A Postmodern Experience?

Introduction - What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism has been analyzed by several philosophers such as Fredrick Jameson, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard. Fredrick Jameson identifies postmodernism as the end of ideology, art, social class, the crisis of Leninism, and social democracy. He thinks that if modernism is a response to fully developed monopoly capitalism, postmodernism is a return to the traditional, to nostalgia, homesickness, and a desire for a last sense of loss. The disappearance of a sense of history in the modern movement caused the social system to gradually lose its capacity to retain its own past. According to Jameson, one fundamental feature of postmodernism is the frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture.[2] Jameson characterizes the postmodern as a cultural logic connected to the economic system of late capitalism and explains that 'this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world.'[3] Postmodernism is the effect, expression, and function of contemporary socioeconomic conditions—in Jameson's view, it is the apprehension of the 'new social space created by the expansion of consumer capitalism around the globe,' and the extent this social space has been permeated by culture. Jameson believes that every position on postmodernism in culture is an implicit or explicit political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today.

Jean-François Lyotard highlights postmodernism as an indicator of an end to modernity's metanarratives and its utopic hopes of human liberation, as these had been constructed through various dominant political, philosophical, and aesthetic discourses.[4] Postmodernism is the breakdown of the grand narratives that give people a framework for comprehending the world.[5] Lyotard believes that the essence of the postmodern event lies in Kant's conception of the sublime. It takes place ...

... when the imagination fails to present an object which might, if only in principle, come to match a concept. We have the idea of the world (the totality of what is), but we do not have the capacity to show an example of it. We have the idea of simple (that which cannot be broken down, decomposed), but we cannot illustrate it with a sensible object which would make an example. We can conceive of the infinity great, the infinity powerful, but every presentation of an object destined to 'make visible' this absolute greatness or power appears to us painfully inadequate. Those are ideas of which no presentation is possible.[6]

Lyotard suggests that postmodernity is a rewriting of modernity, not a radical departure from modernism.[7] For Lyotard, postmodernism is not so much a term for a historical period. The postmodern precedes and postdates the modern[8] and 'our business is not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.'[9] Postmodernism is a reaction against the values of enlightenment and its blind belief in the inevitable nature of progress due to human rationality and scientific discoveries. In contrast to the static world envisioned by Descartes and Kant, postmodernists accentuate becoming, contingency, and chance.[10]

Jean Baudrillard takes a critical position and points to a number of factors contributing to humanity's death knell within the postmodern present, including: the loss of history, mediatization, the proliferation of kitsch, consumer society, simulacra, and simulation.[11] In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard writes: 'The great event of this period, the great trauma, is this decline of strong referentials, these death pangs of the real and of the rational that open onto an age of simulation.'[12] Among other philosophers of postmodernity, Baudrillard puts more emphasis on mediatization and its side-effects[13] by explaining the centrality of communication technologies in providing global access to a culture of mass reproduction in which no original exists.[14] A culture of consumption has so much taken over our way of thinking that all reality is filtered through the logic of exchange value and advertising. Baudrillard writes, 'Our society thinks itself and speaks itself as a consumer society. As much as it consumes anything, it consumes itself as consumer society, as idea. Advertising is the triumphal paean to that idea.'[15]  Baudrillard also emphasizes his concepts of 'simulacra' and 'simulation' to clarify how the new models for the real have taken over the place of the real in postmodern society.[16]

Postmodernism and Architecture

The modern movement in architecture adopted a blind faith in science, technology, rational planning, and in speed and machines.[17] Max Weber defined modernism as the separation of religion from three realms: science, morality, and art.[18] Modernism claimed that art does not need to serve any purpose but should create its own reality. This reality, which belongs to an elite realm, is based on the philosophy of 'art-for-art's sake.'[19]  Using a master language,[20] early modernists turned inward and ignored the complexities of the outside world.[21]  In contrast to common perceptions, abstraction, atonality, and atemporality are only expressions of modernism, not its essence and spirit.[22] Baudrillard writes that modernity is a characteristic mode of civilization, which opposes itself to all traditional cultures and confronts their geographic and symbolic diversity, and imposes itself throughout the world as a homogenous unity.[23]  Jürgen Habermas indicates the term 'modern' expresses the awareness of an era that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of transition from the old to the new.[24] The romantic modernist sought to oppose the antique ideals of the classicists,[25] revolted against the normalizing functions of tradition, and even lived on the experience of rebelling against everything that is normative.[26] These constant disagreements with norms and rules caused contradictions and complications. Such contradictions existed in the nature of modernists, whose work aspired to unity, even while such unity was assembled from fragments or juxtapositions of difference and disrupted continuity.[27]

The postmodern condition, in contrast, is skeptical of discourses that seek to legitimize themselves by making appeal to some grand narrative, such as the hermeneutics of meaning and the emancipation of the rational subject, according to Lyotard.[28] While modernism is ideological at heart, postmodernism is much more eclectic, capable of assimilating and plundering all forms of genre and style.[29] Postmodernism in art is not only the absence of meaning as spoken through the work, but a rejection of the spectator. The postmodern product does not allow for the participation of an audience and leaves the displaced subject numb. In contrast to the modern distinction between high art and mass culture, postmodernism subsumes all culture under mass or popular culture.[30] Jameson identifies architecture as the closest art to the economic structural function, aesthetic innovation, and experimentation. He explains that postmodern architecture, grounded in multinational patronage, is the internal and super-structural expression of a whole.[31]  For Jameson and other critics of postmodernism, such as Lyotard and Mary McLeod, postmodern architecture is the consequence of political, economic, and social changes in the world.

