Competing futures: War narratives in postwar Japanese architecture, 1945-1970

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Content COMPETING FUTURES: WAR NARRATIVES IN POSTWAR JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE 1945-1970 by Hyunjung Cho A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ART HISTORY) May 2011 Copyright 2011 Hyunjung Cho Acknowledgements There are many individuals to whom I am indebted for their support as I completed this dissertation. I am extremely grateful to my dissertation chair, Dr. Jonathan M. Reynolds, for his unforgettable mentorship over the course of my graduate studies. He has always been a solid source of support, guiding me through the academic hurdles of coursework, examinations, and dissertation. The relationship I have developed with him for the past few years has been one of the best things that happened to me during my graduate years. Dr. Anne McKnight has pushed me to think critically about how I deal with Japanese culture and history and offered me invaluable feedback through each phase of the dissertation. Dr. Daniela Bleichmar, as a minor advisor, has shared her sharp intellect, warm friendship, and optimistic energy. I would particularly like to thank Dr. Carolyn Malone for serving my dissertation co-chair at such a late date and offering her feedback. My special thanks must go to Dr. Kim Young-na at Seoul National University, who introduced me to art history and has become a shining example in my academic career. I am grateful to my Korean advisors who guided me in the earlier stages of my studies: Dr. Ahn Hwi-joon, Dr. Rhi Juhyung, Dr. Cho Insoo, Dr. Chung Moojeong, and Dr. Kim Yongchul. I also wish to acknowledge the following scholars for their intellectual inspiration and warm friendship: Dr. Thomas Crow, Dr. Anne Balsamo, Dr. Sonya Lee, and Dr. Miya Mizuta Lippit. This project could not have been completed without the generous support of several people in Japan. It was my great luck to meet Professor Yatsuka Hajime. He ii generously shared with me his incredible knowledge, research materials, and connections to the academic field. He also read my drafts and gave me invaluable feedback. Professor Yoshimi Shun’ya kindly opened his office door and classroom to me and shared his academic network. Mr. Kaneko Yusuke shared with me his research sources and interest. I also appreciate the special opportunities for having inspirational conversations with Mr. Kawazoe Noboru, Mr. Ekuan Kenji, Mr. Shinohara Yoshio, and Mr. Awazu Ken. I was deeply impressed by their sharp intellect, enthusiasm, and courtesy. While at Binghamton, I have owed an intellectual as well as personal debt to the following people: Dr. Nancy Um, Dr. Tom McDonough, Dr. David Stahl, and Dr. Sode Rumiko. My life at Binghamton has been brightened by quality time with Lee Younkyung, Shin Chaeho, Shin Isoo, Kwon Jonghwa, Lee Kwangeun, and Park Shincha. I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. David Ogawa for giving me a wonderful chance to teach at Union College. Various portions of this project were delivered at Seoul National University, the Ponja-Genkon and Getty Research Institute, the Cleveland Art Museum, the Inter-Asian Conference, the Cornell East Asia Colloquium, the Art History Department at Binghamton University, the East Asian Art Program at Harvard University, the College Art Association, and the Society of Architectural Historians. This dissertation has been incredibly indebted to the feedback and criticism from my hosts and interlocutors: Dr. Midori Yoshimoto, Dr. Yukio Lippit, Dr. William Gardener, Dr. Hiroko Ikegami, Dr. Seng Kwan, Mr. KURIDA Raiji, Dr. Yasu Nakamori, Dr. Ken Tadashi Oshima, Dr. John Tagg, Dr. Victor Koschmann, and Dr. Reiko Tomii. iii The Department of Art History at University of Southern California generously provided me with financial support throughout my time in its doctoral program. I am also grateful to East Asia Language and Culture for providing me with multi-year ACE/Nikaido Japan Studies Fellowships. My research in Japan was also supported by a Hashi travel grant, College summer funding, and GPSS travel funding. I want to thank my colleagues and friends: Kim Bokyung, Woo Junga-Ah, Lisa Merighi, Tom O’Leary, Anca Lasc, Virginia Moon, Kim Dong-hoon, Ok HyeRyong, Kim Hyeonjung, Park Soo-ah, Oguchi Genshiro, Kumiko & KK, Guillaume, Lee Miki, Kim Gyewon, Lee Seok-won, Yang Hyunjung, Oh Hyeri, Chin Hyeyoon, Chang Yuri, Kim Hongki, Kim Mingu, Choi Seokwon, Park Myungsook, Cho Ji-yoon, Ryu Jaebin, Ju Hyungak, Oh Yookyung, Bae Suhee, Yang Hyunjung, and Hwang Heekyung. Special thanks must go to my best friend Oh Younjung, who made my life at USC tolerable and even enjoyable. I also wish to express my sincere gratitude to my wonderful editors Sara Schaffzin and Phil Maher. I dedicate this dissertation to my family: my parents, who have looked forward to the completion of this project more than anyone else; my aunt, who has been a source of love, inspiration, and encouragement throughout my life; my mother-in-law, who always supported me as I pursue my scholarly path; my brother, who has broad shoulders; and my LA aunt and her family, who helped me to survive on foreign soil. Finally, I would like to end this acknowledgement by mentioning Chunghoon, who read this dissertation line by line. His engagement with this project has improved it immeasurably. Thank you! You always make me laugh. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Figures vi Abstract xi Introduction 1 “Anxious Modernisms” and Urban Utopias 6 Literature Review and Research Problematic 13 Sources, Methodologies, and Theories 17 Chapter Summaries 24 Chapter One: Tange Kenz ō, the National Architect of Postwar Japan 29 Wartime Tange and the Issue of Continuity 33 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park as a Manifestation of Starting Over 41 Rising Past, the Emergence of Japanese Tradition 50 From the Past to the Future 61 Technocrat’s Utopia: A Plan for Tokyo-1960 65 The Absence of the Past 77 The Presence of the Past 81 Chapter Two: Isozaki Arata, the Architect of Ambivalence 110 Architecture in the Age of ‘Anti’ 116 Invisible City 129 Expanded Field of Architecture: Cybernetic Environment 136 Anti-Monument: Remembering Hiroshima 143 Chapter Three: Metabolism, Cold War Architecture 170 Forgotten Genealogy of Metabolism: Asada Takashi and Antarctic Project 179 Metabolism Manifesto (1): Text 181 Metabolism Manifesto (2): Design 202 Capsule: Utopian Home or Dystopian Shelter? 210 Chapter Four: Expo’70, the Model City of an Information Society 241 Toward the Expo, Toward the Future 244 Future City Realized 253 A Battle for the Future 273 The End of Postwar Architecture 284 Epilogue 300 Bibliography 304 v List of Figures Figure 1: T ōge Sankichi, Hiroshima in 1965, prizewinning design 28 for the Chūgoku shimbun competition entitled “The Creation of Utopia in Hiroshima,” drawing, 1946. Figure 2: Tange Kenz ō, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial, 86 competition entry, drawing, bird-eye view, 1942. Figure 3: Tange Kenz ō, Japan-Thailand Cultural Center, 87 competition entry, drawing, 1943. Figure 4: Hiroshima’s land-use plan, 1947, 88 Tange’s proposal was incorporated in it. Figure 5: Tange Kenz ō, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 89 competition entry, general plan, 1949. Figure 6: Tange Kenz ō, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 90 competition entry, model, 1949. Figure 7: Eero Saarinen, Gateway Arch at the Jefferson 91 National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, 1948. Figure 8: Isamu Noguchi, “Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima,” 92 plaster model, 1952. Figure 9: Isamu Noguchi, “Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima,” 93 view of sanctuary, plaster model, 1952. Figure 10: Tange Kenz ō, Cenotaph, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 1952. 94 Figure 11: Katsura Villa, Shoin, general view, 17 th Century. 95 Figure 12: Ise Shrine, Main Shrine, photographed by Watanabe Yoshio. 96 Figure 13: J ōmon Ceramic, 11 th to 3 rd century B.C. 97 Figure 14: Tange Kenz ō, Kagawa Prefectural Office, general view, 1955-58. 98 Figure 15: Kikutake Kiyonori, Sky House, 1958. 99 Figure 16: Kikutake Kiyonori, Tower-shaped City, 1958. 100 vi Figure17: Tange Kenz ō, “A Plan for Tokyo-1960: 101 Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 18: Kano Hisaaki, “Neo-Tokyo Plan,” 1959. 102 Figure 19: Tange Kenz ō, statistics, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: 103 Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 20: Tange Kenz ō, from radial to linear city, in 104 “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 21: Tange Kenz ō, cycle transportation system, in 105 “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 22: Tange Kenz ō, T ōkaid ō Megalopolis, 1966. 106 Figure 23: Tange Kenz ō, possible axial development of the 107 Tokyo Bay project, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 24: Tange Kenz ō, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity 108 Sphere Memorial, competition entry, drawing, bird-eye view, 1942. Figure 25: Tange Kenz ō, A-frame residential blocks, 109 in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. Figure 26: Isozaki Arata, “Shinjuku Project,” drawing, 1960-1961. 155 Figure 27: Isozaki Arata, “City in the Air,” model, 1960-1962. 156 Figure 28: Isozaki Arata, final page of the “Incubation 157 Process,” photomontage, from Bijutsu techō (April 1962). Figure 29: Isozaki Arata, White House, exterior and interior view, 158 1957. Figure 30: Yomiuri Independent, exhibition view, 159 1962. Figure 31: Hi Red Center, Cleaning Event, 1964. 160 vii Figure 32: Isozaki Arata, “Incubation Process, photomontage,” 161 from Bijutsu tech ō (April 1962). Figure 33: Isozaki Arata, Incubation Process—Joint Core System, 162 multi-media installation, 1962 (re-enacted at the 1997 exhibition The Summer of Japan-1960-64). Figure 34: Kanky ō kai, From Space to Environment, 163 exhibition view, 1966. Figure 35: Isozaki Arata, Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank, 164 model, displayed at the 1966 exhibition, From Space to Environment, 1966. Figure 36: Isozaki Arata, Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank, 165 interior view, 1966-1968. Figure 37: Isozaki Arata, Marilyn Monroe curve, 1966-1972. 166 Figure 38: Isozaki Arata, “Destruction of the Future City,” 167 from Electric Labyrinth, photomontage, 1968. Figure 39: Isozaki Arata, Electric Labyrinth, multi-media installation, 168 1968. Figure 40: Shirai Sei’ichi, Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple, 169 drawing, 1955. Figure 41: A short history of postwar Japanese architecture, 222 Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 11-14. Figure 42: Antarctic Station Building, proposals for round-shaped 223 pneumatic structures, drawing, 1956. Figure 43: Antarctic Station Building, construction process of 224 prefabricated box-shaped structures, drawing, 1956. Figure 44: T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Untitled, in Metabolism: 225 The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 45: T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Asphalt, 1960. 226 Figure 46: T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Ise Bay Typhoon, 1959. 227 viii Figure 47: Kikutake Kiyonori, “Ocean City,” 228 in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 48: Kurokawa Kish ō, “Agricultural City,” 229 in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 49: Kurokawa Kish ō, “Wall City,” 230 in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 50: Maki Fumihiko and Ōtaka Masato, “Group Form,” 231 in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 51: Kikutake Kiyonori, Koto Redevelopment Project, 232 drawing, 1961. Figure 52: Kikutake Kiyonori, Move-net, 233 in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. Figure 53: Kurokawa Kish ō, Nakagin Capsule Tower, 234 Ginza, 1970-1972. Figure 54: Ekuan Kenji, Core House, 235 model and drawing, 1960. Figure 55: Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House, 236 model, 1929. Figure 56: Archigram (David Greene), Living Pod, 1965. 237 Figure 57: Kurokawa Kish ō, Nakagin Capsule Tower, 238 interior view, 1970-1972. Figure 58: Cover Page of Time Magazine, January, 12, 1962. 239 Figure 59: Hi Red Center, Shelter Plan, 1964. 240 Figure 60: Nishiyama Uz ō, Conceptual Plan for Expo’70, 287 the first phase plan, 1966. Figure 61: Nishiyama Uz ō, Plan for Nara, 1965. 288 Figure 62: Tange Kenz ō, Master Plan for Expo’70, 1966. 289 ix Figure 63: Tange Kenz ō, Grand Roof, penetrated by 290 Okamoto Tar ō’s Sun Tower, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 64: Isozaki Arata, Festival Plaza, 291 Robots “Deme” and “Deku,” Expo’70, 1970. Figure 65: Isozaki Arata, operation system, Festival Plaza, 292 Expo’70, 1970. Figure 66: Gutai Art Association, Gutai Art Festival, 293 Festival Plaza, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 67: Kurokawa Kish ō, Capsule House, 294 exterior view, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 68: Kurokawa Kish ō, Capsule House, 295 interior view, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 69: Kurokawa Kish ō, Takara Beautilion, 296 interior view, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 70: Mid-Air Exhibit, exhibition view, 297 Expo’70, 1970. Figure 71: Kikutake Kiyonori, Expo Tower, 298 general view, Expo’70, 1970. Figure 72: Peter Cook, Montreal Tower, 299 drawing, 1970. Figure 73: Yanobe Kenji, Expo Tower 3. 303 from the series titled Atom Suit Project, 2002. x Abstract This dissertation examines the trajectory of postwar Japanese architecture from 1945 to 1970 as a process of overcoming the nation’s war legacy. The task of overcoming the war was not restricted to the physical recovery from wartime destruction and postwar ruins but also included the psychological and symbolic process of coming to terms with the recurring memories of this troubled past. Drawing on memory and trauma studies which have emerged as a crucial element in narrating postwar history, this study traces the progression of war narratives in Japanese architecture against the backdrop of Japan’s socio-political complexity and the global Cold War context. This dissertation focuses on the tropes of the future which prevailed in Japanese architecture and urbanism during the 1960s because these products of futuristic imagination serve as a rich text through which to discuss the dialectic between forgetting and remembering the war. The dissertation’s central argument is that visionary designs for future cities, which accommodated the postwar society’s progressive aspirations to build a brave new world, were deeply infiltrated by the traumatic memories of wartime past and a persistent anxiety over nuclear war. In contrast to previous accounts which placed Japan’s futuristic projects in tandem with an international context of utopian urbanism and the megastructure movement, this dissertation situates these visionary designs within Japan’s changing urban and social landscape and considers them as architects’ belated response to Japan’s tragic past. One of the objectives of this study is to address the disagreements among key xi figures in Japanese architecture, including Tange Kenzō, Isozaki Arata, and the Metabolists, in their envisioning of the city of the future. I argue that their diverse and even competing visions of the future, which range from a technocratic utopia (Tange Kenz ō) to a ruined future (Isozaki Arata) and the post-apocalyptic world (the Metabolists), resulted from the architects’ disparate relationships with the troubled wartime past and continuing Cold War conflict. This dissertation ends with a discussion of Expo’70, commonly known as the “grand swansong” of the modern movement and its utopian projects. It posits Expo’70 as the end of postwar architecture, architecture defined by a physical and psychological overcoming of the war legacy, and the beginning of post- postwar architecture, a new paradigm of architecture in an information and postindustrial society. xii Introduction In 1970, Japan hosted the Osaka World’s Exposition (hereinafter Expo’70), the first world’s fair to be held in an Asian country. Together with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Expo’70 was the culmination of a celebratory drama of the country’s remarkable recovery from the ashes of World War II. Japan’s leading architects played a crucial role in creating a virtual future city by presenting eye-popping pavilions, automatized monorails and moving walks, and multi-media environments. The techno-futuristic spectacle of Expo’70 represented the society’s optimism for a better future at the peak of its economic miracle. Yet what lay behind this seamless utopia were the haunting memories of the war. For Japanese architects, it seemed nearly impossible to imagine a technology-driven future without considering the wartime destruction and in particular the atomic bomb disaster, the tragic event caused by the very embrace of technology that postwar Japan ironically sought as a means to brighten its future. The aim of this dissertation is to examine how postwar Japanese architects formulated a vision of the future while simultaneously addressing its traumatic memories of the past. The war exerted a profound effect on the development of postwar Japanese architecture. The allied bombing campaigns against Japan were campaigns against the cities and industry, against architecture, and against housing. Strategic bombing from October 1944 to August 1945 burnt down over 50% of Tokyo’s factories and other structures. Incendiary bombs had proven highly effective in destroying Japan’s urban fabric, much of which was built of wood, tile, and paper. The only two atomic bombs 1 ever to be used in warfare razed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the ground. As cultural historian Tsurumi Shunsuke has dramatically described, the manner of living at the outset of the occupation period (1945-1952) had much in common with living in a cave in prehistoric times. 1 Temporary huts or dugouts became shelters for people who lost their homes and shantytowns did not disappear from cities for years after the end of the war. This dissertation considers the trajectory of Japanese postwar architecture from 1945 to 1970 as a process of overcoming the war legacy. 2 The issue at stake was not restricted to the physical recovery from destroyed buildings and cities. Overcoming the war legacy included the psychological and symbolic process of coming to terms with recurring memories of wartime destruction and of establishing a new identity for postwar architecture as distinct from its wartime precedent. How did the destruction of the war and consequent reconstruction contribute to the future direction of architecture and urbanism? How did the built environment register memories of the lost Empire, wartime destruction, and postwar ruins? What were the tasks of architects and planners in rebuilding a defeated country and formulating a new identity of postwar architecture in 1 Tsurumi Shunsuke, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan: 1945-1980 (New York: Methuen, 1987), 12. 2 By using the term war, I refer to the “Asia-Pacific War,” or the “Fifteen Years War,” instead of “World War II,” denoting Japan’s war with both Asian countries as well as the United States, spanning the 1930s to 1945. The wide use of the terms World War II or Pacific War runs the risk of failing to include Japan’s invasion of Asian countries in the 1930s and earlier. Therefore, progressive scholars prefer to use the revisionist terms “Asia-Pacific War” or “Fifteen Years War.” Cultural historian Tsurumi Shunsuke proposed the term Fifteen-Year War in order to include Japan’s aggressions in China. See Tsurumi Shunsuke, An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan (London and New York: Sidney and Henley, 1986), 124; For a discussion of the more recent term Asia-Pacific War, see Kisaka Jun’ichir ō, “Aijia Taiheiy ō sens ō no kosh ō to seikaku” [The name and the character of the Asian-Pacific War] in Ry ūkoku h ōgaku 25.4 (March 1993): 386-434. 2 dialogue with its wartime precedents? This study ultimately asks what the concept of a “postwar architecture” might mean. Postwar (sengo) is not merely a temporal category indicating any moments after the war, but is a complex social, economic, and political structure that was shaped by the defeat of 1945 and the subsequent global Cold War geopolitics. By postwar architecture, therefore, I do not merely refer to any building built after 1945, but to the specific architectural culture that addressed the particular circumstance of urban and cultural crisis caused by the recent experience of mass destruction and Cold War nuclear anxiety. Japan’s postwar started in August 1945 when Emperor Hirohito announced unconditional surrender. However, historians have not reached agreement on the exact moment when postwar was over. While most countries ceased to speak of themselves as “postwar” in the mid-1950s, the Japanese have continued to view themselves as living in the postwar era. 3 In fact, despite the official declaration of “postwar is over” in the 1956 government white paper, the end of Japan’s postwar has been announced repeatedly at various junctures of history. 4 Such an extended period of what historian Carol Gluck calls the “long postwar” demonstrates how significantly Japanese society has been influenced by the social, political, and international conditions that were determined by its defeat, the Allied occupation, and the American dominance that followed. 5 3 Carol Gluck, “The “Long Postwar”: Japan and Germany in Common and in Contrast,” in Legacies and Ambiguities, eds. Ernestine Schlant and Thomas Rimer (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 64-67. 4 Keizai kikak ū-ch ō [Economic Planning Agency], Keizai hajusho[Economic White Paper], 19 July 1956. 5 Gluck, “The “Long Postwar”: Japan and Germany in Common and in Contrast,” 64-67. 3 The scope of my research is not restricted to the immediate postwar years, a moment of physical reconstruction and war commemoration. The war narratives gained new momentum at each critical historical juncture. The nationwide demonstration against the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty of 1960, in particular, provided an opportunity for millions of participants to reencounter their memories of the war. Once this popular political movement failed, society shifted its focus to economic growth, and the resultant construction boom of the 1960s nearly erased the last visible signs of wartime destruction and postwar ruins from the everyday urban environment. Despite the society’s will to move forward and to leave the troubling past behind, however, the war–related narratives resurfaced along with the intensifying Cold War tension, and more specifically, the outbreak of the Vietnam War. The effect of the Vietnam War on Japanese society was enormous. Japan’s involvement in the Vietnam War by permitting Okinawa to be used as a launching pad for the U.S. military forced the Japanese society to realize its subordinate position within the specific Cold War geopolitics. Moreover, the misery of the Vietnam War easily overlapped with Japan’s recent past, conjuring up memories of Japan’s wartime destruction as well as its former role as a continental aggressor. My dissertation focuses on visionary designs proposed by Tange Kenz ō, Isozaki Arata, and the Metabolist group who played a crucial role in Expo’70. The visionary schemes, which mostly remain on paper, occupied an important place in their architectural careers not only as a preparatory step for actual building but also as a full articulation of their aesthetic and political agendas. As architectural historian George R. Collins has pointed out, the term “visionary” is not simply synonymous with “unbuilt,” 4 but refers to a “theoretical, speculative, and even imaginary statement or position that is likely to be considerably ahead of its time and may not even be intended to be carried out.” 6 This study considers the futuristic imaginations of visionary designs as a rich text through which to discuss the relationship between the ardent anticipation of a bright future and the recurring memories of a tragic past, a dialectic that constitutes the specificity of postwar architectural culture. Concentrating primarily on the pivotal period of the 1960s, this dissertation explores how Japanese architects who later played a significant role in creating a virtual future city in Expo’70 developed various concepts of the future. I will show that their visions of the future city range from a technocratic utopia (Tange Kenz ō) to destructive ruins (Isozaki Arata) and the post-apocalyptic city (the Metabolists), and contend that these diverse and even competing visions of the future resulted from the architects’ different attitudes toward the traumatic experiences of the war. My dissertation ends with a discussion of the 1970 Osaka World’s Exposition (thereinafter Expo’70), the significant cultural event that announced the country’s remarkable recovery from the ashes of the war to both domestic and international audiences. Architects’ struggle to deal with Japan’s war memories came to a temporary resolution with the material prosperity of the late 1960s. This timing coincides with the decline of modernist practices, architecture which was defined by the progressive goal of physically and psychologically overcoming the war legacy. In architectural discourse, 6 George R. Collins, “Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning: 20 th Century through the 1960s,” Art Journal, vol. 38, no. 4 (Summer 1979): 244. 5 Expo’70 also marked the end of the modern movement which had dominated mainstream Japanese architecture for the first twenty-five years of the postwar era. In this regard, this dissertation is about the modern movement in dialogue with the war’s lingering effects. “Anxious Modernisms” and Urban Utopias 7 The trajectory of postwar Japanese architecture from 1945 to 1970 is often regarded as synonymous with the triumphant resurgence and development of the modern movement, which had been temporarily suppressed during the war. However, this is a simplified narrative that obscures the specific concerns of postwar architectural culture. The wartime destruction and the first military use of the atomic bomb, so fully grounded in technological advancement, jeopardized the sense of technological optimism and the premise of a utopian future, the two pillars that supported the modern movement. Moreover, the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers forced people to live under the threat of instantaneous near-total annihilation. Under such circumstances, postwar architects could not maintain their strong confidence in technological and social progress of the kind that prewar modernists had voiced in their manifestos. Rather, they had to redefine the canonical presentation of the modern movement by drawing on concerns that emerged directly out of the specific sociopolitical conditions of the postwar 7 I borrow the term “Anxious Modernisms” from the title of Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault’s edited volume by the same name, which guides my understanding of postwar architectural culture. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault eds., Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2000). 6 years. In this regard, postwar architecture underwent a process in which the modern movement was constantly reexamined and revised long before a new trend called postmodernism emerged as the dominant style in the 1970s. The modern movement was introduced to Japan in the 1920s, when modernist avant-garde groups such as Bunri-ha kenchikukai (Secession Group) (1920) and Sōusha (Creation of the Universe Society) (1923) were first established. Japanese architects tended to equate the modern movement with the international style, a specific style that was characterized by the lack of decorative motifs and historical allusions, clarity of form and structure, and embrace of new materials and new technologies. 8 In this regard, architectural historian Fujimori Terunobu proposes to use the term kokusai kindai kenchiku, meaning “international modern architecture,” instead of kindai kenchiku, the literal translation of “modern architecture” which includes the eclectic style practices of the Meiji period (1868-1912). 9 The development of the modern movement, however, was obstructed by the growing nationalism which surfaced in the 1930s. As the war got underway, the international style was condemned as less patriotic and anti-Japanese, and architects turned to Japanese tradition as a way of overcoming Western-dominated modernism. History shows that, as architectural historian Jonathan M. Reynolds has pointed out, 8 The international style was codified by the 1932 MoMA exhibition titled “Modern Architecture: An International Exhibition,” curated by Philip Johnson in collaboration with Henry-Russell Hitchcock. 9 Fujimori Terunobu, Nihon no kindai kenchiku, vol. 2 (T ōky ō: Iwanami Shinsho, 1993), 161. 7 Japanese modernists were not always hostile to their architectural past and tradition. 10 On the contrary, since the architectural profession was established as a part of a modernization program in the late 19 th century, Japanese architects have strived to find an authentic language of Japanese architecture in dialogue with tradition. 11 However, the wartime dominance of Japanese tradition, commonly known as Nihon shumi or imperial crown style, became a serious threat to the development of the modern movement because of its close association with problematic nationalism and imperialism. As soon as the war ended, the modern movement regained its worldwide hegemony. Modernist practices provided a perfect vehicle for rebuilding war-trodden cities; its lesson of standardization and prefabrication of building-making was regarded as the best way to cope with acute housing shortages in the wake of the war. More importantly, modernist architecture served as an antithesis to the tainted wartime practices; the iconoclastic formal language of modernist design formed a sharp contrast to the prewar emphasis on historicism and traditionalism, while its democratic and egalitarian ideals stood in opposition to oppressive totalitarianism and the hierarchical system of the prewar past. Postwar architects and critics enthusiastically drew on modernism’s stylistic and political orientations as an antithesis to problematic wartime hybrid design in order to establish legitimacy in postwar architecture. 10 Jonathan M. Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 7. 11 For the Japanese modernists’ ongoing dialogue with tradition, see Jacqueline Kestenbaum, “Modernism and Tradition in Japanese Architectural Ideology, 1913-1955,” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1996). 8 The modernist aspiration for a brave new world was best illustrated in visionary designs that appeared in the immediate postwar period. Since visionary design was not limited by technical, financial and social constraints, it afforded the architects a rare opportunity to present a new world, the world that they really wished to build. This futuristic and utopian nature of visionary design encapsulated the modernist faith in progress and social betterment that prevailed in postwar Japanese society. A short-lived but widespread boom in visionary designs was stimulated by the postwar reconstruction programs. One of the most compelling examples was a utopian scheme drafted by Ishikawa Hideaki (1893-1955), then director of the Planning Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Ishikawa’s utopian proposal for a decentralized, well-balanced city provided a blueprint for Tokyo’s urban reconstruction although most parts remained unrealized. 12 Utopian schemes not only served as practical guides for physical reconstruction but also functioned as a psychological antidote to the traumatic experiences of the recent past. Because of Hiroshima’s special status as the first city destroyed by the atomic bomb, the city offered an interesting case study through which to discuss the symbolic dimensions of visionary architecture. For example, Chūgoku shimbun, a Hiroshima-based newspaper, organized a public competition for the city’s reconstruction under the theme of “The Creation of Utopia in Hiroshima” in 1946. 13 Prizewinning designs included T ōge 12 For Ishikawa’s role in postwar urban reconstruction projects, see Carola Hein and Jeffry M. Diefendorf eds., Rebuilding Urban Japan After 1945 (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 8-12, 52-68. 13 The competition brief was published in Ch ūgoku shimbun on July 7, 1946. 9 Sankichi’s proposal for “Hiroshima in 1965,” a modernist utopia which included wide boulevards and freestanding apartment blocks with green zones between them. (Fig. 1) This was a pure utopia which lacked any traces of the city’s tragic past. 14 In the late 1950s, a decade after the first emergence of urban utopias in the early postwar years, the second round of the future boom began to surface in architecture and urbanism. The advent of visionary architecture in the 1960s was closely connected to what influential critic Reyner Banham would later conceptualize as megastructure, the international utopian movement. 15 If utopian proposals of the late 1940s represented the existentialist will to overcome defeat and despair, the 1960s visionary designs reflected postwar optimism for economic growth and technological innovation. Japan’s leading architects, including Tange, Isozaki, and the Metabolists, offered various proposals for a technology-driven future with cities floating on the sea or spiraling into the sky. Such futuristic products of the imaginations culminated in the virtual future city realized in Expo’70, the international cultural event in which aforementioned architects took part. If technological optimism and utopian vision formed an integral part of the 1960s futuristic designs, doubts about the possibility of a bright future were also clearly part of these projects. Although rarely articulated, the futuristic visions of these projects were infiltrated by the traumatic memories of the recent war and continuing nuclear anxiety. Tange’s technocratic utopia served as an antidote to defeat and annihilation while recalling the “glorious past” when Imperial Japan dreamed of a pan-Asian utopia. 14 T ōge Sankichi, “1965 nen no Hiroshima” [Hiroshima in 1965], Ch ūgoku shimbun, 3 August 1946. 15 Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). 10 Isozaki’s ruin series were strongly imbued with recurring memories of wartime destruction and postwar rubble, while Metabolism’s proposals for techno-future cities exuded a sense of anxiety over the impending nuclear catastrophe and a concern for post- apocalyptic survival. One might wonder why the war narratives exploded not in the immediate postwar years but in the bright era of rapid economic growth of the 1960s. How can we explain such a delay? Scholars in trauma and memory studies offer a useful framework through which to examine the architects’ belated response to the wartime past. According to Dominick LaCapra, “the traumatic event is repressed or denied and registers only belatedly after the passage of the latency.” 16 Cathy Caruth also interprets the “temporal delay” as one of the most striking characteristic of traumatic events. 17 For these scholars, belatedness is a symptom of a traumatic event in the sense that it attests to the difficulty of coming to terms with the traumatic past. Then the question becomes: why did a belated response to the war express itself specifically in the 1960s? The decade of the 1960s was the pivotal period when memories of the war lost their reference points amid economic prosperity and the bright image of progress. But conversely, it was also a time when the specters of the war and nuclear trauma gained new momentum. There were various efforts to articulate the overwhelming events of the past. In 1961, photographers Domon Ken and T ōmatsu Sh ōmei published a 16 Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 9. 17 Cathy Caruth ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 7-9. 11 series of photographs capturing the horror and aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In literary circles, influential books describing the aftermath of nuclear disaster, such as Oe Kenzaburo’s Hiroshima Note (1965) and Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain (1966), gained critical and public acclaim. The 1960s was also a time when nationalistic and nostalgic narratives of the nation’s past increasingly found their way into public view. Historians such as Ueyama Shumpei and Hayashi Fusao presented revisionist histories, calling for a nationalistic reassessment of Japan’s imperial war that had been unimaginable even a few years earlier. 18 In conjunction with the 1960s memory explosion, this study investigates the architects’ belated and disparate responses to traumatic memories of the war. In this dissertation, I will situate postwar Japanese architecture at the intersection of historical specificity and “international contemporaneity,” two frameworks through which Japanese art and culture have generally been addressed. 19 18 In September 1961, Ueyama Shumpei published an article titled “Dai t ōa sens ō no shiso-shiteki igi” [The Intellectual Historical Significance of the Greater East Asia War] in Ch ūō k ōron, while Hayashi Fusao published an article in the same magazine, titled “Dai t ōa sens ō k ōtei ron” [An Affirmation of the Greater East Asian War] in September 1963. In 1964, both articles were published in book format. Ueyama’s article was renamed The Meaning of the Greater East Asian War; For discussion on nationalistic rewriting of the wartime history, see Tsurumi, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945-1980, 20-27. 19 I borrow the term “international contemporaneity” from critic Hary ū Ichiro. For Hary ū, one of the most important goals of postwar Japanese artists was to fill the gap between international and local standards so that their work could be properly received in global circles. See Hary ū Ichiro, Seng ō bijutsu seishu-shi [The Rise and Fall of Postwar Japanese Art] (T ōky ō: Tokyo Soseki, 1979), 73-74. 12 Literature Review and Research Problematic The 1960s visionary schemes were often discussed in terms of what Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co called the “international concept of utopias.” 20 In his book Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (1976), for instance, Reyner Banham described these visionary designs as an Asian branch of the larger megastructure movement, one of the most influential streams in 1960s utopian urbanism. 21 In this book, Japanese experimental architects including Tange Kenz ō, Isozaki Arata, and the members of Metabolism were collectively categorized as “Japanese Metabolists” without considering the diversity and disparity among their design methods and social visions. Influenced by Banham’s pioneering study, the vast majority of research discussed Japanese visionary designs in an international context in tandem with their Western counterparts, including British Archigram, Italian Superstudio, and French Spatial Urbanism, by focusing on their shared interest in mega-scale infrastructure and advanced technology. 22 In contrast to the many accounts that tend to obscure Japan’s local specificity, this study attempts to situate Japanese visionary designs within the context of Japan’s wartime destruction, postwar reconstruction, and rapid economic growth. 20 Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture [1976] (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1979), 357-563. 21 Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past, 45-57. 22 This scholarship includes Robin Boyd, New Directions in Japanese Architecture (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 16-25; George R. Collins, Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning: 20 th Century through the 1960s (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1979), 48-61; Sabrina Ley and Markus Richter eds., Megastructure Reloaded: Visionary Architecture and Urban Design of the Sixties Reflected by Contemporary Artists (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz publishers, 2008). 13 My research is built on recent studies which take into consideration the physical sites, historical period, and architectural movements to which Japanese architects responded. In the first scholarly monograph on Metabolism, published in 1997, Yatsuka Hajime and Yoshimatsu Hideki have placed the emergence of Metabolism within two major internal discourses circulating in the Japanese architectural world at the time: the heated debate on tradition as an effort to rehabilitate Japan’s cultural identity after the termination of the Allied Occupation and the rapid urban expansion in the era of rapid economic growth. 23 Yatsuka, in his subsequent research, attempts not only to contextualize these 1960s designs within their social and urban landscape but also to reveal a veiled continuity between wartime and postwar visionary projects. 24 He examines Japan’s wartime colonial planning as a laboratory for the latest planning thought and experimental design as embodied in Tange’s urban schemes. Yatsuka’s study proposes a new perspective from which to explore the imperial legacy in architecture and urbanism and generates new knowledge in this field. 25 Following Yatsuka and Yoshimatsu’s foundational study, Zhongjie Lin’s recent book Kenz ō Tange and the Metabolist Movement (2010) traces the evolution of the 23 Yatsuka Hajime and Yoshimatsu Hideki, Metaborizumu: 1960 nendai nihon no kenchiku avuangiyarudo[Metabolism: 1960 Japanese Architectural Avant Guard] (T ōky ō: INAX Publishing Co., 1997). 24 Yatsuka Hajime, Shis ō toshite no nihon kindai kenchiku [Japanese Modern Architecture as an Idea], (T ōky ō: Iwanami shoten, 2005), 475-80; Yatsuka Hajime, “The 1960 Tokyo Bay Project of Kenzo Tange,” in Cities in Transition, eds. Arie Graafland and Deborah Hauptmann (Rotterdam: 101 Publisher, 2001), 178-191; Yatsuka Hajime, “The Alter Ego and Id ‘Machines’ of Modernist Architecture,” in Archilab’ s Urban Experiments: Radical Architecture, Art and the City, eds. Marie-Ange Brayer, Frédéric Migayrou and Fumio Nanjo (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 122-128. . 25 Yatsuka’s scholarly achievement resulted in the publication of a special issue of 10+1 with the theme of Tokyo Metabolism 2010/ 50 Years After 1960. See 10+1, INAX Shuppan, no. 50 (2008). 14 Metabolist movement from its inception at the World Design Conference in 1960 to its spectacular “swansong” at Expo’70. 26 Lin’s book seeks to reveal the complexity and disparity among the Metabolists’ design approaches in conjunction with Tange’s work. Despite his emphasis on diversity, Lin tends to consider Metabolism in line with Tange’s technocratic utopianism. One of the main contributions of his work is to demonstrate how Metabolist design incorporates the rational concern and the democratic and egalitarian aspirations inherent in utopian urbanism. However, since he examines the Metabolist project within a longstanding Western tradition of utopian planning which ranges from Thomas More to Lewis Mumford, he does not pay sufficient attention to what the “future” might mean to postwar Japanese society, which had undergone tragic experiences during the war. It is architectural historian Cherie Wendelken who addresses the social, political, and psychological implications of the future as a register of both amnesiac and mnemonic impulses toward the traumatic past. In her 2000 essay titled “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” Wendelken presents a revisionist account of Metabolism not as a techno-utopian project but as “a form of cultural nihilism that developed out of the trauma of defeat in war followed by occupation.” 27 She discusses the 1960s futuristic proposals as a delayed effort to come to terms with the traumatic experience of wartime destruction and postwar ruins. For Wendelken, Japanese architects grappled with constructing “meanings out of 26 Zhongjie Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan (London: Routledge: 2010). 27 Cherie Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, eds., Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2000). 280. 15 the erasure of memory and the loss of identity” by overcoming the war legacy. 28 Wendelken’s essay allows us to interpret the future boom in architecture and urbanism in conjunction with the larger cultural, intellectual, and psychological atmosphere of postwar society. However, her overemphasis on the original moment of trauma prevents her from looking at the complex dynamic and progression of war narratives against the background of postwar history. For her, the meaning and impact of trauma is conceived as something static and homogeneous, rather than contingent on the changing socio- political landscape of postwar history. Wendelken’s study is deeply embedded in recent architectural scholarship which addresses the sense of crisis and anxiety immanent in postwar architectural culture within a global context. Her essay was published in the edited volume titled Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, a noteworthy book on postwar architecture. The contributors to this book share a critical stance toward the tidy narrative of postwar architecture as an “interregnum between an expiring modernism and a dawning postmodernism.” 29 Instead, they attempt to explore the process in which the modern movement was constantly readjusting to the changing urban and cultural conditions of the postwar years. Co-editors Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault in particular emphasize a certain anxiety inherent in postwar architectural culture, 28 Ibid. 29 Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, “Introduction: Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, eds., Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2000), 11. 16 “anxiety about the adequacy of their architectural culture to cope with and positively influence society in its new state.” 30 My dissertation is indebted to Wendelken’s study, which reconciles Japan’s historical specificity and the global context of “anxious modernism.” Taking the recent studies mentioned above as a starting point, this dissertation aims to investigate Japanese architects’ efforts to reckon with the war legacy. However, if the focus of her studies has been exclusively on architectural designs, my dissertation calls attention to architects’ under-recognized activities as technocrat (Tange), avant-garde artist (Isozaki) and interdisciplinary group consisting of architects, designers, a photographer, a scientist, a novelist, and a critic (Metabolism). An in-depth discussion of their different identities and interdisciplinary collaborations provides new perspectives on the subtle but significant discrepancies in the ways in which they addressed the war. One of the objectives of this study is to address the disagreements among Japanese architects in their envisioning of the city of the future. Sources, Methodologies, and Theories In reviewing the war narratives in postwar architecture, my study predominantly relied on archival research. I have examined Japanese art and architectural periodicals published from the late 1930s to 1970. Architectural journals, including Shinkenchiku, Kenchiku zasshi, Kokusai kenchiku, Gendai kenchiku Kenchiku bunka, provided a vital 30 Ibid., 13. 17 forum for architects to discuss the prospects for postwar architecture by featuring round- table discussions, brief introductions of international trends, and numerous symposiums and surveys. In August 1955, the prestigious architectural journal Shinkenchiku featured a special issue on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the end of the war. 31 The Shinkenchiku special illustrates how postwar architecture was in fact influenced by the nuclear blasts and mass destruction influenced the trajectory of postwar architecture. This issue features a dialogue between nuclear physicist Taketani Mitsuo and architect Asada Takashi under the alarming title “The Age of the Atomic Bomb and Architecture.” 32 Asada, who had previously been involved in Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park project (1949-1954) and later initiated the Metabolist movement, encouraged architects to build a new civilization of the “Atomic Age” by overcoming the “Atomic Bomb Age,” a barbarian age characterized by the threat of impending mass nuclear annihilation. 33 The Shinkenchiku special, however, was one of the rare attempts to address the lingering effects of the war and nuclear tragedy on postwar Japanese architecture. Despite the war’s significant impact on architecture and city, relatively little research has been done on the relationship between war and postwar architectural culture. Especially when the era of postwar reconstruction (1945-1955) was over, the narrative of postwar architecture was written as if it were completely separated from the war legacy. Such an 31 Shinkenchiku (August 1955). 32 Asada Takashi and Taketani Mitsuo, “Genbaku jidai to kenchiku” [The Age of Atomic Bomb and Architecture], Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 77-80. 33 Ibid. 18 absence or separation was not accidental. Rather, the issue of the war legacy was structurally eclipsed by the dominant accounts of Japanese architecture which focused on the triumphant resurrection and development of the postwar modern movement. In this framework, the wartime destruction and postwar ruins were merely treated as a necessary condition for the splendid achievement of postwar architecture. Recently, a few attempts to fill the historical void have been made in art and architectural circles. Critic Sawaragi Noi’s 1998 bestseller titled Japan · Contemporary · Art (Nihon·gendai ·bijutsu) can be read as an effort to challenge the historical amnesia which prevailed in postwar art community. 34 Sawaragi claims that Japanese art has been haunted by the specter of the war because it never properly confronted the nation’s traumatic origin. For him, the sunny day in August 1945, on which a mushroom cloud rose into Hiroshima’s sky, was made into the absolute origin of contemporary Japan. Sarawagi defines contemporary Japan as “a ‘place’ without history” in that Japan was semi-permanently deprived of its right to access its history due to its defeat in the war against the United States and the acceptance of the ‘peace constitution.’ 35 What is necessary to escape from the recurring trauma, according to him, is to recognize the fundamental but hidden violence on which Japanese society is grounded and to invent a new form of existence from this condition. 36 34 Sawaragi Noi, Nihon ·gendai ·bijutsu [Japan · Contemporary · Art] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1998). 35 Ibid., 14. 36 Ibid., 23-26. 19 Sawaragi’s views culminated in his 2006 monograph on Expo’70 titled World Wars and World Fairs (Sens ō to banpaku). 37 In this book, he makes the provocative argument that trauma has returned to Japanese society every twenty five years in the 20 th century, first in 1945 and next in 1970. By employing the charged term “mobilization,” which inevitably echoes the total war mobilization of the Asia Pacific War, he compares avant-garde artists who participated in Expo’70 to those who were involved in wartime propaganda. 38 Central to this book is that Expo’70 reiterated the nationalistic rhetoric of the Asia-Pacific War. 39 Sawaragi’s work provides a significant precedent for my dissertation in that he attempts to rewrite the history of postwar Japanese art and culture through the lens of war. His study, however, fails to historicize the meanings and impacts of trauma because he views postwar Japan as an “ahistorical place” which was dominated by the traumatic moment of original violence. 