THEME : "Japanese Culture, Literature and Architecture" #2
2 : Game, Super Flat, Reality
Today, let's begin with looking at works of a contemporary Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami. Characteristically, his works are inspired by comics and animation. It could be said that he creates them directly rather than he is inspired by them. Lichtenstein drew enlarged comic pictures back in the time of pop art. I think that Lichtenstein's works conveyed meanings containing irony and attack on art and also had something tied to old Dadaism. But such irony is not found in Murakami's works so much. And Murakami's another work, "Figure Series", was a big-ticket item valued at $560,000 in the Christie's auction in NY. Murakami is just over 40s and almost same age as me, but he must be one of the most successful artists even in economic.
Probably you need some explanations of this Figure Series. There are those who are called "OTAKU" in Japan. They lack of compatibility with the real world, in consequence, they can have romances only with beautiful girls in animation. Figure was produced to meet the needs of Otaku at first. Animation is two dimensions but was made into three dimensional dolls. They were just tiny first, but then Murakami made them into a life size. People used to have an unrealistic image on a figure, but as scale goes, he brought a figure to reality.
Also Murakami recently let an actress,that means a real woman, dress similarly to a figure and took her pictures as his works. Here, an inversion of meaning happened many times. At first, there are wonderful women in the real world, but Otaku who is unfit for the real world cannot get into a real woman and take refuge at false love with a girl in animation. That virtual girl has become a doll and developed into a life size, and finally she was resolved into a real girl. Of course it does not mean that a virtual imagination of Otaku was converted into realization, and it is not vice versa, either. In short, in the world of Murakami's works, virtual reality and reality do not have a qualitative difference at all. Virtual reality and reality are equally meaningless here. It is Super Flat in Takashi Murakami-speak that the world which is as if all things exists on the same plane with no qualitative difference.
Now, let's look at another artist's works. This is the work of an artist, Kengo Nakamura, and we take one look at this and recollect Mondrian's works. Differing from Mondrian is that it is the painting that Nakamura colored a floor plan of a building, especially of a studio apartment. If one is magnified, it is clear. Here, an inversion of meaning like Murakami's figure arises, too. A one-room mansion is for living alone and mostly exists in a big city in Japan. They are an aggregation of sanitary, but narrow and characterless rooms. You can find plans of this kind of rooms on display in a window at a real estate agency. When a room which must be places of a realistic life is changed into an enumeration of plans, the reality is lost halfway. Additionally Nakamura colored it, and its reality became zero. But it is given the reality as a picture especially as an art connected with Mondrian. Now would we feel a difference between virtual reality and reality of life or art if we stand in front of this picture? I would not. All things exist on the same plane hare with no qualitative difference as well. It is also Super Flat.
Now, how is it then in the field of architecture? Unlike fine art, architecture is asked to be real always. But the change of quality of reality could certainly happen. Let's look at Kazuyo Sejima's architecture, "Saishunkan ladies dormitory". --- I think you all know her because now she is the globally popular architect. She is also a friend of mine. --- It was built around 1990.
Its ground plan is like this. This is the dormitory of the young women who work for a factory. A group of a few women share one bedroom, and a dining room, bathes and toilets are in a large shared space. The place where they relax and watch TV like a living room of a home is also located in this large space.
That is, its planning is based on house design but have a much more schematic character than a residence. It means that the schematic diagram which semi-private bedrooms enclose the semi-public large space is architected in accordance with it. The difference from a residence is that only people of the same generation and sex live together, and their relationship is even, in other word, it is flat. And those flat persons live in this large space making various areas at different times, in a simple term, a party of good friends gathers somewhere in this space and watch TV together or something like that.
When I actually looked at this construction, I thought it was lucid, beautiful and new architecture. But at the same time, I felt that young women who actually live here would have a hard time because here is the space like a game. Their lives are set down like the conditions of a game. As an initial setting, the game just has a semi-public and a semi-private area. Character of places would be changed according to the mood, desire and human relations of the moment of "a game player."
It is a new and clear way. But real human body is not even new and clear so much. Those who live in this dormitory would sometimes murmur aloud or want to walk around in their underwear. But can you image that young women murmur aloud and walk around in their underwear in this space? This building has neither a very private space nor a very public space. Also there is neither a solitary space nor an opposite space to meet alien persons. That is, no space with intensity. The semi-public and the semi-private areas are supposedly separated, but there is no qualitative difference at all. For those who live here, it is better forget their own bodies and even their names. That is Super Flat in the field of architecture.