Most critics agree that the term 'postmodernism' in art or architecture does not signify a distinct style. Jameson believes it was not a movement but a historical period, and a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet secondary features.[32] Richard Beardworth responds that postmodernism should be understood as an experiment that tried to 'witness reflectively the difficulty of presenting events.'[33]  In this context, the 'post' of 'postmodernity' suggests more a matter of tone, style, experimentation, and multiplicity.[34] In the postmodernist sensibility, the search for unity has been discarded. Instead, we have a peak of surfaces endlessly referring to and reflecting from other surfaces.[35]

Postmodernism can be traced back to critical writings on modern architecture and urbanism. American writer Jane Jacobs strongly criticized the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961. In 1973, the inaugural editorial of a new journal, Oppositions, Peter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, and Mario Gandelsonas questioned all norms by stressing that no attempt would be made to establish a single editorial line.[36] Historian of modern architecture, Anthony Vidler, in his 1976 essay 'The Third Typology' referred to new possibilities in design, a 'third typology which utilizes the clarity of the eighteenth century city to rebuke the fragmentation, decentralization, and formal disintegration introduced into contemporary life.' For this typology, there is no set of rules for transformations and their objects, nor any polemically defined set of historical precedents.[37] Around the same time, introducing a new strategy, 'new functionalism,' Gandelsonas wrote that functionalists like Corbusier did not use or develop in depth the idea of meaning because 'their work was an attack on the symbolic architecture of the academy and also because there was no rigorous theoretical context that would allow such a development.'[38] Later, Eisenman pointed to the new ideal style as post-functionalism, as if functionalism was the main cause for the failure of modernism.[39]  In 1977, the critic of modernism, Charles Jencks, wrote 'happily, we can date the death of modern architecture to a precise moment in time. It expired completely in 1972 when Pruitt-Igoe in St. Luois, Missouri was destroyed by dynamites.'[40] Despite Jencks' Amero-centric view, such precision in dating the end of modernity, if it really existed, cannot be generalized to other countries such as Japan.

To justify the necessity of a shift from an ethic of production towards an ethic of livelihood that celebrates the diversity of nature and human beings, the art critic, Peter Fuller, condemned Adolf Loos and his modernist successors for using the aesthetics of the machine and the market place, and talked about the necessity of shifting from an ethic of production towards an ethic of livelihood which celebrates the diversity of nature and human beings.[41] Fuller's utopian image for postmodernism differs from the image that Habermas draws. He points to the similarities between modernism and postmodernism:

[modernist and postmodernist] agree in the critique of soulless 'container' architecture, of the absence of a relationship with the environment and the solitary arrogance of the unarticulated office block, of the monstrous department stores, monumental universities and congress centers, of the lack of urbanity and the misanthropy of the satellite towns, of the heaps of speculative building…the mass production of pitch-roofed doghouses, the destruction of cities in the name of the automobile.[42]

The author Claudia Dona in 'Invisible Design,' asserted that the new postmodern design will maintain a balance between past and future. She also called postmodernism the attitude of a society that has introduced the necessity of continuously redesigning itself.'[43] Lyotard presaged that in the new postmodern world, no laws, prescriptions, or particular norms would be given.[44] The postmodern person always moves beyond the language of the tribe, acquiring in nothing, always creating anew.[45] This quality is considered the similarity between modernism and postmodernism according to Lyotard, who also believes that the postmodern extends that part of the modern movement that aimed at starting over from new beginnings.[46] The eclectic language and the ironic use of materials led the new movement. This postmodern irony appears to have no particular shape of its own and no internal limits. It replays modern universalism with the signs reversed.[47]  According to Jameson, postmodern hyperspace has succeeded in going beyond the capacities of the individual human body and to map itself in an external world.[48]

The desertion of ideology in favor of a pluralist situation offers colossal opportunities to every kind of artistic expression.[49]  This situation was described by Hilton Kramer in the New York Times: 'Our culture is without a focus or center … contradictory and countervailing styles.'[50] Likewise, in the early 1980s, philosopher Richard Rorty announced that there was no 'big picture.' Now everything is more complex and diverse, so much that no single individual—critic or artist—can be consistent with all of it.[51]  In the presence of such anarchism, nostalgia, and probably, frivolity, architects need to seek for new styles.[52] The critic, Kenneth Frampton, urges regionalism as a strategy of resistance. Regional identities can hold out at least for a time against the maximization of profit and efficiency.[53] In 1977, defending his concept of regionalism, Frampton wrote that everything should depend on the capacity of rooted culture to reconstruct its own tradition while appropriating foreign influences at the level of both culture and civilization.[54]

Postmodernism and Japan

The Second World War left the Japanese in a state of confusion and anxiety. Japanese faith in their nation's divine superiority and invincibility was seriously undermined as well as their confidence in their political leaders and their government.[55]  Their cities were left in ruins and 4,200,000 houses were destroyed. With a need for shelter, reconstruction became the main priority for the government and architects.[56] Most cities that were destroyed during the war did not take advantage of new city-planning in rebuilding and were simply rebuilt based on Japanese older traditions, conventions, and methods.[57] As a result, an enormous amount of small scale buildings were carried on by the citizens themselves.[58]  The number of houses constructed in 1948, when self-construction hit the highest point, was 740,000. This number gradually decreased to 250,000 in 1950 and 130,000 in 1951. The overwhelming majority of these houses were barrack-style and 80 percent of them were made of wood. The self-construction movement encouraged publishers to publish many books and magazines containing plans for small houses.[59] The policy of having one's own housing gave room to architects for individual expression through these small houses.[60] The law for 'Housing Loan Corporation' was enacted in 1950 to provide public funds at low interest to finance private building, while other administrative policies also assisted construction projects initiated by private citizens. Postwar administrative strategies that prioritized housing projects not only succeeded in responding to the immediate and serious needs for food and shelter, but also provided great opportunities for young architects and indirectly facilitated training a new generation of architects.[61]

Modernism in post-war Japan was synchronized with the developing economy in a society in which feudalism and social classes were replaced by social monotony. After the war, Japan, which fell strongly under the influence of western countries, began to reassert its identity.[62] In this conception, Japan considered itself always in Asia, and yet above Asia.[63] In this era of widely proliferated Asian modernists, the Japanese started to think about their national and cultural identity. The concept of postmodernism in Japan emerged in literature against the background of modernity.[64]  Even these days, most studies on postmodernism in Japan are mostly focused on literature. Postmodern techniques such as parody, derision, and the pastiche are an inherent feature of Japanese literature. Postmodernism in literature is mostly concentrated on 'the expression not of order and suppression, as the novel is, but of space, decentralization and dispersal.'[65]

