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in London. Dr. Oshima’s publications include “Arata Isozaki” (Phaidon, 2008) and “International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku” (U.W. Press, 2009). He is an author for the “Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Home Delivery” (2008), curator of the exhibition “SANAA: Beyond Borders” (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8), and co-curator of “Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noémi Raymond”. An editor and contributor to Architecture and Urbanism for more than ten years, he co-authored the two-volume special issue, “Visions of the Real: Modern Houses” in the 20th Century (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in “The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Theory Review, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui”, and the “AA Files”.