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They say that if you want a good idea of a country's architectural style, all you need to do is ask its children to draw a building any way they want to. The experiment brings some interesting insights: Children from the Middle East might draw houses with flat decks on top; whereas Chinese children might sketch palaces with long, gracefully curving eaves, and European children churches with arched windows and doors framed in stone or brick. Japanese children will most likely draw houses consisting of a square with a triangle on top for the roof. Select a number of structures from around the world and observe just the roofs, and you can derive a lot about local climates and customs, as well as much else about a country.
Japanese buildings are often categorized among the world's architecture as historically belonging to the Chinese tradition, but this observation largely focuses on Buddhist temple architecture. Though it was strongly influenced by the Chinese, the Japanese developed formats that are largely their own from the 10th century onward, and the Japanese style is heavily informed by the country's climate and indigenous culture.
The foremost example is the primary structural material: wood. One of wood's characteristics is that the cells that comprise it take a long, long time to harden into their final state—so structural wood finally reaches its strongest about 200 years after a building has been erected. Even allowing that the case of the temple Horyuji is special (the world's oldest wooden edifice, it is still functional 1,400 years on), wood is so strong that the service life of a wooden building is said to be about proportional to the lifespan of the trees that went into it. Until duralumin was invented, wood was the strongest material by weight known to humankind, which also accounts for its importance in a wide range of applications. In Japan, with its frequent earthquakes, typhoons, and other natural calamities, it is easy to see how wood's properties make it an ideal building material.
Another distinctive feature of Japanese architecture is that the natural grain and even the knots in wood are left exposed, considered part of the design—in contrast to customs of painting them over with bright colors. |
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Sumitomo Yuho-en, completed in 1920 after seven years of work, was built as a second residence for the 15th head of the House of Sumitomo. Blending with the nature of the Kyoto area, it incorporates first-class design and construction, making it a masterpiece of cultural significance
(courtesy of Sumitomo Shi-ryo-kan) |
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| The engawa is narrow veranda-like corridor with wooden floorboards built along the outer side of a home's interior rooms. About a meter wide, this transitional space can at times serve to join the inside and the outside of the house, and at times to separate them (courtesy of Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum) |
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