The key question in the study of postmodernism in Japanese architecture is identifying the existence of the specific time in the history of Japan in which it occurred. If there is a postmodern era, to what extent is the definition of postmodernism in Japan similar to postmodernism in western countries? This question has been answered by literary critics, Miyoshi and Harootunian, who believe that postmodernism is a western invention because Japan connects its own temporality with different axes of time, progress, and power.[66] The critic of Japanese modern art, Shigemi Inaga, explains, 'Postmodern Japan is a system without structure floating on a flow of bits of mass-information, which are not destined to accumulate and be piled up as the bases of further research in the future.' He compares Japanese postmodern historicity to the Ise Shrine, which floats on its own self-referential loop, challenging any attempt at historical construction.[67]

Conditions of Postmodernism

A. Historicism or Nostalgia

Fredrick Nietzsche writes: 'admiration for the power of history which in practice transforms every moment into a naked admiration for success and leads to an idolatry of the factual.'[68] The modern, or avant-garde, disposed those pasts objectified by the scholarship of historicism and opposed a neutralized history which is locked up in the museum of historicism.[69] Explaining the cultural contradictions of capitalism, Daniel Bell argues that the crises of developed western societies are to be traced back to the separation between culture and society. Modernist culture has come to dominate and penetrate the values of everyday life.[70] Among these values was the secure connection between society and its history; historical values that were fully rejected and neglected by modernists. Baudrillard noted that the role of the media in healing a society that has lost its history, by frequently referring to history and to various 'retro recreations of the past,' is a symptom for the loss of history.[71] Like Baudrillard, who explains the consequences of mediatization, Jameson asserts that the function of the media is to help people to forget and to serve as the agents and mechanisms of 'historical amnesia.'[72]  Jameson specifies that the contemporary social system has begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past and wipe out all traditions that earlier social formations had preserved in some way.[73] He also admits, nostalgia recalls traditional mannerisms of the past by contextualizing them within the aesthetic form of the postmodern image.[74] Patrick Joyce discusses the crucial role of the historians in the postmodern age in identifying representations and constructions of the past and the potential historical discourses which they can reproduce.[75]  Such historiography will include the study of beliefs, symbols, and other forms of representation.[76]

Jameson observes historicism as an old-fashioned representation of historical content with a social, historical and existential present, and the past as referent.[77]  In 1983, Alan Colquhoun discussed three types of historicism. The first is a modern concept often linked to zeitgeist (spirit of the age). The primary definition is the study of society's institutions in the context of their historical development on the basis of an organic model of growth and change. The second is an attitude and sympathy toward the culture and customs of the past. The third is an artistic practice based on sampling forms and imagery freely from historic styles. The last two definitions justify postmodern eclecticism and pluralism.  Both attitude and practice underlie the postmodern use of historical forms in late 1970s.[78] Walter Benjamin explains the eclectic nature of this pluralism and the concept of jetztzeit, the idea that the present is a moment of revelation. He compares this postmodern quality to how fashion cites an antiquated dress. Douglas Crimp, the critic of postmodern art, adds, 'Postmodernism can only be understood as a specific breach with modernism, with those institutions which are the preconditions for and which shape the discourse of modernism.'[79] However, the danger of using this approach lies in its oppositionist mentality and tracing its logic to various forms of extremism.[80]  The other weakness of historicism is that it does not take into account cultural borrowing among civilizations and cultures. It also tends to ignore the cultural development of norms and forms.[81] In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson draws our attention into the importance of the difference between historicism and nostalgia in art and architecture. He writes:  

The architects use this (exceedingly polysemous) word for the complacent eclecticism of postmodern architecture, which randomly and without principle but with gusto cannibalizes all the architectural styles of the past and combines them in overstimulating ensembles. Nostalgia does not strike one as an altogether satisfactory word for such fascination (particularly when one thinks of the pain of a properly modernist nostalgia with a past beyond all but aesthetic retrieval), yet it directs our attention to what is a culturally far more generalized manifestation of the process in commercial art and taste…[82]

In reference to Japanese architecture, we need to explore if historicism referred to international or universal manifestations of history or whether it was more concerned with local and national identities. The uniformity of modern architecture in Japan, plus the growth of the economy in a country which was re-discovering its identity after a period of western domination, encouraged Japanese architects to take a look at their nation more seriously. In those days, this kind of historicism had a good market in Japan.[83] Since the early decades of the 20th century, there have been intellectual debates on the use of traditions and representations of history. Some of these challenges are visible in the writings of the famous Japanese animator, Masao Maruyama, in which he emphasizes issues of tradition and historical context.[84] Japanese architects such as Kunio Maekawa, Kenzo Tange, Arata Isozaki, Kisho Kurokawa, Hiroshi Hara, Fumihiko Maki, and Tadao Ando attempted to retain this sense of history in their work.

Maekawa, one of the earliest promoters of modern architecture, worked for Le Corbusier for almost two years. Although Maekawa's use of concrete did not allow his design ideas and projects to be practical in areas distant from industrial centers,[85] he attempted to develop regionally and climatically conditioned elements of the Japanese architectural alphabet. Maekawa's trainee and colleague, Kenzo Tange, concentrated on the rhythm and texture of Japanese traditional architecture.[86] Tange was certainly a pioneer in studying the principles of Japanese traditional architecture. He published two major books in the 1960s. One was Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese architecture in 1960, and the second one is entitled Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture, published in 1962. Tange referred to a history lesson, what Jameson calls 'the best cure for nostalgic pathos.'[87] At the same time, being influenced by his indirect master, Le Corbusier, Tange applied Hellenic tradition and designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial like a modern Acropolis.[88] The critic, John Morris Dixon, explains that Tange applied Corbu's architectural principles on a civic scale.[89]

