The Architecture of Postmodernism in Japan: the Main Features

Abstract

The architecture of postmodernism, as a western invention, was received with great interest in Japan. Of the huge number of materials, creative means, images and symbols that could be seen in the postmodern works by Western architects, Japanese masters did not take any interest in a particular school or trend. The Japanese met the new movement from the West as an image of the new epoch in general — the epoch of play and experiments, free from any rules. Changing socio-economic conditions resulted in the emergence of popular architecture and the play with styles and trends. That is why among the researchers the following question remains open: Was postmodernism an independent stylistic movement in Japanese architecture? Or alternatively, were they separate bold experiments by Japanese architects with no unifying theory or school — a phenomenon that could be more precisely called “pluralism”? Keywords—the architecture of postmodernism in Japan; the Japanese architecture of the 1980-1990s; pluralism in