Let's move on another work of Sejima. "Gifu Kitakata Apartment". Here, the game of a space is played cross-sectionally. The whole is completed by subdividing necessary places by families. That is exactly a game too and is premised on homogeneity among players. Alien persons, it means who deviate from the rules of the game and insist their desires and tastes, are unacceptable here.
I'm not saying that to criticize Sejima's works. Super Flat is an inevitable characteristic for people who live in present-day Japan.
The first novel I published in 1987 could also be an example. The title is "Portrait in Number". The story is that the hero called "I" makes his friends models and draw pictures, but every picture becomes like his self-portraits somehow. "I" in this novel cannot meet the true others, and even though he encounters the real incident, he connects it to his memories and returns to the past. In this hero's case, he can meet the person who forced this voyage on him while continuing recurrence voyage into his memories. However, in fact, it is difficult to meet others in the real sense of the term. May people are leading game-like lives in the homogeneous space; that is present-day Japan's condition.
By the way, some people may feel that homogeneity of Sejima's architectural space had similarity with Mies's universal space. It could be said that either they have a connection indeed or they are totally different. Mies's "Fansworth House" might be a comparative example. The plan of "Fansworth House" is like this. This plan gives homogeneity to space, but homogeneity of Mies's architecture does not mean that everywhere is the same. Infinite reciprocation motion occurs between inside and outside, and you may feel that here is there, and there is here.
To conclude, Mies's homogeneity seems to converge in "nature" as you can easily see from the case of "Fansworth House." I will explain about the concept of "nature" later. Homogeneity of "Fansworth House" has certain intensity. In contrast, homogeneity of Sejima's architecture is similar to homogeneity of space of a game and does not turn to the outside, "nature." Her architecture remains its homogeneity on the zero point of intensity.
Now let's look at the word "nature" I used here a little philosophically. This is the conception which German romanticism brought out. Generally, such a relation is consisted between the subject and the others. But man's cognitive ability recognizes not only the others but also the self. The self which thinks what I am thinking now exists, and it is called the self of meta-level. Its activity does not remain confined to this level and can set up meta-level infinitely like one who thinks of oneself and another one who watches that oneself. Even though a distinction between the self and the others is clear at first, it would gradually get fuzzy. Seeing from high meta-level, there is no difference between them, but you could realize that if you think of something romantic such as a love. The boundary often becomes blurred between the self and the object in a romance.
German romanticism called the goal of this meta-level "nature." It means that a point where the boundary between the self and the others completely disappears is "nature." I found "nature" with this meaning in Mies's space. "Nature"" has intensity. What pulls a spiral climb motion of cognizance is "nature."
But Sejima does not have such "nature." In the case of her architecture, a game supports an activity of cognizance.
Well, what kind of the background does such an expression of Super Flat have? Earlier I introduced that Takashi Murakami pointed out the similarity between animation/comics and Japanese-style painting. Indeed Japanese-style painting takes a drawing technique which disregards perspective on purpose. There are also a picture which omits even concavity and convexity of human face like Ukiyoe, and then it lacks depth. Super Flat and Japanese-style painting seem to have something in common.
And there may be also Japanese disposition symbolized by the Emperor in the background. A French thinker, Roland Barthes points out that the Japanese Emperor does not exist as a person in great authority unlike the European Emperors. Barthes means that the Japanese Emperor does not appear as plus intensity but exists as zero intensity like a center of falsity. If you see the appearance of the Emperor's residence in the central Tokyo, you would understand what Barthes means. The residence stands still quietly in woods and does not show its appearance. It is able to exist as a special place because it is not visible and does not let anyone in. Barthes explains that Japan became the country which accepts anything greedily and equivalently because such a thing is placed in the center of Japan. Personally I do not feel the need of the Emperor.
However Super Flat does not exist only with these traditions and disposition. We need to look at the current of days.