In contrast to Kunio Maekawa, who focused on the modernization of Japanese architecture, Tange took a more functional approach. Although Tange ignored the sequential organization of spaces in traditional architecture, he had a critical stance towards the modern movement in Japan. Both Maekawa and Tange returned to the spatial concepts and modular proportions of tatami, using textures to enliven the ubiquitous ferroconcrete and steel, and integrating gardens into their designs. In addition, Tange's projects used the cantilever principle in a pillar and beam system reminiscent of ancient imperial palaces.[90] Tange used a pillar and beam system reminiscent of ancient imperial palaces in his architectural projects and a baroque system of composition in his urban projects.[91] This type of representation of past ideals and objectives through the appropriation of codified styles is what would be called 'contemporary nostalgia culture.'[92]

The new Tokyo Metropolitan Government building (Photo 1) designed by Tange was harshly criticized. Tange tried to expand the free space to the exterior and enhance transparency by using glass on the façade. This move was condemned by Japanese critic Noboru Kawazoe, because he believed that this idea was taken from buildings designed by American architects, such as Mies Van der Rohe. Kawazoe did admit, however, that Tange, in general, had skillfully amalgamated Japanese traditions into Western elements.[93] In a response to Kawazoe's comments on Tange's designs, Tange mentioned that he had been accused of extremism and radicalism by Walter Gropius and other foreign architects in their private letters.[94] Tange even explained that the design of the Katsura Palace was not a product of any positive attitude, but that of objective contemplation based on sentimentality of the daily life of nobles. Tange also added that the technique should be a subjective decision of the individual architect.[95]

Photo 1: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (Kenzo Tange).

Photo by sfcityscape. Acquired from flickr.com under a Creative Commons license.

Arata Isozaki, a major architect in the late 1970s, was a student and associate of Tange. Influenced by Corbu's tradition, he turned his attention toward the further exploration of geometric shapes and cubic silhouettes. Isozaki played an important role in the transition of Japanese architecture from modernism to postmodernism. Being art-oriented, he used collage and montage as postmodernist tools to design his buildings. Jameson's idea that history is only accessible to us in narrative form could be seen in what Italian architect, Vittorio Gregotti, labels the 'eclectic exoticism' of Isozaki.[96] For instance, in the Tsukuba complex in Ibaraki, Isozaki introduced a fragmented composition consisting of quotations of historical architecture from various periods and cultures, including Renaissance.[97] While applying a modernized way of fragmentation, Isozaki used the principles of sukiya style. Although he was a formalist, his view on playing with form was different from many other architects. For Isozaki, manipulating form and the dissolution of architecture was much more important than inventing forms.[98] Isozaki used historical associations and geometrical perfection to design his architecture.[99] Impressed by the temporariness of Japanese traditional shrines, he designed the Gunma Museum as a temporary space in which an invisible architecture flows.[100] Hiroshi Hara also paid attention to similar issues in his design. He believed that a collage-like composition lost its validity because of the future of modern cities, especially in Japan. He looked at the idea of collage as a rhetorical mechanic to produce a kind of shock by transferring materials to a new setting.[101] His ideas about collage are very visible in the design of Kyoto's new railway station.

Kenneth Frampton, a harsh critic of this type of historicism, writes, 'any attempt to circumvent this dialectical synthesis through a recourse to superficial historicism can only result in consumerist iconography masquering as culture.'[102] This is the approach that was taken in Kisho Kurokawa's projects. For Tange's student and rival, Kurokawa, history in its universal sense is most important. Kurokawa describes the pure geometry and the universal abstraction of the Great Pyramids of Giza, round and rectangular geometrical forms of the Buddhist cosmology represented by Mount Sumeru, spiral geometrical form of the tower of Samarra, the hemispherical dome of the Pantheon in Rome, as the principles of his philosophy of abstract aymbolism.[103]  He endeavors to combine the abstraction of the 20th century with the iconography of the history to make an eternal architecture.[104] Also in his philosophy, he continues to search for a symbiosis between architecture and the concept of history. With this in mind, there is a difference between the conceptual ideas Tange used in Ise's shrine and Kurokawa's 'symbiosis with history.'[105]

Fumihiko Maki, another member of the Metabolist group, was unhappy with the avant-garde movement because of its monotony. In the 1960s, Maki started working on the Japanese translation of communities but, at the same time, was designing a spiral building. His design aimed to avoid the hierarchical order normally evident in Japanese traditional architecture. Maki developed new ideas of city planning based on the Japanese idea of layering or cocooning around an inner space (oku).[106] He also advocated the use of empty or open spaces based on the Japanese aesthetic principle of ma, which reflects Buddhist spatial ideas. Quietness and void were the main Japanese aesthetic concepts that concerned Maki. He also used details of Japanese traditional houses.  For example, he designed openings onto intimate garden views at the ground level and cut off the sometimes ugly skyline.

By designing the Tomishima House in Osaka in 1973, Tadao Ando was introduced to the society of Japanese architects. In contrast to the dominant trend, called the 'new wave' of Japanese architecture, he attempted to reexamine and modify the formal geometric structural ideas of modernism. Ando did this by introducing metaphysical concepts and producing fantasy effects in architectural design. Inspired by the Japanese classical architecture in Osaka and Tokyo, Ando was very concerned about a more balanced, humanistic, and poetic approach to architecture. Ando applied the traditional reductive symbolism of Buddhism and Taoism in his religious and non-religious designs. He also adapted the inner courtyards of traditional Osaka houses to new urban architecture.[107] Using simple geometry and transparency of Japanese houses, he designed open stairways and bridges to lessen the sealed atmosphere of the standard city dwelling. What we see in Ando's architecture, in terms of history, reminds us of Jameson's definition of the nostalgia form of postmodern culture.[108] In 'Toward New Horizons in Architecture,' Ando criticized modernism and postmodernism by declaring their failure in Japanese architecture.[109] He claimed that modernist architecture had become mechanical and postmodernist styles endeavored to recover the formal richness that modernism appeared to have discarded. This effort undeniably was a step in the right direction—utilizing history, taste, and ornament—and restored to architecture a certain concreteness. Yet this movement, too, has quickly become mired in hackneyed expression, producing a flood of formalistic play that is confusing rather than inspiring.[110]

Photo 2: Church of the Light (interior), Ibaraki, Osaka (Tadao Ando).