40 The ways I approached the anxiety and fear inherent in postwar architecture were informed to a significant degree by trauma and memory studies which emerged as a crucial element in narrating Japanese history. In her book titled Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (1999), historian Lisa Yoneyama demonstrates a dialectical tension between remembering and forgetting the nuclear trauma that was 37 Sawaragi Noi, Sens ō to banpaku [World Wars and World Fairs] (T ōky ō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2005). 38 Ibid., 61-66. 39 Ibid., 145-146. 40 Ibid., 23-26. 20 inscribed in both temporal and spatial registers. 41 On the one hand, she presents two contrasting concepts of time in conjunction with this dialectic: the past associated with memory and the future associated with amnesia. According to Yoneyama, postwar society was dominated by “an obsession with the future,” which lent support to the postwar spirit of economic recovery and progress, although a rosy vision of utopia was encroached on by the recurring memories of wartime destruction and nuclear disaster. 42 On the other hand, she discusses Hiroshima’s urban fabric as a battlefield over memory by investigating a series of urban renewal projects as an unfulfilled mnemonic effort. Yoneyama’s discussion is particularly relevant to my investigation of war memory inscribed in futuristic imaginations (time) in architecture and urbanism (space). If Yoneyama discusses the dialectics of remembering and forgetting the traumatic memories surrounding the war, historian Igarashi Yoshikuni asks how such dialectics progress at the important historical junctures of the society from 1945 to 1970. His 2000 book titled Bodies of Memories: Narratives of Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970 investigates various narrative strategies deployed in order to make sense of the overwhelming experience of the defeat and nuclear tragedy. 43 Igarashi considers the memories of war and Japan’s imperial past as an integral part of postwar cultural production and traces the genealogy of cultural discourse by focusing on popular culture. 41 Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999). 42 Ibid., 75. 43 Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000). 21 His discussion begins with the production of the official narrative in the occupation years (1945-1952), which portrays Japan as the colonial ‘Other’ in relation to the United States. In his view, Japan’s struggle to deal with its war memories culminated in the 1960s and came to a temporary resolution with the prosperity of its high growth economy by 1970. Igarashi’s study offers a useful outline through which to chart the architects’ changing strategies in addressing the recent past against the background of postwar Japan. The changing geopolitics of the Cold War played an important role in retrieving and repressing memories of the war in postwar society. As historian Ann Sherif has pointed out, “the framework of Cold War offers a productive alternative to the retrospective, morally laden discourse centering on the past war and empire, as well as to the perspective of privatized domesticity dominant in much of postwar criticism and art.” 44 In addition to memory studies, my study is indebted to the emerging literatures on Cold War culture. If technological optimism and utopian hope constituted one chapter of the Cold War culture, such a bright narrative was complicated by the thermonuclear arms race and space age competition between the two superpowers which spawned the fear of the end of human civilization. Borrowing Susan Buck-Morss’s famous phase, David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, who curated a groundbreaking exhibition Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 held in Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008, assert that “Nothing 44 Ann Sherif, Japan’ s Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 2. 22 could be more polarized than the visions of ‘dream world’ and ‘catastrophe’ which structured Cold War modernity.” 45 In his 2002 book Survival City: Adventures among the Ruins of Atomic America, critic Tom Vanderbilt asks how such dualism played out in postwar American architecture. 46 Vanderbilt suggests the coexistence of both ‘white spaces,’ as exemplified by the International Style high-rise with a glass façade, and ‘black spaces,’ as embodied by the underground bunker and fallout shelters. According to him, “the existence of one not only presupposed the other but they inevitably seeped into each other, corrupting both in the process.” 47 If Vanderbilt explores the Cold War dualism by contrasting “white space” and “black space,” architectural historian Beatriz Colomina delves into the idea of domesticity—a seemingly peaceful and perfectly controlled space—which masked the Cold War anxieties about global threats. 48 According to Colomina, postwar architecture was “not simply the bright architecture that came after the darkness of the war, but it was the aggressively happy architecture that came out of the war, a war that anyway was going on as the Cold War.” 49 I find Colomina’s and Vanderbilt’s books helpful in 45 David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 (London: V & A Publishing, 2008), 14. T 46 Tom Vanderbilt, Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 39. 47 Ibid. 48 For Colomina’s recent research on architecture and the Cold War, Beatriz Colomina, Annmarie Brenna, and Jeannie Kim eds., Cold War Hot Houses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004); Beatriz Colomina, Domesticity at War (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007). 49 Colomina, Domesticity at War, 12. 23 exploring the dual sensibilities of promise and peril permeating postwar Japanese architecture. By elucidating the war narratives, I hope that this study sheds new light on the anxiety and fear inherent in postwar architectural culture during the Cold War era. Chapter Summaries Chapter one, “Tange Kenz ō, the National Architect of Postwar Japan,” considers Tange as the “national” architect not simply because he designed a number of significant buildings which represented postwar Japan, including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (1949-1954)), the Olympic Stadium (1964), and Expo’70 (1970). More importantly, his designs took part in the symbolic process of constructing an official narrative of postwar Japan, a linear progression from devastation to prosperity, by reckoning with the war’s trauma behind the celebratory narrative. This chapter traces chronologically the important issues of postwar architecture, such as reconstruction and commemoration projects in the immediate postwar years, the debate over Japanese tradition in the 1950s, and the future city boom in the era of rapid economic growth, which was closely intertwined with Tange’s architectural career. The first half of this chapter focuses on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park project (1949-1954) as the iconic monument of newborn Japan by discussing the architect’s efforts to construct a legitimate postwar architecture in dialogue with its wartime precedent. This project embodied the society’s collective will to “start over,” a desire to escape from the yoke of the traumatic past and to move forward to a better future. The latter half of the chapter discusses the proposal for “A Plan for 24 Tokyo-1960” (1961) as the technocratic restructuring of the city to cope with the endless urban expansion of the rapid economic growth period. I would argue that “A Plan for Tokyo-1960,” a technology-driven utopia built on a tabula rasa, enacted a highly selective amnesia by erasing the traces of defeat and annihilation while at the same time recalling the “glorious past” when Imperial Japan dreamed of a pan-Asian utopia. Tange’s amnesic utopia was challenged by a series of projects based on the images of ruins proposed by Isozaki Arata. The metaphor of ruin not only suggested the impossibility of historical amnesia but also exposed the illusion of endless growth and progress. Chapter Two, “Isozaki Arata, the Architect of Ambivalence,” discusses the architect’s obsession with the recurring memories of war and nuclear blasts. Unlike that of Tange, the unequivocal “national” technocrat, Isozaki’s career can be best explained in terms of his dual identity as an artist/architect. While his training at Tange’s office was formative in Isozaki’s identity as an architect-builder, his encounter with the radical art movements of the 1960s, collectively called “Anti-Art,” informed his alter-identity as artist-destroyer. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how the oppositional energy of the 1960s art circles motivated Isozaki to formulate his anti-architectural rebellion and alternative methodology of “invisible city.” It is my contention that Isozaki’s contemplation on the aftermath of wartime destruction should be viewed as a criticism of the historical amnesia that was enacted by Tange’s technocratic utopia. If Isozaki’s work recalled the lingering memories of the recent war, the Metabolists’ project responded to continuing Cold War conflicts. The architects’ grappling with traumatic war memories gained new momentum along with the changing 25 Cold War geopolitics. Chapter Three, “Metabolism: Cold War Architecture,” examines the Metabolist’s concern over the impending crisis and post-apocalyptic hope for messianic regeneration in the nuclear age. In contrast to previous accounts which associated Metabolism with postwar optimism over technological innovation and economic growth, this chapter considers Metabolism as an architectural embodiment of the Cold War dualism which can be best illustrated in terms of the coexistence of “dream world” and “catastrophe.” If the technological innovation and economic growth of the postwar years generated a utopian hope, the nuclear arms race and space-age rivalry between the two superpowers spawned fear of the catastrophic end of human civilization. This chapter first excavates Asada Takashi’s survival structure for Antarctica (1956) as the hidden origin of Metabolism. Then it explicates the Metabolists’ existential anxiety caused by Japan’s nuclear tragedy and the growing Cold War tension by closely reading the 1960 Metabolism manifesto. The final section of this chapter discusses the capsule, a signature feature of Metabolist design, with an emphasis on its dual aspects as a consumerist utopia and as a means of defensive shelter. This dissertation ends with the forth chapter, “Expo’70, a Model City of Information Society,” which describes Expo’70 as the end of postwar architecture as well as an actualization of the future city. Expo’70 provided the above-mentioned architects with an unprecedented chance to realize their visionary proposals. These architects’ diverse visions of the future of the 1960s, which range from an amnesic techno-utopia to mnemonic ruins and the post-apocalyptic survival city, converged in the vision of an information society in this state-sponsored spectacle. Instead of reiterating a widely 26 circulated view of Expo’70 as the demise of the modern movement and the defeat of architectural avant-gardism, this study discusses the contributions of Expo’70 to the formation of a new paradigm of architecture. In 1970, architects’ wrestling with the war legacies came to a temporary resolution with the prosperity of Japan’s high-growth economy. This chapter investigates how architects proposed a new paradigm of architecture and city for the post-postwar period, a model city for an information society which would be suitable for the flexible and fluid movement of people and information. 27 Fig. 1 : T ōge Sankichi, “Hiroshima in 1965,” prizewinning design for the Ch ūgoku shimbun competition entitled “The Creation of Utopia in Hiroshima,” 1946. 28 Chapter 1: Tange Kenz ō, the National Architect of Postwar Japan In an obituary essay for Tange Kenz ō, who died in 2005 at the age of 92, architect Isozaki Arata wrote that “Tange Kenz ō was the first “national architect” of modern Japan, and he was also the last.” 1 Tange is one of the most influential figures in Japanese architecture of the twentieth century. He took the lead in postwar reconstruction while successfully creating new architectural vocabularies for modern Japan by combining modern concepts of design with traditional motifs. Moreover, Tange is arguably the first Japanese architect to gain global recognition and played the crucial role in internationalizing Japanese modern architecture. The main concern for Isozaki was “how one architect was able to forge such an intimate relationship with Japan as a modern nation.” 2 For Isozaki, Tange was the “first national architect” because he was always at the center of national projects. Tange was also the “last” national architect because after him, no Japanese architect ever again had the chance to put his or her skill to work on a public project of national scope. Isozaki’s comment implied a paradigm shift in the relationship between architects and the nation. Japanese architecture needed a national architect who could create monuments to showcase postwar achievements of the country from 1945 to 1970 when Japan was eager to recover from destruction and to regain the trust of the world. However, once Japan became the world’s biggest economic power, it no longer needed iconic monuments to 1 Isozaki Arata, “Requiem for the Real Tange Kenz ō,” Japan Echo (August 2005), 56. 2 Ibid. 29 represent the nation, and thus architects became committed to the design of commercial buildings. Indeed, as Isozaki insisted, Tange had taken charge of some of the most significant public projects in the third quarter of the twentieth century such as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (1949-1954), the Olympic Stadium (1964) and Expo’70 (1970). In doing so, he engaged in every major event of wartime and postwar Japanese history. However, Tange’s status as the state architect can be further understood in relation to the formation of the nation’s official narrative of history. It is my contention that what made Tange the national architect was his active engagement in the construction of the official narrative rather than the construction of any particular state- sponsored building. By the official narrative, I refer to what historian Carol Gluck has labeled “establishment history or status quo history” constructed by “conservative intellectuals,” such as government officials, education bureaucrats, and politicians, who could wield power through governmental institutions. 3 By setting the official dual agendas of domestic reconstruction and recovery of international stature, the postwar chronology of Japan’s official narrative traced an ever rising national trajectory from destruction to prosperity, from international humiliation to the status of economic superpower, which was marked by such celebratory events as the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Expo’70. 4 This 3 For the official narrative of history, I refer to Carol Gluck’s account of status quo or establishment history constructed by the conservative intellectuals. See Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 71-73. 4 Ibid., 72. 30 hegemonic official narrative tended to move away from politics and emphasized economic growth and cultural achievements. The official postwar narrative was founded on what Gluck called the “mythic sense of starting over of 1945,” a radical discontinuity with the wartime and imperial legacy. 5 A radical break with the recent past was claimed as a necessary precondition for embracing the new postwar values of democracy, peace, and prosperity. However, there was no such thing as “starting over.” Despite desperate efforts to break with the troubling past through the radical social reform which followed the end of the war, most prewar institutions and bureaucratic systems remained intact. Moreover, as Gluck has pointed out, “the specter of continuity was never far from the thoughts of the political opposition or of the progressive intellectuals critical of the conservative establishment” in the face of such a strongly willed discontinuity. 6 The official narrative is thus none other than a hegemonic way of coming to terms with the recent past. In this regard, Tange’s status as the national architect did not merely derive from the fact that his career embodied the nation’s triumphant narrative from devastation to prosperity, but also from the fact that his work reckoned with the trauma and anxiety behind this celebratory story. Tange’s struggle with Japan’s traumatic national history included the process of confronting his own personal wartime career. Although Tange 5 Carol Gluck, “The “Long Postwar”: Japan and Germany in Common and in Contrast,” in Legacies and Ambiguities, eds. Ernestine Schlant and Thomas Rimer (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 64-67. 6 Ibid., 66. 31 was usually categorized as part of the “apure” (from après-querre) generation which initiated their careers after the war, his career can be traced back to pre-1945 Japan. 7 Tange’s wartime career became a political “hot potato” in postwar architectural circles, wherein critics and architects alike tried to establish legitimacy in postwar architecture by negating the continuity with its wartime precedent. After the war ended, wartime designs were either treated as an aberration demanded by the military government, or merely silenced as if no significant building was built before 1945. Under such circumstances, Tange’s reputation as the national architect of postwar Japan could only be possible by isolating his wartime activities from his entire career. One of the objectives of this chapter is to discuss Tange’s strategy for tackling his wartime practices in conjunction with the larger issue of dis/continuity between prewar and postwar architecture. This chapter first considers Tange’s oft-neglected wartime designs in order to examine the ways in which wartime architecture was described in the postwar years and then traces chronologically the major issues in postwar architecture, ranging from reconstruction and commemoration programs in the occupation period to the debate over Japan tradition in the 1950s and the future city boom in the era of rapid economic growth, which were closely intertwined with Tange’s two projects: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (1949-1954) and “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” (1961). The first half of this chapter discusses the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park which marks the beginning of postwar architecture and can be interpreted as an 7 Tokukawa Musei, “Mond ō y ūy ō (dai 289 kai) Tange Kenz ō” [The 289 th Useful Questions and Answers Tange Kenz ō], Sh ūkan Asahi (28 October, 1956): 23. 32 architectural embodiment of the tension between the enthusiasm for a new beginning and the anxiety over nuclear trauma that postwar society experienced. Beyond the widely circulated interpretation of the Peace Memorial Park as a harmonious blending of modernist and traditional styles, this chapter shows the tension between international modernism and Japanese tradition, which registers the struggle between universal internationalism of the nascent postwar era and the emerging nationalism of the mid- 1950s respectively. The second half of the chapter examines “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” as a technocratic vision of the future which represents the society’s desire to escape from the yoke of the traumatic past and to move forward to a better tomorrow. I would argue that “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” enacted a highly selective amnesia in which painful memories of defeat and annihilation were forgotten, while the “glorious past” of Imperial Japan was recalled. Wartime Tange and the Issue of Continuity Despite Tange’s fame as a hero of postwar architecture, his career can be traced back to pre-1945 Japan. Tange was born in Osaka in 1913 and attended Hiroshima High School; he went on to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University in architecture in 1938 and worked at Maekawa Kunio’s office for several years before returning to graduate school in 1941. By working at Maekawa’s office when most of its major projects were being carried out in colonial China, young Tange was exposed to the new experiments occurring in the colonial cities. In 1939, Tange had a chance to directly involve himself in 33 the Shinky ō project, the new capital city of Manchukuo, when he assisted Sakakura Junz ō, who was commissioned to design a residential district of this city. 8 Tange had made a dazzling debut in the wartime architectural scene by winning three national architectural competitions in a row: the People’s House Design Competition (1941), the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Commemorative Building Competition (1942), and the Japan-Thai Cultural Hall Competition (1943). These projects can be regarded as a good example of how architecture was used as a vehicle for propaganda during the war. The 1941 competition was an attempt to establish an economical and standardized model of the “people’s house” in the face of shortages of resources. 9 The idea of the “people’s house” can be comparable with that of “people’s dress” (kokumin fuku) that Japanese people wore during the war. According to Yatsuka Hajime, the “people’s house” constituted a basic component of the larger imperialist project of building the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. 10 The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Monument of 1942 was notorious nationalistic propaganda that represented “the heroic aim and the sublime intention of the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” 11 (Fig. 2) Tange won first prize in this architectural competition by proposing a shrine-like commemorative structure at the foot of Mt Fuji. This memorial complex was surrounded by trapezoidal enclosures reminiscent of 8 Yatsuka, “The 1960 Tokyo Bay Project of Kenzo Tange,” 178-191. 9 “Sōritsu no sh ūnen kinen zadankai: dezain (1936-1955)” [The Discussion Celebrating the Foundation: Design (1936-1955)], Kenchiku zasshi, vol.71, no. 833 (April 1956): 11. 10 Yatsuka, Shis ō toshite no nihon kindai kenchiku, 475-80. 11 Kenchiku zasshi (July 1942): 2. 34 Michelangelo’s plaza for the Capitoline Hill and Bernini’s design for the great colonnade at St. Peters. 12 The 1943 competition for the Japan-Thailand Cultural Center was intended as a cultural complex in Thailand to promote an “amicable relationship” between the two countries as part of Japan’s expansionist project in the South Asian region. (Fig. 3) Tange’s prizewinning design featured the shinden-style residential architecture of the Heian period aristocracy. Tange’s wartime designs drew primarily from traditional Japanese architecture. His interest in Japanese tradition should be understood within the dominance of “Japanese taste” (Nihon shumi), a hybrid style combining modernist structure and traditional ornamentation, which prevailed during the war. 13 As the war got underway, the international style was condemned as less patriotic and anti-Japanese, and architects turned to Japanese tradition as a way of overcoming Western-dominated modernism. Tange himself also criticized the international modernism style by pejoratively calling them “hygienic ceramic” for the lack of spiritual inspiration. 14 The emphasis on Japanese tradition in Tange’s work was closely tied to wartime cultural nationalism. In his reply to a 1942 questionnaire regarding the preferred 12 Tange memorial made reference to both of these Italian Renaissance plazas. Tange Kenz ō, “Recollections: Architect Tange Kenz ō, Part 2,” Japan Architect (May 1985): 12; Jonathan M. Reynolds, "Ise Shrine and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition," Art Bulletin vol. LXXXIII, no. 2 (June 2001): 323-324. 13 For Japanese taste (Nihon shumi) during the pre-1945, see Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001), 74-134; Jacqueline Kestenbaum, “Modernism and Tradition in Japanese Architectural Ideology, 1913-1955,” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1996). 14 “Kokusaisei, f ūd ōsei, kokuminsei: Gendai kenchiku no z ōkei o megutte” [Internationalism, Climate, Nationalism: The Art in Contemporary Architecture], Kokusai kenchiku 20, no.3 (March 1953): 4. 35 architectural style and policy of the architecture of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Tange stated: We must ignore both Anglo-American culture and the pre-existing cultures of the Southeast Asian races. To admire Angkor Wat is the mark of an amateur. We should start out with an unshakable conviction in the tradition and the future of the Japanese races. Architects were given the task of creating a new Japanese architectural style in order to contribute to the supreme and inevitable project of the foundation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. 15 Here, the strong conviction of the superiority of the Japanese race and its cultural tradition recapitulated the nationalistic thought of the time, particularly the romantic inspiration for Japanese identity and tradition of the Japan Romantic School (Nihon Roman-ha). The Japan Romantic School’s “ethnic nationalism” was deeply embedded within the larger intellectual and cultural discourse of “overcoming modernism” of the time. 16 In his 1985 retrospective essay entitled “The Age of Compé,” Tange confessed the influence of Yasuda Yoj ūr ō, a leading poet and critic of the Japan Romantic School, who tried to search for the essence of Japanese-ness by articulating the notion of cultural particularism. 17 Also, it was well known that Tange kept a close relationship with his school fellow Tachihara Michiz ō, a member of the Romantic circle. Inspired by Japan’s attack in China of 1938, Tachihara wrote Tange a letter filled with excitement and 15 Tange Kenz ō, “Dai t ōa ky ōeiken ni okeru kaiin no y ōb ō” [Members’ Request on the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere], Kenchiku zasshi (September 1942):744. 16 For more on the Japan Romantic School, see Kevin Michael Doak, Dreams of Difference: The Japanese Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994). 17 Tange Kenz ō, “Konpe no jidai” [The Era of Competition], interview in Fujimori Terunobu, Kenchiku zasshi 100, no. 1229 (January 1985): 24-25. 36 patriotic ardor, which is often characterized as evidence of their shared sense of romantic nationalism. 18 Though none of Tange’s wartime designs were realized, winning a prize in three major propagandistic competitions was enough to direct the attention of the architectural world to this young architect. After the war, however, Tange’s success in these architectural competitions became a political “hot potato” since his wartime designs were regarded as fascist propaganda for the imperial regime. Understandably, Tange’s wartime designs tended to be excluded in the dominant accounts of his architectural career. Not only Tange’s wartime designs but also wartime Japanese architecture as a whole was repressed because both evoked politically and ethically sensitive issues such as the responsibility of the profession during the war. 19 The first substantial attempt to address Tange’s problematic wartime activities was made by Naka Masami. In his 1970 monograph on Tange, based on a series of essays published from 1963 to 1965 in the architectural journal Kenchiku, Naka claims that Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park had its precedent in Tange’s wartime design of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Monument. However, Naka’s voice was largely ignored in mainstream architectural circles because Tange was then an authority 18 Tange Kenz ō and Fujimori Terunobu, Tange Kenz ō (T ōky ō: Shinkenchikusha, 2002), 110. 19 The 100 th Issue of Kenchiku zasshi retrospectively described the rarely discussed wartime architectural culture from 1935 to 1945 as “Lost Showa Ten Years.” “Tokush ū Ushinawareta Sh ōwa 10 nendai o yonde” [Special Issue about the Lost 10 Years of Sh ōwa], Kenchiku zasshi, vol.100, no. 1231(March 1985): 38. 37 figure, representing the postwar achievements of the nation with his design for the Olympic stadium and Expo’70. 20 It was critic Inoue Sh ōichi who ignited a sense of urgency to reexamine wartime architecture. In his controversial study of Tange’s wartime practices, Inoue argues that the so-called “new style of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was not a style that was enforced by the military government but an architect’s voluntary effort to overcome western modernism by reconsidering Japanese tradition, which anticipated the “postmodern” practices of hybridization and historicism. 21 Inoue’s study, which was based on a radical separation between style and politics, was not well accepted in Japanese architectural circles, partly because of its politically sensitive nature. Left-wing commentators, such as Funo Sh ūji and Nishiyama Uz ō, criticized Inoue’s work as a reactionary effort to rehabilitate wartime fascism. 22 Influenced by Inoue’s study, architectural historian Jacqueline Kestenbaum regards “Japanese taste” (Nihon shumi) as an extension of the on-going process of finding an authentic language for Japanese modern architecture since the Meiji era rather than an exception to or betrayal of the modern movement. 23 Kestenbaum’s study can be situated within an ambitious scholarly 20 Naka Masami, Gendai kenchikuka no shis ō Tange Kenz ō ron [Ideas of Contemporary Architect: Tange Kenz ō Study] (T ōky ō: Kindai kenchikusha, 1970). 21 Inoue Sh ōichi, Ato, kitchi, japanesuku: Dait ōa no posutomodan [Art, Kitsch, Japanese-que: Postmodern in Great East Asia] (T ōky ō: Seid ōsha, 1987). 22 Funo Sh ūji, “Kokka to postomodanizumu kenchiku” [National Polity and Postmodern Architecture], Kenchiku Bunka, vol.39 no.451 (May 1984):18; Nishiyama Uz ō, “Tokush ū Ushinawareta Sh ōwa 10 nendai o yonde” [Special Issue about the Lost 10 Years of Sh ōwa], Kenchiku zasshi, vol.100, no. 1231(March 1985): 38. 23 Kestenbaum, “Modernism and Tradition in Japanese Architectural Ideology, 1913-1955.” 38 project to challenge the universal framework of Western-dominated modernism and to pursue the alterative language of “other modernisms.” Recent studies by Fujimori Terunobu and Yatsuka Hajime revisited Tange’s wartime designs in great detail. Based on meticulous research and multiple interviews, both Fujimori and Yatsuka argue that Tange’s lifelong interest in Japanese traditional architecture and urban planning had originated in his pre-1945 designs. In his 2002 bestseller on Tange’s monograph, Fujimori tries to configure Tange’s wartime practices within their social, political, and intellectual context rather than accusing (or excusing) the architect for his wartime collaboration. 24 While most accounts of wartime architecture focus on the issue of style, Yatsuka discusses the continuity between prewar, wartime, and postwar practices by focusing on urban planning practices. 25 Yatsuka’s discussion was particularly relevant to this study of Tange as the national architect because he characterized Tange not only as an avant-garde artist who experimented with innovative architectural vocabularies but also, more importantly, as a technocrat-architect who closely aligned himself with the authorities. Yatsuka examines colonial urban projects in Manchuria as a laboratory for Tange’s innovative planning concepts. Yatsuka’s study can be read as a revisionist attempt to challenge the “island nation” history of postwar architecture, an isolated narrative disconnected from both the Asian continent and the 24 Tange and Fujimori, Tange Kenz ō, 74-113. 25 Yatsuka Hajime, Shis ō toshite no nihon kindai kenchiku [Japanese Modern Architecture as an Idea], (T ōky ō: Iwanami shoten, 2005), 475-80; Yatsuka Hajime, “The 1960 Tokyo Bay Project of Kenzo Tange,” in Cities in Transition, eds. Arie Graafland and Deborah Hauptmann (Rotterdam: 101 Publisher, 2001), 178-191. 39 pre-1945 past. 26 His research provides young scholars with a fresh perspective to re- contextualize postwar architecture in conjunction with Japan’s imperial past. Undoubtedly, there was nothing like a radical discontinuity between wartime and postwar design. Moreover, as Fujimori and Yatsuka have written, Tange’s wartime practices provided him with a seedbed of various architectural languages that would prove useful throughout his entire career. However, Tange’s work cannot be fully grasped in terms of the simplified dichotomy between discontinuity and continuity. Perhaps it would be more productive to think less in terms of dis/continuity than in terms of the architect’s strategy of either repressing or readopting the prewar legacies. Then the question becomes: which architectural elements of wartime design were either rejected or reappeared in Tange’s postwar designs, and how did his choices of stylistic vocabulary change in tandem with the official narrative of the nation? There is neither fascist style nor democratic style as such, but an architectural style cannot be completely separated from ideology because a specific style, whether consciously or unconsciously, registers the desire and will of the period. Moreover, a certain architectural style which had been closely associated with a specific ideology of a particular historical moment is likely to trigger the collective memories of that moment. In this sense, Tange’s choices of either invoking or rejecting the architectural vocabulary utilized in his wartime projects corresponds to the processes of forgetting and 26 Oguma Eiji, Nihonjin’ no ky ōkai: Okinawa, ainu, taiwan, ch ōsen shokuminchi shihai kara fujji und ō made [The Boundaries of the “Japanese” Okinawa, the Ainu, Taiwan and Korea: From colonial domination to the return movement] (T ōky ō: Shin’yosha, 1998). 40 remembering the troubled history of the war, which constituted a key aspect of the formulation of the official narrative of history. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park as a Manifestation of Starting Over In 1946, Tange, then a fledging professor at Tokyo University went to Hiroshima at the request of the War Damage Rehabilitation Board (Sensai fukkoin). Tange recalled requesting to be in charge of the reconstruction of Hiroshima: In spite of warnings of danger of going to a place where, it was said, grass and trees would never again grow, I insisted for a number of reasons. First I had my high-school memories of Hiroshima. Second, in connection with prayers for peace, I felt strongly drawn to the city that had met destruction at a time when I had lost, almost simultaneously, both of my parents.27 Tange seemed to characterize his decision to volunteer, as an act of bravery as well as a conviction, to volunteer to work on the poisoned site of the atomic bomb blast. Indeed, Tange took advantage of the Hiroshima reconstruction project as a chance to launch his heroic postwar career while compensating for his wartime collaboration. Along with architect Take Motoo from Waseda University, Tange conducted a survey to assess the damage of Hiroshima, and proposed a city’s land-use plan based on a functional zoning system including commercial, industrial, residential, and park and 27 Tange Kenz ō, “Recollections: Architect Kenz ō Tange, Part 3,” Japan Architect (June 1985): 7. 41 green areas. 28 (Fig. 4) Their land-use plan, which was partially integrated in the official Hiroshima Reconstruction Plan of 1947, was a utopian city built on a tabula rasa. To a degree, the concept of tabula rasa can explain the existential condition of Japanese cities in the wake of the war. Tange said that “the spectacle that met my eyes was desolate… vast areas of homes, small shops, and stores in lower Tokyo had been completely razed to the ground.” 29 He saw the ravaged Japanese cities as a rare opportunity to implement a radical new order without being bothered by the existing urban structure and land ownership. Tange’s contribution to Hiroshima’s reconstruction peaked with his 1949 prizewinning design for the national competition for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. This design competition was the first official attempt to remember the unprecedented use of the atomic bomb. Though there was a nationwide competition to design the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Catholic Church a year before, it was hard to see this religious project as the nation’s official monument to commemorate Hiroshima’s tragedy because it was sponsored and guided by international Catholic organizations rather than by the state. 30 28 Carola Hein, "Visionary Plans and Planners: Japanese Traditions and Western Influences," in Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective: Place, Power, and Memory in Kyoto, Edo, and Tokyo. eds. Nicolas Fiévé and Paul Waley (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 327-331. 29 Paolo Raini, Twentieth Century Masters: Kenz ō Tange (New York: Hamlyn, 1969), 7. 30 The competition brief stated that the design should be “modern, Japanese, religious, and commemorative.” Tange won second prize with a modernist design. But the jury was not satisfied with the degree of religious expression in modern design and decided not to award the first prize to any competitor. Instead, the church was built in 1954 by Murano T ōgo, one of the competition jurors. For Hiroshima Peace Memorial Catholic Church project, see Ishimaru Noriaki, Sekai heiwa kinen seid ō [World Peace Memorial Catholic Church] (T ōky ō: Sagami shob ō, 1988); Tange and Fujimori, Tange Kenz ō, 130-137. 42 The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was made possible under a law called “Hiroshima Peace City Construction Law,” which granted Hiroshima a special status as a Mecca of world peace. On the occasion of the passage of the law in August 1949, Hamai Shinzo, mayor of Hiroshima, stated that “the people of Hiroshima decided definitely to stand for peace and wanted to demonstrate it to the world by molding their ruined community into a monument of permanent peace.” 31 The effort to commemorate Hiroshima as a symbol of world peace was generated by both the U.S. Occupation Force, which hoped to sever the Hiroshima’s disaster from the U.S. military’s responsibility for it, and Japanese bureaucrats, who hoped to deny any causal relationship between the bomb and Japan’s aggression in its Asian colonies. Therefore, the official peace narrative was designed by both the U.S. and Japan to stand as a new start to the postwar era based on historical amnesia regarding the traumatic experiences in Hiroshima as well as in other Asian countries. In May 1949, the architectural journal Kenchiku zasshi announced the competition brief for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park project. 32 The objective of this competition was “to respond to the worldwide movement for the establishment of a symbolic peace city undertaken by organizers from twenty-six countries.” 33 The competition brief indicated that a park complex should include various facilities including a peace hall, a conference hall, an exhibition space, a bell tower, offices, and 31 “Hiroshima keikaku, 1946-1953” [Hiroshima Project], Shinkenchiku, vol. 29 (January 1954):12-17. 32 Kenchiku zasshi (May 1949): 32. 33 Ibid. 43 others. It does not designate a specific style, except for the stipulation that the design should suit the surrounding environment of the area. A total of 132 entries were submitted and the judging was held in July. Tange’s design in collaboration with his associates Asada Takashi and Ōtani Sachio won first prize. Since Tange had just completed the land-use plan for the city in 1946, he could envision the memorial park as the core of the city as a whole. (Fig. 5) His design was centered on two axes. Considering the existing elements of the surrounding area, he adopted the 100-meter-wide road as the east-west axis and took the monumentalized ruins of the Atomic Bomb Dome as the apex of the north-south axis. On this north-south axis, four main facilities were aligned: the Atomic Bomb Dome, the arch for prayers, the plaza for peace gatherings, and the Peace Memorial Complex. Kishida Hideto, a competition juror and Tange’s mentor at Tokyo University, put a high value on the axial composition as well as the harmony with the comprehensive urban structure in Tange’s prize-winning design. 34 Responding to the dominant peace narrative, Tange described the intention of his project: Peace is not naturally given from God, but it should be searched for. This facility is meant to commemorate peace in an abstract way, but it is for actively producing peace. I hope that my building works as a factory for peace.35 34 Kishida Hideto, “Hiroshima heiwa kinen k ōen oyobi kinenkan ky ōgi sekkei t ōsen zuan shinsahy ō” [Comments on the Winning Design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Competition], Kenchiku zasshi (October-November 1949): 37-38; “Hiroshima heiwa kinen k ōen oyobi kinenkan ky ōki sekkei ni tsuite no zadankai” [A Roundtable Discussion on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Competition], K ōen ryokuchi, vol. 12. no. 3 (September 1950): 7. 35 Tange Kenz ō, “Hiroshima heiwa kinen k ōen oyobi kinenkan ky ōki sekkei t ōsen zuan” [The Winning Design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Competition], Kenchiku zasshi (October-November 1949): 42. 44 Tange considered this park as a symbolic center for commemorating peace rather than for mourning death. Though he later changed the arch with a bell to the cenotaph with an inscription of the names of atomic victims, his original design did not locate a cenotaph for mourning on the central north-south axis. Instead, a small chapel was placed off the main axis as a subsidiary structure. 36 Ōtani Sachio, Tange’s collaborator, claimed that, “the aim of this project was not to mourn the dead, which was a past-oriented and backward-looking act but to commemorate peace, which was a future-oriented and forward-looking act.” 37 Here, peace was associated with the future while death was associated with the past. The spirit in Ōtani’s statement encapsulated what Lisa Yoneyama has called “an obsession with the future” in narrating Hiroshima. This temporal ideology has underwritten the instrumental rationality of Japan’s postwar recovery. 38 The layout of the park complex reflected this future-oriented ideology in narrating the tragic history of Hiroshima. The arrangement of the main north-south axis from the Atomic Dome to the Peace Memorial Complex corresponded to chronological progress from destruction to recovery. Interestingly enough, however, the park complex was actually designed to lead visitors counter-chronologically from the future to the past. Visitors, who approached the park through the 100-meter wide Boulevard, were 36 Kokusai Kenchiku (October, 1950): 30-31. 37 Ōtani Sachio interviewed by Fujimori Terunobu, “Senji modanizumu kenchiku no kiseki, Tange Kenz ō no jidai 01” [The Trajectory of Postwar Modernism Architecture, The Era of Tange Kenzo 01], Shinkenchiku (January 1998): 86. 38 Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory, 75. 45 welcomed by the Peace Memorial Complex, consisting of the Exhibition Hall, the Main Hall, and the International Conference Center. Raised on pilotis, these two-story reinforced concrete structures provided a clear vista to the Atomic Dome. (Fig. 6) Visitors were led to the plaza, the arch, and the dome along the central north-south axis. The entire view of the park was framed by the splendid modern structures of the Peace Memorial Complex. These buildings, which stood in the ravaged site of the bomb’s epicenter, resonated with the collective will of Japan, a strong desire to put the past behind it and to move forward to the next stage of its history. Framed by these heroic modern structures, the atomic tragedy appeared as a relic of the past. Ironically, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, an iconic monument of the postwar new start, had its precedent in Tange’s wartime project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Monument (1942). For Inoue Sh ōichi, the majestic monumental space that Tange envisioned in his aborted wartime project appeared to have been realized in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, albeit on a much reduced scale. 39 Inoue has pointed out the nearly identical ground plan of Tange’s wartime and postwar designs. The commemorative zone located at the foot of Mt. Fuji in his wartime design was composed of four building blocks that would be laid out within an isosceles triangle. At the center of the triangle’s bottom side was the main hall which would serve as an entrance to the commemorative space, and two buildings were placed symmetrically on each side of this main hall. A central axis extended from the entrance structure in a straight line toward a commemorative monument. Similarly, his postwar project of the 39 Inoue, Ato, kitchu, japanesuku:dait ōa no posutomodan, 192-297. 46 Peace Memorial Park was based on symmetrical placement and an axial composition. The Exhibition Hall, which functioned as an entrance gate to the park complex, was located in the middle on the central axis, and two wings of building, the Main Hall to the west and the International Conference Center to the east, were placed symmetrically in alignment with the museum building. The location of the cenotaph corresponded to that of the commemorative monument in Tange’s plan. However, until recently, the similarity between Tange’s wartime and postwar designs was widely marginalized in the discussion of his Hiroshima project. On the contrary, without mentioning his wartime career, tourist pamphlets and other popular accounts have celebrated Tange’s role in designing the Hiroshima Memorial Park. Yoneyama regards this unproblematic transition from celebrating imperial Japan to honoring the peaceful postwar nation as a symptom of the collective amnesia of imperial history in postwar society. 40 That said, I would like to call attention to Tange’s own architectural strategies to distinguish the Hiroshima project from his wartime monument, which is not addressed in Yoneyama’s analysis. I would argue that a widespread failure to recognize compositional analogies between his wartime and postwar designs in no small part resulted from the significant stylistic difference between them. Tange’s wartime design of the Greater East Asia Co- prosperity Sphere monument drew primarily from traditional Japanese architecture. Commentators observed that the main hall of this commemorative complex directly referred to the sanctuary of the Ise Shrine. Its imposing gabled roof capped on the 40 Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory, 3. 47 reinforced concrete building and nine windows extending out from the roof recalled the massive gabled roof and roof billet (katsuogi) perched on the roof of Ise Shrine. On the contrary, in his postwar design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Tange avoided using any explicit references to Japanese traditional architecture, and strictly followed the international style. Its unornamented raw concrete structure with a flat roof reflected the trend of “Brutalism,” a postwar style favored both in Japan and in Europe for its economic efficiency and ‘honest’ expression of materials. Moreover, Tange’s design adopted pilotis, a raised floor, and louvers, a window with vertical or horizontal slats, two signature details of Le Corbusier’s international modernism. Tange had already expressed fascination with Le Corbusier in his provocative 1939 essay, in which he paid homage to Le Corbusier by comparing him with Michelangelo, one of the great artists and architects of history. 41 The lack of traditional elements in Hiroshima park presented a striking contrast to the enthusiasm for Japanese tradition in the wartime practices. Such a radical departure in style obscured the persistence of the basic schema of his wartime monument in his Hiroshima project. Tange was not alone in adopting the suppressed modernist style after the war. Postwar architectural circles witnessed the dominance of international modernism with its emphasis on the rational use of industrial materials, and functional planning, as well as its rejection of historical or regional references. Cherie Wendelken has convincingly argued that the popularity of international modernism went beyond issues of architectural style to 41 Tange Kenz ō, “Michelangelo sh ō: Le Corbusier ron eno josetsu toshite” [Song for Michelangelo as a Introduction to Le Corbusier Study], Gendai kenchiku (December 1939): 36-47. 48 larger cultural and intellectual atmosphere of the time. According to historian Victor Koschmann, the first decade of postwar society can be characterized by the emergence of the universal ideals of humanity and democracy, which was in antithesis to the nationalistic discourse of race and tradition in wartime Japan. 42 Following up on Koschmann’s analysis, Wendelken argues that the strict modern style in architecture corresponds to the popularity of conciliatory internationalism in Japanese culture and politics during the immediate postwar period. 43 In this regard, Tange’s adoption of international modernism can be read as a deliberate effort to break with the historicism of the imperial past and to reenter international architectural circles. Indeed, the modernist style of the Hiroshima project was responsible for it being well regarded in the international architectural community. A 1953 article in Architectural Forum stressed the elements of international modernism in this design by noting that “this development proves how strongly international architecture has appealed to young Japanese architects and how well they use it.” 44 The Hiroshima project brought Tange tremendous international fame and made it possible for him to set off on a new career as the official state architect of postwar Japan. 42 Victor Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 396-403. 43 Wendelken, “Aesthetics and Reconstruction: Japanese Architectural Culture in the 1950s,” 192-94. 44 Hamaguchi Ry ūichi, “Postwar Japan,” Architectural Forum (January 1953): 142. 49 Rising Past, the Emergence of Japanese Tradition As the project progressed, however, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park came to incorporate the growing interest in rehabilitating Japanese tradition. It is important to understand that Hiroshima project was constructed during a relatively long time period, from 1949 to 1954, due to the lack of financial resources. This was the moment when Japanese society witnessed dramatic social, political, and intellectual change. The Hiroshima project was initiated under the Allied occupation (1945-1952), when the representation of the atomic bomb tragedy was strictly censored and the narrative of Hiroshima was channeled into the commemoration of world peace. 45 However, after the occupation terminated in 1952, the dominant narrative of Hiroshima as a city of world peace began to be challenged by the reemergence of nationalist sentiments, which markedly contrasted with what Maruyama Masao calls a “community of contrition” of the immediate postwar era. 46 As I discussed earlier, Tange’s original proposal for the Hiroshima project did not make any explicit references to traditional Japanese architecture. However, over the period of its development from 1949 to 1954, traditional elements began to surface in the design and discourse surrounding this project. The collaboration with renowned sculptor 45 For censorship on representations of nuclear tragedy, see John W. Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory,” in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed. Michael J. Hogan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 124-134. 46 Maruyama Masao, “Kindai Nihon no chishikijin” [Intellectuals in Modern Japan] in K ōei no ichi kara gendai seiji no shis ō to k ōd ō tsuiho (T ōky ō: Miraisha, 1982), 115. 50 Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), who encouraged Japanese artists to reinterpret their tradition, played a significant role in calling for Japanese tradition in the design of the park project. Noguchi’s approach to Japanese tradition can be described as what art historian Ry ū Niimi terms “modern primitive” in that Noguchi tried to discover primitive Japan from a viewpoint that was “modernist” in the Euro-American sense. 