Architectural malaise

By the time you’re reading this article, the 2008 Elections will have already concluded. It’s certainly a relief, considering the way they dragged on, and no doubt everyone back home is breathing a sigh of relief. For my part, I’d like to extend my congratulations to [ELECT], our next President, as well as my sympathies to [RUNNER-UP], who ran a disciplined and hard-fought campaign but came up short this time. Here’s to the next four years. This article, however, is (mercifully) not about politics this week. Instead, I’d like to turn your attention to something that bugs me.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the urban sprawl that characterizes much of Japan’s major metropolitan areas. The public transportation and the conveniently-located shops are certainly a plus. Nevertheless, the unbroken lines of buildings can get depressing at times, especially when I can only find the time to get out of the area on weekends. Even this wouldn’t be all bad, though, if not for one, little thing: the architecture.

Don’t get me wrong – I think traditional Japanese architectural is fantastic. The exteriors of contrasting dark wood supports and whitewashed walls topped with decorative tile roofs, and the interiors with their high floors, tatami mats, sliding doors, and rigid geometry are all nigh-inseparable from the notion of Japan itself. The problem, here, is that traditional Japanese architecture makes up a relatively small part of the makeup of any given town, and it is steadily shrinking. What exists in its stead is something that I view as just plain ugly.

Japanese buildings constructed over the past 50 years or so, both dwellings and commercial space, are afflicted with what I like to think of as “modern-itis”. There’s nothing wrong with building to a modern aesthetic in itself, but Japan’s problem is the tendency to rely on two things: boxy prefabricated construction and wildly incongruous architectural styles. The first grows out of simple cost concerns. When building a new house, business, or what have you, it is easiest and cheapest to build something whose plans already exist, rather than design it from scratch. You don’t have to work out any serious design flaws in revisions, and since the constituent parts are already made it’s much faster to construct. But the upshot is that most of these buildings are unimaginatively ugly at best, and completely out of place at worst.

The ones on the “completely out of place” side of the scale grow out of the second sin of Japanese building, which is the wildly incongruous building style. I have nothing against a stately brick house, or a Southwestern-influenced stucco look, or even something vaguely neoclassical. But none of these things belongs in a Japanese neighborhood, and the “brick” houses (thanks to cost concerns and earthquake codes) aren’t even real brick. And if it’s not something new and ridiculously out of step with its surroundings, it’s often being left to decay until it can be replaced with one of these styles. When I walk down the street, I just have to shake my head.

It is entirely strange to me that Japan would have so little attachment to its own signature buildings, but in some ways I guess it makes sense. After all, this is a nation where since time immemorial, periodic floods, tsunamis, fires, earthquakes, wars, and bombings have regularly leveled entire cities. Combine this with the wabi-sabi aesthetic that celebrates flaws and impermanence, and you get a recipe for the seemingly random distribution of new and old, Japanese and Japanese-idea-of-foreign. People are looking ahead instead of back; it’s part of what makes Tokyo seem so futuristic. But at the same time, is it really so much to ask to take better care in preserving what historical buildings remain for a new generation? There are nice old neighborhoods in places like Kyoto, Nara, Kanazawa, and elsewhere that show it can be done and well, but at this point I’d be happy with reasonable facsimiles. You can’t convince me for an instant that a nation as technologically advanced as Japan is incapable of mimicking the traditional architecture with modern materials, safety features, and accessibility. If anything, it seems to be more a matter of building preference than anything else, and to me that’s just a shame. Change and progress are all well and good, but there are some things that are better left not tampered with. It’s too bad more Japanese people don’t see buildings the same way.