Photo by Stephen Thomas. Acquired from flickr.com under a Creative Commons license.

B. Transformations into Pluralism

The most notable advantage of working in an isolated cultural harbor is the comparative freedom from confusing quick changes in the winds of fashion. It is probably the reason why Japan had a consistent approach to developing modern architecture. Among the disadvantages of this seclusion is the comparative freedom from international criticism.[111] However, it appears that architecture in Japan has been the subject of criticism since the early 20th century. For instance, the Architecture Institute of Japan, founded in 1910, issued a prospectus entitled, 'What Should be the Future Architectural Style for our Nation?' The last two decades of the Meiji period (1868-1912) were marked by the activities of foreign architects as well as the learnings of the Japanese. Having 'Japanese spirit and Western knowledge' as the main slogan, many Japanese architects traveled abroad to learn techniques and material, not to import the spirit. The consequence of such an approach was an increasing use of steel, reinforced concrete, brick and glass in Japanese buildings. The well-known critic of Japanese architecture, Botond Bognar, describes these buildings as 'mushrooming replicas of neoclassicism and Eclectic architecture.'[112]

The rising modernism after the Meiji period (1868-1912)[113] resulted in political and social changes such as the separation of religion and the state.[114] The increasing contacts between Japan and the western world resulted in a great western influence on Japanese architecture. In 1916, Frank Lloyd Wright designed the new Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which was completed in 1922. Wright also set up an office in Japan and commuted between the US and Japan. Wright's work influenced the work of Japanese architects such as Arata Endo (1889-1951),[115] although it appears that some Japanese architects didn't like the act of newcomers in Japan's cultural capital of Nara.[116] In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese students went to foreign universities and worked for famous modern architects like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, who were highly admired in Japan.[117] Architects Bunzo Yamaguchi and Chikatada Kurata studied in Bauhaus and worked with Gropius, while Takamasa Yoshizaka, Junzo Sakakura, and Kunio Maekawa worked for Le Corbusier.[118] The old formula of master/slave relationship between the west and non-west was criticized by Japanese intellectuals such as Iwao Koyama and Masaaki Kosaka. Koyama claimed that the non-western world had begun to move toward independence and to form its own world. He also predicted that, as a consequence of this transformation, the modern (kindai) world would exist only as a world among many worlds.[119] Nevertheless, the trend in the architectural world differed from Koyama's predictions. In response to Gropus's demand for an 'international style' in architecture, the Japan International Architectural Association (Nihon Kokusai Kenchiko Kai) was founded in 1929. In 1930, the architect, Yukichi Kono, wrote that 'we should aim at creating an architecture which can be applied universally by reexamining Japanese traditional architecture from the stand point of modern architecture.'[120] It shows that early modern style was not perceived in contradiction with Japanese traditional styles.

The search for ideal style continued after the Second World War. After the war, Japan gradually managed to restore its economy, industries and social structures by constructing many buildings in local and national scales, following the language of modernism.[121] In 1945, Ryuichi Hamaguchi wrote 'The Problem of Japanese Architectural Style,' after considering a competition entry by Tange and Maekawa for a project for the 'Great Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.' Uzo Nishiyama also spoke of what he called 'the people's architecture.' The question of style pervaded the traditionalists and popularists of the 1950s and the metabolists of the 1960s.[122] Australian architect and commentator, Robin Boyd, wrote that the modern style developed by Japanese architects was something between east and west, a compromise. It is equidistant from functionalism and formalism, from technocracy and humanism, something between geometric and hard architecture of Le Corbusier and organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.[123] Japanese architects attempted to use concrete as a tool to incorporate references to traditional architecture, similar to what Tange did in the design of the Atomic Memorial Museum in Hiroshima.[124] They did not see it as a foreign material and even claimed 'concrete is ours.'[125]

Around the same time, Western critics attacked the historical determinism of modernism, belief in natural law, and the extreme return to the principles of artistic form. They also claimed that a movement that started as the symbolic representation of utopia ended up captured by capitalism, becoming a tool for everyday economic practice, and handing over control of the architectural environment to market forces and their bureaucratic representatives.[126] Such criticism continued with the weakened international modern movement in 1950s and ‘60s.[127] Robert Venturi's book, Complexity and Contradiction, and Aldo Rossi's, Architecture of the City, strongly criticized modern architecture while American populist and European neorationalist trends were emerging.[128] Suzi Gablik's Has Modernism Failed? refers to two different types of art. An art that is appreciated for itself (self-sufficient art) and the one that serves the society (social art).[129] Modern art no longer wished to illustrate the history of manners because, in modernist culture, nothing is sacred.[130] This type of art believes that it can exist, in and of itself, without things.[131] Gradually, the gap between society and art widened and caused a decline in the role of modern art.

In Japan, even in ancient times, art and literature have played a significant role in society. Ise, the Noh, and linked poetry are evident in most genres of Japanese literature as textuality is perceived in terms of interrelation. It explains that authorship is seen as more communal and public than private and individual.[132] Using this concept of more public work, Tange writes: 'The interpretation of architecture must go beyond the functional to deal with more general concepts. Gradually inner and outer functions, private and social spaces, human scale and mass-human scale, began to play parts in our methodologies of design.'[133] He believes when an architect uses a style an unfortunate result is that all subsequent design problems resolve themselves automatically. He thinks using a pre-defined style is contrary to the nature of architecture, in which each project has its own local and operational needs. For Isozaki, being functional, efficient and rational, Japanese in flavor, and oriental in style were the most important factors in designing 'modern' architecture.[134]

From 1955 to 2009, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan enjoyed almost uninterrupted political dominance, very unusual in a non-totalitarian state. This relative stability for more than five decades was needed for the Japanese, whose lives rapidly changed with the quick improvement of the economy.[135]  Ironically, Boyd's book, New Directions in Japanese Architecture (1968), showed no revolutionary movements in Japanese architecture in 1960s.[136]  Bognar refers to structuralism, contextualism, metabolism, and symbolism as the main four movements in modern Japanese architecture. Structuralism in the 1960s was based on a focus on structure and construction. Bognar explains in structuralism, 'man is decentered or dissolved through the determining system itself; the individual is no longer the source of meaning.'[137]

