Modern design is simply a simple design.
Simple means that colors, shapes and materials are restrained.
Simple is not a modernist patent. It is not limited to architecture and product design. Where did the value of simplicity come from? What is that concrete appearance? In the series “Genealogy of Simple”, we explore various aspects of simplicity.
Katsura Imperial Villa has been talked about in connection with modernism. “Japanese” could be the ideal modernism.
How is it actually? In this series “Simple Genealogy”, we will not follow Katsura Imperial Villa as a real thing (architecture or garden), but as Katsura Imperial Villa as texts (texts and photographs) that are spoken in various ways.
Bruno Taut and Katsura
Bruno Taut arrived in Japan via Siberia on May 3, 1933, and visited Katsura Imperial Villa the next day. He was politically exiled to Japan on the occasion of invitation from the Japan International Architecture Association.
In Germany, Taut, considered pro-Soviet, had been deprived of his job and position by the Nazis in power.
Bruno Taut praised Katsura with the great excitement of saying, “It is so beautiful as to make me even want to cry,” and wrote in diary that “I can be proud of myself being a”discoverer”of Katsura Imperial Villa.”
“The taste has reached the culmination of sophistication, and its expression is extremely modest.” “Here, almost all decorative elements are omitted, and the refined taste can be sought only for the balance with high grace. (Bruno Taut’s “The Rediscovery of Japanese Beauty” “Eternal Things”)
Taut praised Katsura as an art that was beautiful and noble, while being simple and practical. At the same time, he described the principle of beauty of Katsura as not just historical or Japanese, but complete, ultra-temporal and modern.
“The Katsura Imperial Villa is not only a historical norm but more than that. Katsura also includes all the principles and ideas of modern architecture which can be the basis of creation. ”(Previously,” The World Miracle of Japanese Architecture “)
This Taut’s praise for Katsura has a great influence. sAmidst the rise of nationalism, the modern architecture group, which had been inferior in the Japanese architectural world at the time when it swayed in the Emperor style vs. modern architecture (international architecture), was based on Taut’s discourse as the base and legitimacy of Modernist architecture. As a result, the myth of “Katsura as modernism” was born.
“A building like this is truly classic because the ultimate details cannot be reasonably grasped. Its beauty is entirely spiritual in nature.” (Bruno Taut “Nippon” collection) “Katsura Imperial Villa”)
“The world-famous palace of the Katsura Imperial Villa and its garden represent the inflexible connection of many relationships. What is the unique power of each part, its complete freedom and independence? , Nevertheless, it forms a whole unity with a round chain like a rigid chain “(” World Miracle of Japanese Architecture “, above-mentioned book)
“The essence of this miracle is the relationship of styles -a kind of reciprocal relationship that has been builts” (previously, “The World Miracle of Japanese Architecture”)
However, these actual words of Taut appear to be more weighted to the aesthetics of nobility, artistry, spirituality and relationships, rather than modernism. The expressionist Taut’s eyes reflected the beauty of Katsura, which has not faded after 300 years, and Bruno Taut’s Katsura was an expression of straightforward surprise and joy.
Taut was not Gropius, or a modernist like Corbusier or Mies.
It was the Japanese modernist who skillfully used Taut, a world-famous architects’s, words and created the myth of “Katsura as modernism”. The Japan Institute of International Architecture originally invited Taut in such an intention.
The gap between Japan and Taut. Compared to the many books left, Taut has little architectural achievement in Japan.
His hopes of getting a position in educational institution has also been denied.
Unable to withstand each other’s expectations, Taut traveled from Japan to Turkey, where he gained the status of university professor and government adviser, then became an architect again, and died two years later in his land. It seems that there is almost no shadow of “Japanese style” in the architectural works that Taut left behind in Turkey.
Katsura of Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Katsura of a photographer
Yasuhiro Ishimoto started his first photo book “Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture” (1960, 1971) with close-ups of hedges, stones, moss, boards, tatami mats and shoji screens. In “Katsura Imperial Villa” (2010), the definitive version of black and white photographs with better printing quality, starts from the close-up of stone passage in the garden and goes on with 10 close-up shots of stones and mosses. It is extremely rare to start with a close-ups for a photo book that focuses on architecture and gardens.
Furthermore, in the photo of Ishimoto, the roof of the Shoin with the “Mukuri” was carefully avoided. Can’t find the pictures of the over decorated Katsura shelf or the garden plant of cycad that Gropius and Taut hated.