47 According to Ryū, Noguchi helped Japanese artists to find a universal nature in their local, indigenous, and native cultures that was shared by a range of folk art and regional cultures throughout the world. 48 At the request of Tange and the mayor of Hiroshima, Noguchi participated in this project during his sojourn in Japan from 1950 to 1952. He designed the railings of two bridges which signaled the entrance of the park complex and, more importantly, he proposed a model of the cenotaph. Tange’s original proposal of 1949 did not include a cenotaph, but instead it incorporated a large arch (120 meters wide and 60 meters long). Undoubtedly, the arch-shape structure in the original scheme had distinct western origins. Competition juror Hideto Kishida critically pointed out that Tange merely copied Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (1948), images of which had been published in recent volumes of architectural journals. 49 (Fig. 7) For 47 Nimii Ry ū, “The Modern Primitive: Discourses of the Visual Arts in Japan in the 1950s,” in Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth, eds. Louise Allison Cort and Bert Winther-Tamaki (Washington D.C.: The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in collaboration with University of California Press, 2003), 93. 48 Ibid., 49 Kishida Hideto, “Hiroshima heiwa kinen k ōen oyobi kinenkan ky ōki sekkei t ōsen zuan shinsahy ō,” 38. 51 some reason, partly due to Kishida’s criticism, Tange abandoned the arch-shaped cenotaph and decided to commission the cenotaph project from Noguchi. Noguchi’s design consisted of two facing structures: a rectangular platform serving as a liminal space and a reduced-scale arch serving as a main sanctuary. (Fig. 8) The sanctuary structure rising from an underground chamber was reminiscent of the prehistoric Japanese tomb ceramic goods called haniwa. (Fig. 9) Visitors would have been able to descend into an underground space beneath the sanctuary through a stairway to face a granite box on which the names of nuclear victims were to be inscribed. However, Noguchi’s proposal was not accepted by the committee of the Construction of the Peace Memorial City because of his American citizenship. 50 Kishida was strongly opposed to Noguchi’s design of the cenotaph because he thought that it was inappropriate to entrust a citizen from the nation that dropped the atomic bomb with the design of a memorial project to commemorate the victims. 51 As a result, Tange hastily took over the cenotaph project again. He basically followed the sculptor’s haniwa-like proposal by reducing and remodeling his original arch-shaped tower. (Fig. 10) But he chose to remove the underground chamber and retain only the upper part of the arch. Expressing regret over the rescission of Noguchi’s proposal, Tange stated that “it was my pleasure to meet Noguchi in the construction process. We discussed Japanese 50 For the debate of Noguchi’s cenotaph, see Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 128-29; Bert Winther-Tamaki, “The Rejection of Isamu Noguchi's Hiroshima Cenotaph,” Art Journal (December 1994-February 1995): 23-27. 51 Kishida Hideto, “Hiroshima no hi” [Day of Hiroshima] in En (T ōky ō: Sagami Shob ō, 1958), 85. 52 tradition, and I was influenced by how he confronted tradition in his work.” 52 The transformation from the Western style arch to the haniwa-shape cenotaph corresponded to a changing emphasis from modernist design to Japanese tradition. For Noguchi and Tange, the concept of “tradition” did not refer to any specific period, material, or style. Rather, they shared an intentionally vague concept of tradition as a certain cultural energy while challenging the boundary between modernism and tradition. The link between Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Japanese tradition should be understood within the larger discourse of the Japan tradition debate (Nihon dent ō rons ō), a collective effort to redefine Japanese culture and tradition among a diverse range of intellectuals, artists, and architects during the mid-1950s. One of the earliest postwar public discussions of cultural identity in Japanese architecture was the 1953 symposium published in the architectural journal Kokusai kenchiku under the double titles “Kokusaisei, f ūdosei, kokuminsei” and “Nationalism vs. Internationalism.” 53 The participants included four influential architects of the time, Yoshida Isoya, Sakakura Junz ō, Maekawa Kunio and Tange, as well as three members of the magazine’s editorial staff, Ikuta Tsutomu, Hamaguchi Ry ūichi, and Tanabe Kazuto. As its title indicated, the theme of the symposium was the competition between the international and traditional styles of the early 1950s. Unlike other participants who were suspicious of the worldwide predominance of international modernist style, Maekawa expressed a strong aversion for 52 Tange Kenz ō, Genjitsu to sh ōzō: Tange Kenz ō, 1946-1958 [Reality and Creation, 1946-1958], (T ōky ō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1966), 91. 53 “Kokusaisei, f ūdosei, kokuminsei: Gendai kenchiku no z ōkei o megutte” [Internationalism, Climate, Nationalism: The Art in Contemporary Architecture], 3-15. 53 the tendency to rehabilitate Japanese tradition, which was inseparably associated with wartime imperialism. 54 Given his background as a “modernist crusader” even under the imperial regime, his championing of international modernism was understandable. 55 Contrary to Maekawa, Tange was skeptical of the homogeneous internationalism in architecture and tried to blur the strict boundary between internationalism and nationalism. He argued that truly international architecture should reflect the specific economic and technological conditions of Japan as well as the localizing factors, such as climate (f ūd ōsei) and tradition (dent ō). 56 This 1953 symposium heralded the resurging interest in Japanese tradition in postwar architectural circles as well as Tange’s own architectural career. When the Hiroshima project was completed in 1954, it became a center for the tradition debate in architecture. In January 1954, Shinkenchiku featured Tange’s essay on the Hiroshima project, in which he discussed traditional Japanese architecture as a source for his Hiroshima design. 57 Tange mentioned that the pilotis structure of the Peace Memorial Complex was reminiscent of the traditional wooden structure of the Sh ōs ōin and the Katsura Villa, both of which were raised on wooden pillars. (Fig. 11) Following Tange’s remark, critic Kawazoe Noboru, then editor-in-chief of Shinkenchiku, tried to 54 Ibid. 4-6. 55 Maekawa himself and his colleagues described Maekawa’s career from 1930 to 1945 using the terms as a “modernist crusader.” See Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture, 74-134. 56 “Kokusaisei, f ūdosei, kokuminsei: Gendai kenchiku no z ōkei o megutte,” 3-13. 57 “Hiroshima keikaku [Hiroshima Project],” Shinkenchiku (January, 1954): 12-13. 54 make a direct connection between Tange’s work and the major traditional buildings by stressing their formal analogy. However, as Reynolds has observed, Tange seemed to consider Kawazoe’s formal comparisons as too literal and specific. 58 Tange’s understanding of Japanese tradition was rather abstract and conceptual. In this same essay, Tange remarked: For my intention to construct something very powerful in concrete that stands among the ruins, the simple model of the ancient warehouse with a raised floor was not enough. Through a reiteration of model studies, the prototype came to emerge in our minds as a vague but powerful image. Gradually, I felt this possible image may be the Ise. After it came to my mind, I tried to resist it, modifying and even violating it. 59 Here Tange took pains to emphasize the link between the Hiroshima project and the Ise shrine, which he termed a “prototype of Japanese architecture.” 60 (Fig. 12) The introduction of Japanese tradition—particularly the motifs of the Ise—into the Hiroshima project was not simply a matter of choice in style. Kawazoe pointed out the dilemma that Tange faced in his adoption of traditional motifs. Kawazoe remarked: Tange was obliged to struggle with the Ise in the chaotic situation after the war. The Ise is the oldest and greatest building of the national heritage. But at the same time, it is a symbol of the imperial system. Tange had to resist it and still hoped to represent the will of the nation, which was associated with the Ise. 61 58 Reynolds, “Ise Shrine and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition,” 325. 59 “Hiroshima keikaku,” 12. 60 Tange published a book titled Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture. Tange Kenz ō, Kawazoe Noboru, and Watanabe Yoshio, Ise: Nohon kenchiku no genkei [Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture] (T ōky ō: Asahi shimbun, 1962). 61 Kawazoe Noboru, “Tange Kenzo no nihon teki seikaku” [Japan-ness in Tange Kenz ō], Shinkenchiku (January 1955): 62-69. 55 The dilemma of the Ise was not reserved just for Tange. As Kawazoe has acknowledged, the Japan tradition debate itself risked being regarded as a postwar version of the debates within the “Japan Romantic School.” 62 Therefore, the key question in the postwar rehabilitation of Japanese tradition was how to refashion the implications of tradition by dissociating it from its wartime imperialist overtones. The main players in the Japan tradition debate, including Tange and Kawazoe, felt that they had found a possible solution in the distant past which was not tainted with the imperial legacies of the recent past. They developed a prehistoric aesthetic model of J ōmon and Yayoi, a variation of the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy. On the one hand, J ōmon which was named after the prehistoric culture from 10,000B.C.E.until 300B.C.E. was equated with the plebeian culture, which was characterized by its vitality and dynamism. On the other hand, Yayoi, from the end of J ōmon until 300 C.E., represented the sophisticated culture of the aristocracy. 63 Such a prehistoric aesthetic model was first formulated in the classic essay written by Okamoto Tar ō (1911-1996) titled “On J ōmon Ceramics” (J ōmon doki ron), published in the February 1952 issue of the art journal Mizue. 64 In this text, Okamoto, the godfather of the Japanese avant-garde, admired the vital energy of J ōmon culture by rhapsodizing that “J ōmon earthenware exudes the smell of Japanese soil and groans 62 Kawazoe Noboru, Kenchiku 1 Kawazoe Noboru hy ōronsh ū tai 1 kan [Architecture 1, Collective Work of Kawazoe Noboru’s Critical Essays vol.1] (T ōky ō: Sangy ō N ōritsu Tanki Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1976), 10. 63 Reynolds, "Ise Shrine and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition,” 325. 64 Okamoto Tar ō, “J ōmon doki-ron” [On J ōmon Ceramics], Mizue (February 1952), 3-10; Okamoto’s essay was recently translated into English with an introduction by Jonathan M. Reynolds. Okamoto Tar ō, “On Jōmon Ceramics,” trans. Jonathan M. Reynolds, Art in Translation, vol. 1, Issue 1 (2009): 49-60. 56 under its weight.” 65 (Fig. 13) Okamoto challenged the widely circulated view that traced Japanese culture to the Yayoi people, who were associated with wet-rice agriculture and a refined ceramic tradition. In addition, he claimed to recuperate the plebian J ōmon tradition, which had long been repressed by the aristocratic Yayoi tradition, so as to revitalize the enervated Japanese culture. 66 Tange who was then familiar with Okamoto’s theory attempted to introduce the J ōmon-Yayoi model into architecture as a way of solving “the dilemma of the Ise.” Tange viewed the conflict between J ōmon and Yayoi principles as a “creative tension to create something entirely new.” 67 Nevertheless, Tange was also much more interested in J ōmon’s vital energy than in Yayoi’s refined aesthetic. From 1953, when Tange participated in the ceremonial reconstruction of the Ise, he was involved in an ambitious project to rewrite the Ise’s genealogy not in terms of the imperial system but in terms of J ōmon tradition. In collaboration with Kawazoe and photographer Watanabe Yoshio, Tange published the monumental book Ise: The Prototype of Japanese Architecture in both Japanese (1962) and English (1965). 68 As Cherie Wendleken has pointed out, Tange presented the Ise Shrine as “an element of folk culture, an irreducible remnant of pre-imperial tradition” by 65 Okamoto Tar ō, “Dent ō wa nanika?” [What is Tradition?] in Watashi no gendai bijutsu (T ōky ō: Shinch ō- sha, 1963), 123, quoted and translated in Alexandra Munroe ed., Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: Abrams, 1994), 382. 66 Ibid. 67 Tange Kenz ō et al, Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 34. 68 Kenz ō Tange, Kawazoe Noboru, and Watanabe Yoshio, Ise:Nohon kenchiku no genkei [Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture] (T ōky ō: Asahi shimbun, 1962); Tange Kenz ō, Noboru Kawazoe, and Yoshio Watanabe, Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture, trans. Eric Klestadt and John Bester (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1965). 57 emphasizing its prehistoric animism and rock worship. 69 The masonry tradition and rock veneration at the Ise was easily reminiscent of the vitality of the oppressed people or the J ōmon hunter-gatherer. In addition, this book featured images of J ōmon artifacts, such as animistic clay figurines and masks, in juxtaposition to Watanabe’s photographs of the shrine. In this way, the Ise Shrine was presented as a direct descendant of J ōmon, a pure tradition which was not contaminated by Japan’s troubled imperial past. 70 In the wake of the Occupation era, the championing of J ōmon can be read as an aspect of the emerging nationalism of the time. The conflict between J ōmon and Yayoi was conceived as a tension between the true Japanese tradition and false Japonica taste, which catered to Western desires. As Isozaki Arata has pointed out, while the beauty of Yayoi was what American modernism brought from Japan to New York as a trophy of the occupation, the beauty of J ōmon nurtured a native dynamism opposing the gaze of the occupier. 71 Here, the primal and bold nature of the J ōmon tradition was presented as an antithesis to the passive, commercialized, and overly-refined aesthetics of Japonica which was then popular in the U.S. art and architectural world. Moreover, the antagonistic J ōmon-Yayoi model echoed a class conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed. If Yayoi represented the articulated aesthetic of the ruling class, J ōmon symbolized the vital energy of common people. The emergence of a 69 Wendelken, “Aesthetics and Reconstruction: Japanese Architectural Culture in the 1950s,” 196. 70 For more on the Ise publication, see Yashushi Zenno, “Finding Mononoke at Ise Shrine: Kenzo Tange’s Search for Proto-Japanese Architecture,” Round 01 Jewels (Japan: Acetate 010, 2006), 104-117; Reynolds, “Ise Shrine and a Modernist Construction of Japanese Tradition,” 316-341. 71 Arata Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), 39. 58 people’s discourse can be traced back to the immediate postwar era. Soon after the war, the quest for the “people” appeared in all dimensions of the society as an effort to invoke new protagonists of history which would replace the state authorities of imperial Japan. 72 The architectural circles also witnessed the popularity of people’s discourse. By proclaiming the ideal of a “people’s architecture,” left-wing architects and critics actively addressed the labor movements and worker’s housing problems until anti-communist fever grew around 1950. 73 According to Jonathan Reynolds, the architects of the mid-1950s wrote of an alternative tradition centered on “the people” rather than on an authoritarian imperial regime. 74 By doing so, he continued, “the authority of tradition which had been deployed to preserve the status quo in the 1930s and 1940s could be co-opted after the war to challenge the discredited wartime political and cultural order and to advance new democratic social ideals.” 75 Unlike the political discourse on the “people” promoted by the left-wing politics during the late 1940s, however, its extension in the tradition debate of the 1950s equated the notion of the people with Japanese people as a whole in an abstract and generic sense while replacing class conflicts with aesthetic one. In other words, the radical politics of “people’s architecture” was replaced by the nationalistic 72 Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 85. 73 For the postwar discourse of “People’s Architecture,” see Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture, 135-140; Kestenbaum, “Modernism and Tradition in Japanese Architectural Ideology, 1913-1955,” 264-272. 74 Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture, 215. 75 Ibid. 59 discourse of minzoku which had risen to the surface of consciousness in scholarly and political domains since the early 1950s. According to literature critic Yoshimi Takeuchi, new Volk consciousness of “Japanese people” or minzoku emerging in the 1950s was noteworthy because the term minzoku had been taboo since August 1945 in scholarly circles, in which “the very existence of the Volk was thought inevitably to be evil.” 76 Like many of his contemporary architects, Tange had briefly associated with the left-wing architectural organization called New Architects’ Union of Japan (Shin nihon kenchikuika sh ūdan), 77 but soon was drawn to the issues of Japanese tradition which had long attracted him since the pre-1945 era. In his Hiroshima design, people’s discourse inspired Tange to provide the people with an agora, a symbolic site of the people’s democracy originating from Greece. But his definition of “people” was rather naïve. According to him, a crowd of fifteen thousand gathered at a peace rally held in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park designated the very people whom his architecture needed to address. 78 For Tange, “people” was less a specified category of working class people than the Japanese people as a whole who shared the same history and tradition as exemplified by the J ōmon-Ise tradition. In this regard, it was fair for critic Hamaguchi Ryūichi to observe that “a crowd gathered in a gigantic plaza in this postwar design 76 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Kindai shugi to minzoku no mondai” [Issues in Modernism and People] (September 1951), in Takeuchi Yoshimi zensh ū 7, Edited by Takeuchi Yoshimi, Iikura Sh ōhei, and Hashikawa Buns ō (T ōky ō: Chikuma Shob ō, 1981), 28-29. 77 Ishida Yorifusa, “Planning in the Reconstruction Period,” in Rebuilding Urban Japan After 1945, eds. Carola Hein and Jeffry M. Diefendorf (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 19. 78 Tange, Genjitsu to s ōzō: Tange Kenz ō, 1946-1958 [Reality and Creation: Tange Kenzo, 1946-1958], 34. 60 recalled the imperial subjects who prayed for the completion of the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere.” 79 From Tradition to the Future From the late 1950s, Tange, who had been a voluble spokesman during the tradition debate, played a crucial role in proposing future cities; he actively participated in the discussions and workshops on this topic organized by architectural journals as well as government institutions. Interestingly enough, his futuristic designs lacked traditional elements that he had developed during the tradition debate of the earlier years. One possible reason for such a transition from tradition to future cities can be found in the popularity of the futuristic design of the international architectural circles of the time. Tange’s attendance at the 1959 CIAM (Congrès International d' Architecture Moderne) held in Otterlo provided him with a chance to determine the direction of his work. The 1959 Otterlo CIAM witnessed the competition between two camps: Team X group’s internationalism based on high-technology futurism and Ernsto Rogers’ regionalism based on local history and identity. 80 At the general meeting of the conference, Tange sided with Team X’s techno-futurism, while distancing himself from the regionalism promoted by Italian architects. He expressed great sympathy with Team 79 “Sōritsu no sh ūnen kinen zadankai: dezain (1936-1955)” [The Roundtable Discussion Celebrating the Foundation: Design (1936-1955)]: 17. 80 For 1959 CIAM conference, see Oscar Newman, CIAM’59 in Otterlo (Germany: Karl Krämer Verlag Stuttgart, 1961). 61 X’s endorsement of flexibility, mobility, and openness, which marked a critical departure from the rigid functionalism of the prewar CIAM and the Athens Charter (1933) predicated on the idea of the separation of functional zones (work, dwelling, recreation, and circulation). In Oterrlo, Tange had a chance to present his recent designs for the Tokyo City Hall (1957) and the Kagawa Prefectural Office (1955-58) along with Kikutake Kiyonori’s futuristic schemes. (Fig. 14) Tange’s designs for these two public buildings, both of which featured super-block raised on pilotis, were discussed in terms of post-and-lintel system of traditional wooden structures within Japan’s tradition debate. 81 At the discussion session following his presentation, Tange defended his works against Rogers’ observation that his designs harbored traditional Japanese elements by saying “I’d like to say a little to answer that. I cannot accept the concept of total regionalism.” 82 Underlying Tange’s remark was a strong desire to present himself not as a regional architect who relied on the visual language of the past but as a contemporary architect who was armed with the most current technology. Tange’s positioning at the CIAM meeting resonates with what art critic Hary ū Ichir ō calls “international contemporaneity.” 83 By “international contemporaneity,” Hary ū refers to the main goal of Japanese art and architecture, which was to fill the gap between international and local standards so that Japanese art could be properly received by the global community. 81 Ibid., 170-181. 82 Ibid., 182. 83 Hary ū Ichiro, Seng ō bijutsu seishu-shi [The Rise and Fall of Postwar Japanese Art] (T ōky ō: T ōky ō Soseki, 1979), 73-74. 62 In the mid-1950s, the renewed interest in tradition taking place in Japan was conveyed to the West and ignited the “Japan Craze.” 84 In 1955, Shinkenchiku decided to launch a monthly journal Japan Architect in English to respond to this “Japan Craze” exclusively featuring the traditional Japanese architecture. In addition, many building projects dealing with Japanese tradition reached international audiences as seen in Horiguchi Sutemi’s sukiya style design of the Japan Pavilion at the 1954 Centennial Exposition in São Paolo as well as Yoshimura Junz ō’s traditional Japanese garden installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1954. Considering the exotic interest in traditional Japanese architecture of the time, it was understandable that Tange was afraid of being marginalized as a regional architect who only appealed to cultural exoticism. Tange’s reluctance to rely on Japan’s past led him to embrace the universal future. Tange concluded his CIAM presentation by suggesting the idea of the future that would refute the existing spatial order: Tradition and regional characters should be reexamined with critical eyes and minds. I shall repeat again that all I have said above begins with the positive denial of the attempt to make order out of existing cities. Vitalism is always destructive to existing reality, but is very constructive in the building of our future. 85 It is worth noting that Tange brought with him the futuristic designs by Kikutake to the CIAM presentation. For Tange, Kikutake’s Sky House (1958) and Ocean City (1959), 84 Wendelken, “Aesthetics and Reconstruction: Japanese Architectural Culture in the 1950s,” 200. 85 Tange Kenz ō, “Aestheticism and Vitality,” Japan Architect (1960 December): 10. 63 which, among Japanese designs, were the most closely keyed to the high-tech spirit of Team X, signaled a new direction for postwar Japanese architecture. (Fig. 15 and 16) Soon after the CIAM meeting, Tange joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting professor in 1959 where he developed the idea of a floating city in the Boston Bay with MIT graduate students. After returning to Japan, he engaged in the 1960 World Design Conference held in Tokyo where the young Metabolists architects including Kikutake proposed various schemes of high-tech future cities. The following year, he published a bold conception of a radically transformed Tokyo which would be built on the sea of Tokyo Bay called “A Plan for Tokyo-1960.” (Fig 17) “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was greatly appreciated within the international architectural circles, wherein utopian future schemes were beginning to emerge as a response to technological innovation and the rapid transformation of postwar society. Critic Reyner Banham placed Tange’s Tokyo Bay project into the international architectural theory in his 1976 book Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past. 86 Banham acclaimed the mature quality of Tange’s Tokyo Bay project and characterized it as an Asian version of the Megastructure movement, one of the most influential streams in the 1960s international urbanism. 87 However, the emphasis on international quality of “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” had the danger of marginalizing the specific temporal and spatial context of the 1960s Japanese society, wherein the ruling elites and bureaucrats were given free reign to 86 Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past, 45-57. 87 Ibid., 51-57. 64 pursue a technocratic economic planning. The essence of “A Plan for Tokyo-1960,” though overshadowed by its fantastic graphic quality and megalomaniacal scale, lies in the technocratic agenda to implement a comprehensive system through the most updated technology. The following section investigates “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” as a technocratic urban vision of Japan’s future. Special emphasis is given on the idea of the “future” as a register of both amnesiac and mnemonic desires of the troubled memories of the past, which constituted a key aspect of the formulation of the official narrative. A Plan for Tokyo-1960, Technocrat’s Utopia “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was presented by the laboratory of Tokyo University which included Kamiya Koji, Isozaki Arata, Watanabe Sadao, Kurokawa Kish ō, K ō Heiki, and Tange himself. It was a voluntary research project of the university and never was commissioned by either the government or any corporations. Nevertheless, as architectural historian Zhongjie Lin has pointed out, it was clearly intended to exercise its influence over the actual policies of urban planning. 88 Tange prominently communicated his plan in the public realm beyond the limit of the architectural community. Before its official presentation in the pages of Shinkenchiku in March 1961, the main concept of Tange’s Tokyo Bay plan was previewed in Shūkan Asahi, one of the most-circulated weekly journals in Japan in October 1960. 89 Then, at the end of 1960 this plan was 88 Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement, 146. 89 Tange Kenz ō, “T ōky ō keikaku-1960, sono k ōz ō kaikaku no teian” [Tokyo Plan-1960, The Proposal of its 65 broadcast to general television viewers through the NHK’s special New Year TV program. Tange gave a detailed explanation of his design against the backdrop of the “Income Doubling Plan,” which was announced by the Ikeda administration in 1960. 90 Tange’s strategy to bring his plan directly into the public realm was quite successful. His proposal appealed to Japanese society, which was facing many challenges from a myriad of urgent problems resulting from overpopulation within metropolitan regions. Tange’s plan was widely discussed in various sectors, including the government, business, and academia. In May 1961, Shinkenchiku organized a public symposium, where more than three hundred people, mostly architects and government officials, discussed the feasibility and the potential of the Tokyo Bay project. 91 Moreover, Tange’s laboratory was frequently asked to give lectures about the plan to various government and non-government organizations, such as the Ministry of Construction, the National Capital Region Development Committee, the Japan Housing Corporation, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 92 In particular, the Japanese Minister of Transportation was urged by representatives of the Diet to read Tange’s report. 93 Structural Plan], Shinkenchiku (March 1961): 79-120; Tange Kenz ō, “Umi no ue ni gohyakuman” [500 million on the Sea], Sh ūkan Asahi (October 1960): 16. 90 David Stewart, The Making of Modern Japanese Architecture (Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1987), 181. 91 “T ōky ō keikak ū 1960: shimpojium h ōkoku” [Tokyo Plan 1960: Symposium Report], Shinkenchiku vol. 36, no.7 (July 1961): 91-94. 92 “Editorial,” Shinkenchiku (July 1961): 97. 93 Tange and Fujimori, Tange Kenz ō, 351. 66 “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” found its direct precedent in Kano Hisaaki’s “Neo- Tokyo Plan” (1958-59), a systematic bureaucratic approach to urban planning at the time. 94 (Fig. 18) Kano was a typical bureaucrat, a well-connected expert in land acquisition as well as former president of the Japan Housing Corporation, and he later became a LDP-supported governor of Chiba Prefecture in 1962. Commissioned by the state-owned enterprise Electric Power Central Research Institute, Kano’s team proposed the ambitious plan for the development of Tokyo Bay. His “Neo-Tokyo Plan” proposed to fill the east side of Tokyo Bay by leveling the mountains located in Chiba using the atomic bomb. The newly reclaimed land offered an empty canvas on which an almighty architect-technocrat could implement the master plan for the city. Kano’s team proposed a new transport hub to replace Tokyo station and an express highway loop and a railroad which would connect the new city with the old one. Tange’s ambitious project for Tokyo Bay was greatly indebted to the “Neo-Tokyo Plan” in its concept of adopting the bay area as a new site of urban planning as well as its emphasis on the transportation network. 95 “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” consisted of two parts: an analysis of the current urban condition and a master plan for solving existing urban problems. In the first part of the report, Tange used numerous statistics, graphs, and maps to characterize Tokyo as a “pivotal city” with a population over 10 million. 96 (Fig. 19) For him, the essence of a 94 For Neo-Tokyo Plan, see Richard J. Samuels, The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: Localities Incorporated (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), 168-189; Andres Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 188-191. 95 Tange discussed the idea of the reclamation of Tokyo Bay with Kano at the 1958 Ch ūōk ōron symposium. See Ch ūōk ōron (March 1958): 234-243. 96 Tange Kenz ō, A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization (T ōky ō: Shinkenchikusha, 67 “pivotal city” was determined not by the production in primary and secondary industries, but by the city’s capacity for organizing the activities of tertiary industries. 97 He thought that the overpopulation of pivotal cities was a natural by-product and a necessary result of the postindustrial shift that had been triggered by economic growth and technological innovation. Yet according to his diagnosis, Tokyo was now “in a state of confusion and paralysis,” because the outmoded urban structure failed to provide an adequate space for the ever-increasing population and movement. 98 Tange insisted on overcoming these urban problems not by constructing satellite cities or developing suburbia, but rather by reorganizing Tokyo from within by implementing a new spatial system. 99 In this regard, his plan was often read as a polemical counterthrust to the National Capital Regional Development Plan of 1958, which had proposed the dispersion of population and city functions from the city center to satellite cities and sub-centers. 100 The second half of Tange’s report presented a technocratic solution to Tokyo’s chaotic expansion by imposing a new spatial system that would accommodate the endless increase of population and the continuous movement which marked a “pivotal city.” Tange hoped to transform the nature of urban structures by replacing the traditional radial model with a linear one. According to him, a conventional urban pattern, which developed concentrically around the nucleus of a civic center, could no longer withstand 1961), 5. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 3. 99 Ibid., 12. 100 Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement, 155. 68 the increasing population and movement because its radial structure only increased the pressure on the center and aggravated the commute from the center to the suburbs. 101 Relying on the biological model of evolution, he argued that Tokyo should evolve from a closed, amoeba-like, radial structure to an open, vertebrate-like, linear structure. (Fig. 20) The biological analogy was applied not only to emphasize the inevitable transition from a radial structure to a linear structure, but also to present the linear model as the most progressive and novel concept in the history of the planning. For Tange, the linear city embodied the very essence of progress. 102 He considered the linear city as a feasible model with the potential to control urban sprawl and direct the decentralization of city in an orderly way. A linear city model was not Tange’s original concept. As early as 1882 Spanish planner Arturo Soria y Mata proposed the idea of a linear city called Ciudad Lineal. Since then, the linear city has been persistently proposed by various architects and urban planners throughout the twentieth century. Yatsuka Hajime has argued that Tange’s urban axis rooted in the linear schemes of Manchurian cities of the 1930s. 103 Inspired by the linear city ideas of the Russian avant-gardes, the new colonial cities of Manchuria took a linear transportation network which was regarded as the best model to deal with the expanding frontier of the empire. Through architectural journals, Tange was familiar with the linear city schemes adopted in the colonial urban planning. 101 Tange, A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization, 7. 102 Ibid. 103 Yatsuka, Shis ō toshite no nihon kindai kenchiku [Japanese Modern Architecture as an Idea], 454; Yatsuka, “The Alter Ego and Id ‘Machines’ of Modernist Architecture,”123-125. 69 However, the linear axis of “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was less a sign of a territorial expansion of imperial Japan than an architectural symbol of economic and urban growth of postwar Japan. The most recent and direct source of the linear idea in Tokyo Bay project can be found in Dynapolis, the city with a parabolic unidirectional growth, which had been proposed by Greek planner and architect Constatinos A. Doxiadis since the early 1950s. 104 Doxiadis developed a new urban frame to cope with the endless expansion of population and movement that the future would bring. Tange remained in close communication with Doxiadis’ Ekistics, a multi-disciplinary consulting firm specializing in land development planning, design, and project management, while publishing his Tokyo Bay plan in Ekistics’ monthly journal in 1961 and then attending its annual Delos symposium in 1967. 105 Given their shared interests in the growing cites of the future, it was very likely that Tange’s linear model was constructed in dialogue with Doxiadis’ approach to a new urban frame. The linear urban axis of the Tokyo Bay project was conflated with a cycle transportation system. (Fig. 21) At the 1959 CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne), Tange was exposed to the Team X’s theory that the city functioned as a flexible and adaptable organization. He also obtained a copy of the manuscript titled “L’Architecture Mobile” written by French architect Yona Friedman. Inspired by the manifesto for “L’Architecture Mobile,” Tange claimed that the future Tokyo should be a 104 Doxiadis refused to use the term linear city in describing his concept of Dynapolis, but the idea of a dynamically growing city in a linear direction falls into the category of a linear city. As for the Dynapolis, see Constantinos A. Doxiadis, Architecture in Transition (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1963), 99-106. 105 Tange Kenz ō, “A Plan for Tokyo, 1960,” Ekistics 12 (July 1961): 9-19. 70 moving city, and he made an analogy between the linear axis of Tokyo Bay and a giant conveyer belt in a manufacturing factory that was incessantly moving. 106 Tange superimposed the civic axis with the cycle-transportation system via a series of overlapping links, which operated based on the principle of leaving minimal options for either direction or speed. Since additional links could be subsequently added unit by unit according to need, the civic axis could be expanded without limits. This transportation system was three dimensionally structured based on a spatial order (street- interchange-parking space-building) and a speed hierarchy (high speed-low speed-human speed-immobility). The upper level was to be used for a high-speed movement and the lower level for slower movement or stationary needs, such as parking spaces and buildings. A unification of transportation routes and building entrances would make it possible for individual vehicles to move freely from door to door. Therefore, this plan introduced an innovative new spatial system which would allow for spontaneous and free movement in the “age of automobile.” Anthropologist and political scientist James Scott provides a useful framework to analyze the technocratic agenda of “A Plan for Tokyo-1960.” The technocratic urban plan was founded on what Scott has labeled the “high modernist ideology,” a strong version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing expectation for the satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature, and above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific 106 Tange, A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization, 12. 71 understanding of natural law. 107 According to Scott, high modernism is not a scientific practice but a faith that borrows the legitimacy of science and technology. 108 Therefore, it is unscientifically optimistic about the possibilities for the comprehensive planning of human settlement and production. Its temporal emphasis is almost exclusively on the future, and thus a heroic image of utopian future is celebrated. 109 Politically, high modernism tends to answer the interests of government officials and big companies which had the power to realize the plan, although it pretends to negate politics which only frustrates the social solutions devised by scientific analysis. 110 “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” represented the above-mentioned characteristics of a high modernism inherent in state-initiated social engineering. “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was a typical top-down bureaucratic plan in that it lacked the voices of Tokyo’s residents despite the fact that it was intended as the blueprint for a city of 10,000,000. It is suggestive that one commentator described this plan as “a city without people” and urged the designer to include the public in formulating this plan. 111 This high modernist urban plan lacked the spontaneity and liveliness of the neighborhood because it approached the city from far above and at a distance. 112 107 James C. Scott, Seeing like a State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 4. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 95. 110 Ibid., 94. 111 Y uichiro Kojiro, “Movement in the Principal Structure,” Japan Architect (August 1961): 41. 112 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 104. 72 Tange’s technocratic confidence in mastering and taking advantage of advanced technology formed the foundation of this plan. However, he was not a blind optimist about modern technology in that he acknowledged the possible conflict between superhuman-scale structure and human-scale activities. 113 He tried to solve this conflict between the control of technology and the freedom of individuals by implementing a hierarchical system that would separate the space according to speed and scale. Paradoxically, it was only through a comprehensive control system enabled by the most updated technology that more freedom and individuality could be encouraged. The goal of “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was to restructure the space in order to mobilize social resources and productive power, and thus to promote economic growth. From the formative years of his architectural career, Tange wrote about the role of architecture and urban planning in advancing national economy. His 1948 essay entitled “Several Problems on Construction” reveals his assumption that the infrastructure of a city or a nation was a founding element of the productive forces. 114 Declaring that the achievement of economic stability was the most urgent task of Japanese society, Tange advocated a planned economy by means of a rational land-use plan. 115 Tange cited the American New Deal program as an ideal model of a state-initiated planned economy within a capitalist society. 116 113 Ibid., 26. 114 Tange Kenz ō, “Kensetsu o meguru shomondai” [Several Problems on Construction], Kenchiku zasshi (January 1948): 2-10. 115 Ibid., 4. 116 Ibid. 73 In fact, Tange engaged in the Economic Stabilization Board (Keizai antei honbu), a successor to the wartime mobilization agent, Cabinet Planning Board (Kikakuin) in the 1950s. He collected data and wrote reports on urban planning for this government organization and one of the reports was later included in his doctoral thesis submitted in 1959. 117 Tange’s doctoral thesis formed a precursor to his research for the Tokyo Bay project in that it analyzed metropolitan issues in terms of economic system, demography, and communication and transportation. Tange’s technocratic vision echoed Le Corbusier’s famous dictum, “Architecture or Revolution,” an effort to ameliorate the problems of society through comprehensive planning rather than a radical revolution. 118 As architectural historian Felicity D. Scott has pointed out, the rhetorical dilemma “Architecture or Revolution” led to the denial of revolution, and therefore, she argues, it would become a foundational myth of the modern movement under capitalism. 119 Although Tange’s plan presented itself as objective scientific planning which lacked political agendas, it responded to the interests of the ruling conservatives by advocating their growth-first policies. The Tokyo Bay project displaced the political radicalism flourishing in the immediate postwar era with the reformist objective of a planned economy. It was not a coincidence that Tange presented 117 Tange Kenz ō, “Geidai daitoshi no chiiki k ōz ō to kenchiku keitai” [The Regional Structure and Architectural Form of Contemporary Large Cities], (PhD. diss. University of Tokyo, 1959). 118 This famous dictum was originally published in his 1923 book entitled Vers une Architecture. For English translation, Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: Architectural Press, 1946), 269. 119 Felicity D. Scott, Architecture or Techno-utopia: Politics After Modernism (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2007), 18. 74 this plan at the NHK’s TV program against the backdrop of the “Income Double Planning” of the Ikeda ministration, an economic policy which was devised to subdue the political turmoil of the anti US-Japan Security Treaty movement of 1960. This project rested on the firm belief that economic growth and investment in construction would continue indefinitely into the future. The adoption of the linear city model evinced this premise of the endless growth of capital and population in a metropolitan area, an optimistic hope which was widely shared by the ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), bureaucrats and the big business. This unassailable consensus for postwar reconstruction and rapid economic growth led political scientist Richard Samuels to label the period from 1945 to the mid-1960s in Japan as a “conservative paradise.” 120 The myth of an economic miracle was prescribed as a panacea in postwar Japanese society, and the ruling conservatives made economic growth the top priority at the cost of social justice, environmental pollution, and unequal regional development. 121 In this era of rapid economic growth, Japan’s official land-use policy was characterized by an efficient industrial concentration within Tokyo’s metropolitan area and along the Pacific belt region. As one economic geographer has pointed out, while the government often loudly promoted “dispersal,” as seen in the National Capital Regional Development Plan of 1958, it quietly achieved “concentration.” 122 By attributing the 120 Samuels, The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: Localities Incorporated, 168. 121 Laura E. Hein “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 99-122. 122 Jeffrey E. Hanes, “From Megalopolis to Megaroporisu,” Journal of Urban History, vol.19, no. 2 (February 1993): 64. 75 hyper-density of cities which was an overtly political choice to a natural process of evolution, Tange helped to justify the government’s urban policy of “metropolitan concentration.” Furthermore, his proposal of the T ōkaid ō Megalopolis, in which he expanded the scope of the Tokyo Bay plan throughout the entire archipelago by stretching the urban axis along the T ōkaid ō Pacific belt, deployed the government’s plan of T ōkaid ō development. 123 (Fig. 22) Borrowing the concept of the “Megalopolis,” first coined by French geographer Jean Gottmann, Tange devoted much of the 1960s to envisioning the T ōkaid ō Megalopolis, a chain of metropolitan areas that was organically connected by an advanced transportation system as well as information technology. 124 At the request of the government, Tange worked at an official think-tank from 1967 to 1970, and published his vision of the T ōkaid ō Metropolis as a guiding policy for the nation’s future development. 125 In this report, Tange articulated the tendency toward the “informatization” (j ōhōka) of society, such that the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information would be a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. 126 123 Tange Kenz ō, Nihon rett ō no sh ōraiz ō : 21-seiki e no kensetsu [The Future Vision of Japanese Archipelago] (Tōky ō : Kodansha, 1966). 124 Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northwestern Seaboard of the United States (New York: Twenty Century Fund, 1961). 125 21 seiki no nihon genky ūkai, 21 seiki no nihon: sono kokudo to kokumin seikatsu no miraiz ō [Japan in the 21st Century: The Future Vision of its Land and People’s Life] (T ōky ō: Shinkenchikusha, 1972). 126 Ibid., 62-107. 76 The Absence of the Past “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” represented the heroic image of tomorrow’s city built on the waters of Tokyo Bay. Although the new marine city extended out from the existing Tokyo, there was little reference to the existing urban fabric and familiar architectural forms of the old city. Such neglect of the existing city’s past had been a key characteristic of modernist technocratic planning, in which the temporal emphasis is almost exclusively on the future. In high modernism, as James Scott has pointed out, the past is always an impediment, a history that must be transcended: the present is the platform for launching plans for a better future. 127 However, Tange’s negation of the past was not only a technocrat’s aspiration of a new urban system, but also a specific attempt to enact a national reckoning with the traumatic experience of the recent past. As Wendelken has pointed out, the rejection of any visual references to the past was not simply a consequence of international modernism, but also a response to wartime destruction and the postwar discrediting of prewar values. 128 The absence of familiar architectural forms from the past and current cities in this utopian project signaled a hope for a new start in postwar Japan. The Tokyo Bay project thus can be seen as an extension of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in terms of the designs’ shared effort to break with the past. The radical departure from the past was made possible by the fact that Tange incorporated the waters of Tokyo Bay as the “tabula rasa” on which a totally new 127 Scott, Seeing like a State, 95. 128 Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” 289. 77 structure could be built from scratch, supplanting its predecessor. The techno-utopia envisioned in the Tokyo Bay project represented the desired future of postwar Japan. In this sense, “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” served as an antidote to the apocalyptic vision of ruins and destruction that had haunted postwar Japan. In his plan for Tokyo Bay, Tange defined construction as the diametrical opposite of destructive war: We believe that the civilization and economy of the world are about to undergo a tremendous development. At the same time, we cannot help fearing that surpluses created in this expansion will be poured into the destructive consumption known as war. The wisdom of mankind must put the expansion in production to peaceful constructive uses. Construction is the hope of twentieth-century man and, at the same time, the responsibility to the men of the twenty-first century. 129 This plan emphasized the construction of the future city with the help of advanced technology. Tange’s optimistic faith in technology was all the more remarkable since he had personally witnessed the destructive power of modern technology in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. As historian John Dower has pointed out, despite the disaster of nuclear blast, the Japanese did not place a negative connotation on science and technology, but they regarded technology as the most immediately accessible means by which the country could be rebuilt. 130 According to Dower, the atomic bomb, in particular, had dual meanings in the postwar Japanese society: a symbol of both nuclear terror and the promise of scientific and technological innovation. 131 Such a distinction between the 129 Tange, A Plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization, 30. 130 Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory,” 121. 131 Ibid., 120-124. 78 tragic past and an optimistic future laid the foundation for the postwar sense of atomic power. Because of its reliance on modern technology, the reevaluation of nuclear power was a crucial issue to architectural circles. In August 1955, for the 10th anniversary of the end of the war, Shinkenchiku featured an article titled “The Age of Atomic Bomb and Architecture,” a dialogue between a nuclear physicist Taketani Mitsuo and architect Asada Takashi who collaborated on Hiroshima’s reconstruction with Tange. 132 During the war, Taketani engaged in the development of an atomic bomb, but he became an enthusiastic anti-nuclear bomb critic in postwar years. Taketani distinguished the “atomic bomb age” from the “atomic energy age,” and urged architects to contribute to building a civilization by overcoming the former and progressing with the latter. 