In 1954, Kiyonori Kikutake, Fumihiko Maki, Masato Otaka, Kiyoshi Awazu, and Kisho Kurokawa formed the Metabolist group. Later in 1960, they worked as a team to prepare for the 1960 World Design Conference. In their manifesto, they proposed a new urbanist regard for human society as a vital process and a continuous development 'from atom to Nebula.' In this proposal, they insisted on the active metabolistic development of Japanese society. From their perspective, humanity is a part of a continuous natural society which should maintain control over technology. In trying to give a human shape to technology in their architecture, metabolists avoided a rigid relationship between human and technology, what was a principle of the modern architecture. They believed an architect's job is not to make ideal models for society, but to devise spatial equipment that the citizens themselves can operate. The main principles of this kind of architecture was its 'replacementability, interchangeability, and its metabolic cycle.'[138] Metabolists declared that it was not a style but a provisional manifestation of thoughts. Rejecting abstracted universal space, they attempted to use architecture to make a new relationship between individuals and society. The author, John Morris Dixon, claims that metabolism was the first contribution of Japanese architects to the modern movement.[139] As a promoter of contextualism, Maki accentuated the fact that context points to the dialectic interrelationship among various elements, more precisely between parts and the whole. Maki passed the technological and formalism of metabolism in order to interpret the man-environment relationship.[140] Praising the relationship between inside and outside buildings, Maki believes that the exterior space should serve as the generator of the interior spaces and even become the interior spaces themselves.[141]

Photo 3: National Art Center, Tokyo (Kisho Kurokawa).

Photo by 黃毛. Acquired from flickr.com under a Creative Commons license.

In the 1970s, a large number of Japanese architects, including metabolists, sought replacements for lost universal symbols that modern architecture had offered them. Searching for their individual identities as architects, they tried to establish their own styles, forms and meanings in the cities 'without quality.'[142] After that, two opposite ideas emerged. One was a contextual view of city design, and the second one was an anti-urban movement, which completely ignored urban context in architectural design. For these architects like Kazuo Shinohara, Toyo Ito, and Hiroshi Hara, the architecture rejected the amorphous urban environment. For this generation of architects, the new challenge was making a relationship between the city and architecture, between private and public, and between inside and outside. [143]

The Osaka World Fair in 1970 was a turning point in Japanese modern architecture. Tange's central plaza in this exhibition, described as 'a gigantic tombstone for the orgies of the Japanese economic miracle,' is the last example of the modern movement.[144] Hajime Yatsuka indicates that it was the final phase of the modern movement and metabolism, whose rationality failed to achieve public support.[145] This stage has been described by Jameson, who argues that one might illustrate the end of modernity, at the point when the radical stylists of modernism no longer appear shocking, when their canonization and institutionalization represent the acceptance of modern art into established styles.[146] This diversity and loss of depth in the architectural design of this generation illustrates one of the major characteristics of postmodernity.[147] If modernity expressed that an art object was something mysterious within which there was a secret to be uncovered or a truth to reveal, postmodernism destroys the possibility of depth as it relies on an image divorced from a referent of any particular signification. With the condemnation of capitalism in 1960s and ‘70s,[148] a new architecture of resistance was formed, architecture of pluralism.[149] Pluralism is a synthesis of responses sensitive to a wide range of complex issues inherent in architecture.[150] Irving Howe in 'Decline of the New' writes 'nothing is stable' and it is hard to believe in the possibility of another stylistic breakthrough, another leap into radical form.[151] Pluralism in Japanese architecture is the result of socioeconomic, ideological, and political developments of the mid-1970s, the international energy crisis, the sharp decline in industrial development, and the economic recession.[152]

With the end of the modernist utopia of metabolism in the late 1970s, Japanese architects didn't have any guiding norm and each of them looked for their own style. This challenge has been described by Yoriko Moichi as the question about cultural identity in the age of globalization.[153] Maki, as one of the members of the Metabolist group, believes in symbolizing collective life and activity in his architecture,[154] while Ando tried to develop an anti-metabolic process he called 'Catabolism.'[155] Monta Mozuna attempted to design an anti-dwelling to make 'cosmological architecture,'[156] and Takefumi Aida applied the principles of Noh theatre and traditional tea-houses in his architecture.[157] Ito used collage in his architectural design to make 'superficial architecture.'[158] At the same time, Osamu Ishiyama considered the environment the main issue in his architecture and introduced 'sewer-pipe architecture.'[159] Hara used the openness of Japanese traditional architecture to design new buildings[160] and Minoru Takeyama sought a 'heterological rhetoric' in his architecture.[161] In a rebellion against the avant-garde movement, Isozaki's manifesto, 'The City Demolisher,' suggested to destruct the city physically and functionally to improve its qualities.[162] All of these attempts, started after modernism, reveal the confusion of Japanese architects about the concept of style. In contrast to the modern era, having a common style was the aim of these architects. This attempt is indicated in Jameson's The Anti-Aesthetic: 'In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.'[163]

In 1978, Kenneth Frampton wrote a book entitled New Wave of Japanese Architecture. In this book, he gave a fresh idea of what was going on in those days in Japanese architecture, introducing a new generation of architects. These architects, although each had very different ideas in their designs, all had two important common characteristics. It was the strength of the cultural bond linking them to the older generation, and their mastery in synthesizing form into an incisive and powerful gestalt.[164] This age is a beginning point for what Bognar calls, 'Neomodernism' in Japanese architecture. In contrast to the postmodern era, it is recognized by its technological approach, construction logic, design economy, minimalism, and avoidance of decorations in architecture.[165] However, Tange blamed the superficiality of buildings in this age.[166] Isozaki's Tsukuba Center, with its undeniable similarities with American populist postmodern interpretations of European classicism, appeared like a blend of foreign and Japanese quotations.[167] In Kamimuta Kōminkan (1975) Yasufumi Kijima superimposed several architectural surfaces with different historical references.[168] In another project, the Kamimuta Matso shrine (1975), Kijima juxtaposed two culturally different buildings in a radical manner with classical columns and Japanese shrine.[169] Around the same time, some architects designed buildings with facades which replicated faces or symbols.[170] These buildings remind us that Jameson's aesthetic mode of the postmodern 'glossy image'[171] was not so much a stylistically new way of presenting society and culture, but a 'reaction to the changes occurring within the society.'[172] These movements match Jameson's definition of postmodernism as a progression toward nostalgic culture resulting in the decline of genuine historicity, the fragmentation of the subject, and the eclipse of style.