Stilt that looks like a piloti supported by delicate pillars, a geometric facade composed of vertical and horizontal wires and shoji, like Mondrian, minimalistic colors dominated by black and white, abalone and rust. Stones, moss, and wood grain textures that have an abstract image.
A graduate of the Chicago Institute of Design, known as the “New Bauhaus,” opened by U.S.-based photographer Moholy-Nagy László, the Bauhaus aesthetic has captured the eyes of this photographer. It’s modern.
Katsura shown in a color photo book (described later) issued by Ishimoto (described later) has the look of a normal Furuya, while the black and white Katsura is overwhelmingly minimal. Give a modern impression. Even in the 2010 black and white photo book, Ishimoto thoroughly sticks to modern Katsura.
In Katsura of Yasuhiro Ishimoto, “Katsura as modernism” has realized.
Kenzo Tange’s Katsura
Kenzo Tange is the co-author of Yasuhiro Ishimoto in “Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture”. “Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture” is also the title of Tange’s thesis placed at the beginning.
Tange succeeded in expressing the delicacy of Katsura and Yayoi as modernist architecture in the works of the 1950s, such as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (1952), his residence (1953), and the former Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (1957). So, this paper was written when we were looking for the next step.
Later, it will bear fruit at the National Yoyogi Stadium (1964) and Tokyo Cathedral St Mary’s Cathedral (1964). These works are dialectical methodologies of delicacy and dynamics, Japan and the West, tradition and modern.
Tange’s Shoin = Yayoi-style, garden, tea-house (wabi, sabi) = Jomon-like, rather aggressive view of Katsura, can be said to be a strategic stance toward the practice of this methodology.
The paper concludes with the words, “It is also our tradition and creation that denies Katsura and tries to destroy it”.
Kenzo Tange’s, whom said to be a national architect of the Showa era, decided to settle the relationship between “Japanese things” and modernism.
New Isozaki Katsura
Arata Isozaki wrote a paper “The Ambiguous Space” in Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s color photo book “Katsurakyu-Space and Shape” (1983).
Isozaki read Katsura Imperial Villa by focusing on the elements that Katsura had cut off as modernism after Taut.
Example is accidental or misaligned.
The architecture of Katsura Imperial Villa consists of the Koshoin, Chushoin, and New Goten, which have been built over the last quarter century, and three buildings are arranged in a geese line and continue to the back. This shift is recognized not only on the flat surface but also on the vertical surface, and the three buildings are connected while the floor height and vertical surface are slightly deviated. Isozaki says that this accidental shift creates Katsura’s “Pleasant pleasure” and “subtle gradation.”
Mixed and multi-layered.
The Katsura style is said to be a traditional Shouin style that has been converted into a Sukiya style (commoners, hobbies, liberalization). However even in the same Sukiya style is used, the Shingoten can be called a “clean tatami room” with a lighter and more splendid taste, on the other hand Koshoin admires a fictional rural.
In the past Katsura as Modernism, the simplicity and transparency of the Koshoin were highly praised, while the glittering decorativeness of the new palace was cut down as corruption and play. But rather, he points out that Katsura is the mixture of these two designs and the layers.
Arata Isozaki concludes that the reason why Katsura is a classic, is that opposing elements have a pleasant relationship with each other and create pleasure while maintaining an exquisite balance. It can be said that it is post-modern Katsura, which is typical of this architect who seeks for a rigid modernism.
* References: Bruno Taut’s “Nippon” (Translated by Mori Ikuro, Kodansha Academic Library, 1991)
Bruno Taut “Rediscovering Japanese Beauty” (Translated by Hideo Shinoda, Iwanami Shinsho, 1962)
Kenzo Tange / Yasuhiro Ishimoto “Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture” (Chuo Koronsha, 1971)
Yasuhiro Ishimoto “Katsura Imperial Villa-Space and Shape” (Iwanami Shoten, 1983)
Arata Isozaki “” Japanese things in architecture “” (Shinchosha, 2003)
Shoichi Inoue, “The Katsura Imperial Villa Myths Made” (Kobunsha, 1986)
* All photos are from Yasuhiro Ishimoto “Katsura Imperial Villa” (Rikuyosha, 2010)
text by Tetsuya Omura