133 In his opening speech delivered at the 1960 World Design Conference, Tange stated his position on the issue of atomic energy: As we leave the earlier half of the twentieth century and proceed into the second half, I have the feeling that we are experiencing vital changes in cultural forms in social structure, and in human environment. There is no way to predict the future, but I believe we can say this much: the current great change is resulting from the development of atomic energy and electronics, and the direction of the change is not toward unregulated expansion of energy but toward the controlling and planning of its development. Mankind is engaged in a second attempt to gain superiority over scientific technique. The release of atomic energy had led us to discover such things as automatic brains to control its great power and ultimately it has released a new consciousness of humanity. This applies not only to countries where atomic energy has been harnessed, but to those where it has not. 132 Asada Takashi and Taketani Mitsuo, “Genbaku jidai to kenchiku” [The Age of Atomic Bomb and Architecture], Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 77-80. 133 Ibid. 79 This new consciousness may have come in part from fear of the atomic bomb, but in a larger sense it results from the freeing of new energy. 134 It was notable that Tange singled out atomic energy as the core of modern technology. To some extent, he revealed the anxiety over the destructive force of modern technology, as represented by nuclear weapon, but such anxiety was soon overwhelmed by the technocratic confidence in mastering and taking advantage of the technology. Based on the dichotomy of atomic power as a destructive weapon and as a source for creative energy, he argued that nuclear energy would benefit humanity and could even spawn a new collective consciousness. Tange’s notion of nuclear energy was indebted to the nuclear optimism that was propagated by both the U.S. and Japanese governments in order to embrace the new era of atomic energy of the Cold War era by overcoming the traumatic experiences of mass casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 135 Given that the future Tokyo was built on technological optimism and repressed the troubled memories of war and ruins, “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” enacted a form of historical amnesia. In this sense, it represented the culmination of the future-oriented ideology of postwar Japan begun in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park project. However, unlike the Hiroshima project, the Tokyo plan epitomized the new sense of self- confidence that was accompanied by the process of miraculous economic growth and 134 Tange Kenz ō, “Technology and Humanity,” Japan Architect (October 1960): 11. 135 For the formation and effect of nuclear optimism, see Stephen L. Del Sesto “Wasn’t the Future of Nuclear Energy Wonderful?” in Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future, ed. Joseph J. Corn (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986), 58-76. 80 technological development, which facilitated the reassessments of the nation’s history and culture. The Presence of the Past “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was produced at the peak of Japan’s miraculous economic growth after more than a decade had passed since the end of the war. The decade of the 1960s was a pivotal period when memories of the war lost their reference points amid the bright image of progress and prosperity. But conversely, it was also a time when nationalistic and nostalgic narratives of the nation’s past increasingly appeared into public view. 136 The changing narrative of Japan’s history was dramatically captured in the case of Takayama Eika, an influential urban planner and Tange’s senior fellow at Tokyo University. In the 1956 symposium organized by Kenchiku zasshi, Takayama reflected self-critically on his wartime activities in the colonial urban planning: Since I had collaborated with imperial Japan in Manchuria, I should have quit the field of architecture after the war. However, the urgency of continuing issues of urban reconstruction and housing problems in the immediate postwar era brought me back to the architectural projects. 137 The sense of contrition and remorse revealed by this above-mentioned statement, however, disappeared in Takayama’s bold presentation of the metropolis in the mid-1960s. 136 Victor Koschmann, “Intellectuals and Politics,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 396-414. 137 “Sōritsu no sh ūnen kinen zadankai: dezain (1936-1955)” 15. 81 He suggested a grandiose vision of a megalopolis which included a connection to neighboring Asian countries via a sub-oceanic railway, in the hope of creating an international economic dynamo. 138 Takayama’s proposal, which seemed to extend Tange’s plan for T ōkaid ō Megalopolis to its logical limit, can be read as a response to Japan’s rapid urbanization combined with economic growth. The issue at stake in Takayama’s expansionist vision is its reference to the pan-Asian community that Japan hoped for during the war. During the 1930s, the South-Machuria Railway Company (SMR) functioned as a main agent of the development and exploitation of Manchuria and led the construction boom by installing approximately 5,300 kilometers of new track to their network. Along with the railway system, the newly built colonial cities in the Asian continent were widely propagated as a symbol of the splendid modernization of Japanese empire. The vast territory of colony afforded Japanese architects and urban planners a supposedly empty terrain, and this relative freedom boosted their plans to a larger scale. 139 One Manchuria-based architect said that, “[Manchuria] is very different from Japan and foreign countries in its city planning. It is a virtual “tabula rasa” upon which great cities can be made as though by magic.” 140 Moreover, Manchurian cities of the 1930s were considered as laboratories for the latest planning measures and urban facilities in that 138 Takayama Eika, “Daitoshi kin ōteki tenkai to seido no awasemetekisei” [Rule regarding Inductive Development of Metropolis and System], in Nihon no toshi seisaku, eds., Mida Kazuo and Takada K ōji (T ōky ō: G ōd ō Shuppansha, 1968), 287-290. 139 Hein, “Visionary Plans and Planners: Japanese Traditions and Western Influences,” 316. 140 Mansh ū kenchiku zasshi (November 1939): 558, cited in Kestenbaum, “Modernism and Tradition in Japanese Architectural Ideology: 1913-1955,” 140. 82 they displayed ultra-modern infrastructure including running water, sewer systems, gas and electricity as well as public amenities such as parks, hospitals, and sport facilities. 141 In this regard, historian Louise Young described the colonial cities in Manchuria as “the cities in the future.” 142 The pre-1945 technological aspirations and drive for colonial expansion, according to Yoshikuni Igarashi, were revitalized through the construction boom in the era of rapid economic growth. 143 The widespread restructuring of the metropolis and urban infrastructure in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics recalled the earlier construction boom within the colonial territories, particularly in Manchuria. In particular, according to Igarashi, the construction of the postwar bullet train system which began in 1959 “testified as to the persistence of the pre-1945 aspiration for speed,” as seen in the Asia Express inaugurated by SMR. 144 Tange’s plan for Tokyo Bay, characterized by a desire for expansion and speed, had its precedent in colonial cities. As I discussed earlier in this chapter, Tange was deeply influenced by the new experiments taking place in the colonies. His concern in colonial city planning was captured in his unrealized project of the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere Monument, which won him first prize at the national architectural 141 For more on the topic of Manchurian urban planning, see Louise Young, Japan’ s Total Empire: Manchuria and Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 243-259. 142 Ibid. 143 Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970, 143-153. 144 Ibid., 146-48. 83 competition in 1942. In an accompanying text, Tange expressed a technocratic concern about planning, along with a nationalistic sentiment, by stating that “the core of this project lies in urban planning which could represent the new spirit of Japan.” 145 This project featured a commemoration zone located at the foot of Mt. Fuji which was connected to Tokyo by a high-speed transportation axis. This linear axis, named “Greater East Asia Road,” made it possible to commute from Tokyo to Mt. Fuji within an hour at 70km/hour. 146 As Yatsuka Hajime has observed, “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” was similar to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Monument (1942) insofar as they both featured a linear urban axis. 147 (Fig. 23 and 24) The axis, which connected the capital city with Mt. Fuji in his wartime project, was now extended toward the opposite side of Tokyo Bay in his postwar project. The civic axis of the Tokyo Bay project can be extended either toward Tokyo Bay on its east or Mt. Fuji on its west. It is worth pointing out that Tange was not hesitant about utilizing Mt. Fuji, a charged symbol of imperial Japan, as a possible direction of axial development in this postwar project. In this sense, Yatsuka describes “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” as a “negative picture of the Greater East Asian Co- Prosperity Sphere Monument, just as the political background had reversed from a totalitarian regime to a democratic one.” 148 145 “Dai T ōa kensetsu kinen eiz ō keikaku” [Commemorative Monument of the Construction of the Greater East Asia], Kenchiku zasshi (December 1942): 963. 146 ibid. 147 Yatsuka, “The 1960 Tokyo Bay Project of Kenzo Tange,”187. 148 Ibid. 84 “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” not only recalled the architect’s wartime scheme but also reflected his interest in Japanese tradition. The Tokyo Bay project included A-shaped residential blocks which were reminiscent of traditional wooden gabled-roof structures. (Fig. 25) It is important to note that Tange developed this A-frame structure in his unrealized design for the World Health Organization Headquarters (1959) and the Boston Bay project (1959) during his involvement in the publication of the Ise Shrine and the Katsura villa. Therefore, the repetitive use of the A-framed can be understood as an extension of the cultural nationalism of the tradition debate. The recurring presence of the past in Tange’s design was not irrelevant to the growing self-confidence of the time in conjunction with economic achievements under the conservative LDP regimes. However, I am not arguing that Tange attempted to rehabilitate Japan’s wartime past as seen in the controversial history books such as Hayashi Fusao’s Affirmation of the Greater East Asia War (1964) and Ueyama Shumpei’s The Meaning of the Greater East Asian War (1964). Rather, by replacing the disputable past with the consensus on the prosperous future, Tange’s project reiterated the official narrative of postwar Japan, a linear progression from destruction to economic prosperity based on historical amnesia. However, the amnesia enacted by the Tokyo plan was a highly selective one; it erased the trace of the frustration of previous defeat and annihilation on the one hand and recalled the “glorious past” when Imperial Japan dreamed of a pan-Asian utopia on the other hand. Here, the recalled past did not threaten the official narrative, but reinforced its celebratory narrative of linear progression. 85 Fig. 2 : Tange Kenz ō, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial, competition entry, drawing, bird-eye view, 1942. 86 Fig. 3 : Tange Kenz ō, Japan-Thailand Cultural Center, competition entry, 1943. 87 Fig. 4 : Hiroshima’s land-use plan, Tange’s proposal was partially incorporated in it, 1947. 88 Fig. 5 : Tange Kenz ō, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, competition entry, general plan, 1949. 89 Fig. 6 : Tange Kenz ō, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, competition entry, model, 1949. 90 Fig. 7 : Eero Saarinen, Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, 1948. 91 Fig. 8 : Isamu Noguchi, “Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima,” plaster model, 1952. 92 Fig. 9 : Isamu Noguchi, “Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima,” view of sanctuary, plaster model, 1952. 93 Fig. 10 : Tange Kenz ō, Cenotaph, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 1952. 94 Fig. 11 : Katsura Villa, Shoin, 17 th Century. 95 Fig. 12 : Ise Shrine, Main Shrine, photographed by Watanabe Yoshio. 96 Fig. 13 : J ōmon Ceramic, 11 th to 3 rd century B.C. 97 Fig. 14 : Tange Kenz ō, Kagawa Prefectural Office, general view, 1955-58. 98 Fig. 15 : Kikutake Kiyonori, Sky House, 1958. 99 Fig 16 : Kikutake Kiyonori, Tower-shaped City, 1958. 100 Fig. 17 : Tange Kenz ō, “A Plan for Tokyo-1960,” 1961. 101 Fig. 18 : Kano Hisaaki, “Neo-Tokyo Plan,” 1959. 102 Fig. 19 : Tange Kenz ō, statistics, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. 103 Fig. 20 : Tange Kenz ō, from radial to linear city, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. 104 Fig. 21 : Tange Kenz ō, cycle transportation system, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. 105 Fig. 22 : Tange Kenz ō, T ōkaid ō Megalopolis, 1966. 106 Fig. 23 : Tange Kenz ō, possible axial development of the Tokyo Bay project, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. 107 Fig. 24 : Tange Kenz ō, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial, competition entry, drawing, bird-eye view, 1942. 108 Fig. 25 : Tange Kenz ō, A-frame residential blocks, in “Tokyo Plan-1960: Towards a Structural Reorganization,” 1961. 109 Chapter 2: Isozaki Arata, Architect of Ambivalence Isozaki Arata (1931- ) is one of the most distinguished architects in the world today, not only for his numerous experimental designs but also for his rigorous architectural theses. He studied under Tange Kenz ō in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo and apprenticed in Tange’s office from 1953 to 1963, before he opened his own office. Isozaki has been widely known to both domestic and international audiences as a pioneering figure of the postmodern movement in architecture. In September 1962, Isozaki published a surrealistic story entitled “City Demolition Industry, Inc.” in the prestigious architectural magazine Shinkenchiku. 1 The story features two personas: architect Arata and ex-killer Shin. Given that Shin is a Chinese phonetic reading of the character of Arata, the essay can easily be read as an autobiographical parable about the dual nature of the author, Isozaki Arata. Shin, the protagonist, is a professional killer who admires the art of assassination and appreciates the poetic meaning of death. However, after observing the mass massacres caused by urban disasters such as traffic accidents, urban pollution, and nuclear warfare, Shin quits his job and declares war on his new rival, namely contemporary metropolis. Aiming at the complete destruction of the city using all possible means, Shin founds an underground company named “City Demolition Industry, Inc” and asks his architect friend Arata to join. 1 Isozaki Arata, “Toshi hakaigy ō KK,” Shinkenchiku (September 1962), reprinted in Isozaki Arata, K ūkan-e (1971; reprint, T ōky ō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1975), 11-20; this essay was translated in English with an introduction by Fredric Jameson and republished in South Atlantic Quarterly 106:4 (Fall 2007): 853-858. 110 Arata and Shin tentatively decide to help realize some of the visionary urban projects of the time. Referring to Tange’s famous urban proposal for Tokyo Bay, Shin claims that the megalomaniac urban project would inevitably bring the city to self- destruction. He pejoratively describes Tange’s “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” as an “oversized dinosaur threatened with extinction.” 2 While this autobiographic parable was critical of Tange’s technocratic utopian vision, it was also self-critical, since Isozaki was an active participant in the Tokyo Bay project during his apprenticeship at Tange’s office. Isozaki engaged in “A Plan for Tokyo-1960,” a groundbreaking plan for the future city created by the Tange Team, and also proposed his own mega-scale visionary schemes, such as the “Shinjuku Project” (1960-1961), the “City in the Air” (1960-1962), and the “Marunouchi Project” (1963). (Fig. 26 and 27) Despite their close relationship and shared methodology, however, Isozaki maintained a certain distance from Tange’s fanatic utopianism. Furthermore, Isozaki consistently challenged the authority of Tange, particularly his technocratic orientation. Yatsuka Hamije uses the psychoanalytic term “patricide” to describe Isozaki’s relationship to Tange, his architectural father as well as the national architect of postwar Japan. 3 The story of “City Demolition Industry, Inc.” ends with the deterioration of the conversation between the two characters; Shin labels Arata a “cowardly Stalinist” for his technocratic mindset, while Arata calls Shin an “inexperienced Trotskyite” because of his 2 Isozaki, K ūkan-e, 18. 3 Yatsuka Hajime, “Autobiography of a Patricide: Arata Isozaki’s Initiation into Postmodernism,” AA Files, no. 58 (2009): 68-71. 111 anarchistic attitude. 4 The use of outmoded communist labels as insults seems to reveal a certain frustration with the old leftist politics that Isozaki believed were no longer able to cope with contemporary urban and social problems. This broken dialogue exemplifies Isozaki’s conflicted dual identity as creator and destroyer. Not surprisingly, Isozaki’s “City Demolition Industry, Inc.” was not welcomed by the architectural establishment. Alarmed by the radical tone of the essay, the editor of Shinkenchiku moved this essay from its original place in the beginning of the issue to the advertisement section at the back of the magazine, and printed it in small, barely legible type. The recent history of Shinkenchiku, the largest-circulation architectural journal, was marked by the so-called “Shinkenchiku scandal.” The Shinkenchiku scandal resulted from the August 1957 issue, which featured an article about Murano T ōgo, a highly influential figure in the field. The publisher of Shinkenchiku was discontent with the critical tone of the article and fired every member of the editorial department, which hoped to challenge the architectural establishment by asserting freedom of speech. 5 Understandably, after this incident, the editor of Shinkenchiku was not anxious to publish this potentially controversial essay, which was basically a thinly veiled attack on Tange. In 1971, when Isozaki reprinted this essay in his first anthology, Toward Space (K ūkan-e) from the respected publisher Bijutsu shuppansha (Art publisher), he went so far as to violate the 4 Isozaki, K ūkan-e, 18. 5 For Shinkenchiku scandal, see Isozaki Arata and Hiroshi Naito, “K ūkan-e,” Inax Report, no. 167 (July 2006): 22. 112 otherwise chronological order of the collection to place this essay in the opening section, no doubt as a playful act of resistance to Shinkenchku’s previous attempt at censorship. 6 If Isozaki’s ego as the creator ‘Arata’ was formed by his training in Tange’s office and his collaboration with the Metabolists, his alter-ego as the destroyer ‘Shin’ was indebted to his encounter with the 1960s avant-garde art movements. The goal of this chapter is not to provide an exhaustive study of Isozaki but to examine how the architect’s dual identity drove him to formulate an alternative architecture methodology, which was distinguished from the dominant architectural culture of the time. Since Isozaki has been widely known as a pioneering figure of postmodern architecture with his designs produced during the 1970s and 1980s, scholars tend to use a postmodern lens to examine Isozaki’s ambivalent designs and writings of the 1960s. For example, architectural historian David B. Stewart characterized Isozaki’s drawing of a ruined future titled “Incubation Process” (1962), featuring both a futuristic megastructure and a fragmented Greek temple, as “a precursor of a certain postmodern thinking” because of its “preoccupation with neoclassical resurgence.” 7 (Fig. 28) In a similar vein, architectural historian Kenneth Frampton also described Isozaki’s 1960s projects, such as the Oita Medical Hall (1960) and the Oita Prefectural Library (1962-1966), by employing a dichotomy between tectonic and scenographic, construction and decoration, inner substance and outer form, which hints at the tension between modern and postmodern 6 Ibid., 22-23. 7 David B. Stewart, The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture (Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1987), 221. 113 tendency in architecture. According to Frampton, Isozaki’s design was suspended between “an ontological priority being given to tectonic form on the one hand and a tendency for the work to become enveloped in an all-encompassing aesthetic on the other hand.” 8 Whether or not commentators rely on the controversial term “postmodernism,” they tend to argue that Isozaki’s criticism of existing modernism resulted in an attitude of ambivalence. The two overarching frameworks of modernism and postmodernism, however, cannot sufficiently consider the spatial-temporal specificity of 1960s Japan, wherein Isozaki demonstrated his inner-conflict as both a proponent and opponent of the practices of utopian architecture. Furthermore, it is anachronistic at best to discuss Isozaki’s practices of the 1960s as a precursor to postmodernism. By focusing on the topography of 1960s Japanese art and architecture, critic Sawaragi Noi made an interesting point regarding Isoazaki’s ambivalence. In his recent study on Expo’70 titled World Wars and World Fairs (Sens ō to banpaku), Sawaragi called Isozaki a “Janus-like figure” whose work embodies both an optimistic side of technocratic architects and a nihilistic side of radical avant-garde artists. 9 Drawing on Sawaragi’s observation, I would like to delve into the dual identity of Isozaki as artist-architect. My interest, however, is not restricted to the disciplinary intersection between art and architecture but extends to a discussion of the two competing 8 Kenneth Frampton, “The Rise and Fall of Mega-Architecture: Arata Isozaki and the Crisis of Metabolism 1952-1966,” GA Architect 6, 1991, 11. 9 Sawaragi, Sens ō to banpaku, 116-124. 114 perspectives vis-à-vis the nation’s past and future in postwar Japanese society. While the technocrat-architect’s optimistic vision of a better future constituted one chapter of the celebratory narrative of Japan’s rapid postwar development, this simplified story of successful progress was complicated by radical artistic practices which critically unearthed the postwar reality in the form of rubbles and ruins. As art historian Alexandra Munroe has pointed out, the avant-garde art practices of the 1960s emerged from “Japan’s bleak postwar landscape as a provocative form of social criticism and cultural subversion.” 10 It is my contention that Isozaki’s ambivalent stature stems from his identity as both a technocrat-architect, who was preoccupied with future-oriented narrative of postwar reconstruction and economic prosperity, and as an avant-garde artist, who was obsessed with traumatic memories of catastrophic destruction and postwar ruins. Following sections examine how Isozaki’ dual identity led him to formulate his alternative architecture, focusing on his visionary schemes, performances and displays, and writings. The first section delineates the avant-garde art practices of the 1960s, collectively called “Anti-Art,” against the backdrop of “anti-spirit” of the Japanese society and art community. It examines Anti-Art’s fascination with junk-objects and devastated ruins not only as resistance to the conventional notion of art, but also as a criticism of the technocratic conviction of an ascendant trajectory from destruction to prosperity built on historical amnesia. The next section examines how the oppositional energy of the 1960s art circles helped Isozaki to articulate his design methodology, 10 Alexandra Munroe, “Morphology of Revenge: The Yomiuri Indépendent Artists and Social Protest Tendencies in the 1960s” in Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe (New Y ork, Abrams, 1994), 150. 115 known as “invisible city.” Invisible city not only denotes an expansion of disciplinary limits from built structures to cybernetic environments but also refers to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two Japanese cities obliterated by the world’s first nuclear attack. The final section discusses how Isozaki’s design engages in remembering and narrating the traumatic history of the wartime destruction and nuclear tragedy. Architecture in the Age of ‘Anti’ Isozaki’s orientation during the 1960s, the formative years of the architect, was directed at the art community as much as architectural one. Just as Isozaki’s architectural identity was formulated by his training at Tange’s office, his identity as destroyer was enacted by his contact with radical artists, particularly the members of the Neo-Dada. 11 The Neo-Dada began in Tokyo in April 1960 with an ambition to subvert the accepted values of art institutions and social norms. The members included Akasegawa Genpei, Arakawa Shūsaku, Ishibashi Betsujin, Iwasaki Kunihiko, Ueno Noriz ō, Kazakura Sh ō, Shinohara Ushio, Toyoshima S ōroku, and Yoshimura Masunobu. Although Isozaki was not an official member of the group, he maintained a close relationship with these avant- garde artists. According to art critic Hary ū Ichir ō, the Neo-Dada had their root in the art 11 For more on Isozaki’s engagement in the Neo-Dada, see Oita-shi Kyoiku linkai, Neo-Dada Japan 1958- 1998: Isozaki Arata to Howaito Hausu no menmen [Neo-Dada Japan 1958-1998: Arata Isozaki and the Artists of “White House”] (Oita-shi: Kyoiku linkai, 1998); Art Tower Mito, Nihon no natsu-1960-64 [Japanese Art 1960s-Japanese Summer 1960-64], exh. cat. (Mito-shi: Art Tower Mito, 1997); Kuroda Raiji, “A Flash of Neo Dada: Cheerful Destroyer in Tokyo (1993),” trans. by Reiko Tomii with Justin Jesty, in Review of Japanese Culture and Society (December, 2005): 51-71. 116 supply shop called Kimuraya located in Ōita, Kyushu, the hometown of Isozaki. 12 Young artists of the region, including Yoshimura, Akasegawa, Kazakura, and Isozaki, who later became associated with the Neo-Dada, clustered around the Kimuraya and founded a local art group called Shin Seiki-gun (New Century Group). They eventually left to attend various colleges in Tokyo, and settled down in the Shinjuku area, which was then a center of vanguard culture in art, theater, and music. 13 In 1957, Yoshimura, who was a leader of the Neo-Dada group as well as Isozaki’s former schoolmate at First Ōita Prefectural High School, commissioned Isozaki to design a studio-residence at Hyakuninch ō in Shinjuku. 14 This simple cubic structure was called “White House” because it was a mortar-finished studio which stood out due to its white exterior. (Fig. 29) The studio space was a 4.5 meter-square atrium, adjoined to a narrow (2.7 meter wide) elongated two-story structure. The White House, unofficially the first realized design in Isozaki’s portfolio, soon became the headquarters of the Neo-Dada and other art groups of the early 1960s. As a regular visitor to the White House, Isozaki was immersed in the contemporary avant-garde art trends of the time. Isozaki’s identity as a radical destroyer resulted from his association with the Neo-Dada group. For the Neo-Dada’ first exhibition, in April of 1960, Shinohara Ushio 12 Hary ū Ichir ō, “The Phase of Neo-Dada in Postwar Art,” in Neo-Dada Japan 1958-1998: Isozaki Arata to Howaito Hausu no menmen, 276. 13 For Shinjuku as a center of vanguard art, see Thomas R. H. Havens, Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 131-133. 14 For White House, see Kuroda, “A Flash of Neo Dada: Cheerful Destroyer in Tokyo (1993),” 56. 117 wrote an invitation letter that reveals the group’s nihilistic antagonism toward social norms: As seriously as one might dream of procreation in 1964, a single atomic bomb can cheerfully solve the problem. Picasso’s [painting of] a bull fight cannot impress us so much as blood gushing forth from a stray cat run over by a car. Being, as we are, on the stage of this red-faced Earth in the 20.6th century, the only means for us to avoid being massacred is to become destroyers ourselves. 15 Here, the utopian dream which had been projected onto the 1964 Olympics was juxtaposed with the nightmare of the atomic blast of 1945. By identifying the atomic bomb blast as the origin of postwar absurdity, Shinohara attempted to expose the deceptive nature of postwar peace and material prosperity in the era of economic growth. The destructive tone of Shinohara’s words is reminiscent of Isozaki’s aforementioned essay “The City Demolition Industry, Inc” (1962). In fact, this destructive gesture was a part of the oppositional spirit of the 1960s, which can be best described as “Art in the Age of Anti.” 16 In 1960, Japanese society witnessed large-scale demonstrations against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (known as Anpo), due to the perceived unequal terms of the treaty. In January of 1960, a new treaty was drafted by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) under the leadership of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke. Though the renewed treaty was more favorable to Japan than the original one, which had been signed in 1951, it still allowed the U.S. to maintain troops in Japan, turning Japan into a key staging area for America’s 15 Shinohara Ushio, statement in Neo Dadaizumu Oruganiza-ten [Neo Dadaism Organizer] (1961) 16 An article titled “Art in the Age of Anti” was published in the art magazine Geijitsu Shinch ō in January 1960. 118 military operations. The Kishi regime forcibly passed the treaty through the Diet, infuriating the oppositions, which was composed mostly of progressive intellectuals, radical students, and labor organizations. In June of 1960, thousands of radical students, led by the Zengakuren (All Student Association), formed barricades around the National Diet Building and called for the cancellation of the treaty. Despite the protests, the treaty renewal was ratified on June 19. According to historian Yoshikuni Igarashi, the protests of the anti-Anpo struggle provided an opportunity for the Japanese to revisit the repressed memories of the war and defeat and to critically reconsider the optimism attached to the economic growth and eternal peace of their postwar society, which had been enabled under the aegis of the Security Treaty itself. 17 Several members of the Neo-Dada were active participants in this political struggle, combining chants of “Down with Anpo!” with “Down with Anfo,” a Japanese abbreviation of Art Informel, which was then a hegemonic trend in art institutions. At the peak of this political struggle, Tokyo hosted the World Design Conference, in which Tange engaged and the Metabolists presented their manifesto. Isozaki did not attend this international conference because he was too busy with the Anpo protest and the Tokyo Bay project in which he was involved at that moment.” 18 Looking back to the time of the Anpo crisis, Isozaki remarked that his itinerary delineated a triangle, the three corners of which were Tange’s office at Tokyo University where he worked in the morning: the front 17 Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970, 3-18. 18 Isozaki Arata interviewed with Igarashi Tar ō and Oda Masanori, “Like the Chronicle: Takashi Asada, Sh ūz ō Takiguchi and 60s,” 10+1, no. 36 (2004): 101-108. 119 plaza of the Diet Building where he protested in the afternoon: and Shinjuku’s White House where he interacted with avant-garde artists at night.” 19 On the whole, the Neo-Dada treated the Anpo struggles as an artistic event. On June 18, the eve of the treaty’s ratification, they mounted a performance called “Anpo Episode Event” at the White House. In this performance, Yoshimura attached a giant erect penis to his loins and imitated hara-kiri suicide by painting his stomach with intestines. This performance captures the essence of what Alexandra Munroe labels “Anpo spirit,” the anarchistic nihilism prevalent in the left-leaning cultural atmosphere after the failure of the Anpo protests. 20 These young artists were disenchanted with the political impotence of Japan Communist Party and with what they thought was its outmoded socialist realism, which had been adopted by the left-wing artists of the previous decade. With this provocative performance, they attempted to turn a serious political issue into what artist Okamoto Tar ō calls “utter nonsense.” 21 The oppositional nihilism of the Neo-Dada was greatly indebted to the confrontational avant-gardism proposed by Okamoto, a godfather to young avant-garde artists. In his 1954 best-selling book Art of Today (Konnichi no geijutsu), Okamoto advocated a radically new art which was neither aesthetically pleasing nor technically skillful, and encouraged young artists to overthrow the “authority blackened with age that 19 Isozaki Arata, “Runaway System,” Nihon no natsu-1960-64 [Japanese Art 1960s-Japanese Summer 1960-64], exh. cat. (Mito-shi: Art Tower Mito, 1997), 81. 20 Munroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, 152 21 Okamoto Tar ō, 1955; quoted and trans. in Kazu Kaid ō, “Reconstruction: The Role of the Avant-garde in Postwar Japan,” in Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945-1965, exh. cat. (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1985), 20. 120 still presses down stiflingly over our lives.” 22 He called for destroying everything with monstrous energy in order to recreate Japanese art. Like his contemporaries, Isozaki was deeply influenced by Okamoto’s confrontational avant-gardism. He later personally collaborated with Okamoto, designing the gallery space for Okamoto’s 1964 solo exhibition in Seibu department store and working with Okamoto on the creation of the Festival Plaza at Expo’70. This rebellious spirit was expressed in the form of unconventional objects and events, an experimental practice which was collectively called “Anti-Art.” The term “Anti-Art” was first adopted by art critic T ōno Yoshiaki to describe the junk-based objects displayed at the Yomiuri Indépendent. 23 (Fig. 30) The Yomiuri Indépendent, annually held from 1949 until 1963, was a non-juried group exhibition sponsored by the media company Yomiuri Newspaper. From the late 1950s onward, it offered the most prominent outlet for young artists who lacked gallery, museum or private support, including the Neo-Dada, the Ky ūsh ū-ha, the Group Ongaku, the Zero Dimension group and others. 24 Around 1960s, these young artists associated with the Yomiuri Indépendent began presenting junk objects, consisting of urban debris and cheap non-art material. These pieces corresponded to industrial detritus and the mass-media icons utilized by European Nouveau Realism, American Neo Dada, and Pop Art. 22 Okamoto Tar ō, Konnichi no geijutsu [Art of Today] (1954, reprint, T ōky ō: Kodansha, 1973), 132-147. 23 Yoshiaki T ōno first used the term “anti-art” in his review on the 12 th Yomiuri Independent. T ōno Yoshiaki, “Garakuta no han-geijutsu” [Junk anti-art], Yomiuri shimbun 2 March 1960, evening edition. 24 For Yomiuri Independent, see William Marotti, Political Aesthetics: Activism, Everyday Life, and Art’s Object in 1960s’ Japan,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 7, no. 4 (2007): 606-618. 121 Reviewing the 1960 Yomiuri Independent for the daily newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, T ōno writes: You may wonder whether they are Art. Never mind. They are not Art, but Anti- Art, so to speak. Still, I dare ask you this question: Won’t they touch your heart more immediately than those objects d’art that primly inhabit the display cases at the museum, completely dissociated from your everyday life. 25 For T ōno, the idea of Anti-Art aims at the breakdown of the conventional lore of art and its institutional power. While T ōno regarded Anti-Art as non-art or the end of art, critic Miyakawa Atsushi confined his discussion of Anti-Art to the issue of style. By emphasizing the appropriation of debris and common objects, Miyakawa describes the essence of Anti-Art as “descent to the everyday.” 26 The artists of the Neo-Dada and other avant-garde groups of the 1960s not only adopted everyday junk objects but also embraced the quotidian elements of daily life into their performative events. Going beyond the walls of the museum or gallery, they generated “events” on the streets, which blurred the boundaries between art and life. The unexpected and uncontrolled participation of anonymous viewers became integral parts of Anti-Art practice. If the aesthetic contribution of the Anti-Art can be found in its challenges to the disciplinary boundary of art and its institutional power, its political contribution lies in its 25 T ōno Yoshiaki, “Garakuta no han-geijutsu” [Junk anti-art], Yomiuri shimbun 2 March 1960, evening edition, quoted and trans. in Reiko Tomii, “Geijutsu on Their Mind: Memorable Words on Anti-Art,” in Art Anti-Art Non Art, eds. Charles Merewether with Rika Iezumi Hiro (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 37. 26 Miyakawa Atsushi, “Han-geijutsu: sono nichij ō-sei e no kak ō” [Anti-Art Descent to the Everyday], Bijutsu tech ō, no. 234 (April 1964): 48-57. 122 intention to “shock and revolt the status quo” and to escape from the “oppressive wartime legacy.” 27 Like the Nouveaux Realism of postwar French art which pursued a new perception of the real, Japanese Anti-Art attempted to rehabilitate “realism” by embracing the mass-produced objects of everyday life. The Anti-Art participants captured the reality of the postwar condition which was trapped in a dialectic combining aggressive reconstruction and economic growth and recurring memories of the wartime destruction and postwar ruins. On his encounter with the Neo-Dada’s exhibition, T ōno made an interesting connection between junk objects and postwar ruins: Their exhibits reflected the immense junkyard of the teeming city of Tokyo. The junk which they first saw, which influenced their way of feeling objects, was the junk of the burned ruins of the city during the war. The blasted city had been their playground: their first toy had been bottles melted into distortion from fire bombs, pieces of roof-beams founded in the ashes. Now, their shows were full of these junk-flowers, with their queer blossoms… 28 As pointed out by T ōno, the Neo-Dada’s fascination with junk objects was primarily rooted in their childhood experience of Japan’s catastrophic destruction in 1945. Their childhood was lived among the rubble of Japan’s catastrophic defeat and the utter collapse of the Japanese empire and its value system, which later become an integral part of their art. 27 Munroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, 149-51. 28 T ōno Yoshiaki, “Neo-Dada et Anti-art,” in Japon des Avant-gardes 1910-1970, exh. cat. (Paris: Centre George Pompidou, 1986), 53. 123 Here it is useful to apply the generational model to discuss the artists’ fascination with ruins and destruction in conjunction with Japan’s recent history. Most members of the Neo-Dada belonged to the so-called “Sh ōwa single digit” generation, born between Sh ōwa 1(1926) and Sh ōwa 9(1934). 29 According to Carol Gluck, “Because of what they had been through, this age group virtually captured the memory market in the postwar decade.” 30 The people of this generation had grown up during the war and were indoctrinated by the militarist thought and value system of that period. However, since they were not yet in a position to play an active adult part in the war, they bore less moral responsibility for wartime collaboration compared with the older generations. The most striking characteristic of the “Sh ōwa single digit” generation, according to composer Mayuzumi Toshir ō, was its skepticism toward anything and everything, which resulted from their disillusionment following Japan’s defeat. 31 The practitioners of the Neo-Dada who belonged to this generation were trying to recall the traumatic memories of wartime destruction and postwar ruins. By doing so, they were opposed to the historical amnesia underlying the conservative’s progressive narrative of postwar Japan. 29 For a discussion of the Sh ōwa single digit generation, see Gluck, “The “Long Postwar,”” 70-73; Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 76-79; Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, “Post-World War II Literature: The Intellectual Climate in Japan, 1945-1985,” in Legacies and Ambiguities, eds. Ernestine Schlant and Thomas Rimer (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 108-110. 30 Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” 78. 31 Mayuzumi Toshir ō, “Sameta genjitsushugi e no susume,” [A call for a reawakened realism], in Sh ōwa hitoketa zoku no ish ō: gendai o sh ōgen suru 38 nin [Testaments of the Sh ōwa Single Digits: Thirty-Eight People Bear Witness on the Present Day], ed. Ishihara Shitar ō (T ōky ō: Jitsugyo no nihonsah, 1972). 241- 247. 124 The Neo-Dada’s obsessive use of junk and scraps can be also read as a critical reflection of the teeming cityscape of contemporary Tokyo, which underwent a radical alteration in preparation for the 1964 Olympics, the first major international event in Japan since World War II. Architects and urban planners played a crucial role in constructing the new infrastructure of Japanese cites, including the bullet train system. Moreover, Tange proudly designed the Yoyogi Olympic Stadium, as an architectural symbol of Japan’s recovery and development. However, as captured in Ichikawa Kon’s documentary film Tokyo Olympiad (1965), which opened with a scene showing buildings being demolished, the mass construction in preparation for this international spectacle was accompanied by mass destructions and waste. The radical artists of the time were less interested in heroic monuments of mass construction than in the fragmented remnants of demolition. Their work, comprised of urban debris, stands as the radical antithesis of the technocratic endeavor to produce a clean and bright metropolis for the upcoming spectacle of the Tokyo Olympics. For example, the Hi Red Center, the avant-garde group which consisted of Akasegawa Genpei, Takamatsu Jir ō, and Nakanishi Natsuyuki, performed the Cleaning Event (1964) on the seventh day of the Tokyo Olympic Games in October 1964. 32 (Fig. 31) These artists ostentatiously pretended to be officials who conducted a beautification program of the city. Dressed in surgical masks and gowns, they scrubbed and polished the Ginza’s 32 For Hi Red Center’s Cleaning Event, see Reiko Tomii, “After the “Decent to the Everyday”: Japanese Collectivism from Hi Red Center to the Play, 1964-1973” in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945, eds. Blake Stimson & Gregory Sholette (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 45-76; Midori Yoshimoto, “Off Museum! Performance Art that Turned the Street into ‘Theatre’ Circa 1964 Tokyo,” Performance Paradigm 2 (March 2006): 102-118. 125 pavement. By doing so, the Hi Red Center attempted to mock the technocratic effort to build a sanitized metropolis for the Tokyo Olympics. Like his contemporaries, Isozaki was obsessed with the image of ruins and rubble. Isozaki’s interest in ruins was clearly demonstrated in his illustrated essay entitled “Incubation Process,” published in the well-established art magazine Bijutsu tech ō. (Fig 32) In April 1962, Isozaki was commissioned to produce the six-page illustrated essay by art critic Takiguchi Sh ūz ō, who was brought in to edit the magazine’s special issue, the theme of which was “Contemporary Image.” 33 A series of images comprising the “Incubation Process” portray the city as a living organism which goes through an endless cycle from birth to death and death to rebirth. In an annotated text in “Incubation Process,” Isozaki elaborates the destructive nature of the city’s life cycle as follows: Incubated cities are destined to self-destruct Ruins are the future of our cities Future cities are themselves ruins Our contemporary cities, for this reason, are destined to live only a short “time,” Then give up their energy and return to inert material All of our proposals and efforts will be buried And once again the incubation mechanism is reconstituted That will be the future. 34 In “Incubation Process,” Isozaki featured a collaged photo-image of an apocalyptic vision of the future in which half-destroyed ultramodern structures were superimposed onto ancient ruins whose motif came from the Greek temple at 33 Isozaki Arata, “Fuka-katei,” Bijutsu Techn ō (April 1962): 46-50. 34 Ibid., 50. 126 Agrigento. 35 This compelling image of a ruined future encapsulates irony and ambivalence of life and death, creation and destruction, and past and future. Amid the shadow of death and destruction, one can detect a spirit of life from the presence of people and automobiles, albeit on a small scale, depicted in a decaying megastructure. Interestingly enough, the decaying megastructure was a derivative of his earlier scheme of the Joint-Core System, a connected network of infrastructure intended for cities of the future. The idea of the Joint-Core System can be found in Tange’s thought of a giant piloti-core where communication and energy facilities converged. 36 Tange employed this piloti-core in his buildings, including the Yamanashi Press and Radio Center (1964) and the Shizuoka Press Building (1967). Inspired by Tange, Isozaki developed the model of Joint-Core System and inserted it into his Shinjuku Project (1960-1961), in which cylinder-shaped cores carrying people, material, energy, and information were linked by long span trusses which were used for office space. The Joint- Core System unitized in the Shinjuku Project again appeared in the office district of the “A Plan for Tokyo-1960” designed by Isozaki while he was a member of the Tange team, and finally reappeared in the “Incubation Process.” 35 Isozaki recollected that he merely picked up the Greek temple at Agrigento without any background knowledge because this temple represented the archetype of ancient ruins. In 2002, Isozaki traveled in Greece and sketched the ruined temple at Agrigento. See Isozaki Arata, “Haikyo to yakeato: seiy ō to nihon no kenchiku k ūkan”[Ruin and Burn Scar: Architectural Space in the West and Japan], D/SIGN, no. 16 (August 2008): 14-19. 36 For more discussion of the origin and variation of the core system, see Yatsuka Hajime, “Kyoch ū gens ō no riarupoliteitsukusu” [Illusion of Giant Pillar and Real Politics], Hankenchiku shi (T ōky ō: TOTO Shuppan, 2001), 64-68. 127 “Ambivalence” might be the best word to describe Isozaki’s relation to the futuristic visions which were prevalent in Japanese architecture during the 1960s. Like many of his contemporary architects, Isozaki was fascinated with the futuristic megastructure and high-rise. Architectural historian It ō Teiji recollected that Isozaki used to say, “I am leaving everything below 30 meters to others… I will think about architecture and the city in the air above 30 meters.” 37 For It ō, Isozaki’s assertion was particularly bold considering that at that time the building law in Japan still limited the height of all structures to 31 meters. 38 By superimposing his own scheme of the Joint-Core System onto the fragmented ruins, however, Isozaki demonstrated his own ambivalent position as both an enthusiastic practitioner of utopian design and its bitter critic. Isozaki’s presentation of ruin, which was reminiscent of Japan’s wartime destruction and postwar rubble, can be interpreted in the context of his skepticism toward the futurists’ rosy vision of a technology-driven future, which he felt served the problematic faith in linear progress and the infinite growth of society. Unlike Tange and the Metabolists, who used a biological metaphor to formulate an urban model that was most suitable for the rapid growth and change of contemporary cities, Isozaki’s conception of the city’s life cycle emphasized decay and death over growth and expansion. As Yatsuka has pointed out, a superimposition of decayed ruins on the futuristic megastructure demonstrates Isozaki’s “reluctance to accept 37 It ō Teiji, “Genesis of Imagination: Moratorium and Invisibility,” in Isozaki Arata 1960/1990 kenchiku ten [Arata Isozaki, 1960/1990 Architectural Exhibition] (T ōky ō: Isozaki Arata Kokusai junkaiten jikk ō iinkai, 1991), 91. 38 Ibid. 128 the optimistic faith in the future and technology advocated by Tange and the Metabolists.” 39 Moreover, Isozaki’s image of the future city in ruin, as David Stewart points out, permits us to “glimpse a crack in the spotless utopia” proposed by the Metabolist group at that time. 40 Invisible City As the term “Anti-Art” caught on, variants emerged, including anti-painting, anti-sculpture, anti-music and anti-criticism. 41 Isozaki who was keenly aware of the avant-garde art practices of the time through his association with the Neo-Dada attempted to adopt the idea of Anti-Art into the realm of architecture. In January of 1964, Isozaki participated in a multi-disciplinary debate titled “Anti-Art, Yes or No?” Besides Isozaki, this round-table discussion included panelists from different fields such as critic T ōno Yoshiaki and Hary ū Ichir ō, artist Miki Tomio and Ikeda Tatsuo, musician Ichiyanagi Toshi, and designer Sugiura K ōhei. According to Miyakawa Atsushi’s report published in Bijutsu tech ō in April 1964, each panelist was allowed ten minutes to present his own opinion about Anti-Art. 42 Isozaki mentioned that “invisible city” was a model of our 39 Yatsuka Hajime, “Architecture in the Urban Desert: A Critical Introduction to Japanese Architecture after Modernism,” Oppositions (Winter 1981): 9. 40 Stewart, The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture, 221. 41 T ōno Yoshiaki, Hary ū Ichir ō, and Ebara Jun, “Han kaiga, han-ch ōkoku, han-hihy ō” [Anti-painting, anti- sculpture, anti criticism], Mizue, no. 660 (April 1960): 77-84. 42 Miyakawa, “Han-geijutsu: Sono nichijo-sei e no kak ō,” 48-57. 129 future cities which would be flooded by virtual flow of communication and information. 43 Unfortunately, no further documentation on Isozaki’s presentation at this Anti-Art conference beside Miyakawa’s brief comment survives. However, Isozaki frequently discussed the notion of ‘invisible city’ as an architectural version of Anti-Art in his writings and designs of the 1960s. Isozaki’s concept of “invisible city” was first shown in his 1962 installation- performance titled Joint Core System-Incubation Process. (Fig 33) Isozaki presented Joint Core System-Incubation Process at the architectural group exhibition The City and Life of the Future. This exhibition was held in Seibu department store to showcase Metabolism’s visionary schemes as well as futuristic proposals by Tange Kenz ō, Ōtaka Masato, and Takayama Eika. For Joint Core System-Incubation Process, Isozaki displayed his own futuristic drawings on the wall, and then placed an aerial photograph of Tokyo on the table, along with some nails and pieces of colored wire. He asked viewers to stick nails wherever they wanted to make core structures and to connect them freely with the wires. Thus, the production of the Joint-Core System, a basic unit of the urban future, was to be decided by anonymous participants. It was not long before the structure became as chaotic as a spider’s web, such that the wire stretched all over the gallery space, including the prepared table, walls, and ceiling. On the last day, Isozaki returned to the gallery to pour plaster on the tangled wires, a gesture reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s action painting. 43 Ibid., 56. 130 Thus, the incessant flow of becoming finally ceased, and the invisible process became visible in the form of chaotic ruins. The labyrinthine structure of the Joint-Core System-Incubation Process is similar to Christopher Alexander’s diagram of “semi-lattice,” a non-hierarchical and anarchic model of a city whose emphasis is given to the elements of overlapping, ambiguity, and multiplicity. In his classic 1965 essay “A City is Not a Tree,” Alexander proposed a semi-lattice model that could accommodate the formidable complexity engendered by social reciprocity, as opposed to the existing tree structure which is essentially homogeneous and implicitly determined by a single designer or urban planner. 