C. Capitalism, Consumerism, and Globalism

Karl Marx believed that the supreme value of a work of art is achieved along with social, moral, and religious values.[173] The disaccord between the artist and society in the modern age resulted in the lack of belief in any system of values beyond the self. In contemporary society, bureaucratic and corporate interests have become the deepest drives of artists.[174] Global capitalism, rather than being an accommodating element, is portrayed as an inevitable consequence, driven by the economic self-interest of a newly conscious class of consumers.[175] Jameson historically paralleled postmodernism to transformations in the capitalist system and the development of global multinational capital.[176] Now, art's value tends to be defined, not by its spiritual, intellectual, or emotional content but, by its economic worth.[177] This trend was opposed by critics like Lewis Hyde who wrote in 1983: 'a work of art is a gift, not a commodity… [and] every modern artist who has chosen to labor with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange.'[178] Baudrillard writes that our society thinks itself and speaks itself as a consumer society. As much as it consumes anything, it consumes itself as consumer society.[179] A culture of consumption has so much taken over our way of thinking that all reality is filtered through the logic of exchange value and advertising. In this secular society, careers highly depend on advertising.[180] This economy has even affected the psychology of the artists, whose bureaucratic or organizational personality dictates them to submit to an economic power system for money and prestige.[181] The globalization of markets has been another influential economic, political, and cultural force. In the new global economy, everyone is on short-term contracts and associations are more fleeting and episodic.[182] Suzi Gablik indicates, 'In prioritizing economic growth at any cost, capitalism has begun to wreak its own havoc from within.'[183]

The homogenization of societies or cultures across the world was in contrast to the diversity and uniqueness of cultures. This tension between capitalism's global logic of similarity and the national logic of difference is complicated in the field of architecture. Keiko Nakao believes that postmodernism in Japan was a response to societal changes and needs.[184] In contrast, Gordon Mathews specifies that postmodernism was mainly influenced by market identity and must be considered in our study.[185] In the 1960s, after the first wave of rapid economic growth, the view of urban design in Japan changed. For architects, cities were filled with huge buildings in which they could show their creativity.[186] In this chaotic urban environment, architects reacted negatively while they tried to maintain their own identities.[187] The international oil crisis in the 1970s slowed down the economy and the pace of building construction.[188] In postmodern Tokyo, there was no tradition, and architects, fortunately or unfortunately, had an opportunity to rebuild everything. In the lack of influential planning in the brutality of capitalist speculation, Japanese cities became collections of eclectic buildings that had no relationship with streets. There also seemed to be a lack of environmental concern as the land within cities was essentially conceived of as 'artificial and public.'[189] The progress of architecture in general has been tied with the growth of economy, commercialism, consumerism, and the decentralization of the government.

The dramatic increase in land value, especially after the 1960s, strongly affected the movement of Japanese architecture in large cities and caused the fragmentation and irregularity of the urban fabric.[190] In 1976, Kawazoe urged Japanese architects to consider the growing shortage of land and seek to create new land. He wrote, 'As the earth's surface is a given, the first step to create city planning is conceptualization of the city as a three-dimensional structure where 'modern man' lives. It is best to conceive of the city as a whole and the architecture of individual buildings which cannot be separated from that whole.'[191] The limitation and restrictions of land resulted in space related innovations. The invention of the kaikan, or all-purpose hall, included a variety of services such as a movie theater, a stage, hotel, shopping center and business offices. It was a typology that was commonly designed in this age.[192] If we accept Augustin Berque's idea that 'societies conceive themselves in the same way as they conceive and build their cities,'[193] we can claim that this fragmentation and irregularity within the large cities of Japan was the reflection of the big changes within the Japanese understanding of their own society. The importance of land arose as a great interest among academicians in issues related to the city. During this period, with the increase of public interest in architecture, numerous books were published about cities in which serious issues were discussed. Such issues included the absence of culture in Japanese cities, the preservation of buildings, and the importance of urbanism. This new era shaped individuals and families around their modes of consumption. The globalized consumer culture also affected national identity.[194] With consumption at its peak, it became very difficult for architects to preserve their private individuality.[195] The rapid progression of consumerism, the growth of the economy, the enhancement of commerce, and increasing advertisements filled large cities like Tokyo and Kyoto with signs. Yatsuka's description of these cities as 'sea of signs'[196] is comparable to what Jameson called 'society of the image.'[197]

Japan's growth made it one of the most powerful economies in the world. Globalization has caused a shift in power from the nation state to multinational corporations. Japanese companies played a very crucial role in the world's economy and, consequently, in the universal consumer society.[198] The new economy created the opportunity for young architects to experiment in the field of 'commercial' architecture in late 1970s and ‘80s.[199] During this era, according to Isozaki, a commercial school of design existed that illustrated the Osaka capitalist philosophy. Similar to the critic, Chiara Baglione, who believes that the architecture in this period was regarded as a part of the production process,[200] Isozaki believes that the members of this school (Setsu Watanabe, Takeo Yasui, Kenzo Tange, and Togo Murano) treated buildings as commercial merchandise. He also warned architects about this spreading 'commercial style.'[201] After the 1960s, the Japanese state managed on the basis of commercial theories and gradually faded away, giving the whole nation fewer opportunities to express its own will. The continuation of this trend in the 1970s, in addition to the amalgamation of emperor, state, and capital generated a prevailing structure in which architecture was treated more like commercial merchandise.[202] This process later reduced architecture to a fashion trend or instrument. Later, in the 1980s, in the so-called 'bubble economy' period, a number of large-scale projects increased in the country.[203]

