Utopia and Nostalgic Return

Abstract

The term ‘traditional Japanese architecture’ often causes confusionbecause people want the architecture of a certain period to eithercontinue endlessly, or to be substituted by some kind of facsimile.This paper maintains that the roots of Japanese architecture continueand that these roots make themselves evident at times of upheavaland renewal.Japan consists of a number islands which have had periods ofisolation both internationally, and nationally from ‘political lockdown’within. And yet these periods of isolation have often produceda veritable zenith in the houses of what Bruno Taut called “thepeasants”, and the author has chosen to call ‘commoners (minka)’.One example this is the Japanese tea house, which came about at atime of heightened military dominance. Castles were the strongholdsof power complete with large rooms in which the rituals of statedemanded order by rank. Beside this show of power came the humbletea house, used for the simple tea ceremony, sometimes between as few as two people. The roots of this humble hut, if we can call itsuch, carried with it the same structural principles as the minka, orcommoner’s house. A non-loadbearing structure of post and lintelconstruction for the sole purpose of concentrating on “the sound ofboiling water”. Out of the dream of power came the need for humility.The warrior’s power lay in the control of space; the tea master’s in thecontrol of time. The architecture responds. The building is an event