44 As Alexander has pointed out, one can hardly grasp a complex and even the chaotic structure of semi-lattice in a “visualizable form.” Isozaki was well aware of Alexander’s concept of semi-lattice and wrote an essay which introduced this innovative urban model to Japanese readers. Furthermore, in a recent discussion on the relationship between architectural style and political ideology, Isozaki mentioned that he preferred the semi-lattice system over the tree system because the semi-lattice model was closer to the democratic system in that it is an open system which includes the heterogeneous others. 45 The Joint Core System-Incubation Process was clearly produced under the strong influence of the Anti-Art tendency, as they shared the fascination with junk-based objects 44 Christopher Alexander, “A City is Not a Tree” Architectural Forum, V ol.122, No. 1 (April 1965): 58-62 (Part I); V ol. 122, No. 2 (May 1965): 58-62 (Part II). 45 “Fashizumu to kenchiku,” Hihy ō K ūkan (October 1998): 142-143. 131 and the emphasis on interactions between spectators and practitioners. Moreover, it represented a radical departure from the disciplinary boundary and norms of conventional architecture practice. Isozaki was not interested in the finished form of permanent construction or the sovereignty of an individual designer. But rather, he wanted to present an immaterial and invisible flow of movement and communications produced by the intervention of multiple others, a practice which has rarely been categorized as architecture in a conventional sense. The Joint-Core System-Incubation Process was later re-enacted at The Summer of Japan-1960-64, the 1997 retrospective of the avant-garde movement, for which Isozaki served as a chief director. 46 Other participants at this show include Nakanishi Natsuyuki, who scattered thousand of metal clothespins all around the gallery space, Takamatsu Jiro, who hung rope down to the floor, Tanaka Shintaro, who displayed musical instruments made from scrap metal, and Akasegawa Genpei, who showed artificial fabric decorated with mass-produced fuses. These objects all had a capacity to grow and change according to the viewers’ uncontrolled intervention. The scene could be described as “the immense junkyard,” just as critic Ton ō Yoshiaki had once described the exhibition of the Neo-Dada 47 While Joint Core System-Incubation Process was welcomed by the art world, it stirred controversy in architectural world. When the Joint-Core System-Incubation Process was presented at the architectural show “The City and Life of the Future,” it 46 For more on this exhibition, see Nihon no natsu-1960-64. 47 T ōno, “Neo-Dada et Anti-Art,” in Japon des avant-gardes 1910-1970, 53. 132 faced opposition from the Metabolist critic Kawazoe Noboru, the organizer of the exhibition. According to Isozaki’s recollection, Kawazoe was initially opposed to include Isozaki’s representation of decaying ruins, for it seemed inappropriate for the theme of “the wonderful life of the future” promoted by the exhibition. 48 Isozaki used this episode to dramatize the gap between Metabolism’s utopian schemes and his own ruins project so as to bring his radical politics into sharp relief. Basically, Isozaki was sympathetic with the Metabolists’ concept that architecture was not a static machine but a living organism which experienced endless changes through metabolic processes. However, as critic Asada Akira points out, Isozaki was always critical of the Metabolism’s “naïve progressive belief in infinite growth based in linear time.” 49 Isozaki viewed the architecture of Metabolism as a part of technocratic project because its trend toward eternal expansion corresponded to the “growth-first policy” which marked the era of rapid economic growth. This belief was the primary reason for his resistance toward being categorized as member of the Metabolism group. In a 1971 interview with architect James Stirling, Isozaki conceded that “some of our tendencies are the same, but I always felt differently. I never became a member of the Metabolism group.” 50 48 Isozaki Arata, “Metaborizumu to kankai o kikarerunode, sono koro o omoideshite mita” [To Ask about the Relationship with the Metabolism, Let’s Think of that Moment], 10+1, no. 13 (Spring 1998): 28-29. 49 Asada Akira and Isozaki Arata, “From Molar Metabolism to Molecular Metabolism,” in Anyhow, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 67. 50 Isozaki Arata, “James Stirling in Tokyo,” Architecture and Urbanism (August 1971): 7. 133 As opposed to the predictable and systemic change preferred by the Metabolists, Isozaki called for “dramatic and destructive change,” which lay outside the control of individual architects or planners. 51 Isozaki continued, “Since change is half-destructive and half-constructive, it should be permissible for architecture to create the exact appearance of ruins.” 52 Isozaki’s decaying ruins posed a clear counter-image to what he thought of as the Metabolists’ technocratic utopia. However, while the Metabolists are commonly considered a homogeneous group whose members were of one mind in celebrating a techno-utopian future, the shadow of the war and nuclear anxiety are clearly part of their visionary projects. Isozaki’s idea of the ruined future seems to affirm the Metabolists’ interest in death and decay, a largely marginalized aspect of the group, which I will explore in the following chapter. Isozaki’s concept of “invisible city” was motivated by the interest in traditional Japanese cities. Beginning in 1961, Isozaki participated in the research project of the City Design Research Group (Toshi dezain kenky ū tai), initiated by Tange and It ō Teiji. Based on this research, Isozaki published an essay regarding urban design methodology in the December 1963 issue of Kenchiku bunka, in which he first used the term “invisible city.” 53 In 1968, the collective urban study of the City Design Research Group resulted in a volume called Japanese Urban Space (Nihon no toshi k ūkan). 54 The aim of this project 51 Isozaki, “Metaborizumu to kankai o kikarerunode, sono koro o omoideshite mita,” 30. 52 Isozaki, The Island Aesthetic: Polemics, 29. 53 Isozaki Arata, “Toshi dezain no h ōh ō,” Kenchiku bunka (December 1963). 54 Toshi dezain kenky ū tai, Nihon no toshi k ūkan [Japanese Urban Space], (T ōky ō: Sh ōkokusha, 1968). 134 was to explore the elements of traditional Japanese cities which could not be adequately explained through the use of Western urban concepts. 55 While the traditional Western city is dominated by monumental buildings, its Japanese counterpart is governed by the dynamic ambience of lively neighborhoods called kaiwai. Isozaki’s idea of “invisible city” derives from this invisible space of communications and movement in traditional Japanese cities. In addition, the concrete image of “invisible city” was modeled on the actual cityscape of Los Angeles. During 1963 and 1964, Isozaki, along with architectural photographer Futagawa Yukio, traveled around the world to study various cities and serialized his travelogues in Yomiuri shimbun. To Isozaki’s eyes, Los Angeles literalized his idea of an “invisible city,” since it lacked any substantial structure which could be easily recognized from the aerial photographs taken from the sky. Isozaki referred to Los Angeles as a prototype of the future city, in which landmark buildings were replaced by a virtual network of communication and information. 56 As art historian Jonathan Crary has pointed out, during the 1960s, “The legibility of the city appeared near a threshold of oblivion.” 57 The legibility or coherence of built space became secondary to problems of speed and the network of communication. In the face of the loss of the materiality of urban space, Los Angeles has received serious 55 Ibid., 25. 56 Arata Isozaki, “Sekai no machi” [World’s Towns], Yomiuri shimbun, October-December 1964, reprinted in Isozaki, K ūkan-e, 210-211. 57 Jonathan Crary, “J.G. Ballard and the Promiscuity of Forms,” Zone 1/2 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 159. 135 attention from the profession of urban studies. Reyner Banham also recognized that Los Angeles was “incomprehensible” when viewed through the lens of existing architectural models. Rather than attempting to recuperate the monumental landmark, Banham tried to understand this new type of city with the help of the concept of “ecology,” an interrelationship of geography, climate, economics, demography, and mechanics and culture. 58 Isozaki’s idea of “invisible city,” which had been influenced by both traditional Japanese cites and views of a futuristic American city, developed into a new semiotic model of a cybernetic city in his 1966 essay entitled “Invisible City” (Mienai toshi). Environment as Expanded Field of Architecture In his 1966 essay entitled “Invisible City,” Isozaki attempted to conceptualize a new concept of city and architecture. 59 From a historical perspective, he articulated four stages of urban development as follows: 1) The substantial stage, which saw urban design as a physical decoration of cities, as seen in Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. 2) The functional stage, which developed from the Athens’ Chart of CIAM based on mechanic division of space according to functional zones. 3) The structural stage, which was based on a mechanical analogy between architecture and living organisms as seen in Tange’s Tokyo Plan 1960 and Metabolism’s future city. 4) The semiotic or symbolic stage, which evolved from electronic communications and control systems. 60 58 Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (London: Pelican, 1971), 24. 59 Isozaki Arata, “Mienai toshi” [Invisible City][1966], in K ūkan-e, 400. 60 Ibid., 196. 136 The semiotic or symbolic stage, which incorporated invisible elements of movement and interaction happening outside of physical buildings, was enabled by the development of new information and communications technology. In the 1960s, new post-industrial technology including Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics stimulated a growing interest in invisible electronic networks within the architectural discipline, a trend later labeled “network fever” by architectural historian Mark Wigley. 61 Isozaki’s presentation of the semiotic model was distinguished from both the mechanic model of the prewar CIAM which was based on the functional zoning system, and the structural model of Tange and the Metabolism, which was founded on the biological analogy of machine and organism. In fact, Tange was also quite interested in the influence of information and communications networks on the contemporary city. However, his emphasis was given to the creation of a hardware system that could control and manage the movement of information and communication. In his Tokaid ō Megalopolis project, Tange argued that Japan could only maintain its “organic life” by evolving into a single colossal city, using the linkup of physical, social, and information networks to form a “single central nervous system.” 62 The semiotic stage, or “invisible city,” however, suggests a paradigm shift from the generally accepted concept of a city as characterized by a certain tension governing physical urban compositions and spaces to a city as a virtual realm of cybernetics. This 61 Mark Wigley, “Network Fever,” Grey Room (Summer 2001): 81-122. 62 Ibid., 104. 137 paradigm shift is presented in Isozaki’s book Dissolution of Architecture (Kenchiku no kaitai), in which he examined the new architectural tendencies of the 1960s and early 1970s. 63 In this book, Isozaki wrote a series of essays about architects and architectural group, such as Hans Hollein, who called for a complete rebooting of architectural thinking and the elimination of disciplinary boundaries; Cedric Price, who replaced an immutable monumental structure with a cybernetic system; Archigram, which shifted its interest from a concrete hardware megastructure to a pure-serving software environment; Christopher Alexander, who mused about the potential role of the new media. By investigating these contemporary architects, Isozaki concluded that architecture was moving beyond its conventional boundaries, as defined by autonomous structures, into the expanded field of “environment,” which incorporated inter-media and cross-disciplinary practices. 64 The idea of environment as the dissolution of existing realms of architecture was particularly influenced by Hollein’s manifesto that “Everything is Architecture (1968).” Hollein claimed that “the limited categorical foundations and tradition-bound definitions of architecture and its means have on the whole lost their validity…A true architecture of our time… is emerging, and is both redefining itself as a medium and expanding its field.” 65 Hollein advocated expanding the realm of architecture into new territories including urban planning, information technology, space technology, mass-produced commodities, and contemporary art. 63 Isozaki Arata, Kenchiku no kaitai [The Dissolution of Architecture] (T ōky ō: Biijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1975). 64 Ibid., 316-334. 65 Hans Hollein, “Alles ist Architecture,” Bau 1/2, 1968: 1-32. 138 The phrase “expanded field” was coined by art historian Rosalind Krauss in her famed 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” 66 According to Krauss, the new sculpture of the late 1960s had been “kneaded and stretched and twisted” to the extent that it might “include just about anything” from video installation, to earthworks, to minimally material concepts, which were fundamentally different from the self- contained monolithic forms which had previously been recognized as sculpture. 67 Influenced by Krauss’s essay, architectural historian Anthony Vidler discussed an architectural counterpart of the “expanded field” by examining the combination between architecture and other disciplines such as landscape, biology, and computer programming. 68 The idea of environment as an expanded field of architecture was central to Isozaki’s participation in a multidisciplinary exhibition called From Space to Environment, held in 1966 at the Matsuya Department Store and the S ōgetsu Art Center. 69 (Fig. 34) This exhibition, a precursor to the intermedia art which flourished at Expo’70, was organized by an avant-garde artist group called Kany ō kai (Environment Society). This cross-disciplinary group had emerged slightly after the Anti-Art boom of the early 1960s, and consisted of thirty eight artists including Isozaki, Metabolist 66 Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” (1979), reprinted in Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster (London: Pluto Press, 1985), 31-42. 67 Ibid., 31. 68 Anthony Vidler, “Architecture’s Expanded Field” in Architecture Between Spectacle and Use, edited by Anthony Vidler (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 143-154. 69 For more on this exhibition, see Midori Yoshimoto, “From Space to Environment: The Origin of Kanky ō and the Emergence of Intermedia Art in Japan,” Art Journal (Fall 2008): 25-45. 139 designer Awazu Kiyoshi, artist Miyawaki Aiko (who later became Isozaki’s wife), critics T ōno Yoshiaki and Takiguchi Sh ūz ō, who were both associated with the Anti- Art movement. The accompanying catalogue for this exhibition presented the concept of an environment as follows: We are conscious of the concept of ENVIRONMENT, which has become adapted and used in the new field of urban design and recent art, ENVIRONMENT DESIGN, which considers the city as a subject called ENVIRONMENT, where everything is organically and dynamically related rather than as an entity composed of fixed parts such as architecture, space, function, and form. 70 The concept of “ENVIRONMENT” denotes a more dynamic and inseparable relationship between a person and her surroundings than a “space.” Isozaki joined T ōno, who had first coined the term “Anti-Art,” for a discussion about the theme of the show, which was published in a special issue of Bijutsu techō. 71 Isozaki claimed that this multi-media exhibition offered an innovative model for the contemporary city as a “virtual environment,” which included various immaterial elements such as light, color, sound, and dynamic interaction with viewers. 72 As an architect-participant and curator of this multi-disciplinary exhibition, Isozaki presented a relief model of the Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank (1966-1968), one of his few built projects during the 1960s. The submitted work, nearly two meters in 70 Kany ō kai, “K ūkan kara kanky ō e ten shushi” [The Concept of the Exhibition From Space to Environment], Bijutsu tech ō, no. 275(November 1966): 118. 71 T ōno Yoshiaki and Isozaki Arata, “Kanky ō ni tsuite” [About Environment], Bijutsu tech ō, no. 275 (November 1966): 91-105. 72 Ibid., 105. 140 height, was a 1:20 model of the bank. (Fig. 35) This white sculptural relief was cleaved in the center by a slot that emanated black light and was crossed on both sides by white beams at forty-five degrees to the slot. From the base of the slot, five branches jutted out and crossed the beam. Isozaki’s model, viewed from below, was hung on the gallery wall like a painting. The Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank is a good example to show how Isozaki’s interest in multi-media environment was incorporated in his architectural design. (Fig. 36) T ōno’s description of this building merits quotes in some details: Certainly, his bank is a place where girls in miniskirts might energetically dance about, a place cheerful, active, and moreover sporty. One can give any number of derivations for the actual details. The disposition of all lines is by the √2 isometric projection system; there are no squares, rectangles. Where line meets line, plane meets plane, like a fencer’s epees, they meet in a supple, agile way, so that the entire space is lively. Two exterior wall are almost all glass; through them the winter sun softly enters, and at night, when employees work overtime, light shines out into the night…lined up before the counter are sensual visitors’ chairs covered in cobalt blue plush. The cobalt blue, together with the red, pink, yellow, and green of the lobby furniture are like the crash of cymbals. On the toilet doors (blue for men, pink for women) is a large pattern based on Marilyn Monroe’s curves, and because of the positioning of mirrors just inside, reflected images are endlessly multiplied. 73 According to T ōno’s impression, various elements such as color, light, and movement collectively consist of the ambience of space. Among them, the bold use of vivid color in both interior and exterior of the building played a crucial role in creating a lively and dynamic environment. Architectural historian Philip Drew has pointed out the unprecedented importance attached to color in the Ōita bank, which marked the 73 T ōno Yoshiaki, “Architecture for the Miniskirt Age,” Japan Architect (May 1968): 34. 141 beginning of a new formalism in Isozaki’s work. 74 For Drew, color served as a form of decoration at a time when decoration was still suspect, and as such, anticipated the appearance of Supergraphics. He continued that color saturated-walls intensified the texture of in situ concrete and differentiated individual spaces. 75 Another important piece of information that T ōno’s review provides is that Isozaki adopted his own decorative pattern called the Marilyn Monroe curve in the interior decoration of the building. (Fig. 37) The Marilyn Monroe curve is a pattern created by cutting out the picture of the actress from a pin-up photo in which she appears in the nude. Isozaki used this pattern for various occasions, such as the computer faced “lettrism” imposed on the entire faced of the Tokyo branch of the Fukuoka Bank of the mid-1960s, the “neon-letter” trademark of his own office, and his furniture design called Marilyn Monroe chair (1972). The Marilyn Monroe curve illustrates his interests in contemporary art practices as well as American popular culture. As Kenneth Frampton has pointed out, the Marilyn Monroe curve linked to the iconography of Pop Art, above all to Andy Warhol’s silkscreen series using Monroe’s face. 76 Furthermore, Isozaki recollected with some enthusiasm that during the 1960s he was extensively exposed to the international art trends ranging from Jackson Pollock’s Action Painting to Jasper 74 Philip Drew, The Architecture of Arata Isozaki (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1982), 57. 75 Ibid. 76 Kenneth Frampton, “Post-Metabolism and the Dissolution of Architecture: Amplication and Neutrality, 1960-1975,” in GA Architect: Arata Isozaki: 1959-1978, edited by Isozaki Arata and Futagawa Yukio (Tokyo: A.D.A., 1991), 103. 142 Johns and Robert Rauschenberg’s Neo-Dada, Andy Warhol’s Pop Art, Minimalism’s Primary Structure exhibition, Happening and Fluxus. 77 Anti-Monument: Remembering Hiroshima I have discussed the concept of invisible city in terms of a fluid cybernetic environment. Such a radical departure from conventional notion of architecture as fixed built-objects corresponds to Anti-Art’s challenge to the disciplinary limit of art and its lore. However, the influence of Anti-Art was not limited to the aesthetic rebellion against the disciplinary boundary. More importantly, Isozaki shared the Anti-Art movement’s political opposition to historical amnesia of the wartime past that was prevalent in postwar Japanese society. In this sense, the essence of invisible city, for Isozaki, is a “space of darkness.” In his 1964 essay entitled “Space of Darkness” (Yami no k ūkan), Isozaki has identified several sources of his notion of darkness. 78 The first source was Tanizaki Jun’ichir ō’s classic essay In Praise of Shadow in which prize-winning writer Tanizaki expressed his admiration of dark aesthetics of Japanese architectural space which has been destroyed by electric illumination of the West. Secondly, Isozaki recalled his personal experience of a dark space in which “an unknown death and indefinable shape swallowing up and 77 Arata Isozaki interviewed with Hino Naohiko, “Kenchiku no kaitai e” [Towards the Dissolution of Architecture], 10+1, no. 49 (2007): 190-191. 78 Isozaki Arata, “Yami no k ūkan” [Space of Darkness], Kenchiku Bunka (May 1964), reprinted in Ku-kan e, 146-164. 143 dissolving all imaginings” during a long hospitalization around 1960. 79 However, for Isozaki, the nature of darkness goes beyond the aesthetic and perceptional level to the core of the traumatic moment of Japanese history. The architect remarked, in retrospect, that he sensed “infinite darkness” which lay behind the blue sky on the historic day of Japan’s surrender in August 1945. 80 In postwar Japanese society, the notion of invisibility tended to denote rhetorically and phenomenologically the destruction of visual order caused by the nuclear blast. In his book Atomic Light, film scholar Akira Mazuta Lippit explores an inextricable relationship between the catastrophic light of 1945 and the issue of in/visibility in postwar visual culture. 81 In particular, Lippit analyzes several films featuring an “invisible man” emerging in the early postwar era, Japanese versions of The Invisible Man, as a powerful metaphor for addressing the condition of visuality in the aftermath of World War II. 82 The invisibility of a city, for Isozaki, has its historical origins in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which Lippit describes as “two views of invisibility unfolded under the brilliant force of the atomic blasts.” 83 Interestingly enough, in the aforementioned essay “Invisible City,” Isozaki paired the flat and horizontal cityscape of Los Angeles with the burnt-out Japanese cities after the war and Hiroshima, in particular, in which “everything 79 Ibid., 157-158. 80 Isozaki, The Island Aesthetic: Polemics, 28. 81 Akira Mizuta Lippit, Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2005). 82 Ibid., 82-92. 83 Ibid., 95. 144 that he has considered enduring and immutable in architecture was obliterated” and “reduced to networks of roads lined with flat piece of ground covered with the ashes and rubble of the building that had once stood there.” 84 Isozaki’s idea of invisible city led to an architectural engagement with Japan’s traumatic history of nuclear calamity. In 1968, for the fourteenth Milan Triennial, Isozaki addressed the bombed city of Hiroshima in his installation project, the Electric Labyrinth. The Milan Triennial, planned by architect Giancarlo De Carlo, featured Isozaki in company with his contemporary experimental architects, such as Archigram, Saul Bass, Georges Candilis, Aldo van Eyck, Gyrogy Kepes, George Nelson, Peter and Allison Smithson, and Shadrach Woods. Ironically, although, Isozaki sympathized with the leftist revolutionary politics prevalent in 1968, his work was taken over by radical students, who considered the Triennial to be an elite art establishment, and torn it down before it ever opened to the public. The Electric Labyrinth consisted of two parts: a multi-media panel installation and a panoramic photo collage of a ruined future city known as “Hiroshima Blast Site: Electric City.” 85 (Fig. 38) This photograph featured two futuristic megastructures, partly in decay, superimposed on the devastated cityscape of Hiroshima. These gigantic megastrucures, with exposed metallic skeletons, are treated as massive scrap, reminiscent of the junk-based objects of Anti-Art. On top of this photograph, Isozaki projected successive slides of futuristic buildings. Each utopian scheme appears as merely one in a 84 Isozaki, “Mienai toshi,” in K ūkan-e, 392-394. 85 This drawing also appeared under various English titles, such as Death of the Future City and Re-ruined Hiroshima. 145 series of projects which will be inevitably overthrown, demonstrating the fragile, transient nature of the future city. The idea of a ruined future comes from his 1962 image, “Incubation Process,” in which he juxtaposed an ultramodern megastructure with ancient Greek ruins. In the Electric Labyrinth, however, Isozaki pinpoints the historical origin of his ruins by replacing the decaying ancient temple with the decimated Japanese city. In another part of the Electric Labyrinth, Isozaki presented a multi-media installation in collaboration with designer Sugiura K ōhei, composer Ichiyanagi Toshi, and photographer T ōmatsu Sh ōmei. 86 (fig. 39) Isozaki and Sugiura installed a maze of twelve revolving mirrors made of a curved and reflective aluminum panel on which numerous images of death and destruction were silk-screened. Some of the images depicted figures of demons and ghosts from the Edo period (1603-1867), whereas others showed T ōmatsu’s photographic representations of nuclear victims. Composer Ichiyanagi created eerie sound effects to create an ominous ambience within the exhibition space. This project involved the physical presence of the body, through the combined effect of distortion and motion by mirrors, sound, light, and projection. Because these revolving mirrors were motion-triggered, viewers were immediately confronted by ghosts or dead bodies when they entered the maze. In a Kenchiku bunka review of August 1968, the Electric Labyrinth was described as a “fantastic mandala, an illusion-evoking space created by the odd combination of eccentric sound, abnormal color, and revolving 86 Isozaki had already collaborated with Sugiura and Ichiyanagi at the aforementioned interdisciplinary conference called “Anti-Art, Yes or No?” Also, Isozaki was acquainted with T ōmatsu who had been associated with the Metabolist group in the early 1960s. 146 movement.” 87 Characterized by audience participation and the use of multi-media, the Electric Labyrinth can be viewed as a direct descendent of a 1966 total art exhibition called From Space to Environment. The Electric Labyrinth was a rare representation of nuclear trauma in postwar Japanese architecture. Surprisingly, although Japan is the only country to suffer an atomic bomb strike, very few architectural projects have addressed the traumatic history of the nuclear blast. After the surrender, graphic images of causalities and the bomb’s devastation were strictly suppressed by the occupation forces. But even after the occupation was terminated in 1952, the wretched events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rarely visualized in a concrete and vivid way. 88 The mid-1960s was a time when traces of the war returned to public view, a phenomenon evident in the increasing inventory of wartime photographs and war-based literature. The U.S. war in Vietnam was one of the most significant triggers. As the Japanese witnessed the cruelty and destruction of U.S. military in their daily newspapers and televised reports, they were forced to reflect on their own nation’s former roles as continental aggressor and nuclear victim. Left-wing intellectuals strategically recalled Japan’s war-related misery not only to oppose the U.S. violence in Vietnam, but also to expose the potential violence immanent in a seemingly peaceful postwar Japanese society which relied on the protection of the U.S. nuclear 87 Ky ōk ō Yamaguchi, “Heisa sareta 14 kai mirano torienare” [The 14 th Milan Triennial was cancelled], Kenchiku bunka (August, 1968). 88 For U.S. censorship on the visual representations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see Laura Hein and Mark Selden, “Commemoration and Silence: Fifty Years of Remembering the Bomb in America and Japan,” in Living With the Bomb, eds., Laura Hein and Mark Selden (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 24-31; John W. Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory,” in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed., Micheal J. Hogan (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 128-134. 147 umbrella. 89 Isozaki, who was aligned with the radical politics of left-wing intellectuals and the avant-garde artists of the 1960s, attempted to criticize the conservative’s optimism about the possibility of an ever-growing economy and the illusion of eternal peace by presenting Japan as an anxious space haunted by the recurring memories of nuclear trauma. Isozaki’s presentation of ruined future in the Electric Labyrinth, according to architectural historian Igarashi Tar ō, can be read as a mockery of Japan’s national myth of economic miracle and deceptive peace. 90 The Electric Labyrinth clearly stands out within the genealogy of architectural practices related to the atomic bomb trauma in postwar Japan. In comparison with other branches of the visual arts, Japanese architects were particularly reluctant to address the issue of the atomic bomb. Before Isozaki, Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (1949-1954) and Shirai Sei’ichi’s Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple (1955) represented two competing approaches to commemorate the traumatic historical event. 91 While Tange was commonly regarded as the state architect of postwar Japan, Shirai was a rather isolated figure who distanced himself from public projects. Though Shirai was hardly known outside Japan, within a domestic context he was considered to be a rival of Tange. In the 1950s, a debate over tradition arose, with Shirai’s architecture representing the J ōmon side and Tange’s the Yayoi side. Yatsuka has clarified that, “While Shirai was 89 For a discussion of the relationship between wartime memories and postwar politics, see Oguma Eiji, “Minchu” to “aikoku”: sengo nihon no nashonarizumu to k ōky ōsei [Democracy and Patriotism: Postwar Nationalism and the Public Interest] (T ōky ō: Shiny ōsha, 2002). 90 Igarashi Tar ō, Sens ō to kenchiku [War and Architecture] (T ōky ō: Shobonsha, 2003), 158. 91 For a discussion of Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, see the first chapter of this dissertation. 148 searching for the now forgotten sublime passion of people in J ōmon, Tange insisted on a dialectical synthesis of both, thus, in reality, rejecting the chaotic nature of the J ōmon culture and representing only the side of Yayoi tradition.” 92 Although Isozaki was trained under Tange’s guidance, he was also influenced by Shirai’s work and thought, becoming interested in Shirai’s predilection for sublime aesthetic of J ōmon, as well as his symbolic and spiritual inclinations. 93 Isozaki’s Electric Labyrinth follows the lineage of Shirai’s mnemonic memorial rather than Tange’s amnesic monument. In April 1955, Shirai published his unrealized scheme titled Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple in Shinkenchiku as a criticism of Tange’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, which had recently been completed. 94 (Fig. 40) The English title of Shirai’s project—Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple— highlights the horror of violent death which is hidden in Tange’s Hiroshima project. Shirai’s self- commissioned project was conceived under wholly different circumstances than Tange’s public project for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. While Tange initiated his project during the Occupation era when representations of the nuclear damage were strictly controlled by U.S. officials, Shirai proposed his Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple after the termination of the Occupation when Japanese society began to reexamine the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Shirai initiated his project in 1954, widespread anti- 92 Yatsuka, “Architecture in the Urban Desert: A Critical Introduction to Japanese Architecture after Modernism,” 6. 93 Isozaki Arata and Shirai Sei’ichi, “Taiwa” [A Dialogue], in Shirai Sei’ichi kenky ū 1[Shirai Sei’ichi Study 1] (T ōky ō: Nanyud ō shuppansha, 1978), 74-114. 94 “Genbaku d ō” [The Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple], Shinkenchiku (April, 1955): 36-44. 149 nuclear and anti-U.S. sentiment was roused by the U.S. army’s hydrogen-bomb test on the Bikini Atoll, which claimed the lives of several Japanese fishermen due to radiation sickness. Shirai’s scheme was to provide a permanent gallery space for a series of “Atomic Bomb Paintings” drawn by the husband-and-wife painters Maruki Iri and Akamatsu Toshiko, who were well known for their graphic rendering of atomic bomb miseries. Without considering specific sites and concrete plans for construction, Shirai located the “Atomic Catastrophe Bomb Temple” in the middle of nowhere, an imaginary wilderness reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic world or ancient ruins. After walking through the round courtyard, visitors are guided through the entrance hall and then led to an underground tunnel below a pond which is connected to the main gallery building. As critic Isamu Kurita has pointed out, the route from the dark underground passage to the dimly lit gallery space symbolizes a redemptive pilgrimage from death to regeneration. 95 The architectural vocabulary utilized in Shirai’s virtual project contrasts sharply with that of Tange’s on-site public monument. While Tange’s project exclusively draws on international modernism, Shirai adopted various design elements from different cultures and periods. In Shirai’s design, the entrance hall features Greek-style columns, containing neither capitals nor bases, while the main gallery simultaneously recalls a futuristic spacecraft and a primordial Egyptian tomb. The shape of the main gallery structure, in which a black granite cylinder penetrates a white cube, is reminiscent of the 95 Isamu Kurita, “Genbakud ō keikaku” [Atomic Bomb Temple Plan], Gendai nihon kenchikuka zensh ū 9 (T ōky ō: San’ichi shobo, 1970), 20-21. 150 mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. Moreover, unlike the open vista and progressive layout of Tange’s park, Shirai’s design adopts an enclosed structure which defies a spectacular visibility, as the main gallery is screened by the entrance hall, and thus not visible from the outside. In this sense, the layout of Shirai’s project harbors allusions to the seventh- century temple of H ōryūji, in which a corridor obstructs the view of the main hall. 96 More importantly, what distinguishes Shirai’s design from Tange’s is the presence of underground space. Shirai incorporates an underground passage in which visitors lose their sight until they arrive at a dimly lit ground floor. The dark underground space has often been associated with death. More precisely, the subterranean tunnel in Shirai’s design refers to the air-raid shelters that were constructed during the war to escape from indiscriminate bombing. Art historian Bert Winther-Tamaki observes the similarity between Shirai’s “Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple” and Isamu Noguchi’s unrealized cenotaph proposal for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, as they both feature subterranean mourning zones. 97 Just as Shirai’s “Atomic Catastrophe Bomb Temple” adopts various design elements from different cultures and periods, so Isozaki’s Electric Labyrinth embraces diverse motifs from various spatial and temporal origins, such as prints from the Edo period, futuristic megastructures, and photographs of nuclear ruins. Also, like Shirai’s design which defies a spectacular visibility by enclosing structure and adopting an 96 “Genbaku d ō,” 41. 97 Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 121-130. 151 underground space, the Electric Labyrinth refuses easy visibility, with its maze-like panel installation preventing viewers from grasping the exhibition in a comprehensive way. The Electric Labyrinth forces viewers to sense the fragments of the work in a dark space, relying on their phenomenological bodies rather than their vision. However, Isozaki’s project is distinguished from both Tange’s celebratory monument and Shirai’s redemptive memorial insofar as Isozaki’s work does not rely on a constructive narrative of postwar Japan, either as heroic or victimized. On the contrary, Isozaki refuses to impose any fixed account of the traumatic history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this sense, the Electric Labyrinth can be interpreted as what historian James E. Young has termed a “counter-monument,” a memorial space conceived to challenge the very premise of the monument. 98 Monuments have long sought to provide a naturalizing locus for memory, in which a state’s triumphant events, ideals and founding myths are cast as being as naturally true as the landscape in which they stand. In his research on contemporary holocaust memorials, Young has pointed out the metamorphosis of the monument from the “heroic, self-aggrandizing figurative icons of the late nineteenth century celebrating national ideals and triumphs, to the antiheroic, often ironic and self-effacing conceptual installations that mark the national ambivalence and uncertainty of the late twentieth century postmodernism.” 99 The emergence of counter-monuments is an outgrowth of this 98 James E. Young, At Memory’ s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 96. 99 Ibid., 93. 152 transformation of the role of monuments. According to Y oung, counter-monuments tend to reject the traditional forms of everlasting permanence which embody any singular national narrative and value. Instead, they return the burden of memories to viewers by embracing their participation in producing multiple interpretations. 100 The concept of counter-monuments penetrates Isozaki’s anti-architectural rebellion, which was influenced by Anti-Art practices. His opposition to monuments can be read as an extension of his ongoing challenge to the conventional notion of architecture as a permanent and fixed structure imposed by a single designer. More importantly, counter-monuments raise a fundamental question of the discipline’s association with the state power, which is an underlying assumption of existing monuments. Isozaki’s questioning leads to the criticism of the technocratic position which was assumed by the architectural hegemony of postwar Japan. In his obituary essay for Tange Kenz ō, introduced in the beginning of this dissertation, Isozaki critically defines Tange as the “national architect” in that Tange “forged an exceptionally intimate relationship with Japan as a modern nation.” 101 Tange emerged as the national architect not only because of his active engagement in public projects of national scope, but also due to his contribution to the making of official narrative of postwar Japan, that of a linear progress from destruction to economic growth based on historical amnesia. Isozaki’s anti-architectural rebellion, inspired by the radical antagonism of the Anti-Art, has dual implications. First, he articulated an alternative 100 Ibid., 96. Isozaki, “Requiem for the Real Tange Kenz ō,” 56. 153 identity as an “artist-architect,” whose ambivalent position is distinct from the technocratic conviction of the “national architect.” Second, by invoking the lingering memories of the war and nuclear calamity, the loss of Japan’s autonomy to the U.S. army, and postwar ruins, Isozaki counters the celebratory official narrative which was advocated by the technocratic architects. Despite his oppositional politics, Isozaki participated in the public project of Expo’70. Expo’70 represented the climax of postwar optimism toward economic growth and technological development, sentiment which Isozaki had previously sought to oppose. While his contemporary radical artists joined the anti-Expo movements, Isozaki joined in this national spectacle and collaborated with Tange on the design of the Festival Plaza. Although Isozaki publicly criticized this state-driven spectacle and eagerly expressed his uneasy relation with it soon afterward, his design of the Festival Plaza co-opted the narrative of progress which was being championed by government and corporations alike. Isozaki’s predicament at Expo’70 epitomizes his ambiguous dual identity as technocrat- architect and avant-garde artist. 154 Fig. 26 : Isozaki Arata, “Shinjuku Project,” drawing, 1960-1961. 155 Fig. 27 : Isozaki Arata, “City in the Air,” model, 1960-1962. 156 Fig. 28 : Isozaki Arata, final page of the “Incubation Process,” photomontage, 1962. 157 Fig. 29 : Isozaki Arata, White House, exterior and interior view, 1957. 158 Fig. 30 : Yomiuri Independent, exhibition view, 1962. 159 Fig. 31 : Hi Red Center, Cleaning Event, 1964. 160 Fig. 32 : Isozaki Arata, “Incubation Process,” photomontage, from Bijutsu tech ō (April 1962): 45-50. 161 Fig. 33 : Isozaki Arata, Incubation Process—Joint Core System, multi-media installation, 1962 (re-enacted at the 1997 exhibition The Summer of Japan 1960-64). 162 Fig. 34 : Kanky ō kai, From Space to Environment, exhibition view, 1966. 163 Fig. 35 : Isozaki Arata, Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank, model, displayed at the 1966 exhibition From Space to Environment, 1966. 164 Fig. 36 : Isozaki Arata, Ōita branch of Fukuoka City Bank, interior view, 1966-1968. 165 Fig. 37 : Isozaki Arata, Marilyn Monroe curve, 1966-1972. 166 Fig. 38 : Isozaki Arata, “Destruction of the Future City,” from Electric Labyrinth, photomontage, 1968. 167 Fig. 39 : Isozaki Arata, Electric Labyrinth, multi-media installation, 1968. 168 Fig. 40 : Shirai Sei’ichi, “Atomic Bomb Catastrophe Temple,” drawing, 1955. 169 Chapter 3: Metabolism, Cold War Architecture In May 1960, the Metabolist group made a stunning debut at the World Design Conference held in Tokyo, the first international cultural event held in the country after the war. At the conference, which some two hundred fifty designers and architects from twenty-seven countries attended, a group of young Japanese architects presented a bilingual manifesto titled Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism. 1 This eighty-nine page booklet included designs and texts on future cities, authored by the group’s members such as architects Kikutake Kiyonori, Kurokawa Kish ō, Maki Fumihiko, Ōtaka Masato, and architectural critic Kawazoe Noboru. Established under the leadership of architect Asada Takashi and Kawazoe Noboru, Metabolism was a loosely-organized group of architects, designers, and critics. Using the biological term “metabolism” (shinjintaisha), which evoked growth and change in living organisms, the Metabolists proposed the idea of flexibility and renewability in architecture and urban design as a reaction against rigid rationalism. Metabolism, however, was far from a homogeneous group; it was a collective of diverse and even contradictory voices in terms of the members’ design approach and political orientation. One of the goals of this chapter is to articulate the diversity and contradictions among the members. Nevertheless, I would retain the concept of “Metabolist group” as a meaningful entity because the members consciously identified 1 Kawazoe Noboru, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1960). 170 themselves as the Metabolists and collectively proposed an alternative model of city and architecture under the banner of “Metabolism.” The members shared a sense of crisis over the contemporary city and developed the idea of “vitality,” although their urban proposals were far from the same. Moreover, beyond their one-time collaboration at the World Design Conference, they worked with each other on several other occasions, including Expo’70. Most recently, they got together and published the book titled Metabolism and Metabolists in 2005. 2 After the publication of the manifesto, their futuristic proposals received immediate attention from the international architectural community. In September 1960, Arthur Drexler, director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), included Kikutake’s “Marine City and Kurokawa’s “Agricultural City” in MoMA’s Visionary Architecture exhibition. 3 This exhibition, in which the Metabolists’ projects were displayed along with drawings and models by world-renowned architects such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis Kahn, marked the acceptance of these Japanese architects within the international art and architectural world. Drexler described the exhibited work as ideal projects that were “unhampered by technological details and uncompromised by the whim of patrons, or the exigencies of finance, politics, and custom.” 4 For him, these visionary projects provided architects with 2 Kawazoe Noboru and Ōtaka Masato eds., Metaborizumu to metaborisuto tachi [Metabolism and Metabolists] (T ōky ō: Bijutsu Shuppansha), 3 For MoMA’s Visionary Architecture exhibition held from September 29 to December 4, 1960, see Museum of Modern Art Archive, “Visionary Architecture,” no. 108B; Arthur Drexler, “Visionary Architecture-Museum of Modern Art,” Arts and Architecture (January 1961): 10-14, 28. 4 Ibid., 11 171 the sole chance to create the world as they know it ought to be. 5 After the MoMA exhibition, the Metabolist projects became quickly associated with technological optimism and utopian rhetoric prevalent in architecture and urbanism in the 1960s. However, Metabolists’ futuristic schemes—cities erected on the sea or spiraling into the sky—did not simply fit into the unified category of utopian architecture, the usual account of their futurist projects. Rather, their proposals for future cities were saturated with the shadow of the war and the ongoing nuclear anxiety. If technological optimism and utopian vision constitute one chapter of Metabolist design, fear and anxiety over an impending catastrophe also form a crucial part of Metabolism’s program. In this chapter, I would like to characterize Metabolism as Cold War architecture which can be best illustrated in terms of the dual visions of “dream world” and “catastrophe.” To this end, this chapter first excavates the hidden role of Asada Takashi as an inspirer cum promoter of Metabolism. Overlooked by the dominant historiography, Asada’s career and his architectural projects constitute an alternative genealogy by which to see the ambiguity of what I call the “post-apocalypse” that the Metabolists developed in their architectural designs and theories. This chapter is devoted to examining Metabolism’s under-recognized anxiety over a catastrophic end by reinterpreting their 1960 manifesto. The final section of this chapter discusses the capsule, a signature design of Metabolism, with an emphasis on its dual concern of utopian promise and apocalyptic anxiety. Metabolism has long been understood within an international context of utopian architecture. One of the most influential presentations of Metabolism is Reyner Banham’s 5 Ibid. 172 Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past, published in 1976. 6 In this book, Banham characterized Metabolism as an Asian branch of the Western megastructure movement by emphasizing their shared interest in mega-scale infrastructure and advanced technology. Despite his crediting the Metabolist Maki Fumihiko for coining the term “megastructure,” however, Banham assigned only a marginal role to Metabolism in the context of the global megastructure movement. For him, Metabolism soon lost its initial vitality and became a derivative of its European counterparts. Following Banham’s framework, the vast majority of research tends to examine Metabolism in terms of the Western tradition of visionary avant-garde architecture by situating Metabolist design in tandem with the work of its European counterparts such as British Archigram and French Spatial Urbanism. 7 Such an emphasis on the “international contemporaneity” of the Metabolist movement, however, runs the risk of overlooking the specific postwar conditions that the group’s work responded to. Recently, scholars attempted to contextualize the Metabolist project within Japan’s domestic context. In the first monograph on Metabolism written in Japanese in 1997, Yatsuka Hajime and Yoshimatsu Hideki examined the emergence of Metabolism as a solution to the explosive growth of Japanese cities in the wake of the 6 Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past, 45-57. 7 This scholarship includes Robin Boyd, New Directions in Japanese Architecture (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 16-25; George R. Collins, Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning: 20 th Century through the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1979), 48-61; Sarah Deyong, “Memories of the Urban Future: Rise and Fall of the Megastructure,” in The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from Howard Gilman Collection, ed. Terence Riley (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002); Sabrina Ley and Markus Richter eds., Megastructure Reloaded: Visionary Architecture and Urban Design of the Sixties Reflected by Contemporary Artists (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz publishers, 2008). 173 postwar recovery and economic growth. 8 Following their foundational study, Zhongjie Lin also traced the evolution of the Metabolist movement from its inception at the World Design Conference in 1960 to its “spectacular swansong” at Expo’70 in conjunction with Japan’s changing social and urban landscape. 9 If the above-mentioned studies viewed Metabolist design as the architects’ response to the physical urban changes and problems, Cherie Wendelken tried to consider them in conjunction with the society’s psychological and cultural crisis in the postwar era. In her 2000 essay, Wendelken has claimed that the spirit of Metabolism was rooted in concerns far-removed from technological optimism over new possibilities; rather, she argues, it was “a form of cultural nihilism that developed out of the trauma of defeat in war followed by occupation.” 10 For Wendelken, Metabolism was as much a part of a broader cultural and intellectual program to formulate a new identity for postwar Japan as it was an architectural movement. Metabolism in this regard grappled with constructing “meanings out of the erasure of memory and the loss of identity” by coming to terms with the recurring trauma of wartime destruction and ruin. 11 My study is built on Wendelken’s revisionist account of Metabolism as an architectural response to Japan’s traumatic history. 12 Viewing Metabolism as a belated dialogue with the wartime past permits a new understanding of Metabolism’s visionary 8 Yatsuka and Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu: 1960 nendai nihon no kenchiku avuangiyarudo. 