The tendency to create architecture as a part of the consumption process contradicted with the nature of modern architecture in which it had come to live forever. This view of buildings as temporary objects is based on a tradition in Japan.[204] According to Buddhist teachings, there is 'no permanence' and 'all things must pass.' Similarly, in Zen, the emphasis is on the evanescence and insubstantiality of things.[205] Another tradition in Japan is that the values of craftsmanship prevail over the antiquity of an object.[206] This concept, according to Bognar, in profound ways 'conditioned the Japanese mentality toward the phenomena of change and the transitory nature of existence.' Thackera explains that 'buildings [in Japan] are designed in the expectation not that they will stand the test of time but that they will be torn down sooner rather than later and replaced by something more appropriate to the economic and technological demands of the future.'[207]

Photo 4: Shinjuku Park Tower, Tokyo (Kenzo Tange)

Photo by dtpancio. Acquired from flickr.com under a Creative Commons license.

In theory, postmodernism is characterized by discontinuity, irregularity, lack of hope for any type of utopia,[208] as well as impermanence and inaccessibility.[209] This sense of temporality has been used in the works of metabolist architects like Hasegawa. Based on these ideas, architecture is a cell which can grow. This trend has affected the design of the cities in Japan. Isozaki explains that the city is not a work of art—it could easily be demolished, only to be reconstructed again.[210] Greer describes Tokyo as a place that 'changes at a dizzying pace, defying every attempt at control and planning. This internal, seemingly wilful force of change defines Tokyo.'[211] This characteristic of Tokyo attracts Foster's attention who explains that the Japanese city is not a museum; buildings can be pulled down because they are old. Maki also explains this saying,

Tokyo has undergone many changes in physical appearance over the last century. The city, so decimated by World War II, has had to rebuild from the ashes. In its [postwar] rebuilding it has become—perhaps it has returned to being—a city without heaviness. It was once a city of wood and paper; it has now become a city of concrete, steel, and glass. The feeling of lightness, however, remains.[212]

Bognar explains that Japanese cities have always been subject to endless and unpredictable natural and other disasters and subsequent reconstructions. [213] In this kind of architecture, buildings do not last for a long time and can corrupt objects.[214] Buildings in Japan are treated as objects that are there to be rebuilt every thirty or forty years.[215] Bognar in his article, 'What Goes Up, Must Come Down,' exemplifies famous buildings which have recently been demolished in Japan: Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Ito's well-known U-House in Nakano built in 1976, and five of Minoru Takeyama's residential buildings which were completed as recently as the 1970s.[216]

The postmodern sense of rupture and decenteredness also influenced urban design in Japan. In the 1940s and ‘50s, the dependence of the economy on cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto became a serious issue for the Japanese.  The accumulation of wealth in Tokyo caused other isolated cities to be left out of parts of the economic growth.[217] In addition, Tokyo was the focal point of national transportation within the country, an international center for commerce and finance, and the domestic center of politics.[218] Berque mentions that the domestic rediscovery of Tokyo in recent history owes much to the evolution of the balance of power between Japan and western nations.[219] Based on a concept of provincial centers, the first decentralization plans in Japan were devised in 1962 and 1969 to develop local industries and make a more balanced economy in Japan.[220] In 1977, in the continuation of the decentralization movement, a greater autonomy for the regions and prefectures based on their spirit of independent creativity was set as a goal.[221] As a result, in this 'age of provinces,' the central government shifted to regional administrations.[222] This process within the country strongly increased the number of modest-scale public works in rural areas of Japan, when there was less of a tendency to construct mega-structures and large scale urban projects.[223] Consequently, in the 1980's, numerous cultural centers, museums, sports arena, and multi-purpose halls were constructed in small cities and towns. This movement was important for the careers of architects such as Isozaki, Taniguchi, Ando, Ito, and Hasegawa.[224] Starting in 1987, this movement came to Tokyo, and the government began to reverse the centralization around Tokyo and created a decentralized administration.[225] Urban designers began to increase the number of independent suburban areas in Tokyo, which were called 'bed towns' or satellite cities.[226] These towns were places for people to live, while Tokyo still remained a center for recreational activities.[227]

Conclusion

The failure of modernism to satisfy aesthetic demands of the public, or respond to social issues, launched an era of diversity and pluralism in architecture. This experiment, called postmodernism by philosophers, was rooted in major political, social, and economic changes in the world. As a movement in culture and arts, postmodernism corresponded to a new configuration of politics and economics that was based on a transnational consumer economy and the global scope of capitalism. The thirst for profit led capitalism to invest in marketing, advertising, public relations, and other cultural industries such as architecture. Japan, although a secluded island, was tied to the international realm, especially after becoming a major commercial, industrial, and technological pioneer in the '60s. The increasing bonds between Japan and the western world affected Japanese society through increasing commercialism and consumerism. The development of Japanese architecture after ‘70s, however, was a continuation of the neo-modern movements like structuralism, metabolism, contextualism, and symbolism. Thus, postmodernism in Japan appears to be less a stylistic movement and more a change in socio-economic conditions that fundamentally affected modernism.

Fragmentation of cities, individualization of the design process, and the engagement of the public in decision-making provided opportunities for a new generation of architects to experiment without being obligated to follow certain universal rules. The amalgamation of state and capital, the rapid progression of the Japanese economy, and the increasing power of local authorities enhanced the role of architects and amplified their self-confidence. With the loss of depth in architectural theory, buildings were considered commercial merchandise that could be used and replaced. The growth of the economy within the society led architects into popular architecture, while, at the same time, giving them the chance to design small-scale buildings harmonious with local cultures. In the age of globalization, the architects' challenge remains not only to preserve national identity while establishing personal style, but also to consider environmental concerns that have become prominent in architecture of the new century.

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