Japan Style: Architecture + Interiors + Design

Contents

Zen and the Art of Japanese Design

A Tea Master’s Home in Aichi

Elegant Style in a Kyoto Machiya

Exuberant Spontaneity in Osaka

House of Ikebana

A Kaga-style Teahouse

A Celebration of Lacquer Craft

Coming Home to a Kyoto Machiya

An Antique-filled Minka

A Cosmopolitan Villa in Gunma

A Potter’s Minka in Tanba

A Traditional Farmhouse in Niigata

A Stately Mansion in Akita

A Sukiya-style Gallery in Gifu

An Old Parlor in Kanazawa

The Evolution of a Modern Home

A Cottage on the Izu Peninsula

A Room for Light and Shadows

A Salute to Modernism

A Mountain Retreat in Karuizawa

A New Home in Kanazawa

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Zen and the Art of  

Japanese Design

Minimalism and simplicity are the hallmarks of Zen-inspired traditional Japanese interiors. This effect is achieved by a rhythm of vertical and horizontal surfaces paired with natural colors. Exterior wall panels and shoji screens have been removed in this room to let the summer breeze and garden view in, making it as open as a tent.

Floor-plan of Zan Yu So—the organic organization of a Japanese house

The wood-floored engawa corridor mediates the relationship between the interior and exterior of a room. The storm shutters on the outer edge of the engawa are removed during the day so that the veranda becomes part of the garden, while at night, or during stormy weather, the shutters are closed to extend the interior space. These wooden storm shutters are a feature many newer houses in Japan do not have.

Simple interior surfaces and spaces add drama to the few objects d’art displayed in a room.

The unassuming beauty of a minka farmhouse comes from natural materials such as unhewn logs, mud, bamboo and straw. Traditional building methods, perfected over hundreds of years, are employed to create a building that is ecologically sustainable and completely recyclable.

This large country house and its garden are seen here through the perimeter fence. Built with natural materials and colors, the house nestles comfortably in the garden that attempts to mimic the great outdoors as closely as possible. The ethos is of co-existence with nature, not control over it.

These small tea ceremony utensils underscore the attention to detail in Japanese design. At left are two whisks referred to as chasen; one has been turned over on a stand especially designed for that purpose. The flat scoop (chashaku), is an object of art in its own right. During the Momoyama and Edo Periods, men of power often vied with each other in crafting this simple object.

Japanese and modern Western elements of this interior complement each other, since both aspire to the beauty of simplicity. The shoji wall on the left is completely removable.

A surprising intellectual leap in housing design took place in Japan during the 14th century. This was an idea so powerful that it resonated for the next 600 years, and still retains enough influence in Japan as shown in the houses in this book. This intellectual leap sought to eliminate the inessential, and seek the beauty in unembellished humble things. It sought spaciousness in deliberately small spaces, and a feeling of eternity in fragile and temporary materials. A house’s interior was not to be just protected from nature, but to be integrated with nature in harmony. Influential Zen Buddhist priests in the Muromachi and Momoyama Periods articulated this ideal so well that leaders in many fields followed it, and the entire Japanese society aspired to it. What resulted were homes that speak to the soul and seem to hold time still. They provide a quiet simple base from which to deal with the world.

Around the time that European and English homes were becoming crammed with exotic bric-a-brac collected from the newly established colonies, Japanese Zen priests were sweeping away even the furniture from their homes. Out also went any overt decorations. What was left was a simple flexible space that could be used according to the needs of the hour. At night the bedrolls were taken from deep oshire cupboards, and during the day they were replaced, making space for meals, work, play and entertaining. This lightness was in part a response to Japan’s frequent earthquakes, and in part to the Buddhist teachings about the transient nature of all things. It is interesting to note that this ephemerality is not reflected in the architectural tradition in India, China or Korea, the three countries from where Buddhism arrived in Japan.

Wood is the preferred building material in Japan. The country’s Shinto roots have inculcated a deep understanding of and respect for nature. Japanese carpenters have perfected techniques of drawing out the intrinsic beauty of wood. Craftsmen often feel, smell and sometimes even taste wood before purchasing it. Although stone is available in abundance in mountainous Japan, it was traditionally used for the foundations of temples, castles and, to a limited extent, for homes and warehouses. Even brick buildings, when first built in Ginza around 1870, stayed untenanted for a long time, because people preferred to live in well ventilated wooden buildings.

Traditional Japanese builders designed houses from the inside out, the way modern architects professed to do until about two decades ago. A house’s exterior evolved from its plan, rather then being forced into pre-conceived symmetrical forms. Bruno Taut, a German architect trained at Bauhaus, and who came to Japan in 1933, claimed that Japanese architecture has always been modern. The Bauhaus mantras of form follows function and less is more, as well as the modern ideas of modular grids, prefabrication and standardization had long been part of Japanese building traditions.

Around the time when Leonardo da Vinci was developing a system of dimensions that scaled the human body for use in architecture, Japanese craftsmen standardized the dimensions of a tatami mat to 90 x 180 centimeters, which was considered adequate for a Japanese person to sleep on. Every dimension in a Japanese house relates to the module of a tatami mat. For example, the height of fusuma doors is usually 180 centimeters. The width of a structural post is usually one-tenth or one-fifth of 90 centimeters, and the post’s bevel is one-seventh or one-tenth of its width. Thus, as in da Vinci’s model, the proportions and scale of a traditional Japanese house can be considered to flow from the dimensions of the human body.

The houses shown in this book are a wonderful reminder that there are other alternatives to big is beautiful, and that eternity is not about permanent materials. Living in the condensed world—Japan’s population is half the size of the US, but it occupies a land area about 30 times smaller—the Japanese have developed a unique understanding of space. An ikebana arrangement charges the area in and around itself, and that space becomes an integral part of the design. The arrangement would not be nearly as effective