9 Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan. 10 Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” 281. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 174 schemes through the lens of memory and trauma studies. However, her overemphasis on the original moment of trauma prevents her from looking at the complex dynamics of war narratives in postwar Japanese society. The meaning and impact of trauma were not static but changing against Japan’s historical background, which was intrinsically tied to the international Cold War context. 13 The changing geopolitics of the Cold War had specific significance in postwar Japanese society, which underwent the Allied Occupation, nationwide anti-nuclear movements, and the anti-Anpo protests. Rather than being insulated from the larger context of the Cold War condition, Japan was assigned a strategic role as the U.S.’s military base against Communism in the Far East and strove for reconstruction and economic growth under the U.S.’s nuclear umbrella. 14 Under these circumstances, memories and narratives of war were significantly influenced by the relationship between Japan and the U.S., the former adversaries. It is hoped that my study will fill the gap in Wendelken’s argument by incorporating the continuing Cold War tension which shaped Japan’s socio-political complexity as it evolved from 1945 to the 1960s. According to David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, who curated a groundbreaking exhibition on the Cold War culture held in Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008, “Nothing could be more polarized than the visions of ‘dream world’ and ‘catastrophe’ 13 For discussion of war narrative in postwar Japan, see Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970. 14 For the relationship between Japanese culture and Cold War discourse, see Ann Sherif, Japan’s Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (New York: Columbia Press, 2009). 175 which structured Cold War modernity.” 15 The dual sensibility of peril and promise in the Cold War era provides a useful tool to investigate Metabolism within Japan’s postwar condition, which looked forward with anticipation to postwar reconstruction and prosperity while at the same time witnessing recurring memories of the tragic past. Delivering the opening address at the 1960 World Design Conference, the very site at which the Metabolists presented their manifesto, Maekawa Kunio, then president of the Japanese Architects Association and a committee member of the Conference Preparation Bureau, expressed his dual attitude toward the future: The good old memories of humanity as it existed at the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century were driven out by the First World War and the slightest remaining hope in this mechanical age was wiped out by the Second World War. Fourteen years since then, we are now facing the fatal moment when we have to choose between pleasant travel to space or space war. 16 Maekawa was keenly aware of the fatal specificity of the postwar years, in which humankind stood at the crossroads of space age utopia and space war apocalypse. The skepticism toward a purportedly bright future that he expressed in the comment above stems not only from the historical lessons provided by the debilitating experience of two world wars, but also from the current geopolitical situation, which prevented humankind from maintaining its optimism about modern technology. If the technological innovation and economic growth of the postwar years generated a utopian hope, the nuclear arms 15 David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 (London: V & A Publishing, 2008), 14. 16 Maekawa Kunio, “To Brilliant Success and Beautiful Friendship,” in Daily Report, World Design Conference in Japan no.1, 4. 176 race and space-age rivalry between the two superpowers spawned the fear of the catastrophic death of human civilization. The coexistence of anticipation of a promising future and nuclear anxiety operated in Japanese architectural discourse at the time. The debate over the safety of glass as a building material occurring in 1955 and 1956 can be viewed as one of the most telling examples of the architectural embodiment of Cold War dualism. This debate, which was then called the “anxiety debate” (fuankan rons ō), took place between construction engineer Takeyama Kenzaburo and architectural critic Hamaguchi Ry ūichi. Takeyama criticized the pervasive use of glass for its fragility in case of earthquakes, typhoons, or nuclear blasts. 17 In contrast, Hagamuchi defended the aesthetic value of glass on building surfaces against the current trend toward fortification in architecture. For him, the sensibility of light openness and uneasy fragility of glass encapsulated the essence of freedom and ephemerality in contemporary society. 18 This dualistic approach to glass was of course not unique to Japan; indeed, it was one of most oft-cited themes in U.S. architectural discourse in the early and mid-1950s. Despite the warning of U.S. civil defense planners that “Glass is one of the greatest sources of danger,” International Style glass façade buildings were widely celebrated as a 17 The safety concern over glass can also be traced back to the wartime concern for civil defense. In his 1942 essay “Design, Plan, and Defense,” Hoshino Sh ōichi, then a design professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo, noted that glass was hard to camouflage and when broken, its pieces would cause severe damage. Hoshino Sh ōichi, “Ish ō, keikaku to b ōky ō” [Design, Plan, and Defense], Kenchiku zasshi (December1942): 927. 18 Asahi shimbun, December 12, 1955. 177 symbol of postwar American prosperity and technological mastery. 19 Referring to the Lever House (1952), a representative glass façade building, historian and urban planner Lewis Mumford wrote, “Fragile, exquisite, undaunted by the threat of being melted into a puddle by an atomic bomb, this building is a laughing refutation of ‘imperialist warmongering’ and so it becomes an implicit symbol of hope for a peaceful world.” 20 He meant that precarious looking glass building ironically represented the faith in peace and prosperity in that it stood in opposition to fear instigated by warmongers. Thus, glass demonstrated Cold War dualism—a hope for postwar social and technological progress coupled with the fear of destruction. The Cold War framework allows us to examine Metabolism not only as an outcome of Japan’s specific war loss and nuclear trauma but also as a part of a larger global context. Indeed, considering the Cold War as an integral element of the international megastructure helps us to revise the Banham-like approach of megastructure design as a purely utopian design associated with optimism about technology and the future. The following sections explore the Metabolists’ designs and texts through the lens of Cold War dualism. 19 Progressive Architecture (September 1951): 24. 20 Lewis Mumford, From the Ground Up (New York: Harcourt, 1956), 165. 178 Asada Takashi: Forgotten Genealogy of Metabolism Metabolism has been commonly understood as the Tange’s brainchild and the result of his techno-utopian project. In fact, around 1960, Tange achieved huge international acclaim for his adept combination of traditional Japanese motifs and updated modernist elements, and he wielded strong influence over young Japanese architects. Tange maintained a particularly close relationship with the key members of the Metabolist group; Kawazoe worked with Tange from the time of the tradition debate of the mid-1950s, while Kurokawa and Maki came directly from Tange’s laboratory at Tokyo University. Furthermore, it was Tange who first introduced the work of these young Metabolists to Western audiences. At the 1959 CIAM conference, he showed Kikutake’s Marine City as a new trend in Japanese architecture, along with his own projects for public buildings. In this regard, Yatsuka Hajime describes the Metabolists as “satellites circling the planet called Tange.” 21 Yatsuka’s remark highlights Tange’s crucial role as an inspirer cum promoter of the Metabolist group. However, Tange was never an official member of the group and he was not directly involved in Metabolism’s activities. Tange was initially involved in the World Design Conference as a committee member along with two other influential architects, Maekawa and Sakakura Junz ō. However, Tange left Japan to take a position at MIT as a visiting professor for six months in 1959. Architect and planner Asada Takashi, 21 Yatsuka and Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu: 1960 nendai nihon no kenchiku avuangiyarudo, 36-43. 179 then Tange’s junior associate, was appointed as executive director of the conference and played a crucial role in preparing for the conference in Tange’s absence. In 1958, as soon as Asada took the position of executive director of the World Design Conference, he solicited young architects and designers with the help of Kawazoe in order to showcase Japan’s architectural avant-garde at this 1960 conference. Asada invited the future Metabolists to the intellectual gatherings held in a Japanese-style inn, called Ryu ūgetsu ryokan (meaning willow and moon inn), in which diverse eminent figures from the arts and sciences gathered and shared their opinions on a variety of topics on human civilization, without disciplinary parochialism. Asada’s personal salon served as a cradle for this architectural movement, followed by Metabolism’s official debut at the World Design Conference in 1960. Interdisciplinary exchanges among the invited guests ranging from nuclear physicist Taketani Mitsuo to photographer T ōmatsu Sh ōmei stimulated the Metabolists to develop their own architectural concepts and design methodologies. For example, Kikutake’s three stages of “ka” (image)-“kata” (technique)- “katachi” (phenomenon) in design reflected a strong influence of Taketani’s physics theory of the three stages of matter—the stage of phenomenon, of the actual condition, and of substance. 22 Looking back on those moments, Metabolist designer Awazu Kiyoshi emphasized the importance of Asada’s role, calling the Ryu ūgetsu ryokan meeting as “Asada’s private samurai school.” 23 22 Kikutake Kiyonori, Kiyonori Kikutake: Tradition to Utopia (Milano: L'Arca Edizioni, 1997), 13. 23 Awazu Kiyoshi, “Looking Back on Metabolism,” Approach no. 116 (Winter 1991): 32. 180 Asada’s significant role in promoting the Metabolism movement has been largely overlooked in the vast majority of research. This is not only because he produced hardly any architectural projects under his own name, but also because his multiple identities as architect, planner, organizer, and policy maker exceeded the limits of disciplinary subspecialties like architectural history. 24 Asada’s early career, however, helps us to trace an alternative genealogy of Metabolism which is closely associated with war memory and nuclear anxiety. During the war, Asada then an architecture student at the University of Tokyo was drafted to serve as a naval officer. While working at the construction battalion at Kure, a city near Hiroshima, Asada carried out a rescue operation in Hiroshima after the bombing in August 1945. The traumatic scene of death and destruction he encountered in this devastated city played a formative role in his career as an architect and urban planner. In 1946, Asada joined Tange’s office immediately after graduating from school. During his extended apprenticeship in Tange’s office from 1946 to 1958, Asada participated in Tange’s key projects, including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (1949-1954), Tokyo City Hall (1952-1957), and Kagawa Prefectural Hall (1955-1958). After leaving Tange’s office, he did not open his own architectural firm. Instead, he founded a private consulting corporation called “Center for Environment and Development” (Kanky ō 24 The few exceptions include Asada Akira, “Before and After Metabolism,” Anyhow (T ōky ō: NTT Shuppan, 2000): 293-301; Yatsuka and Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu: 1960 nendai nihon no kenchiku avuangiyarudo, 12-15; Sawaragi, Sens ō to banpaku, 16-34, 268-287; Kikuchi Makoto, “K ūkan no kaihatsu, kanky ō no seigyo: 1960 nendai no Asada to k ōs ōkai kinky ū jink ō tochi, kyokuchi kenchiku” [Space Development and Environmental Control: Takashi Asada and the High Rise City, Artificial Land, and Extreme Architecture in the 1960s], 10+1 no. 50 (2008): 96-113. 181 kaihatsu senta) in 1959 where he initiated a new career as manager of total living environments while getting involved in policy and legislative solutions for urban problems. Later, Asada briefly joined the site survey of Expo’ 70 before official planning team headed by Tange and Nishiyama Uz ō was organized. Despite his extended collaboration with Tange, Asada would seem to have assumed a different stance toward the recent past from that of Tange, who had been reluctant to speak to it. Rather than operating on historical amnesia, Asada’s architectural practices attempted a persistent dialogue with the traumatic moment of wartime destruction and nuclear tragedy. Asada’s involvement in the 1955 Shinkenchiku issue on the atomic bomb and his leading role in the 1956 Antarctic project demonstrated his concerns about nuclear anxiety and survivalist rhetoric in the Cold War conflict. In August 1955, upon the request of Kawazoe, then chief editor of Shinkenchiku, Asada joined as a guest editor in the publication of the special edition of this leading architectural journal. 25 On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the end of the war, Asada and the editorial staff published a four-page spread that illustrated the chronology of the past ten years of Japanese architectural history. 26 (Fig. 41) This chronology reiterated the hegemonic narrative of postwar history, a linear progression from destruction to successful recovery. However, unlike the dominant narrative of postwar progress based on historic amnesia, this essay featured the compelling image of a 25 Asada Takashi and Taketani Mitsuo, “Genbaku jidai to kenchiku” [The Age of Atomic Bomb and Architecture], Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 77-80. 26 Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 11-14. 182 mushroom cloud at the beginning. Here, the traumatic moment of the nuclear blast was not repressed but revisited as the original moment of postwar Japanese architecture. The same issue of Shinkenchiku featured a conversation between Asada and the aforementioned nuclear physicist Taketani Mitsuo under the alarming title “The Atomic Bomb Age and Architecture.” 27 The title was deliberately chosen because, as Asada and Taketani noted, contemporary society could be not diagnosed as the “Atomic Age” characterized by the peaceful use of nuclear energy, but as the “Atomic Bomb Age” infiltrated by the impending threat of mass nuclear annihilation. 28 Asada and Taketani’s approach to the atomic issue was clearly distinguishable from the dominant narrative on this issue at the time, which could be called “nuclear optimism.” This narrative was promoted to divert attention from the mass casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as from the continuing threat of nuclear annihilation from the thermonuclear arms race between the two superpowers. 29 Nuclear optimism as an ideology that the peaceful use of atomic energy would contribute to the advancement of science and human benefit played itself out within architectural circles as well in both the U.S. and Japan. Beginning the early 1950s, architectural journals featured a series of celebratory articles promoting the 27 Taketani had once been involved in the government project for developing nuclear weapons during the war. After the war ended, however, he became an enthusiastic anti-nuclear bomb critic. Taketani believed that Japan, as the world’s first victim country of the atomic bomb, had a right to conduct research on the peaceful use of atomic energy, with the assistance of overseas countries. 28 Asada and Taketani, “Genbaku jidai to kenchiku,” 77-80. 29 For the formation and effect of nuclear optimism, see Stephen L. Del Sesto “Wasn’t the Future of Nuclear Energy Wonderful?”58-76. For more on the nuclear discourse in postwar Japan in particular, see Sherif, Japan’ s Cold War, 30-33. 183 anticipation of the bright atomic age. 30 Of course Asada’s and Taketani’s dialogue was not far from such postwar optimism for nuclear energy in that they ultimately aimed to replace the barbarian era of the “Atomic Bomb Age” with the high civilization of the “Atomic Age.” However, in contrast to the uncritical optimism over nuclear power, they stressed the destructive nature of nuclear weapons which evoked both the repressed memories of nuclear catastrophe in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the impending crisis of the Cold War nuclear tension. Asada’s struggle in the shadow of the atomic bomb in the postwar years is suggestive of the strong influence of French Existentialism among postwar Japanese intellectuals. Indeed, Jean Paul Sartre in particular was a postwar phenomenon in Japan. 31 According to Kawazoe’s recollection, Existentialism was so influential in postwar intellectual circles that it was almost impossible not to feel its touch, although he did not admit a direct link between Existentialism and Metabolism. 32 Asada’s 1950 essay entitled “Architects and Morals” (Kenchikuka to moraru), in which he elaborated on the architect’s task in the postwar years, was saturated with such Existentialist concepts as 30 In the early 1950s, the architectural journal Kokusai kenchiku began featuring nuclear-related articles published in the U.S. press, such as Progressive Architecture and Architectural Forum, and Nucleonics Magazine. See “Genshi no ky ōi to kindai toshi”[The Pros and Cons of Architecture for Civil Defense], Kokusai Kenchiku (February 1952): 1-16; “Genshiryoku jidai to kenchiku” [Atomic Power and Architecture], Kokusai Kenchiku (December 1954): 45-55; Kenchiku zasshi also presented a special edition focusing on the relationship between atomic energy and architecture, which reiterated the optimism of the era of the atomic age. See Kenchiku zasshi (October 1957). 31 For detailed discussion of Sartre’s influence in postwar Japanese literary circles, see Doug Slaymaker, “Sartre’s Fiction in Postwar Japan,” Confluences: Postwar Japan and France (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002), 86-109. 32 Kawazoe Noboru, interviewed by the author, December 2, 2008. 184 individual choice, responsibility, and engagement, although he, too, did not explicitly refer to the specific literature of the Existentialists. 33 Existentialism was historically specific to World War II and the Cold War condition because it raised the fundamental issues of the human condition and ontological anxiety in the face of uncertainty, death, and the dismal pessimism of the post-Hiroshima and post-Holocaust era. In the specific context of postwar Japan, as literary scholar Kuno Osamu and cultural historian Tsurumi Shunsuke observed, the reversal of the value system concomitant with the unconditional surrender followed by the nuclear tragedy made “Existentialism” an experience common to all Japanese in postwar years. 34 Here the anguish of postwar reversal of value was equated with the prewar tenk ō— intellectual’s renunciation of their Marxism in face of political repression. 35 However, Existentialism was far from a philosophy of pessimism. On the contrary, Existentialism fostered optimism for many Japanese who had sunk into despair after the war because it encouraged them to expect a positive future that was dependent upon individual effort and action. Asada’s existential concerns with regard to the particular condition of postwar life took shape in the Antarctic housing project, which should be read as a prehistory of Metabolism’s futuristic design. In 1956, Asada took the position of a chief designer of the Antarctic architectural committee, which was formed in 1955 by the 33 Asada Takashi, “Kenchikuka to moraru” [Moral and Architect], Kenchiku zasshi (January 1950). 34 Osamu Kuno and Shunsuke Tsurumi, Gendai nihon no shis ō [Contemporary Japanese Thoughts] (T ōky ō: Iwanami shinsho, 1961), 184-211. 35 Ibid. 185 Japanese government to build the headquarters for the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition, commonly known as Sh ōwa Station. The Japanese Antarctic project was initiated as part of the International Geographical Year (IGY) occurring from 1957 to 1958, a scientific research collaboration among the international community. 36 During the Cold War, the polar region was regarded as a locus of a continuous rivalry between the two superpowers, along with outer space. Since Antarctica provided not only a strategic military location but also a rich repository of natural resources, it appeared to be a promising and challenging frontier on which the future survival of humankind would hinge. 37 The world powers were enthusiastically engaged in exploring this terra incognita in the name of technology and science. Subsequently, the mid-1950s witnessed a “construction boom” in the Antarctic region which was comparable with “the Olympiad in the international architectural field.” 38 Architects around the world competed against each other to build Antarctic stations as architectural symbols of national pride and advanced technology. 36 The Japan Institute of Architects (JIA) was asked to cooperate in the construction of the habitats for Japanese crews. Responding to this request, in January 1956, JIA formed a temporary Antarctic architectural committee and assigned Asada to be a chair of its design team. The Antarctic project was carried out under the sponsorship of the Asahi newspaper, and its design process was featured in Kenchiku zasshi, JIA’s official journal, in January 1957. For more on the Antarctic project, see Kenchiku zasshi 728, no.1 (January 1957); Nihon kenchiku gakkai, Nankyoku chiiki tokubetsu kansokutai tatemono kaisetsusho [Report on Architecture for the Research of Antarctica], 1956; Hiromi Mitsuhashi, “Nankyoku kichi tatemono to kyoku kanky ō” [Antarctic Station Building and the Polar Environment], 10+1 no. 46 (2007): 88-91. 37 For discussion of Antarctic exploration within the Cold War conflict, see David Crowley, “Looking Down on Spaceship Earth: Cold War Landscape” in Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970, eds. David Crowley and Jane Pavitt (London: V & A Publishing, 2008), 14; Christy Collis and Quentin Stevens, “Modern Colonialism in Antarctica: The Coldest Battle of the Cold War,” in Proceedings 7 th Australasian Urban History/Planning History Conference, eds. Gunter Lehman and David Nichols (Geelong: Deakin University, 2004), 72-95. Internet resource: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00004605. 38 Kenchiku zasshi 728, no.1 (January 1957): 80. 186 Although rarely articulated, the exploration of Antarctica was motivated by the anxiety that humankind’s conventional habitat faced destruction due to overpopulation and an impending environmental crisis. 39 Such existential concern was intensified by the threat of nuclear war generated by Cold War tension. In the future, humankind would have no choice but to conquer the hitherto uninhabited environments such as polar continents, extraterritorial areas, and the seabed. Therefore, the Antarctic house was seen as a survival structure that would protect its inhabitants from the extremely harsh environment of the polar area, with its low temperatures, heavy snowfall, and blizzards. As Asada has stated, “Each part of the building was linked directly with the survival of the crews. 40 The activities of Asada’s design team for the Antarctic project were divided into three stages: (1) collecting information on the polar area including its natural environment and life (January to March 1956) (2) designing various plans for polar houses (March to June 1956), and (3) manufacturing components of houses and having crews practice assembling them (June to November 1956). The primary goal of this project was to “achieve a perfect prefabrication” which enabled unskilled crews to install and remove housing units in the Antarctica within a limited time. 41 Asada and his designers attempted to present a “monumental building representing the coming world” with the help of the latest technology and new 39 Crowley, “Looking Down on Spaceship Earth: Cold War Landscape,” 14. 40 Asada Takashi, “Nihon kansokutai no keik ō kaoku no sekkei oyobi seisaku ni tsuite” [On the Portable Housing of the Japanese Research Expedition Crews], Kenchiku zasshi 728, no.1 (January 1957): 13. 41 Ibid., 9. 187 materials. 42 Proposed schemes included round-shaped pneumatic structures supported by a mast and cables, which closely resembled a spacecraft or a flying saucer. (Fig. 42) These proposals were for lightweight, portable structures that could be easily transported, erected, and dismantled. Since they would be suspended above the ground, they had to be easy to install on snow-capped rock or slippery surfaces of the polar region. In addition, they were designed to minimize heat loss by reducing the surface area per unit volume and to maximize weight efficiency through making optimum use of new materials. These futuristic designs, however, could not be realized due to some practical considerations including high expense, limited time for construction, and technological limitations. Most of all, the expedition crews, actual users of these units, preferred a conventional rectangular-type house to an innovative architectural experiment. They were less interested in the expression of a futuristic aesthetic than in a convenient and secure house that could protect them from harsh outside conditions. In response to users’ requests, the final design adopted a prefabricated panel system which consisted of a specially produced wooden panel 4 inches high x 8 inches wide and one type of connector. (Fig. 43) The Antarctic house, however, was not merely a prefabricated shell for survival. Asada and his design team tried to offer a pleasant and modern living environment for the inhabitants. Since outdoor activities were severely restricted in the polar area, the emphasis was given to creating a livable and comfortable domestic space. The compact indoor space of the box-type prefabricated house was 42 Ibid. 188 nicely equipped with prefabricated furniture units, kitchen and toilet appliances, and an efficient heating system. The prefabricated panel system of the Antarctic house, in particular, was greatly indebted to the Packaged House designed by two German architects, Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann. 43 The Packaged House was an industrialized factory-made housing system that was based on the mass-production and modularization of limited types of panels and connectors. Gropius and Wachsmann tackled an age-old question in construction—how to achieve maximum efficiency of structure and materials with minimum material and effort. They began to develop this mass produced prefabricated housing in order to deal with the critical housing shortage during World War II and the immediate postwar era. Wachsmann’s timely visit to Japan in 1955 made Japanese architects well aware of the Packaged House. It was Asada who played a significant role in inviting Wachsmann for a series of lectures and publishing essays on Wachsmann’s design methodology for the Japanese architectural community. 44 The effect of Wachsmann’s visit was not limited to the prefabricated panel system of the Antarctic house but extended to Japanese architecture as a whole. During his stay in Japan from November through December 1955, Wachsmann offered a two- month seminar under the sponsorship of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In this seminar, he designed a school unit based on prefabrication technology in collaboration 43 For a detailed discussion of the Packaged House by Gropius and Wachsmann, see Gilbert Herbert, The Dream of Factory-Made House (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984), 243-298. 44 Asada’s essay on Wachsmann includes: Asada Takashi, “Kikei jidai to kenchiku no shinro” [The Mechanic Age and the Future of Architecture], Kenchiku zasshi no. 832 (March 1956): 13-16; Asada Takashi, “Konrad Wachsmann,” Kindai kenchiku, no. 12 (December 1960): 68-84. 189 with twenty-one Japanese architects including Isozaki Arata and Ekuan Kenji. Both Isozaki and Ekuan recollected the strong influence of Wachsmann’s seminar on Japanese architects in general as well as on their own careers. Isozaki recalled that Wachsmann’s emphasis on the joint connector as the basic element of the prefabrication system motivated him to develop a joint-core system as the basic unit of urban built environment. 45 Moreover, according to Isozaki, Wachsmann’s technology-centered vision brought a new perspective to postwar Japanese architecture, which was preoccupied with the tradition debate. 46 Likewise, Ekuan, who later became a member of the Metabolist group, was deeply affected by Wachsmann’s prefabricated structure in which service facilities and equipment provided the essential components of buildings. Ekuan’s design of a prefabricated capsule as an array of modern utilities and equipment showed the direct influence of Wachsmann’s seminar. The Antarctic project served as a precedent for the Metabolist project in two regards: (a) the Antarctic house was a lightweight, prefabricated, expandable, and flexible house which was easily adaptable for a nomadic future life, and (b) the Antarctic house was a survival structure which protected its residents from the harsh condition of Antarctica. Likewise, the Metabolist project can be seen as not only a utopian proposal for a flexible and growing building system, but also as a protective shell which shelters one from hitherto uninhabited areas such as the sea and sky. More concretely, Metabolism’s prefabricated capsule unit equipped with modern equipment and appliances 45 Isozaki, K ūkan-e, 487-488. 46 Ibid. 190 directly referred to a box-type prefabricated Antarctic house furnished with convenient utilities. The following two sections examine the Metabolist design and text as a descendent of the Antarctic project by focusing on the sense of crisis and survival tactics permeating Metabolism’s manifesto of 1960. Metabolism Manifesto (1)-Text On the occasion of the World Design Conference, the Metabolists presented their bilingual manifesto entitled Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism. In the introduction of the manifesto, Kawazoe explained the meaning of their group’s name: Metabolism is the name of the group, in which each member proposes future designs of our coming world through his concrete designs and illustrations. We regard human society as a vital process—a continuous development from atom to nebula. The reason why we use such a biological word, metabolism, is that, we believe, design and technology should be a denotation of human vitality.” 47 Using the biological term “metabolism” (shinjintaisha), the Metabolists proposed the idea of “vitality” as an alternative to the functionalist model of a city and the mechanistic worldview of modernism. 48 The publication of this manifesto is the only occasion when 47 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 5. 48 Professor Anne McKnight suggested a possible link between Metabolism and vitalist philosopher Henri Bergson, who was highly influential in Japanese intellectual circles in the prewar era. Unfortunately, I cannot find any substantial evidence which demonstrates a direct link between Bergson’s thought and Metabolist writing. However, Kawazoe mentioned the influence of Herbert Read, the eminent British art theorist, who tried to formulate a unified theory of the artistic and scientific organism drawing on Bergson’s theory of “creative evolution.” See Kawazoe Noboru, Kenchiku no metsub ō [The Death of Architecture] (T ōky ō: Gendai shich ō-sha, 1960). In this regard, it is plausible that Kawazoe was exposed to Bergson’s work via Read’s work. I am grateful to Professor McKnight for her insightful comment. 191 the Metabolists collectively demonstrated their theory and design under the heading of “metabolism.” Despite the Metabolists’ effort to continue the movement by recruiting new members from different fields, the identity of the Metabolists as a group did not last long due to the growing diversity of opinions among the members. Thereafter, there were only fruitless efforts to resume the publication of the Metabolism journal. 49 The 1960 manifesto includes visionary architectural proposals including Kikutake’s “Ocean City,” Kurokawa’s “Space City,” Ōtaka and Maki’s “Group Form,” and two essays by critic Kawazoe titled “Material and Man” and “My Dream 50 Years Hence.” Kawazoe Yasuko, a design magazine editor as well as Kawazoe’s wife, undertook the editing and layout of this publication while graphic designer Awazu Kiyoshi took charge of logo design. Photographer T ōmatsu Sh ōmei contributed two black and white photographs depicting a nebula and the ocean which were used as the frontispiece and a chapter divider respectively. T ōmatsu, a leading figure of postwar Japanese photography, was well-known for his documentation of the dark side of postwar Japanese society including the aftereffects of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the U.S. military camps and the Occupation, and student demonstrations. 50 Although he was not an official member of the Metabolist group, he was involved in the Metabolist movement 49 In 1961, as soon as the 1960 World Design Conference ended, the Metabolists tried to publish the second issue of the journal by including Asada, Ekuan, Awazu, T ōmatsu, and painter Hiromi Manabe, whose works were not included in the 1960 manifesto. In 1965, there was a full-scale publication project, motivated by the discoveries of the limitations which the practical application of the Metabolist theory had revealed. See Kurokawa Kish ō (Kurokawa Noriaki), Metabolism in Architecture (Boulder, Westview Press, 1977), 43-45. 50 For T ōmatsu Sh ōmei’s career and work, see Leo Rubinfien ed., T ōmatsu Sh ōmei: Skin of the Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), Linda Hoaglund, “Interview with T ōmatsu Sh ōmei,” Positions (Winter 1997): 835-862. 192 from the beginning. T ōmatsu’s above-mentioned frontispiece image served as a visual manifestation of Metabolism’s interest in “a vital process—a continuous development from atom to nebula.” 51 (Fig. 44) The focus of previous studies on the 1960 manifesto has been exclusively on visionary architectural drawings, which seems to fit smoothly into the discourse of utopian architecture. However, it should be noted that Metabolism’s activity was not solely limited to architectural experimentation but rather it encompassed an interdisciplinary collaboration. Architects, artists, and a critic jointly envisioned the future society and thus maintained an interest in new life styles. An in-depth discussion of Kawazoe’s two essays, “Material and Man” and “My Dream 50 Years Hence,” allows us to look at a different side of the Metabolism movement, one which cannot be fully explained in terms of technological optimism and utopian tradition. I would consider Kawazoe’s essays as a demonstration of both a utopian vision of postindustrial society and apocalyptic anxiety over impending catastrophe, which corresponds to Cold War dualism. His first essay, “Material and Man,” began with the ominous prospect of nuclear catastrophe: Everything will come to an end if a nuclear war covers all the earth with a radioactivity. No one on earth wishes it, but arguments among the best brains of the world are always based on the possibility of a nuclear war.… these people use similar logic when they threaten the public by saying that the next war will bring the destruction of mankind, for this approach simply arouses a general feeling of anxiety all over the world. 52 51 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 5. 52 Ibid., 48. 193 Despite the nuclear anxiety that saturates this paragraph, however, Kawazoe was hardly pessimistic. He believed that even if all of mankind was wiped out by radioactive fallout, many cities and villages would be left as ruins as evidence of our high civilization. Kawazoe argued that only architects and designers can maintain optimism in times of crisis because they were the ones who created things that would remain long after mankind disappears. 53 Kawazoe’s optimism resided in his belief in the endless process of “metabolism.” This essay ended with the declaration of metabolic transformation from birth to death, and to rebirth, “We hope to create something which, even in destruction, will cause a subsequent new creation. This ‘something’ must be found in the form of the cities we are going to make—cities constantly undergoing the process of metabolism.” 54 The idea of metabolism was crucial to such an extent that Kawazoe and other member of this circle took this term as the title for their group. Despite the members’ recollection that they just chose this word because its suffix “ism” sounded like an assertion of principle, this biological term encapsulated the central themes of the group’s design methodology—a flexible and changeable system of architecture and urbanism like that of living organisms. More importantly, the term “metabolism” reflected the Marxist-oriented political background of the group. Kawazoe has made it clear that the concept of metabolism derived from Marx and Engels’ ideas about the material exchange between nature and 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 49. 194 humans, the fundamental relationship between external conditions and human society. 55 Marx and Engels employed the term “metabolism” in their key publications including Capital to suggest a dialectical interaction between nature and society. As sociologist John Bellamy Foster has pointed out, Marx and Engels relied on the concept of metabolism to criticize humankind’s alienation from nature and the ecological crisis caused by capitalism and to restore the relationship between nature and human society to its rightful form through socialism. 56 At the end of World War II, leftist intellectuals began to be interested in the problem of the domination of nature by technology, which took revenge against human society in the form of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under such circumstances, Marxism’s ecological concept of metabolism was revisited as an antidote to the abuse of technology and the crisis of modern civilization. 57 Kawazoe’s emphasis on the metabolic process of architecture and city can be understood within this postwar strand of Marxist thought that attempted to apply the law of nature to human civilization. Kawazoe chose T ōmatsu’s Asphalt (1960), a black-and-white photograph that was submitted to the aborted second issue of the Metabolism journal, as one of the best images of the metabolic process occurring in an urban setting. 58 (Fig. 45) In Asphalt, T ōmatsu shot wet asphalt imprinted with everyday junk items, such as pins, nails, coils, 55 Kawazoe Noboru and Ōtaka Masato eds., Metaborizumu to metaborisuto tachi [Metabolism and Metabolists] (T ōky ō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2005), 17; Noboru Kawazoe, “The Thirty Years of the Metabolists,” in Approach no. 116 (Winter 1991): 27-28. 56 John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 141-163. 57 Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 28. 58 Kikan Obayashi 48 (Special Issue: 2001): 44. 195 and pieces of razor. It is worth mentioning that Japanese avant-garde artists of the time often used asphalt as a medium expressing Anti-Art’s idea of “descent to the everyday.” 59 The photographer describes the essence of Japanese cities not by capturing the fixed façades of a newly built cityscape but by picturing fluid industrial materials found in every corner of Japanese cities during the construction boom of the 1960s. On the one hand, Asphalt is strongly reminiscent of T ōmatsu’s earlier image of nebula in that the arrangement of scattered earthly items in the former closely resembled the heavenly constellation in the latter. As an interstellar cloud of dust and gas signified the first stage of a star’s cycle, so wet asphalt imprinted with junk and waste represented the first stage of the continuing process of urban construction. On the other hand, Asphalt can be read as a twin image of T ōmatsu 1959 photograph titled Ise Bay Typhoon in which he captured odds and ends embedded in mud to document the severe damage to Japanese villages and cities caused by the typhoon. (Fig. 46) A similarity between Ise Bay Typhoon and Asphalt seems to suggest that life and growth are the flipside of death and decay, which echoes the principle of metabolic transformation. Seen in this light, T ōmatsu’s photograph can be read as what Kawazoe has described “a rare illustration of metabolic process of Japanese cities,” which repeatedly underwent mass construction and mass destruction in preparation for the 1964 Olympics. 60 If Kawazoe’s “Material and Man” comments on nuclear anxiety and the metabolic regeneration of postwar Japan, his second essay, “My Dream 50 Years Hence,” 59 Miyakawa, “Han-geijutsu: sono nichij ō-sei e no kak ō,” 48-52. 60 Kikan Obayashi 48 (Special Issue: 2001): 44. 196 addresses the internal discourse of architecture by redefining its changing meaning in postindustrial society. Originally published in the architectural journal Kenchiku bunka in 1959, “My Dream 50 Years Hence” is comprised of three paragraphs, “I want to be a Kai (sea shell),” “I want to be a Kami (god),” “I want to be Kabi(bacteria).” 61 This text requires further analysis because it shows Kawazoe’s two under-recognized but crucial concepts, the Marxist utopia and the “death of architecture.” The essay reads: I want to be a Kai (sea-shell) I am a seashell. All day long, I do nothing but opening and shutting my shell. It is really a wonderful world for lazy boys. Soon everything will be done by machines. Only [sic] work we have to do will be dreaming. Suddenly I think of a wonderful plan. I want to be a Kami (god) I hear the voice from heaven. I am a prophet or perhaps a god himself. I give orders to the architectural world to make a “universal architecture”-architecture of four dimensions which [sic] drawings have to be cubic. Who will be an architect? Masato Ōtaka? Kiyonori Kikutake? Or Kish ō Kurokawa? I am sure I am the one who can grasp precisely a four-dimensional space. I deserve to be a god. I want to be Kabi (bacteria) Mad, dogmatic, and fantastic are the adjectives put on me. It is not a good thing to be a god. Perhaps I stick too much to “myself.” I have to throw away self- consciousness and fuse into mankind as its mere particle. I have to attain a state of perfect selflessness. Now I am a cell of bacteria which is constantly propagating itself. Several generations hence, the extreme progress in communication will enable everyone to take a brain wave receiver with him which conveys directly and exactly what other people think and feel to him and vice versa. What I think will be known by all people. This means that the self- consciousness of the individual will be lost and the will of mankind will remain. 61 “My Dream 50 Years Hence” was originally written as a response to a survey about “My Dream 20 Years Hence,” published in the May 1959 issue of Kenchiku bunka. 197 I will be the same as the will of bacteria. The only difference will be men’s capacity to dream a magnificent dream. 62 Scholars have agreed that the phase “I want to be a shell” came from the title of a 1958 Japanese hit TV drama. This drama was based on the true story of a Japanese soldier who was sentenced to death by the Occupation authorities for killing an American soldier during the war. Awaiting his execution, the protagonist murmured, “I want to be sea shell. If I were a sea shell, I could have been stuck on a rock in the deep sea without worrying about anything. No worry about being drafted into the war …” The enormous popularity of this drama was easily associated with the general ambience of anti-U.S. sentiment that surfaced after the end of the U.S. Occupation. Moreover, the metaphor of a sea shell, a self-enclosed entity, can be read as an assertion of individual autonomy in opposition to the totalitarian regime of wartime Japan. In this regard, this essay can be easily interpreted as a reflection of Kawazoe’s sympathy toward the anti-totalitarian and anti- U.S. sentiment which was in line with Japan’s progressive camp of the time. On the remaining parts of this enigmatic essay, however, scholars hold different views; they tend to either dismiss it as a narcissistic statement about the newly strengthened role of architectural journalism or consider it a supplement to Metabolism’s architectural principles. On the one hand, Yoshimatsu Hideki reads this essay as a 62 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 50-51. This dissertation follows the English translation published in the manifesto (translator is unknown). But scholars have raised questions about the original translation. For instance, Gunter Nitschke translated kai as mussel, kami as God, and kabi as germ, while Wendelken translated kai as sea-shell, kami as spirit, and kabi as mold or micro-organism. See Gunter Nitschke, “Tokyo 1964: Olympic Planning/ Dream Planning,” Architectural Design (October 1964), 485-524.; Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” 286. In my view, Wendelken’s translation makes the most sense in the given context. 198 manifestation of Kawazoe’s ambition as a critic to reign over the architectural world. By focusing on the second paragraph titled “I want to be a god,” Yoshimatsu claims that Kawazoe identifies himself with a god who “can precisely grasp a four-dimensional space” and “give orders to the architectural world to make universal architecture.” 63 Cherie Wendelken, on the other hand, sees this essay as an elaboration of Metabolism’s architectural principles. She notes that, “Individual cell was self-enclosed and self- contained, like a sea shell or kai; the growth of cells was structured but flexible, like mold or kabi, which could conform to the surface of a rock; and finally, growth was motivated by a force or spirit, kami.” 64 These existing studies help us to understand each symbol operating in Kawazoe’s text. However, Kawazoe’s riddle-like essay “My Dream 50 Years Hence” cannot be understood outside of his extensive vision of human civilization and history. It is my contention that “My Dream 50 Years Hence” served as a prologue to his 1960 book titled The Death of Architecture (Kenchiku no metsub ō) that was published five months after the World Design Conference. 65 As architectural historian Igarashi Tar ō has stated, The Death of Architecture is “an epic of human civilization from the prehistory to the future” which embraces a variety of topics ranging from religion, technology, and mass-media to architecture and urbanism. 66 Drawing on the Marxist principle of social evolution 63 Yatsuka and Yoshimatsu, Metaborizumu: 1960 nendai nihon no kenchiku avuangiyarudo, 30-34. 64 Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” 286. 65 Kawazoe Noboru, Kenchiku no metsub ō [The Death of Architecture] (T ōky ō: Gendai shich ō-sha, 1960). 66 Igarashi Tar ō, “Saidoku kenchiku no metsub ō” [Rereading the Death of Architecture], INAX REPORT, no. 175 (July 2008): 16. 199 through class struggle, Kawazoe presented a vision of a proletarian utopia in which working-class people would be liberated from the burden of labor with the help of technological innovation. Ironically, Kawazoe conflated his optimism about a socialist utopia with the idea of architecture’s death in multiple ways. Kawazoe employed the metaphor of “death” in order to think about a totally new concept of architecture which might be more democratic and flexible and thus suitable for the future society. First, as ordinary people would have more leisure time with the help of new technology, they would build their own houses without relying on the help of elite professional architects. Second, the conventional notion of architecture as a fixed entity symbolizing the authority of a ruling class would be no longer valid because the proletariat would dominate the world in the future. Working-class people who are “bird-like free” would not need permanent monuments like Egyptian pyramids and Gothic cathedrals. 67 Last but not least, along with the development of communications and transportation technology, people would be spread all over the country instead of living together in big cities. Therefore, architecture and city in a conventional sense would be replaced by a flexible network in the near future. It can be argued that Kawazoe’s idea of a socialist utopia mixed with the death of architecture was predicted on “My Dream 50 Years Hence,” published in the 1960 manifesto. In the first paragraph of “My Dream 50 Years Hence,” Kawazoe envisioned a utopia in which machines would liberate people from the slavery of unnecessary labor 67 Kawazoe, Kenchiku no metsub ō, 35-41. 200 and allow them to become seashells. The only thing for a seashell to do is to “be dreaming” and “think of a wonderful plan.” 68 The following paragraph envisaged the end of the privileged role of professional architects in this future society; the critic cynically asks, “Who will be an architect? Masato Ōtaka? Kiyonori Kikutake? Or Kish ō Kurokawa?” 69 In the final paragraph, Kawazoe suggested the demise of architecture and the city as a byproduct of the enormous development of communications technology. Since people would be able to convey their thoughts and emotions directly through a portable brain receiver, they would become less dependent on architecture as a medium of communication. Moreover, as people would no longer need to live together in big cities, the existing concept of city would require redefinition. When Kawazoe’s book The Death of Architecture was published in 1960, Tange expressed his displeasure with the provocative metaphor of “death” employed by Kawazoe. 70 In his review of this book, Tange criticized the biological determinism that was inscribed in Metabolism’s organic metaphor and instead called for creative actions of human subjectivity. 71 Although Tange was well aware that the idea of death and destruction constituted an integral part of Metabolism’s life cycle, he seemed reluctant to accept the fatalistic tone in Kawazoe’s writing. Given that Tange enthusiastically advocated that the profession played a constructive role in rebuilding a devastated county, 68 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 50. 69 Ibid. 70 Kawazoe Noboru interview with Naito Hiroshi, INAX REPORT no. 175 (July 2008): 35. 71 Tange Kenz ō, “Kenchiku no metsub ō ni kotoyosete” [On the Death of Architecture], Kindai kenchiku vol.15 (January 1961): 13. 