A little while before Sejima takes active part, from the 1980s to the 1990s, Japan has enjoyed the unprecedented booming economy. It is the bubble economy as folks say. The bubble economy has supported by an ascendant spiral which arises out of speculation in lands and surging land prices by speculation. It means that it was the insubstantial economy and has burst right after passing a law to hold down the land prices. At that day, it was economically advantageous to build something handsome, earn some money and break it to resell a land rather than to build something permanent because lands are the target of speculation. This economical situation brought up a profusion of outstanding artists and achievements of postmodernism. Postmodernism had an ideological significance, and there are not some great buildings with such ideological depth in the postmodern architecture. But most of architects had interests in the surface design in fact. The picture you are looking at is "M2" by an architect, Kengo Kuma. Architects at the day often used the technique to violate the architectural rules on purpose with extreme deformation or scale conversion. Kengo Kuma designs cool and simple buildings now but used to design such buildings 10 years ago. He is good at reading today's trends. Next is "Tsukuba Center Building" by Arata Isozaki. He said, "Now that the historical styles of architecture are presented in front of architects as catalogs. Because those styles have already lost their peculiar meanings, architects can connect them as they like." It is "Yamato International" by Hiroshi Hara . He has researched in spatial structures of colonies in the world and put the results to good account in it. In truth, I have taken part in design and management of this building as a staff of Hara's office when I was young. It is "Aoyama Technical College" by Makoto Watanabe. It is totally a comic-like or animation-like building. It is the building by Naigel Coates , but I forgot the name. Around this time, a lot of foreign architects and designers came to Japan. By the way, this picture was taken by a photographer, Kishin Shinoyama, who I introduced last time. It is "Super Dry Hall" by Philippe Starck. According to him, the idea of this form was from flames, but I know people call it "feces building."
Each architect must have had each point of view. But if every insistence becomes possible, it would mean that they do not have any particular meanings. The advocacy that a form has an appropriate propriety is almost meaningless in places where any form is available. From this context, it might be said that the situation of postmodernism itself has been already Super Flat. Comparing the architecture at the time with Sejima's late works, they are totally the same in the point of a play of space even though they are different in the point of a play of form indeed.
Anyway, why did such bubble architecture become possible? I told you that speculation in lands led the bubble economy. But why were there a lot of lands for reselling? Before the bubble economy, in the 1970s, Tokyo has already been the overpopulated city. It means no extra lands were available. All the architecture built until the 70s had been pulled down?
Not all but most of them had been pulled down in fact. Most of the buildings in Tokyo have been built after World War II. Tokyo and other cities such as Osaka had been scorched by the war). After the war, a lot of buildings were constructed aiming to revive, but they were poor. Of course it does not mean poverty of architectural idea but means they were built under the extremely poor economic situation. In the 1960s, Japanese has entered an age of high economic growth. Rush to construct buildings has begun, but by contraries, slipshod work had happened a lot because of too many constructions.
For example, this is "Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office" designed by Kenzo Tange in 1952. It is a good building like a textbook of the modernism architecture, but this building had completed its roles in 30 years. Mr. Tange did not complain about demolition of his building because he might think that he could design a new government office. Actually the new government building was designed by Kenzo Tange and completed in 1991. This time, it is the stereotyped postmodernism architecture. I like the old one about 10 times. But in fact, the old government office was too poor. The capacity of the building could not keep up with social progress at all.
That is why, people did not hesitate to pull down existing buildings and build showy buildings for the purpose of speculation during the period of the bubble economy. People should hesitate to pull down the 200- or 300-year-old buildings, but they were just buildings which sprang up like mushrooms after the war.
By the way, Kenzo Tange who I mentioned now is undoubtedly a representative architect of Japan. He has worthless works like the new government office but has created masterpieces of the modernism architecture from the 1950s to 60s. "National Gymnasium for Olympic Games" for Tokyo Olympic in 1964 is one example. Tokyo Olympic was just the national big undertaking. Taking advantages of this event, architects created infrastructures and public buildings at a stretch which were suitable to the capital of Japan.
Also in the city which has completed the infrastructure construction, private buildings began to be built at quite a pace As seen in the old government office, the functional design using steel and glass was the mainstream. In other words, it was American modernism architectural design led by Mies-Philip Johnson line.
I explained that postwar Japan has learned modernism from Europe in the last lecture. But Japanese architecture moved on to American architecture after the war. Postwar Japan looked forward things American not only in architecture but also in every culture. American culture such as movies, music, fashion and every mortal thing came into Japan. One of the reasons of this situation was that Japan has been under America occupation until the peace treaty was taken effect. Either democratic ideology or capitalistic standard of value came to Japan from America under the circumstances that America was trying to set Japan up for the frontline of the capitalist world. Anyway, a lot of American modern buildings were built. Some big architect studios were established, and they would lead this kind of designs. Nikken Sekkei is like SOM in Japan and designs these buildings.
Kenzo Tange's design is also descended from American modernism. His master is Kunio Maekawa who is Corbusier line --- this is Maekawa's works --- but it has to be said that Tange himself has learned a lot from American modernism. In the case of "National Gymnasium for Olympic Games" I showed you a little while ago, the similar kind of building has been in America on ahead. That is "Ice Hockey Link, Yale University" by Saarinen.