201 it was not surprising that Tange regarded Kawazoe’s contemplation of architecture’s downfall, which recalled the wartime destruction of Japanese cities, as a negative and unproductive thought. Kawazoe’s vision of the future can be summarized as “post-apocalyptic” in that it includes both the end of architecture and a new start amid endless metabolic transformation. Apparently, his images of the ‘end’ were shaped by Japan’s specific experience of wartime devastation and reinforced by the Cold War threat of nuclear warfare. For Kawazoe, however, the catastrophic ‘end’ served as messianic momentum for a new start. Kawazoe’s post-apocalyptic vision, in this regard, was different from Tange’s notion of amnesic utopia in which society continuously proceeded without origin and end. It can also be distinguished from Isozaki’s idea of mnemonic ruins which was trapped in the recurring memories of traumatic past. Kawazoe hoped to move toward a future with some optimism, yet without amnesia. Metabolism Manifesto (2): Design Was a post-apocalyptic vision of the future unique to the critic Kawazoe or was it shared by other Metabolist architects? What was the relationship between text and design in Metabolism? How can we understand Metabolism’s architectural project in conjunction with Kawazoe’s essay? Beside Kawazoe’s two essays, the 1960 manifesto featured architects’ visionary proposals including Kikutake’s “Ocean City,” Kurokawa’s 202 “Space City,” and Otaka and Maki’s “Group Form.” The manifesto showed two ramifications of the Metabolists’ urban design—the megastructure and the group form. First of all, the group’s drawings revealed the members’ common interest in the megastructure as a way of imposing a form of order on the urban chaos of explosively expanding Japanese cities. Megastructure was conceived as an open structure which was able to grow based on the differentiation of its long-term and short-term elements. Kikutake’s “Ocean City,” which filled thirty-four pages out of a total eighty-nine pages, featured a large-scale floating deck as artificial land onto which high-rise towers would be built, or under which underwater towers would be connected. (Fig. 47) Kikutake expanded his idea of a floating structure to an industrial city floating on the ocean called “Unabara.” Kurokawa’s “Space City,” composed of “Agricultural City” and “Wall City,” also proposed a gigantic stretch of artificial land in a form of megastructures. (Fig. 48 and 49) “Agricultural City” was built upon a 500 m x 500 m concrete slab which was elevated four meters above the ground by piloti. This platform contained infrastructure such as roads, monorails, water service, and electrical equipment. “Wall City” was an erected version of the “Agricultural City” in that it provided a vertical platform from which individual residential and office units were suspended. Each living unit attached to the megastructure was easily changeable and expandable according to the changing needs of the inhabitants. As trees send out new buds, turn red, then drop their leaves in accordance with the circulation of the four seasons, Kikutake wrote, each unit was 203 organically linked to the life cycle of the inhabitants and selectively added and removed. 72 While the megastructure conceives of the city as a gigantic building, the group form focuses on a human-scale individual unit. The concept of group form can be read as a criticism of the static nature inherent in the megastructure. If Kikutake’s and Kurokawa’s proposals were provocative futuristic megastructures, Ōtaka and Maki’s “Group Form” was a rather practical plan for redeveloping the Shinjuku area in Tokyo from a site of water purification plants into a business and entertainment district using artificial land. (Fig. 50) In his 1964 publication titled Investigations in Collective Form, Maki explains that the “Group Form” is a master form which can “move into ever new states of equilibrium and yet maintain visual consistency and a sense of containing order in the long run.” 73 Unlike conventional building, in which the totality is equal to the sum of all the elements, in the “Group Form,” the totality was larger than the sum of all the elements. Therefore, the total image of the group form would not be affected by changes in its components. In this sense, for Maki and Ōtaka, the “Group Form” had the potential to engender a more flexible urban system responsive to the changing needs of contemporary society. While Kawazoe’s texts reflected Metabolism’s political orientation toward socialism, the architects’ visionary proposals did not reveal explicitly that orientation, or rather they seem to harbor a pervasive faith in capitalist development and technological 72 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 19. 73 Maki Fumihiko, Investigations in Collective Form (St. Louis: Washington University, 1964), 11. 204 innovation in postwar Japanese society. Of course we can trace the Metabolists’ socialist orientation in their emphasis on large-scale collective living and egalitarian social visions can be understood in terms of their socialist orientation. 74 However, their presentation of giant tracts of artificial land and flexible systems was deeply embedded in Japan’s postindustrial shift, which was characterized by the growing demand for building sites and fluidity in metropolitan areas. Metabolism’s organic model of ever-growing architectural structures paralleled the optimism for technological and economic growth of Japanese society in the era of the economic miracle. According to critic Asada Akira, a nephew of Asada Takashi, the success of Metabolism in the 1960s, during the Japanese economy’s tremendous growth, lay in the fact that Metabolism “took for granted the possibility of infinite growth based on the assumption of the linear progress of time.” 75 In this sense, Asada continues, the essence of Metabolism echoed the underlying logic of capitalism, i.e. “a ceaseless movement of capital, a cycle of unending building and demolition, and massive production and massive waste.” 76 While Metabolism’s visionary schemes appeared largely indebted to the premise of economic growth and technological optimism of the time, there was a flipside to this utopian thinking: growing anxiety over urban population explosion and a looming environmental crisis. What motivated the Metabolist visionary projects—cities floating 74 For the influence of Socialism and Soviet city planning on Metabolism, see Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan , 79-84. 75 Asada Akira and Isozaki Arata, “From Molar Metabolism, to Molecular Metabolism,” in Anyhow ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: Anyone Corp.; Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1998), 65. 76 Ibid. 205 on the sea or spiraling into the sky—was a sense of crisis caused by overpopulation and urban density. Pessimism over this Malthusian crisis forced the Metabolists to explore the harsh environments of hitherto uninhabited areas such as the sea and sky. In fact, techno- futuristic schemes of Kurokawa and Kawazoe exuded a dystopian ambience rather than a purely utopian one. The cylinder-like residential tower of Kikutake’s “Ocean City,” floating on a bleak dark sea, was often compared with a cramped beehive or a bird’s nest, the last place on earth that anyone would want to live. One commentator mentioned that “the terrifying symbolism of this underwater inhabitat”—distinguished from a habitat, a place one would want to live—stemmed from the pessimistic premise that “population growth may force communities into the sea in the future.” 77 The Metabolists’ concern was not limited to the theme of population explosion but was also directed toward the threat of natural disaster and an environmental crisis. Kikutake’s idea of a floating city, for instance, was conceived of as a survival structure in case of flooding. Kikutake was deeply concerned about the rising sea level in Tokyo’s lowland area, which was gradually sinking because of the removal of underground water for industrial purposes. In 1961, Kikutake applied his earlier scheme for a floating tower to a redevelopment project in the Koto district, Tokyo’s lowland area. 78 (Fig. 51) Every year this area, which was surrounded by the Arakawa River and Tokyo Bay, was plagued by floods during the rainy season or after a typhoon. Kikutake’s proposal for the Koto redevelopment plan, a lattice-shaped floating foundation on which residential 77 Ada Louise Huxtable, “The Architect as a Prophet,” New York Times, Oct 2, 1961. 78 Kawazoe Noboru, “A New Tokyo: In, On, or Above the Sea?” This is Japan, no. 9 (1962): 62-64. 206 towers would be built, was meant to survive after a flood. Kawazoe has pointed out the survivalist nature of Kikutake’ project by stating, “Even if the earth sinks, this building will still ‘float’ on its broad foundation.” 79 Kikutake was not alone in reflecting the anxiety and fear of natural disaster in futuristic schemes. Kurokawa’s “Agricultural City” was conceived of as a response to the Ise Bay Typhoon of 1959, one of the most destructive natural disasters in Japanese history, which hit the Ise Bay region and Nagoya, the hometown of the architect. 80 The damage caused by the typhoon was so severe that more than 5,000 people were killed and about 1.5 million people left homeless. Such extensive damage was a huge blow to Japan’s economic recovery after the war. During the typhoon and subsequent flooding, Kurokawa’s family, who then lived in the coastal area of Nagoya, had to take refuge on the second floor of the house for days. Inspired by this experience, Kurokawa proposed an elevated platform on which a rural community would be built four meters above the ground. In this sense, his “Agricultural City” was as much about refuge from flooding as it was about the utopian future. Metabolism’s concern with the impending environmental crisis was dramatically illustrated in Kawazoe’s apocalyptic essay titled “The Last Day of the Great Tokyo,” published in the January 1961 issue of Kenchiku bunka. 81 In this essay, Kawazoe speculated that a metabolic balance of the environment would collapse in the near future 79 Ibid., 62. 80 Kawazoe Noboru, “The City of the Future,” Zodiac, no. 9, 1962, 105. 81 Kawazoe Noboru, “Dai T ōky ō saig ō no hi” [The Last Day of Tokyo] Kenchiku bunka, vol. 16, no. 171 (January 1961): 5-12. 207 and as a result a series of natural disasters occur that would be reminiscent of the Great Kant ō Earthquake and the Ise Bay Typhoon. The breakdown of the metabolic order would finally cause global warming, leading to a rise in sea level, and the Japanese archipelago eventually disappearing under the sea. It is not a coincidence that Kawazoe employed Kikutake’s floating structure as an illustration of survival architecture when Japan sinks. Interestingly enough, Kawazoe’s fiction shared the exact same story line as the best-selling 1973 novel Japan Sinks (Nippon chinbotsu), written by renowned science fiction writer Komatsu Saky ō (1931- ). 82 Komatsu was not only a best-selling writer but an influential futurologist who was at that time close to the Metabolist circle. In 1968, Komatsu co-founded the Japan Society for Future Research (Nihon mirai gakkai), along with Kawazoe, with the aim of predicting and preparing for the society of the future. 83 Moreover, Komatsu got involved in the exhibition of the theme pavilion at Expo ’70 in which he collaborated with Kawazoe and other Metabolists. 84 On the theme of ‘Japan sinks’ shared by Kawazoe’s and Komatsu’s fictions, Kawazoe himself remarked that “Komatsu and I had a vivid image of the end of the 82 Komatsu began writing his novel in 1964 and spent nine years on this project. For more discussion of disaster narratives in postwar Japanese literature, see Thomas Schnellächer, “Has the Empire Sunk Yet?— The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 29 (2002): 389-393; Susan Napier, “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira,” Journal of Japanese Studies, 19:2 (Summer 1993): 327-351. 83 In 1968, Japan Society for the Future was established by Kawazoe, Komatsu, and Umesao Tadao. This organization has continued its research and educational activities through the present day. See the website http://www.iftech.or.jp/miraisite/ 84 On Komatsu’s work, see Susan Napier, Tatsumi Takayuki, Kotani Mari, and Otobe Junko, “An Interview with Komatsu Saky ō,” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 29 (2002): 323-339. 208 world in that we both belonged to the generation that witnessed the destruction of Japanese cities and the collapse of imperial Japan.” 85 Kawazoe seemed to suggest that their apocalyptic stories repeated traumatic events of Japan’s wartime destruction and nuclear disaster. Furthermore, it can be argued that their apocalyptic images not only reflected historical trauma but also anticipated the impending nuclear annihilation of the Cold War. It was not surprising that the threat of nuclear war was replaced by that of the hazard of natural disaster. As John Dower has pointed out, “The destructiveness of the atomic bombs was so awesome that many Japanese regarded them—much like the calamitous losing war itself-almost as if they were a natural disaster.” 86 In his seminal psychoanalytic study of trauma, Sigmund Freud found that a victim cannot escape from the compulsion to repeat the traumatic moment. 87 For him, repetition is a physiological mechanism which drains the significance from the traumatic event and then defends against its effect. In a similar vein, literary scholar James Berger points out the “therapeutic effects” of apocalyptic narratives in American literature and film. 88 According to Berger, apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) narratives help one to work through trauma by recognizing its formative catastrophes. 89 Both Kawazoe’s and 85 Kawazoe, Interview with Naito, 31. 86 Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory,” 119. 87 Sigmund Freud, “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through” (1914) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey, ed. Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1966), 147-156. 88 James Berger, After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 29. 89 Ibid., 219. 209 Komatsu’s fictions were as much about survival and regeneration in the post-nuclear years as they were the story of destruction and death. Following the common structure of the apocalyptic genre, which describes not only the end of the world but also the glories of the era to come, neither Kawazoe nor Komatsu concluded their fictions with a catastrophic ending. On the contrary, they made a special effort to envision the world after the catastrophe. Kawazoe describes the reappearance of the sunken metropolis in the form of ruin while in an epilogue Komatsu addresses the future of the Japanese nation and people after the island sinks. In sum, as Metabolism’s utopian premise of technology and social progress was embedded in postwar reconstruction and economic growth, so its anxiety and survivalist concerns were deeply rooted in the specific existential condition of postwar society. This dualism took concrete shape in the capsule, an international symbol of Metabolist design. Capsule: Utopian Home or Dystopian Shelter? Over the course of the 1960s, the Metabolists’ attention shifted from grand megastructure to individual capsule, although they still maintained their interest in megastructure as a way of “framing.” The concept of the capsule can be traced to the 1960 manifesto, in which Kikutake proposed a mobile housing unit called a “move-net” as a minimum component of his floating megastructure. 90 (Fig. 52) The capsule was developed mostly by Ekuan and Kurokawa, and widely regarded as the form that most 90 Kawazoe, ed., Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism, 28-31. 210 successfully manifested the ideal of Metabolist architecture in the late 1960s. Expo’70 witnessed the culmination of the development of the capsule as an iconic image of the future as seen in the various fair pavilions designed by the Metabolists, such as the Expo Tower, the Takara Beautilion, and the Capsule Exhibit. The capsule is a prefabricated living unit inserted into a megastructure; each part of the capsule is mass-produced at a factory and transported to the remote construction site, where it is plugged into a large frame. As the ultimate form of prefabrication, the capsule finds its precedent in the prefabricated residential unit of the aforementioned Antarctic project. Take, for example, Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower (1970-1972), a rare example of the Metabolist design that was actually constructed. (Fig. 53) This structure consists of 144 capsule units, manufactured and assembled at a factory that makes shipping containers. Prefabricated capsule units were shipped to the construction site and then attached to the two concrete shafts which house elevators, stairs and mechanical systems. However, the idea of Metabolist capsule challenged the uniformity and systemization of the modern prefabrication system. In a 1969 essay “Capsule Declaration” which provided a conceptual frame for the capsule idea, Kurokawa pointed out that the capsule represented a “qualitative change in the meaning of a building” by calling into question the very nature of dwelling. 91 He claimed that the capsule was a new dwelling unit for Homo movens, a term coined by Kurokawa himself to express the 91 Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture, 83. 211 importance of mobility as the distinguishing characteristic of contemporary humankind. 92 The mobility, flexibility, and interchangibility of the capsule structure would satisfy the growing need for diversity and fluidity in postindustrial society. At the same time, Kurokawa tried to find the origin of the capsule in premodern Japanese architecture. He described an individual capsule unit as the modern-day tea house, a minimal and spiritual space which secured what he called “oriental individiuum.” 93 In addition, he compared the capsule with a traditional kago carrier for their shared nature as mobile architecture. 94 Considering the ongoing tradition debate within Japanese architectural circles, Kurokawa’s efforts to emphasize traditional sources for his capsule design were not surprising. Furthermore, it can be argued that the architect strategically invoked the exotic flavor of Japanese tradition as a way of successfully appealing to international audiences. The kit-of-parts concept, an object-oriented building technique exemplified by the capsule, increased flexibility in assembly and efficiency in manufacturing. Industrial designer Ekuan Kenji played a crucial role in employing the kit-of-parts concept. In 1960, Ekuan’s GK design company proposed Core House, a pumpkin-shaped self-contained living unit. (Fig. 54) Each component of the Core House, which consisted of movable functional modules, could be rearranged in several configurations according to the different needs and tastes of the inhabitants. Ekuan’s Core House is strongly reminiscent 92 Ibid., 76-80. 93 Ibid., 35-36. 94 Ibid. 78. 212 of Dymaxion House designed by American inventor-architect Buckminster Fuller. (Fig. 55) Both Dymaxion House and Core House were lightweight factory-made houses based on the kit-of-parts idea. Therefore, they could be reduced to an aggregation of prefabricated, exchangeable modules and a service core. Fuller’s Dymaxion model was influential in Japanese architectural circles and Fuller actually visited Japan to give lectures and work on projects on several occasions. In the October 1960 issue of Kindai kenchiku, Kawazoe published an essay on Fuller’s theories and designs, focusing on his Dymaxion model. 95 In this regard, the Metabolists might have referred to Fuller’s Dymaxion House in their capsule design. 96 The shift of interest from megascale hardware to lightweight software was not unique to Japanese Metabolism, but was common in the trajectory of the international Megastructure movement of the 1960s. In particular, the British experimental group Archigram showed a parallel movement from grand megastructures to miniaturized capsule structures. 97 Archigram developed the capsule from a prefabricated living unit inserted into plug-in projects to a lightweight and flexible living pod or pneumatic bubble structure. (Fig. 56) If Archigram’s capsule proposed a liberating and hedonistic space informed by 1960s countercultural radicalism and pop vocabulary, its Japanese 95 Kawazoe Noboru, “Buckminster Fuller no seikei” [The World of Buckminster Fuller], Kindai kenchiku (October 1960): 26-36. 96 In this sense, Wendelken argues that the capsule idea might have originated from Fuller’s Dymaxion House, although none of the Metabolist recalled a direct link between their capsule and Fuller’s work. Wendelken, “Putting Metabolism Back in Place,” 294. 97 For Archigram’s capsule, see Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 90-117. 213 counterpart took a bureaucratic and practical tone; the Metabolists were more interested in producing a mass-produced, rational living unit for urban dwellers than in creating an ephemeral and dematerialized anti-monument. 98 The Metabolist capsule can be characterized by its dual nature as an exhibitionist modern house on the one hand and a defensive shelter on the other hand. 99 As an exhibitionist house, the capsule displays a modern lifestyle and domesticity. Special emphasis is often given to the latest home amenities and domestic appliances, as if to compensate for the claustrophobic anxiety that might be experienced in this miniature space. Metabolism’s exceptional focus on home appliances and consumerist goods drew attention from foreign architects when Kurokawa presented his plan for a capsule apartment complex at the 1962 Team Ten meeting held in Royaumont. 100 As a proposal for the redevelopment of Kyoto’s old district, Kurokawa proposed a concrete structure into which a series of mechanical capsules could be placed and replaced. The interior of each capsule unit was comfortably equipped with modern furniture and home electronics. The exhibitionist nature of the capsule was best illustrated by the giant portholes utilized in Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower of 1972 through which the capsule displayed a 98 For a detailed comparison between Metabolism’s and Archigram’s capsules, see Thomas Leslie, “Just What is it that Makes Capsule Homes So Different, So Appealing,” Space and Culture, vol. 9, no. 2 (May 2006): 180-194. 99 My discussion of the capsule’s dual aspects is deeply indebted to Beatriz Colomina’s analysis of the House of the Future (1956) designed by Alison and Peter Smithson. Colomina shows that Smithsons’ House of the Future is not only a showcase of consumerist utopia and the modern life style, but also a kind of bunker— that is, “a mechanism of escape, an all interior space the overly happy inhabitant would never need to leave.” She claims that the defensive interiority of Smithsons’ project resulted from the pervasive anxiety of the Cold War which was associated with fresh memories of World War II. See Beatriz Colomina, Domesticity at War (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), 193-236. 100 Alison Smithson, Team 10 Meetings 1953-1984 (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 70-73. 214 miniature universe complete with an HVAC (heating and ventilating and air conditioning) unit, bathroom, convertible kitchen, double bed, TV, tape deck, typewriter, desk calculator, and clock radio. (Fig. 57) When only 20 percent of the Tokyo ward area had a sewer system and most household waste water was dumped, untreated, into local rivers, modern bathroom and kitchen units were associated with improved hygiene. 101 More importantly, the latest home appliances became regarded as symbols of postwar reconstruction and economic prosperity. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the so-called “three imperial regalia,” refrigerators, washing machines, and televisions, became the ultimate objects of desire. 102 In the Cold War context, an idealized image of domesticity functioned as propaganda for the capitalist dream of affluence and comfort in the shadow of the communist threat. 103 Another aspect of the capsule is a defensive mechanism. The capsule is a hyper- interiorized space which protects one from the perilous outside of sky and outer space. Architectural historian Thomas Leslie finds the origin of the postwar capsule design in aerospace development, particularly from the military fighter cockpit to a container for astronauts. 104 For him, the extremely efficient space of the military fighter cockpit, which offers only the barest accommodations and security for the pilot, can be a possible source 101 Jigy ōgaiy ō: Heisei 6 nenban (T ōky ō: T ōky ō to eiseikyoku gy ōmubu fuky ūka, 1966), 130-131, quoted from Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970, 150. 102 For more discussion on electric products in postwar Japan, see Yoshimi Shun’ya, “Made in Japan: The Cultural Politics of Home Electrification in Postwar Japan,” Media Culture and Society 21 (Summer 1999): 149-172. 103 Colomina, Domesticity at War, 12. 104 Leslie, “Just What is it that Makes Capsule Homes So Different, So Appealing,” 181-182. 215 for the capsule design. In addition, the rivalry over the manned space program between the two superpowers had more immediate consequences for the capsulization of architectural spaces. The space-age rhetoric of the capsule is manifested in Kurokawa’s essay, “Capsule Declaration,” which states: The capsule is cyborg architecture. Man, machine, and space build a new organic body which transcends confrontation…The word ‘capsule’ usually conjures up either a capsule containing medicine or the living quarters of an astronaut. The capsule referred to here is a capsule without which what is contained in it would be perfectly meaningless. For example, a spaceship is such a capsule. The capsule which protects the astronaut from space or from very high temperatures or other hazards differs in essence from containers such as coffee cups in that it creates an environment peculiar to itself. A rupture in the capsule, however small, would instantly upset the internal equilibrium and destroy the strictly controlled environment in it. Such a device and the life in it depend on each other for their existence and survival. 105 Kurokawa characterizes the capsule as cyborg architecture, a prosthetic device that enhances the human body’s capability to adapt to any environment. Like a spaceship or space capsule, the capsule presents a highly controlled environment which can protect the inhabitant from the dangerous outside. The capsule is thus conceived of as an architectural equivalent of the survival pod used to explore outer space. In the same article, Kurokawa soon shifted justification for the survival logic of the capsule from space-age perils to information age hazards. He continues: Just as an astronaut is protected by a perfect shelter from solar winds and cosmic rays, individuals should be protected by capsules in which they can reject information they do not need and in which they are sheltered from information they do not want, thereby allowing an individual to recover his subjectivity and independence. 106 105 Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture, 75. 106 Ibid., 82. 216 As a space capsule provides physical security for astronauts in the dangerous environment of outer space, so the capsule defends the privacy and individuality of its residents against the flood of information from the outside world. The capsule filters unwanted information while accelerating the influx of desired information. Kurokawa regarded Japan’s rapid social transformation to the information society of the 1960s as either a blessing for its ability to foster individual liberation or a curse for its dehumanizing and surveillance aspects. Under such circumstances, he described the capsule as a “weapon” or “individual shelter” with which individuals could assert their privacy and freedom in postindustrial society. 107 Given that the capsule is a survival mechanism as well as an exhibitionist house, its logic is analogous to that of the home fallout shelter, which was popular in the U.S. at the height of the Cold War. 108 (Fig. 58) I would consider the capsule, a fortified domestic space attached to a high-rise megastructure, as an underground bomb shelter in reverse. The bomb shelter boom in the U.S. was a product of the growing concerns about safety in light of the threat of nuclear attack. During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. government encouraged its citizens to construct private fallout shelters while initiating a public shelter program as well, although fallout shelters were never been put into practical use in its 107 Ibid., 79, 84. 108 For more discussion of the bomb shelter construction boom in the U.S., see Kenneth Rose, One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture (New York and London: New York University Press, 2001); Tom Vanderbilt, Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 96-155; Sarah A. Lichtman, “Do-It-Yourself Security: Safety, Gender, and the Home Fallout Shelter in Cold War America,” Journal of Design History 2006, 19(1) : 39-55. 217 heyday. In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, an enthusiastic proponent of the shelters, stated, “To recognize the possibility of nuclear war in the missile age without our citizens knowing what they should do and where they should go would be a failure of responsibility.” 109 However, the U.S. fallout shelter was neither a primitive underground cave nor a protective shell with minimal provisions. Rather, it symbolized the ideal domesticity which was associated with the emergence of the suburban nuclear family. The U.S.’s home shelter boom was stimulated by the increase in home-ownership and the growing popularity of do-it-yourself home improvement hobbies of the time. 110 It also reflected the growing interest in good design and modern interiors. In 1960, an exhibition showcasing model bomb shelters was held under the sponsorship of the American Institute of Decorators and the National Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. Commenting on a shelter displayed in this exhibition, one designer remarked, “It will be informal in feeling, comfortable, and as cheerful as possible, with lots of buoyant colors. Why be drab about your shelter, when it is more fun, and costs no more to survive in style?” 111 Furthermore, the shelter boom rode the wave of consumerism made possible by postwar American affluence. In fact, the construction of private shelters which were well 109 Kennedy’s civil defense speech is quoted in “Civil Defense: The Sheltered Life,” Time, October 20, 1961, quoted in Lichtman, “Do-It-Yourself Security: Safety, Gender, and the Home Fallout Shelter in Cold War America,” 41. 110 Lichtman, “Do-It-Yourself Security: Safety, Gender, and the Home Fallout Shelter in Cold War America,” 39-55. 111 Newsweek, October 23, 1963, 51. 218 stocked with various consumer goods demanded for refugee life, such as canned food, medical supplies, battery-powered radios, and flashlights, would not have been possible without surplus resources and commodities. In this regard, French Situationist Guy Debord described the fallout shelter as the “creation of a new consumable commodity in affluent society.” 112 For him, surviving in an underground atomic shelter is the converse of life. He goes so far as to compare this “affluent form of family tomb” with the dehumanizing housing projects undertaken by bureaucratic capitalism in postwar France during the Cold War era. 113 In Japan, there was no such a thing as a fallout shelter boom, partly because Japan was not a direct target for potential Soviet missile attacks. Besides, Japan did not have enough surplus resources to invest in the construction of fallout shelters. However, the idea of a fallout shelter was known in Japanese art circles, as seen in the 1964 performance called Shelter Plan by Hi Red Center, the avant-garde group which consisted of Akasegawa Genpei, Takamatsu Jir ō, and Nakanishi Natsuyuki. 114 (Fig. 59) In January 1964, the members of Hi Red Center invited world-famous Fluxus artists including Paik Nam Jun, Ono Yoko, Kubota Shigeo, and Shiomoto Mieko to the Imperial Hotel. The performance featured the process of measuring various body parts, such as height, weight, volume, and even the amount of water that one could hold in one’s mouth, 112 Guy Debord, “The Geopolitics of Hibernation,” in The Situationists and the City, ed. and trans. Tom McDonough (New York and London: Verso, 2010), 201. Originally published in Internationale Situationiste no. 7 (April 1962): 3-10. 113 Ibid. 114 For Hi Red Center’s Shelter Plan, see Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 169. 219 in order to produce a custom-made shelter for each guest-artist. This exaggerated process of measuring can be read as a criticism of a micro-power operating on the level of bodies and everyday lives in the name of security (or surveillance). A custom-made shelter, which would protect one against dangers such as storms, heats, cold, and noise as well as s nuclear attack, was a luxury item, an object of desire, which could be owned by only the privileged. At the same time, however, it was hardly different from a tiny cell or a custom-made coffin which would imprison people in a highly-controlled, isolated space. In this regard, Shelter Plan reflected the fear and desire immanent in the nuclear age, a dual sensibility shared by the Metabolist capsule. Critic Tom Vanderbilt argued that the architecture of the Cold War can be defined by the coexistence of both ‘white spaces,’ as exemplified by the International Style high- rise with a glass façade, and ‘black spaces,’ as embodied by the underground bunker and fallout shelters. 115 He claims that “the existence of one not only presupposes the other but they inevitably seeped into each other, corrupting both in the process.” 116 The ‘white spaces’ and the ‘black spaces’ of Cold War architecture are simultaneously present in the capsule; the capsule is the white space, a new type of modern dwelling that represents the affluence and comfort of capitalist society in the postindustrial era. At the same time, it is a manifestation of black spaces, the defensive structures, which are saturated with the anxiety of the high-tech Cold War. 115 Vanderbilt, Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America, 39. 116 Ibid. 220 I have characterized Metabolism as an architectural embodiment of Cold War dualism. This dualism was played out in Expo’70, Japan’s World’s Fair, in which the Metabolists, Isozaki, and Tange were engaged in creating a model of the future city. The following chapter on Expo’70 will further examine what traits defined the “futures” represented at the fair, and how those “futures” functioned in relation to the traumatic past and continuing Cold War conflict. 221 Fig. 41 : A short history of postwar Japanese architecture, Shinkenchiku (August 1955): 11-14. 222 Fig. 42: Antarctic Station Building, proposals for round-shaped pneumatic structures, drawing, 1956. 223 Fig. 43 : Antarctic Station Building, construction process of prefabricated box-shaped structures, drawing, 1956, 224 Fig. 44: T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Untitled, in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism. 225 Fig. 45 : T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Asphalt, 1960. 226 Fig. 46 : T ōmatsu Sh ōmei, Ise Bay Typhoon, 1959. 227 Fig. 47 : Kikutake Kiyonori, “Ocean City,” in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. 228 Fig. 48 : Kurokawa Kish ō, “Agricultural City,” in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. 229 Fig. 49 : Kurokawa Kish ō, “Wall City,” in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. 230 Fig. 50 : Maki Fumihiko and Ōtaka Masato, “Group Form,” in Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. 231 Fig. 51 : Kikutake Kiyonori, Koto Redevelopment Project, 1961. 232 Fig. 52 : Kikutake Kiyonori, Move-net, In Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960. 233 Fig. 53 : Kurokawa Kish ō, Nakagin Capsule Tower, Ginza, 1970-1972. 234 . Fig. 54 : Ekuan Kenji, Core House, model and drawing, 1960. 235 Fig. 55 : Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House, model, 1929. 236 Fig. 56 : Archigram (David Greene), Living Pod, 1965. 237 Fig. 57: Kurokawa Kish ō, Nakagin Capsule Tower, interior view, 1970-1972. 238 Fig. 58 : Cover Page of Time Magazine, January, 12, 1962. 239 Fig. 59 : Hi Red Center, Shelter Plan, 1964. 240 Chapter 4: Expo’70, the Model City of an Information Society From March 15 to September 13, 1970, Osaka’s World Exposition, commonly known as Expo’70, attracted a record-breaking 64 million visitors. Together with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Expo’70 was the culmination of a celebratory drama of the country’s remarkable recovery from the ashes of World War II. Japanese architects who have developed various concepts of a future city were given an unprecedented chance to realize their visionary futuristic proposals. With the help of the advanced building technologies and exhibition techniques, they proposed eye-popping pavilions, automatized monorails and moving walks, and multi-media environments which combined to produce a techno-futuristic spectacle. The goal of this chapter is to examine Expo’70 as a model city for this new information society by drawing on the futurological studies that were prevalent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Expo’70 was often viewed as the “spectacular swansong” of the utopian movements in Japanese architecture. Bemoaning the dominance of commercialism and kitsch style buildings in Expo’70, commentators tend to describe the designs for Expo’70 as overly superficial and merely eye-catching. In their views, Expo’70 failed to make a lasting impact on the Modernist Movement in Japanese architecture. Yatsuka Hajime, for example, regards Expo’70 as a symptom of the breakdown of the modern movement and its utopian vision. For Yatsuka, the progressive social vision of the modern movement lost its social relevance and was quickly superseded by a new trend known as 241 postmodernism. 1 The decline of the modern movement was further accelerated by the dominance of commercialism and the growing power of corporate sponsors. Zhongjie Lin characterizes Expo’70 in terms of “the contradiction between idealism and consumerism, between social agendas and commercial propaganda, between the search for an eternal order and the pursuit of material goods and entertainment.” 2 Lin concludes that the progressive vision of architectural avant-gardes was overwhelmed by the vulgar consumerism and entertainment spectacle of the Expo. 3 The prevalent view of Expo’70 as the end of the modern movement was reinforced by the tendency to describe Expo’70 as the grand tomb of the avant-garde movement. Expo’70 seriously divided the Japanese art community into those who supported it and those who opposed it. While a majority of Japan’s leading artists participated in this national event, some radical artists criticized it for its deceptive nature, calling it a form of state propaganda and refusing to take part in it. Critic Sawaragi Noi, in his critical analysis of Expo’70, employs the charged term “mobilization,” which inevitably echoes the war mobilization of the Asia Pacific War. 4 Central to Sawaragi’s argument is that Expo’70 reiterated the nationalistic rhetoric of the war. Within this framework, Sawaragi compares the participation of avant-garde artists in Expo ’70 to the 1 Yatsuka, “Architecture in the Urban Desert: A Critical Introduction to Japanese Architecture After Modernism,” 8-10. 2 Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan, 225. 3 Ibid., 226-226. 4 Sawaragi, Sens ō to banpaku, 146-152; Sawaragi Noi, “Sens ō to banpaku: m ō hitotsu no sens ō bijutsu o megutte” [World Wars and World Fairs: Regarding another War Art], 10+1, no.36 (T ōky ō: INAX Shuppan- sha, 2006): 62. 242 wartime mobilization of artists for various patriotic events, and he thus argues that avant- garde art degenerated into official Expo art. 5 Interestingly, the rhetoric of “mobilization” was also found in Yoshimi Shun’ya’s sociologist critique of Expo’70. 6 Yoshimi’s study shows that the event depended on not only the drafting of intellectuals and artists but also the mobilization of the masses in this national spectacle by focusing on the crucial role of the mass media campaign. This fatalistic narrative of Expo’70, however, tends to obscure the architects’ own endeavors to build a city of the future. A simplistic dichotomy between avant-gardes and bureaucratic/commercial power can be complicated by the fact that these architects’ visions of the future were neither homogeneous nor necessarily radical. During the 1960s, the architects who participated in Expo’70 had already proposed diverse and even conflicting visions of the future, which ranged from a technocratic utopia (Tange) to destructive ruins (Isozaki) to a post-apocalypse survival city (Metabolism). Historically, Expos provided architects with a laboratory for new urban concepts and construction technologies. This study considers architects participating in Expo’70 less as members of a tragic avant-garde who were mobilized and victimized by state authorities or big business than as active agents who took full advantage of this state event in order to realize their ambitious plans for the city of the future. I would characterize Expo’70 as a model city for an information society, and I investigate how 5 Ibid., 60. 6 Yoshimi Shun’ya, Banpaku Gens ō: Sengo Seiji no Jubaku [The Phantasm of Expositions: The Spell of Postwar Politics] (T ōky ō: Chikuma Shinsho, 2005), 86-90. 243 architects strove to propose a new paradigm of architecture, one which would be suitable for the flexible and fluid movement of people and information. This chapter first offers a synchronic and diachronic account of Expo’70 by focusing on its futuristic theme. Then it examines the architects’ efforts to transcend the rigid functionalism of modernist architecture in order to accommodate the growing mobility and fluidity of people and information, which was required for the coming society. By situating Expo’70 within the specific social, political, and intellectual context of Japan in 1970, this study asks how the virtual information city in Expo’70 responded to the traumatic past and the contradictory present of postwar Japan. By way of conclusion, I will argue that Expo’70 marks the closure of postwar architecture, architecture which was haunted by the traumatic memories of the war-ridden past. Expo’70 opens a new page for Japanese architecture in the post-postwar period by providing the new architectural paradigm for an information and postindustrial society. Toward Expo’70, Toward the Future As early as 1963, there was a move among politicians and in industrial circles to host an international exhibition in Japan. Since it was expected that a mega-scale event would have a positive impact on the local economy, many local governments competed in order to attract the event to their prefectures. The rivalry between Kansai and Kanto region figured significantly in the selection of Osaka as the site of the Expo. Since Tokyo had hosted the Olympic Games in 1964, it was considered natural for Osaka, the core city 244 of Kansai’s economy, to host the Expo. In response to local movements, the Japanese government got involved in the preparation for the Expo under the leadership of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the government agency responsible for the nation’s industrial policy. In April 1965, the Osaka Expo Preparatory Council was established and the hilly area located in the northern part of Osaka was soon selected as the site of the Expo. In September 1965, the International Exhibitions Bureau (B.I.E.) officially accepted Japan’s application to hold the Expo in Osaka. 7 Before Osaka hosted Expo’70, Japan had over a hundred years of experience participating in international expositions and organizing domestic industrial exhibitions. Since first appearing at the 1862 London World Exposition, Japan had been among the most enthusiastic participants in such expositions, utilizing these international events as a useful means of cultural diplomacy and industrial promotion. At the turn of the twentieth century, Japan’s displaying arts and ceramics in these international exhibits stimulated a vogue for Japonisme in the U.S. and European countries, generating substantial income with which Japan spurred its industrial development. While the international expositions played crucial roles in promoting a positive image of Japan as a highly civilized and developed country to foreign audiences, Japan’s domestic exhibitions served as a chance to present the splendid accomplishments of nation’s rapid modernization and industrialization to its own people. Following the model of Western exhibitions, the Meiji 7 For a detailed explanation of the opening of the Expo in Osaka, see Nihon Bankoku Hakurankai Ky ōkai [Japan Association for the 1970 World Expo], Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970: Official Report (Suita City, Commemorative Association for the Japan World Exposition, 1970/ 1972). V ol. 1, 34-42 245 government (1968-1912) organized a series of industrial exhibitions in Tokyo and Osaka. 8 The success of the domestic industrial exhibitions led to efforts to stage an international Expo on Japanese soil. In 1940, the Japanese government planned to host both an Expo and the Olympics in Tokyo in commemoration of the 2600th anniversary of the accession of the Emperor Jimmu, although both projects were postponed indefinitely due to the escalation of the war. In the context of growing wartime patriotism, these events were intended to promote its imperial destiny to both domestic and international audiences. For example, the aborted Tokyo Expo was designed to display the authentic nature of Japanese traditional culture and self-identity. The prizewinning design for the Tokyo Expo’s Memorial Hall heavily drew on shinto-style traditional buildings, echoing the strong influence of the wartime popularity of Japanese taste (Nihon shumi). 9 In addition, one of the poster designs selected as the official icon of the Expo featured a samurai, Japan’s traditional warrior, standing in a commanding manner, which expressed national commemoration and pride. 10 8 The first three domestic Expos were held in Tokyo’s Ueno Park in 1877, 1881, and 1890. In 1895, Kyoto hosted the fourth industrial domestic fair at Okazaki Park, and in 1903 Osaka attracted the fifth and final industrial expo at the Tenn ōji. 9 Japanese taste (Nihon shumi) indicates a hybrid style, a synthesis of modern construction and traditional ornamentations. For detailed discussion of Nihon shumi, see the first chapter of this dissertation. 10 For the aborted 1940 Tokyo Expo, see Angus Lockyer, “Expo Fascism?: Ideology, Representation, Economy,” in Culture of Japanese Fascism, ed. Alan Tansman (Durham: Duke University Press), 226-295; Furukawa Takahisa, K ōki hanbaku, orimpiku [Imperial Origin, Expo, Olympics] (T ōky ō: Chu ōk ōron-sha, 1998). 246 This aborted 1940 Tokyo Expo is widely conceived as the direct precedent of Expo ’70. 11 Although the Japanese government was desperate that the country be seen as a new nation, distinct from wartime and imperial Japan, there was in fact a strong continuity between postwar and prewar/wartime society. In particular, Japan’s bureaucratic system, which was responsible for preparing for the 1940 Tokyo Expo, remained almost intact after the war and continued to play a leading role in organizing Expo’70. A direct link between these two Expos was clearly illustrated by the fact that the one who officially proposed the opening of Expo’70 was LDP politician Toyota Masataka, a former bureaucrat who had been in charge of a management committee for the prewar Tokyo Expo. 12 Indeed, anyone who had bought tickets for the aborted Tokyo Expo was welcome to use them in Osaka thirty years later. However, Expo’70, held on the 25 th anniversary of the end of war, marked the moment of Japan’s reacceptance into the world’s community, not as a wartime enemy but as a peace-loving and prosperous ally. Understandably, government fair officials tried to distance Expo’70 from its wartime precedent, which was closely connected with nationalism and imperial legacy. Instead of displaying Japan’s origin narrative and cultural authenticity, characteristic of the 1940 Tokyo Expo, Expo’70 presented the universal theme of techno-futurism. To a large degree, Expo’70 was an important event in 11 Yoshimi, Banpaku Gens ō: Sengo Seiji no Jubaku, 40-45; Furukawa, K ōki hanbaku, orimpiku, 224-227; Sawaragi, Sens ō to banpaku, 146-152. 12 Furukawa, K ōki hanbaku, orimpiku, 224-225. 247 transforming the stereotypical image of Japan from its association with its traditional aesthetic to the current image of Japan as a techno-futuristic virtual space. Far from an isolated phenomenon, techno-futurism has been one of the most frequently found motifs in the history of international exhibitions. Since the first 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, Expos functioned as guides to new technology and a technology-driven future. As new techniques of display and visual media developed in the twentieth century, Expos began to offer a more vivid image of the future to the public. Nowhere was the Expo’s futuristic theme better expressed than in the New York World’s Fair held in 1939-1940 under the theme of “Building the World of Tomorrow.” The landmark icon of this New York fair was the General Motors exhibit “Futurama,” wherein viewers made a virtual trip to “a city of 1960,” a utopian city filled with streamlined glass skyscrapers and elevated superhighways. 13 Expos in the postwar period, which Robert Rydell called “Fairs in the Atomic Age,” continued to uphold the optimism of a technology-driven future so as to rekindle popular confidence in science and technology, which was undermined by the recent war and nuclear tragedy. 14 In this sense, the futuristic theme of Expo’70 can be situated within Expos’ long tradition. And yet, at the same time, the visions of the future portrayed in Expo’70 should be discussed within the context of newly emerging futurological discourses at the advent of postindustrial society. The 1960s saw intensive discussion of this coming society, 13 Folke T. Kihlstedt, “Utopia Realized: The World’s Fairs of the 1930s,” in Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future, ed. Joseph J. Corn (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986), 97-118. 14 Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2000), 137. 248 which was variously described as postindustrial, information, and consumer society. Focusing on the growing number of white-collar proportion of workers, sociologist Daniel Bell proclaimed a new intellectual paradigm of the postindustrial society, as opposed to the previous industrial model dominated by blue-collar workers. 15 Among the most renowned prophets who celebrated the coming world was media scholar Marshall McLuhan. His utopian image of a “global village,” a world electrically unified by dramatic developments in communications and information technology, deeply affected the urban planning concept of contemporary architects. 16 More specifically, there were intense interdisciplinary and international debates about urbanism and futuristic issues, including population growth, urban explosion, and environmental sustainability. An exemplary case showing the impact of future studies in the field of architecture and urbanism was the Cities of the Future (COF) project initiated by Ekistics, the new field of “the science of human settlements,” established by charismatic Greek planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis. 17 I discussed how Tange have interacted with Doxiadis’ Ekistics since the mid 1960s in the first chapter of this dissertation. Japanese intellectuals wasted no time in participating in the futurology boom. The key literature on future studies, such as Bell’s and McLuhan’s works, was quickly 15 For Daniel Bell’s prophetic forecast of postindustrial society, see Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideologies in the Fifties (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960); Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 16 McLuhan proposed the idea of global village in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Topographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). 17 For the cities of future project by Ekistics, see Panayiota Pyla, “Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental Developmental Politics,” Grey Room, 35 (Summer 2009): 6-35; For a discussion of the close relationship between Tange and Ekistics, see the first chapter of this dissertation. 249 translated into Japanese, and these writings deeply affected the thinking of Japanese intellectuals. 18 Kawazoe Noboru cited McLuhan’s major publications, such as Understanding Media: The Extensions of Men (1964) and The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (1965), as an importance source of his imaginings of a future city for Expo’70. 