Let's look at Tange's works more.
The Osaka Expo was held in 1970. Kenzo Tange took charge of the comprehensive plan of the Festival Park and designed the large roofs in this exposition. Architecture as the government project was substantially finished on the Osaka Expo. Tange was an architect of the period when architecture was the government project. With architecture, Tange had admirably represented the image of Japan of the time until Japan has become one of the developed countries out of the battered state by the war's devastation. He was also a professor of Tokyo University. Tokyo University was established as if to train high-flyers and was the most essential school in this period to make Japan a modern nation. That's why the all professors of architecture including Tange had played parts in the government projects. But in the full-grown society, it rarely happens that a nation manages projects. So, the professors of Tokyo University have no chance to play a part in the government project now.
Ando who you know well has been the professor of Tokyo University for several years up until a few years ago. His projects are global. But all of them has no relation to the nation. Precisely his work which earned him distinction was this small house. He is quite different from Tange.
Incidentally, I used to attend Ando's office when I was a student. At the time, most of his jobs were small-scale, and if large-scale, he got started the 1st term of "Rokko Housing". Ando was known for knocking his staffs when he gets angry furiously. He used to be a boxer. The staffs were sometimes knocked when I was in the office. When I was freaking in front of the drawing board, Ando came to me and said, "Don't worry, Suzuki. I do not hit a student because I could not care less about a student."
Let's come back to Tange. He has designed "Hiroshima Peace Center". It was also one of the government projects and the excellent modernism architecture. This facility was built for exhibit on atomic bombing not to forget its tragedy and to pray a peace.
Let's look at the plan of Peace Park including "Peace Center" . Of course, it was also Tange's plan. Here is Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome). I explained about its history last time. Tange drew the axis which leads to Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), placed the memorial on that axis and arranged the layout that the piloti of "Peace Center" can be seen on an extension of the axis. By this axis plan, Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome) looks very symbolic from just under Peace Center.
Japan has learned modernization from Europe, produced good results and became an Asian power. People criticized European modernism and led to the belief that they could find a possibility of "the conquest of modernity" in their own history. But as a result of becoming overly self-confident, Japan has got into the reckless war and was burned all over Japan by the US Air Forces. In the end, Japan became the first country to be dropped atomic bomb. Thus Japan has lost everything such as once completed modernism, her own history and the possibility of "the conquest of modernity."
Japan which has returned to nothingness had to do was just one thing; starting modernization back in the first place. And then Japan has learned not European but American modernism which is functionalism and efficiency principle as pragmatism.
The 9th article of the Constitution of Japan is globally famous. It says, "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." It means that Japan will never have war. War gave Japan damage so much. I think that Japan should be proud of this constitution in the world. But some people criticize that the American Occupation forced it on Japan. There might be such an aspect indeed. Right after the war, America wished Japan did not become a big country. But there was no time for that with the Cold War, America urged Japan to remilitarize. Even after the end of the Cold War, America continues requiring it. But Japan has not had any wars after World War II by virtue of this constitution. There were several reasons for economic growth of Japan. Some of them should be criticized, but pacifism undoubtedly supported economic growth as well.
But it cannot be denied that such a situation has made Japanese culture like rootless. For initiation of modernization, Japan gave up the traditional culture once and exhaustively westernized their manners and lifestyles. There was the first breaking of a history here. And as a result of the first breaking, Japan has succeeded in modernization and became a power on par with the western countries. But after the war, Japan had to bring back even the ideological repertories which have been stored in the process of modernization to zero and to start modernization over from zero. It was the second breaking of a history. As a result of two times of breaks, in so many words, Japan was burned to the ground. In other words, an environment which accepts any cultures and values has been created. In this environment, everything was equivalent, and a difference would be dissolved. In the place where anything is possible to exist, the meaning of existence would disappear.
What I want to say is that behind the birth of Super Flat is the fact that there is the existence of Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome).
By the way, as an added bonus, Kenzo Tange has had one government project before the war. This was the building to congratulate militaristic Japan on her hegemony over Asia. The person who designed such architecture designed "Peace Center" after the war. Tange himself is neither a pacifist nor a militarist. For him, there is no difference between pacifism and militarism. He was a great architect who could design whatever the government project if he was offered. Should we call such a stance Japanese or describe as architect-like?
Let's move on to contemporary architecture, art and literature next time. I will also talk about my work.