19 Since the late 1960s, a number of government proposals and government- sponsored think-tank reports outlined the technocratic vision of an information and postindustrial society. 20 According to historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki, the increasing emphasis on the new information society in the 1960s and 1970s was not a natural outcome determined by a sort of inherent teleology of technology itself, but a planned policy response designed to restructure Japanese industry in favor of the interests of politically and economically privileged groups. 21 Adopting the notion of ‘information capitalism” instead of the neutral “information society,” Morris-Suzuki claims that the information society was a 18 Bell’s and McLuhan’s famous books were quickly translated into Japanese. For example, Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberugu no Gingakei [The Gutenberg Galaxy], trans. Takaki Susumu(T ōky ō: Takeuchi shoten, 1968), Marshall McLuhan, Ningen kakuch ō no genri [Understanding Media: The Extension of Man], trans. G ōto Kazuhiko and Takagi Susumu (T ōky ō: Takeuchi shoten, 1967), Marshall McLuhan, Media wa masage de aru [The Medium is the Message], trans. Minami Hiroshi (T ōky ō: Kaudi shob ō, 1968); Daniel Bell, Ideorogi no sh ūen [The End of Ideology], trans. Okada Naoyuki (T ōky ō: Gendai shakai kakaku s ōsho, 1969), Daniel Bell, Datsu k ōky ō shakai no d ōrai [The Coming of Post-industrial Society], trans. Uchida Tadao (T ōky ō: Daiyamodo-sha, 1975). 19 Kawazoe Noboru, “Banpakuden to kenchiku” [Expo’70 and Architecture], in Nihon bankokuhaku, kenchiku and zokei [Expo’70, Architecture and Form], eds. Tange Kenz ō, Okamoto Tar ō, and Kurokawa Kish ō (T ōky ō: Kobun-sha, 1971), 211. 20 For a detailed analysis of these official reports, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Beyond Computopia: Information, Automation and Democracy in Japan (London and New York: Kegan Paul International: 1988), 6-24. 21 Ibid. 250 “technocrats’ utopia,’ a public justification for the policies desired by the ruling class. 22 However, before the ideological dimensions of information society were fully perceived, the potentiality of the new society gained credibility among various disciplines. This forward-looking trend reached its peak with the opening of Expo’70. Newspapers and magazines ran special features on the futuristic themes and promoted the image of a utopian future in which less taxing labor, more abundant leisure, and access for all to goods could enhance the quality of life. On the first day of 1970, the Kansai edition of the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese daily newspaper, devoted several pages to anticipating the new decade. This New Year issue featured a special article titled “Forecasting the 1970s,” based on a survey of one hundred selected leaders responsible for Japan’s future. 23 Most respondents to the survey predicted the 1970s as an era of change and affluence to be brought about by technological innovation. Numerous illustrations of the upcoming Expo offered a palpable picture of this new world. In April 1970, the Japan Society of Futurology held an international future research conference in Kyoto with more than two hundred participants from across the world that gauged the impact of technological progress on future society. Japanese futurists presented the idea of a “multi-channel society,” a vision of a high-tech society, to which existing societal institutions should adapt. 24 A multi-channel society refers to an affluent and elastic society in which flexibility and diversity would be encouraged within 22 Ibid., 22. 23 Asahi Shimbun (Kansai edition), 1 January 1970. 24 Japan Society of Futurology published three volumes based on the panel presentations of the Kyoto Conference, Japan Society of Futurology, Challenges from the Future, vol. 1-3 (T ōky ō: Kodan-sha, 1970). 251 some degree of order. What draws our attention in the Kyoto Conference is the attendance of two Metabolists, Kurokawa Kish ō and Kikutake Kiyonori, who were involved in the Expo project and designed famous capsule structures such as the Takara Beautillion, the Capsule House, and the Expo Tower. In this conference, Kurokawa presented a paper titled “Homo-Movense and Metabolism in the Multi-Channel Society,” in which he stressed mobility as a new value for humanity in an information-oriented multi-channel society. 25 Kikutake’s paper, “The General Concept of a Multi-Channel Society,” introduced the concept of a soft environment in which two contradictory factors— individual spontaneity and overall planning—are reconciled. 26 Their idea of mobility and a soft environment was further developed in their designs for Expo’70. It was not surprising that Expo’70 reflected such futurological discourse of the time. In other words, the futuristic spectacle of Expo’70 was based on less a random choice of any future than a coherent picture of the information and postindustrial future. The following section examines how architects utilized the Expo in developing a new model of architecture and city, which would be suitable for the flexible and fluid movement of people and information in a postindustrial future. 25 Kurokawa Kish ō, “Homo-Movense and Metabolism in the Multi-Channel Society,” in Challenges from the Future, ed. Japan Society of Futurology, vol. 1, 357-370. 26 Kikutake Kiyonori, “The General Concept of a Multi-Channel Environment,” in Challenges from the Future, ed. Japan Society of Futurology, vol. 2, 353-362. 252 Future City Realized It is a widely circulated idea that Tange was exclusively responsible for the overall plan and central facilities of the fair. And yet it was Nishiyama Uz ō, a Kansai- based architect, who played a crucial role in laying the foundation of the master plan. In December 1965, the Expo Preparation Committee assigned both Tange and Nishiyama to be in charge of drafting the master plan. If Tange mostly worked for the government and big corporate sponsors, Nishiyama’s career represented that of a leftist architect who was inclined to improve workers’ living conditions and design collective public housing. The double appointment of Tange from Tokyo University and Nishiyama from Kyoto University can be regarded as a compromise between the competing interests of the Kanto and Kansai architectural circles. 27 Based on preliminary research on the Senri site conducted by Nishiyama’s team from Kyoto University, Nishiyama proposed the first two drafts of the Expo’s master plan. He proposed the concept of the “model core of a future city” as a basic design guideline for the Expo. 28 His master plan features the Symbol Zone, running from north to south, as the central axis of the site. (Fig. 60) The centerpiece of the Symbol Zone is a giant 27 Andrea Yuri Flores Urushima, “Genesis and Culmination of Uz ō Nishiyama’s Proposal of a ‘Model Core of a Future City’ for the Expo’70 Site (1960-1973),” Planning Perspectives, 22 (October 2007): 396-398. 28 Nishiyama Uz ō, “Bankokuhakuk kaij ō keikaku: ch ōsa kara kikaku e” [Expo’70, From Research to Planning], Kenchiku zasshi (March 1970): 197. 253 plaza which accommodates “face-to-face” interaction among the visitors. 29 Nishiyama envisioned the fairground as a ‘pedestrian city’ in which automobile movement would be highly restricted. The idea of “car-less city” can be found in his 1961 essay titled “Home City.” In this text, he states that “as it is an old custom in Japan to take off shoes before entering a house, so cars should be left outside the city… I think that a city in Japan should be built like a ‘home’ in the future.” 30 Nishiyama’s plan finds its precedent in his own Kyoto Plan (1965) and Nara Plan (1965), two urban redevelopment proposals for Japan’s old capitals. 31 (Fig. 61) The Kyoto Plan includes a 13km-long north-south axis which would serve as the central traffic route as well as configuring the high-rise residential districts. The central band of the axis would be reserved for a public space where mass gathering and pedestrian movement take place, which hints at Nishiyama’s socialist concerns. The Nara Plan resembles the Expo’s master plan in that it features two linear axes that cross in perpendicular directions, like the Expo’s layout. The intersection of two axial lines in the Nara Plan provides a plaza at their intersection as a gathering place for a maximum of four hundred thousand people. Nishiyama’s urban schemes might have borrowed the idea of linear composition from the famous proposal for Tokyo Bay (1961), in which Tange proposed a mega-scale urban axis as a central spine of the city to resolve the chaotic urban expansion. However, as Zhongjie Lin has pointed out, Nishiyama was interested in 29 Ibid. 30 Nishiyama Uz ō et all, “Home City: Future Image of City,” Kindai kenchiku 14 (March 1961): 52. 31 For more on Nishiyama’s Kyoto Plan and Nara Plan, see Urushima, “Genesis and Culmination of Uz ō Nishiyama’s Proposal of a ‘Model Core of a Future City’ for the Expo’70 Site (1960-1973),” 403-406. 254 mass transit and pedestrian movement whereas Tange focused on a highway system and automobile movement. 32 Nishiyama’s master plan for Expo’70 revealed less the nostalgic impulse of an old socialist than a forward-looking vision of a future city or the pilot project for the nation’s future urban planning. In his layout, the Symbol Zone, which is perpendicularly intersected by a newly built railway line, serves not only as a conventional plaza but also as a traffic hub to receive and send visitors to different zones through various traffic systems with different velocities. Nishiyama called this traffic filter “core-kombinato,” a concept which was actually incorporated into the construction of industrial conglomerates built along the Tokaid ō line. Despite his crucial contribution to the master plan, however, Nishiyama resigned from the position of chief-producer, and Tange and his staff took over the entire responsibility for the Expo’s construction. Commentators tend to argue that Nishiyama’s resignation was forced by the bureaucrats and industrialists who preferred Tange’s technocratic stance to Nishiyama’s socialist one. 33 Indeed, Nishiyama often spoke out against the official policy of the Expo, and he even questioned charging an entry fee to the Expo, arguing that people should have free access since it was a public event. 34 It was 32 Lin, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan, 210-211. 33 Miyauchi Yoshihisa, “Non o iwani kenchikuka” [Architect who doesn’t say non], in Ware-ware ni totte banpaku towa nanika [What does Expo’70 mean to us?], ed. Hariu Ichir ō (T ōky ō: Takata shoten, 1969), 104; Urushima, “Genesis and Culmination of Uz ō Nishiyama’s Proposal of a ‘Model Core of a Future City’ for the Expo’70 Site (1960-1973),” 396. 34 Urushima, “Genesis and Culmination of Uz ō Nishiyama’s Proposal of a ‘Model Core of a Future City’ for the Expo’70 Site (1960-1973),” 400. 255 not clear whether Nishiyama lost his leadership of this project due to political pressure, but it seems obvious that there was a clear conflict and even antagonism between Tange’s and Nishiyama’s teams. When Tange’s team submitted the final draft in October 1966, for instance, Nishiyama made a point of criticizing the drafts regarding the ideas for post- Expo use of the site, pointed to a security problem with the conveyer belt, and criticized the lack of flexibility in the overall layout of Tange’s plan. 35 Despite their different political perspectives, Nishiyama’s draft remained mostly intact in Tange’s final version though Tange revised and developed the plan in compliance with updated statistics on the anticipated numbers of visitors and traffic flow. Following Nishiyama’s draft, Tange’s plan features the north-south central area of the Symbol Zone in which the Expo’s main pavilions and facilities—the Expo Tower, the Main Gate, the Grand Roof, the Festival Plaza, the Museum of Fine Art, the Expo Hall, the Rose Garden—were all aligned. (Fig. 62) The Symbol Zone intersects the approaching highway which divides the Expo site into two sections: the north section, which was primarily used for the space of domestic and foreign pavilions, and the south section, used for recreation and administrative facilities. Following Nishiyama’s initial plan, the main function of the Symbol Zone was to bring together various traffic systems of different velocities and to redistribute them through the entire site. What makes Tange’s design unique is his interest in the non-human system as distinguished from Nishiyama’s face-to-face interactions in the physical plaza. As discussed below, Tange’s emphasis on the system itself was motivated by the recent futurological discourses. 35 Nihon Bankoku Hakurankai Ky ōkai, Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970: Official Report. V ol. 3, 167. 256 If Nishiyama’s proposal was based on a rather vague and abstract concept of the “model core of a future city,” Tange’s was drawn on a much more specific vision of an information society. As early as 1960, Tange tried to graft the latest futurological studies into his designs. In his “A Plan for Tokyo-1960,” Tange outlined a shift from secondary to tertiary industry as a basic condition for the emergence of a “pivotal city.” 36 His plan was to transform Tokyo’s urban structure so that it could accommodate this industrial shift. His urban proposals based on futuristic interests affected the nation’s urban planning policy. From 1967 to 1970, Tange was involved in a government project called the “Japan in the Twenty First Century,” for which his team drew a picture of the coming society. 37 In this report, Tange articulated the tendency toward the “informatization” (j ōhōka) of society, such that the creation, distribution, and manipulation of information would be a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. 38 This document proposed a plan for the T ōkaid ō Megalopolis as a guiding policy for the nation’s future development. As the chief designer of the Expo, Tange made it clear that the goal of Expo’70 was to provide a new model of city and architecture in response to the urgent tasks facing the informatization process, such as the growing mobility and fluidity of society. In the Expo special issue of Shinkenchiku of May 1970, Tange put it this way: 36 For a detailed discussion of A Tokyo Plan 1960, see the first chapter of this dissertation. 37 21 seiki no nihon genky ūkai, 21 seiki no nihon: sono kokudo to kokumin seikatsu no miraiz ō. 38 Ibid., 62-107. 257 During the stage of an industrial society, Expos had the cultural-historical significance of exposing physical things, such as technology and the achievements of scientific engineering. However, such a form of Expo doesn’t have much meaning in the contemporary era, in which we are progressing into an ‘information society.’ Rather than displaying hardware, it would be more meaningful to create a software-like environment. In other words, we should gather together to exchange direct communication between people, each bringing our own cultures or non- physical traditions to exchange. 39 For Tange, the software-like environment would stimulate the spontaneous and fluid movement of people and information, which would allow for maximum possibilities in terms of urban growth and individual liberty. Tange’s concept of a software environment was far from unique. The newly emerging information and multi-channel society was widely conceived as a soft and flexible society. In 1969, Hayashi Y ūjir ō—a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and adviser to the Economic Planning Agency who was also credited with coining the term “information society”—published an influential book titled The Informatized Society: from Hard Society to Soft Society (1969). In this book, Hayashi argued that the move toward a more information-based society would bring about an elastic and flexible world in which people would have more choices and free time. 40 It was likely that Tange was familiar with Hayashi’s book, which was highly influential in contemporary Japanese intellectual circles. Tange believed that a soft environment, in 39 Tange Kenz ō and Kawazoe Noboru, “Nihon bankokuhakurankai no motarasu mono” [What Japan Expo brought about], Shinkenchiku (May 1970): 147. 40 Hayashi Y ūjir ō, J ōh ōka shakai: had ō na shakai kara sofuto na shakai e [The Informatized Society: from Hard Society to Soft Society] (T ōky ō: Kodansha, 1969). 258 which the spontaneous and fluid movement of people and information are encouraged, would be most suitable for the shift to a soft, informatized society. Tange’s vision of a soft environment was widely shared by the architects and designers who were involved in the Expo’s project. In his dialogue with Tange, Kawazoe reaffirmed Tange’s call for a turn toward a software-like environment in architecture by asserting that “architects in recent days cease to think of architecture as something rigidly fixed and begin to include in it certain environmental elements.” 41 In a similar vein, Isozaki brought up the idea of a “soft architecture,” a flexible architecture which would be “responsive to the flow of time and the needs of a succession of occasions.” 42 Kikutake also proposed the concept of the “soft environment” as a new urban model which would replace existing planning methods in the aforementioned Kyoto conference. 43 For Kikutake, the soft environment introduced management, administration, and feedback systems into planning in order to do away with the rigidity of an imposed order and stimulate individual spontaneity and freedom. In Expo’70, Tange attempted to make a visible and recognizable form of software environment through the master plan and his design of the Grand Roof. First of all, Tange employed the tree model as a basic layout of the fairground. Drawing on an organic analogy, he compared the Symbol Zone, located at the core of the Expo grounds, with “trunk facilities,” which would transmit energy and water to various parts of organisms. 41 Tange Kenz ō and Kawazoe Noboru, “Some Thoughts about Expo’70,” Japan Architect (May/June): 32. 42 Isozaki Arata, Architectural Design (June 1970): 293. 43 Kikutake, “General Concept of Multi-Channel Environment,” 359. 259 The moving walkways, which led in four directions from the Symbol Zone, were equated with the branches and leaves of a tree, and various pavilions were likened to colorful flowers blooming on the tree. Tange characterized the trunk facilities as the central nervous system which can control and manage the circulation of people and information at the fairground. 44 Here, Tange’s organic model became conflated with the idea of cybernetics, an emerging field that Norbert Wiener defined as the “science of communication and control in the animal and machine.” 45 The main presupposition of cybernetics is the notion that biological, technological, and social systems are similar in certain basic characteristics and are held together by communication in the sense of a transfer of information. For Tange, the Expo site was conceived as a living organism, a simulated model of a cybernetic city in which the constant but dynamic equilibrium of the space was coordinated by a vast central management and control system. However, the tree model did not lead to a flexible space that Tange intended it to be; the rigid nature of a tree-shaped urban model had already been pointed out by architect Christopher Alexander in his 1965 essay titled “A City is Not a Tree.” 46 Alexander argues that a tree model of a city is essentially hierarchical and homogeneous 44 For Tange’s account of the Expo site, see Tange and Kawazoe, “Some Thoughts about Expo’70,” 29-32; Tange Kenz ō, “Bankoku hakukaij ō keikaku: kikaku kara keikaku e” [Expo Site Plan: From Vision to Planning], Kenchiku zasshi (March 1970): 201-206. 45 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (New York: J. Wiley, 1948). 46 Christopher Alexander, “A City is Not a Tree” Architectural Forum, vol.122, no. 1 (April 1965): 58-62 (Part I), vol. 122, no. 2 (May 1965): 58-62 (Part II). 260 because it is imposed by a single designer or urban planner. Instead of a tree model, Alexander proposes a semi-lattice model in which formidable complexity and spontaneity are engendered by reciprocity and social networks. Alexander’s semi-lattice model seems to be realized in Isozaki’s design for the Festival Plaza that I will discuss later in this chapter. In addition to the layout for the Expo site, Tange presented the space frame of the Grand Roof as a visual representation of the soft environment. (Fig. 63) In collaboration with engineer Kamiya Koji and Fukuda Asao, Tange erected a light-weight structure 30 meters above the ground. The space frame of 100 by 300 meters, which consisted of standardized module of steel pipes and ball joints, was a lightweight and ever-expandable structure. The upper part of the space frame was covered with a pneumatic polyester film panel, providing an artificially controlled climate that was free of the unpleasantness of rain and snow. Tange wanted to erect “something resembling clouds,” a simple and flexible frame. 47 The Grand Roof was penetrated by Okamoto Tar ō’s Sun Tower, the seventy- meter colossus with three faces, which housed the Expo’s theme exhibit. The Sun Tower can be discussed in terms of Okamoto’s avant-garde theory of “bipolar oppositionalism,” an attempt to “venture into the depth of contradictions, exploring widely split dichotomies without trying to bring them together with the easy solution of compromise.” 48 By “bipolar oppositionalism,” Okamoto challenged the idea of harmony 47 Tange and Kawazoe, “Some Thoughts about Expo’70,” 31. 48 Isozaki, “As Witness to Postwar Japanese Art,” 28. 261 and comfort in conventional art and demanded a “cacophony” of clashes of opposing elements, such as abstraction and figuration, stillness and movement, organic and inorganic. 49 Okamoto’s totem-like and phallus-shaped giant sculpture collided with Tange’s ultra-futuristic and horizontal structure of the space frame. Moreover, Okamoto’s presentation of the chaotic origin of a primitive life at the subterranean-level exhibit held inside the Sun Tower made a sharp contrast with the architects’ Mid-Air exhibition of the city of the future. The idea of the space frame can be traced back to Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the prefabricated cast-iron open structure built for the first world exposition held in London in 1851. Along with the development of construction technology and new materials, the space frame evolved and its long-span roof trusses gained popularity in creating dramatic and expressive space in commercial and industrial buildings. Tange’s understanding of the space frame used in the Grand Roof was heavily indebted to Konrad Wachsmann, a German-born American architect who was renowned for his articulation of prefabrication technology and the triangulated space frame. Wachsmann claimed that the technological and spatial concepts of the space frame represented the paradigmatic “turning point of building” for all architecture. 50 As I discussed in the previous chapter, Wachsmann’s two-month seminar held in Tokyo in 1955 had a significant impact on Japanese architects. It was likely that Tange, who was involved in organizing 49 Okamoto Tar ō, Avangyarudo geijutsu [Avant-Garde Art] (T ōky ō, Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1950), 79-83. 50 Konrad Wachsmann, The Turning Point of Building (New York: Reinhold, 1961). 262 Wachsmann’s seminar, was directly influenced by Wachsmann and his prefabricated space frame method. At that time, Tange was preoccupied with the triangulated space frame because he viewed this web-like structure as an architectural expression of an invisible network. For Tange, the creation of architecture and city was a “process of making the communication network visible in space.” 51 In the 1960s, the triangulated space frame enjoyed worldwide popularity among experimental architects and planners. According to architectural historian Mark Wiegly, the popularity of the triangulated space frame can be understood as an attempt to visualize an invisible communications infrastructure. 52 Tange’s effort to give a recognizable form to an invisible software environment, however, entailed a tension between a solid form and a dematerialized flow. As Tange himself admitted, neither the site plan nor the Grand Roof satisfied the need for softness and flexibility as he had hoped they would. 53 The predicament Tange faced could not be solved by utilizing alternate architectural forms since it was inherent in the very task of rendering the invisible visible. Perhaps it was in Isozaki’s Festival Plaza, in which any attempt at visibility was abandoned, that the concept of a soft environment was actualized in its fullest sense. While Tange tried to fabricate a visual form to express the agenda of flexible architecture, Isozaki instead made a radical turn to the immaterial system of 51 Tange Kenz ō, “Function, Structure and Symbol,” in Kenzo Tange: Architecture and Urban Design 1946- 1969, ed. Udo Kultermann (New York, Praeger, 1970), 240. 52 Wigley, “Network Fever,” 111. 53 Tange and Kawazoe, “Some Thoughts about Expo’70,” 31. 263 communications and networks, which he termed “invisible city.” (Fig. 64) The Festival Plaza, located at the center of the fair ground, was mainly used for three purposes: a place for national day events in the morning, a rest zone in the afternoon, and a space for large- scale shows and pageants in the evening. To accommodate these purposes, the Festival Plaza was constructed as an open space composed of cutting-edge equipment for lighting, sound, and robots. The centerpiece of the Festival Plaza was the two giant robots designed by Isozaki. Each stood fourteen meters tall and was equipped with ultra-modern mechanisms. The heads of these anthropomorphized robots were used as the center of operations which sensed the surrounding sound and light and sent them back to the main control computer. Their arms were able to carry people or equipment up to 9 meters above the ground or 7.5 meters laterally. On the ceiling, seven mobile moving trolleys hung under the space frame of the Grand Roof. Along with the robots, these remote- controlled trolleys amplified the stage effects by providing additional lighting and sound. According to Isozaki’s recollections, he did not like the name “Festival Plaza” (omatsuri hiroba) coined by Nishiyama because it was an absurd combination of two contradictory concepts, Japanese “festival” as a temporary element and Western “plaza” as an enduring element. 54 However, the made-up term, “festival plaza,” opened up the new possibility of an urban core which retained the contingency and eventfulness of traditional matsuri. Isozaki’s interest in traditional Japanese space was motivated by the collective research on traditional Japanese cities conducted by the City Design Research Group (Toshi dezain kenky ū kai), which included Isozaki and architectural historian It ō 54 Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture, 71-72. 264 Teiji. 55 Through this research project, Isozaki observed that the traditional Japanese city was dominated by the invisible ambience of lively neighborhoods called kaiwai, unlike its Western counterpart which was governed by permanent monuments. 56 The study of Japanese kaiwai led him to formulate an alternative architectural method called “invisible city.” In his 1966 essay entitled “Invisible City” (Mienai toshi), Isozaki proposed the idea of the semiotic stage of architecture, a new model of architecture and city, which incorporated invisible elements happening outside of physical buildings. 57 At the outset, invisible city was an anarchistic model of architecture which celebrated uncontrolled dynamicity and unprecedented interactions. 58 The only way to visualize the “invisible city” was to present a chaotic ruin. However, after drawing on the communications and information theory, which prevailed in the intellectual circles of the 1960s, Isozaki’s destructive model of the “invisible city” was transformed into a constructive planning method. The mechanism of the Festival Plaza can be best illustrated in terms of cybernetics. (Fig. 65) One of the key concepts of cybernetics, which is derived from the Greek word for “steersman,” is the principle of feedback, the process by which continual adjustments are made based on past processes. The Festival Plaza is a prototype of a 55 The report of this investigation was resulted in a volume called Nihon no toshi k ūkan [Japanese Urban Space] (T ōky ō: Sh ōkoku-sha, 1968). 56 Ibid., 25. 57 Isozaki, “Mienai toshi,” 380-404. 58 For a detailed account of Isozaki’s “invisible city,” see the second chapter of this dissertation. 265 cybernetic city, an innovative model of a city which can evolve incrementally through a bottom-up process of trial and error instead of being planned by a master planner from the outset. The Festival Plaza provides organized complexities in which the variables are interrelated into a self-adjusting dynamic equilibrium through computer data management and a feedback mechanism. Two methods were adopted for computer controls: 1) a pre-set system by which the computer was made to memorize a set of patterns, and 2) an automatic playing system in which the computer memorized not only the control patterns but also the signal for setting them in motion. By means of magnetic tapes bearing preset programs fed into a computer, a tape recorder was able to control all performance activities including sound, light, movement and robots. 59 Cybernetics was based on Norbert Wiener’s wartime research on electromechanical systems. During World War II, Wiener proposed a device called antiaircraft predictor, capable of obtaining information on the position and velocity of an aircraft and making the necessary calculations regarding its trajectory as well as anticipating and factoring in the pilot’s future behavior. 60 This wartime research on feedback-based weaponry developed into cybernetics, the science of communications and control which was employed in the Cold War’s command-and-control mechanisms. In the aforementioned essay “Invisible City,” Isozaki applied Wiener’s cybernetic model to articulate a new concept of urban planning by comparing the designer of a contemporary 59 Isozaki Arata, “Festival Plaza,” Japan Architect (May/June 1970): 68-77. 60 Peter Galison, “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 21, no.1 (Autumn 1994): 228-266. 266 city with a pilot in war. He wrote, “[T]he designer acts as a pilot and must not be swayed by his own fixed, preconceived concepts, since he is dealing with constant mutual response between reality and hypothesis. His city designing resembles push-button warfare.” 61 However, the cybernetic mechanism of the Festival Plaza was disconnected from its war-origin. Rather, Isozaki tried to present this feedback-sensitive space of the Festival Plaza as a multimedia entertainment environment which would facilitate the spontaneous and voluntary participation and involvement of visitors. Isozaki’s playful use of cybernetics might have been influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s optimistic proposal for a media-saturated total environment, with which Isozaki was familiar at that time. 62 McLuhan viewed this total environment enabled by new technologies as a new form of public space which would create new social relations and human associations in an electronic age. However, the Festival Plaza was not as democratic and spontaneous a space as it was intended to be. Instead of a conventional master designer, Isozaki appeared as “programmer,” a new type of bureaucrat who channeled users’ activities and mobility in the service of the fair authorities. 63 Despite Isozaki’s assertion that all kinds of activities 61 Isozaki, “Mienai toshi,” 402. 62 Isozaki’s article “Mienai toshi” introduced McLuhan’s idea of environment which instantaneously involves human beings. See Isozaki, “Mienai toshi,” 403. For more on McLuhan’s thought on this new media environment, see Marshall McLuhan, “The Invisible Environment: The Future of an Erosion,” Perspecta, vol. 11 (1967): 163-167. 63 Architectural historian Alan Colquhoun introduced the idea of a new type of bureaucrat—the programmer—in his critical analysis of the Pompidou Center. See Alan Colquhoun, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981), 117-8. 267 would take place in the Festival Plaza, one could hardly expect that any kind of political demonstration would occur in this highly-controlled cybernetic space. Given that human beings were treated as quantitative data, there was the possibility that the Festival Plaza would essentially be a vast social control system. In this sense, this homeostatic space which encompassed unprecedented variants and spontaneous movements corresponded to the emergence of the totalizing system of a “managed society (kanri shakai),” a form of mass society dominated by corporate capital. Nevertheless, the Festival Plaza represented a shift in the architectural paradigm from the conventional boundaries as defined by autonomous structure to the “expanded field of environment.” The Festival Plaza was an immaterial environment in which visitors could be immersed in a vast field of perceptual space of light, color, sound, and dynamic movement. The idea of an “expanded field of environment” was widely circulated in 1960s art and architecture circles, as exemplified in the 1966 exhibition called From Space to Environment, in which Isozaki participated together with various members of the cross-disciplinary group “Environment Society” (Kany ō kai). 64 The accompanying catalogue for this exhibition makes it clear that “environment” denotes a more dynamic and inseparable relationship between a person and his or her surroundings than that of “space.” Here, the notion of the “expanded field” also refers to the cross- disciplinary collaborations with various artists from different fields. 64 For this exhibition, see Yoshimoto, “From Space to Environment: The Origin of Kanky ō and the Emergence of Intermedia Art in Japan,” 25-45. 268 This 1966 exhibition From Space to Environment can be read as a direct precursor to the inter-media and cross-disciplinary spectacle staged at the Festival Plaza. In particular, the Gutai Art Festival staged at the Festival Plaza was directly derived from the interdisciplinary collaboration of “Environment Society.” The Gutai Art Association, the Kansai-based avant-garde artist collective, presented the three-night event by performing their earlier theatrical pieces, such as Shiraga Kazuo’s Sabas ō Dance and Kanayama Akira’s Giant Balloon on an enlarged scale. (Fig. 66) The cutting edge technological equipment at the Festival Plaza created a multi-sensory psychedelic environment into which both performers and viewers were plunged. Here, the Festival Plaza did not cease to provide a physical backdrop but instead served as an integral part of Gutai’s performance. If Isozaki proposed a dematerialized plaza as a new paradigm of architecture and city, the Metabolists presented their signature design of the capsule as the basic living unit of an information and postindustrial society. The Metabolists considered architecture to be a living organism which could grow and adapt itself to future change. In order to increase the capability for growth and regeneration, the Metabolists divided a structure into permanent and temporal elements according to their different life cycles. In the late 1960s, their attention shifted from a colossal megastructure as a way of “framing” to an individual capsule which maximized dwellers’ freedom, mobility and leisure activities. Their interest in the capsule reached its peak at the various Expo pavilions, including Kikutake’s Expo Tower, Kurokawa’s Takara Beautilion and the Mid-air Capsule House. 269 It was Kurokawa who was most enthusiastic about presenting the capsule as a new dwelling unit in a future society. Kurokawa claimed that the capsule was a private shelter which protected its residents from unnecessary and one-way information traffic. 65 However, the capsule was, in Kurokawa’s formulation, far from an isolated space, but rather constituted an integral part of a larger system. Kurokawa termed the capsule a “feedback mechanism” which was tightly connected to the metropolitan city functioning as an “information center.” 66 As the focal point of the Mid-air exhibit wherein the Metabolists collectively presented models of the future city and future house, Kurokawa presented a full-size model of a capsule thirty meters above the ground. (Fig. 67) Each unit of the capsule was manufactured at factories and transported to the fair site. Then it was plugged into a large steel frame under the Grand Roof with the help of engineer Kamiya Koji, who undertook the construction of the Grand Roof. The Capsule House was designed as a closed space for a nuclear family that was sealed off from external conflicts. However, at the same time, the capsule units, which were plugged into the Grand Roof, suggested the “docking” of individual dwellings into a communications and information infrastructure. 67 The interior of the Capsule House represented the dream of “my home,” a modular confine for nuclear family, a concept of the family that was prevalent in 65 Kurokawa, Metabolism in Architecture, 82. 66 ibid. 67 Ibid., 80. 270 Japanese society of the 1960s and 1970s. Kurokawa tried to present a vision of the future as an affluent society in which people would have more choices and leisure time. The Capsule House was composed of several detachable functional units, such as a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Its interior showcased a model house in which all sorts of electric appliances and modern furnishings were on display. Electric appliances, according to cultural anthropologist Marilyn Ivy, symbolized the “object of desire, the sign of middle- class inclusion, and the unparalleled commodity fetish for the Japanese” in an era of economic growth. 68 A photograph of the Capsule House, among those circulated in the press, shows a charming female model who appears as part of the spectacle of this domestic space in which a curvy plastic wall and a shaggy carpet produce a sensual ambience. (Fig. 68) This female model can be easily compared with a middle-class Japanese housewife who was confined within a homogeneous and standardized living unit surrounded by electric household appliances. Social theorist Tada Michitar ō argued that privatized and electrified domestic life was not a refuge from social structure but rather was highly indebted to corporate life because the dream of “my home” relied heavily on corporate-produced household appliances. 69 For Tada, “my-home-ism” was conflated with “my-loan-ism,” the domination of capital over everyday life. His critical comment hinted at the conversion from a utopian vision of an information and 68 Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 249. 69 Tada Michitar ō, Teihon kanri shakai no kage [The Shadow of a Managed Society] (T ōky ō: Nihon buritanika, 1979), 69. 271 postindustrial society to the pessimistic reality of a managed society, a mass consumer society dominated by corporations that prevailed in the 1970s. A link between domestic and corporate life in advanced capitalist society was clearly demonstrated in another of Kurokawa’s capsules structure called Takara Beautilion. (Fig. 69) The Takara Beautilion was one of the most glamorous pavilions in Expo’70. It was composed of steel pipe framing modules and thirty rounded hexahedron capsules. Each component of the pavilion was prefabricated at the factory and transported to the Expo site. Assembly and disassembly were extremely easy to complete. The structure of this capsule pavilion expresses the concept of flexibility and exchangeability in architecture. Like the Capsule House, the interior space of the Takara Beautilion, designed by Metabolist designer Ekuan Kenji and his GK design company, displays a vision of the future as a consumerist utopia in that the latest household appliances and special gadgets for beauty and fashion stand for the affluent and efficient life of the coming society. It is hard to disregard the connection between the pavilion’s exhibition and its sponsor, the Takara Company, a Japanese corporation that produces household items and beauty products. This pavilion displayed a mode of consumerist future dreamt of by the company. In this sense, the Takara Beautilion was none other than a towering advertisement for the Takara Company. 272 A Battle over the Future If the architectural designs for Expo’70 can be read as those of a model city of a postindustrial society that can be alternatively called an information, management, or consumerist society, two questions are raised. First, how did the model city of an information future staged in Expo’70 function within the specific socio-political context of Japan in 1970? Second, how can we read this techno-utopian city of Expo’70 in conjunction with the architects’ disparate concepts of a future city that had been developed in the 1960s? Except for Tange, whose career represented Japan’s linear progression from wartime devastation to economic prosperity based on historical amnesia, Isozaki’s and the Metabolists’ imaginaries of the future had the potential to contradict the utopian picture of Expo’70. In the 1960s Isozaki was preoccupied with destructive images of ruins, while some members of the Metabolist group were captivated by the notion of catastrophic end. To what extent were architects’ visions of the future, which were deeply infiltrated by memories of the war and Cold War anxiety, accepted or rejected by Expo’70 during the process of collaboration and negotiation with government officials and corporate sponsors? When Expo’70 was held, Japanese society was not only enveloped in the euphoria of the economic miracle but was also experiencing violent social upheaval. In June 1970, the greatest single set of political demonstrations since Japan gained autonomy in 1952 took place against the automatic renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security 273 Treaty (known as the Anpo treaty). Student movement reached its climax with the lifting of the barriers at Tokyo University in 1969. Anti-Vietnam War protesters also appeared as powerful oppositional forces in Japanese society. Under the Anpo treaty, which extended the presence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, Japan came to be involved in the Vietnam War by offering Okinawa as a military outpost launching pad for U.S. attacks on Southeast Asia. Japan’s media were inundated with visual representations of the destruction and death in Vietnam, which reminded Japanese people of their own wartime disaster in the recent past. According to historian Thomas H. Havens, the Vietnam War was regarded among the progressive sectors of the society as “an emblem of the evils produced by contemporary bureaucrats: anonymous warfare, in direction and execution, by the Americans and constant complicity by a monolithic Japanese state.” 70 It was in the heat of this political turmoil that Expo’70 was enjoying remarkable success, attracting more than two-thirds of Japan’s total population. The success of Expo’70 played a crucial role in diverting public attention from the political radicalism of the time. Yoshimi Shun’ya succinctly states that “the year of the Anpo treaty changed into to the year of Expo’70.” 71 Expo’70 seriously divided the society, including the arts community, into those who supported it and those who opposed it. Progressive forces associated with anti-war and anti-Anpo protests criticized Expo’70 for its technocratic and propagandistic nature. The anti-war activist group Beheiren (Citizen's League for 70 Thomas H. Havens, Fire Across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 1965-1975 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), 58. 71 Yoshimi Shun’ya, Hakurankai no Seijigaku: Manazashi no Kindai [Politics of Expo: A Glimpse of Modernity] (T ōky ō:Ch ūk ō shinsho, 1992), 233. 274 Peace in Vietnam) took collective action against Expo’70. August 7-11, 1969, a year before the opening of Expo’70, members of Beheiren hosted a counter-cultural festival under the banner of anti-Expo (banhaku) on the ground of the Osaka castle. They characterized Expo’70 as “a mode of cultural domination by state authorities” and tried to “combat the commercialism and big power nationalism.” 72 This anti-Expo festival featured anti-war film, artwork, and symposiums on Okinawa and university issues as well as the relics of a crashed American combat plane, all of which would be strictly repressed in the Expo’s presentation of a rosy future. On the final day of this five-day anti-Expo event, about six thousand participants went into the streets to join the anti-war protests. For these radicalized demonstrators, anti-Expo activities were part of the anti- war movement. 73 The anti-Expo camp attempted to scratch the Expo’s seamless vision of a rosy future by exposing the various contradictions inherent in contemporary society, including social injustice, environmental illness, racial and class struggle, and, most importantly, warfare and the nuclear crisis. In this light, Komatsu Saky ō—an SF novelist and an unofficial member of the Metabolist group who was appointed as an associate theme producer for Expo’70—described the anti-Expo struggles as “battles against the rosy future.” 74 Nothing was more effective in cracking the veneer of the Expo’s technology- 72 Hariu Ichir ō, “Hanbaku: Hansen und ō no shik ō sakub ō” [Anti-Expo: Trial and Errors of Anti-war Movements], Gendai no me (October 1969): 126-7. 73 For the 1969 anti-Expo festival, see Hariu, “Hanbaku: Hansen und ō no shik ō sakub ō,” 126-135; Yoshimi, Hakurankai no Seijigaku: Manazashi no Kindai, 96-100; Thomas H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan 1965-1975, 184. 74 Komatsu Saky ō, “Banpaku kara k ōgai e: Miraigaku no atarashii dankai” [From Expo’70 to Pollution: A 275 driven utopia than the destructive experiences of warfare caused by the abuse of modern technology. Japan, the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons, had palpable memories of the devastating effect of war, which was so fully grounded in the technological advances of the recent history. Under such circumstances, one might expect some contradictions between the Expo’70 and Isozaki’s engagement in its architectural project. During the 1960s, Isozaki presented a series of ruin projects which were reminiscent of Japan’s wartime destruction and nuclear trauma. By summoning up the long repressed memories of the war and nuclear calamity, Isozaki sought to reveal his suspicions about technological optimism and to challenge the government-led faith in ever-lasting growth and progress. Considering his radical anarchistic position in his early career, it was not surprising that Isozaki showed up at a political rally against Expo’70 named “The Activist Committee of Architects of 1970” in February 1968. 75 Anti-Expo activists seemed to expect Isozaki to undertake the role of an internal critic who would say “no!” within the fair. 76 However, Expo’70 did not make room for Isozaki’s subversive contemplation on war and ruins. A comparison between Isozaki’s Electric Labyrinth (1968) and the Festival Plaza (1970) allows us to recognize that Isozaki failed to convey the criticism about the rosy vision of a technology-driven future at the fair. The Electric Labyrinth, which was scheduled to be displayed at the 1968 Milan Triennial, shows a hell-like New Stage in Futurology], Jiy ū (December 1970): 46. 75 Miyauchi Yoshihisa, “Non o iwani kenchikuka,” in Wareware ni totte banpaku towa nanika, 100-125. 76 Awazu Kiyoshi, Taki Kogi, Hariu Ichir ō, Miyauchi Yoshihasa, “Sankasha no ronri to hihansha no ronri,” in Wareware ni totte banpaku towa nanika, 176. 276 ambience of the bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki using multimedia representations. 77 Isozaki’s presentation of Japan as a wounded country in the Electric Labyrinth challenged the historical amnesia engineered by the Japanese government and architectural establishment. Although the Festival Plaza shared an interest in multi- media and interdisciplinary performance with the Electric Labyrinth, they could be farther apart in terms of the themes they conveyed. A panoramic photo-collage titled <Hiroshima Blast Site: Electric City> and the revolving aluminum panels of the Electric Labyrinth showing the horrifying images of nuclear death and destruction were now replaced by the entertainment spectacle and two anthropomorphized robots in the Festival Plaza. These robots, nicknamed “Deme” and “Deku,” not only functioned as a mobile control station but also could walk, dance, and take souvenir photos with visitors. Such a friendly presentation of robots conveyed the theme of technological optimism and enhanced the futuristic mood of Expo’70. It might be helpful to examine Isozaki’s two robots in conjunction with the Expo’s emphasis on robot technology. Since the Japanese government fostered robotics as one of its strategic industries, Expo’70 was enthusiastic about showcasing advanced robotic technology. 78 The Fujipan Pavilion was devoted to exhibiting robots around the theme of “Children’s Dream.” Like Deme and Deku, some forty robots shown in Fujipan Pavilion appeared as docile friends rather than fearful machines. They were 77 For a detailed discussion of the Electric Labyrinth, see the second chapter of this dissertation. 78 For the significance of robot technology in Japanese industry, see Frederik, L. Schodt, Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1988); Michael Webb, “The Robots are Here! The Robots are Here!” Design Quarterly no. 121 (1983): 4-21. 277 busy singing, dancing, juggling, and playing in front of visitors. It was Japan’s legendary cartoonist Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) who curated the robot exhibit in the Fujipan Pavilion. Tezuka’s comic and animation series played a crucial role in promoting a positive popular image of science and technology, which formed a sharp contrast with the horrible experience of wartime destruction and postwar ruins. The most beloved character created by Tezuka was “Atom,” the lovely robot boy who fought for the peace and prosperity of humankind. As the name itself suggests, Atom was a nuclear-powered machine with a nuclear reactor as its heart. Ironically, Japan’s fate was closely tied to atomic power. By examining the comic robots displayed in Fujipan Pavilion as an extension of Atom boy, art historian Gunhild Borggreen argues that the robots at Expo’70 were a perfect symbol of Japan’s high-tech future as an antidote to its destructive nuclear past. 79 The Expo’s theme of a techno-utopian future based on nuclear optimism was reiterated in the Japan Pavilion. It presented the nation’s history as a linear progression from prehistory to the future. As historian Igarashi Yoshikuni has pointed out, the exhibit on Japanese history in the Japan Pavilion leaped from the Meiji period to the present and the future without being bothered by the shameful moments of imperial and wartime history. 80 The future section of the Japan pavilion housed two atomic towers: the “Tower of Sorrow,” which stood for the sorrow of nuclear victims and the “Tower of 79 Gunhild Borggreen, “Ruins of the Future: Yanobe Kenji Revisits Expo’70,” Performance Paradigm, vol. 2 (2006): 121-122. 80 Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970, 165. 278 Joy,” which represented the peaceful use of atomic energy for the happiness of the human race. The narrative said that the destructive nature of the atomic bomb would be replaced by the premise of the constructive use of atomic power. The bright image of the atom as a safe and friendly energy source for Japan’s future was well demonstrated in the Electrium Pavilion, a Japanese pavilion in which the benefits of nuclear energy for civilian use were highlighted. It is worth pointing out that the Electrium Pavilion featured the nuclear fission process as an eye-catching entertainment spectacle. Under these circumstances, the negative effects of nuclear power as a weapon were largely ignored in the Expo’s representations of nuclear energy. One of the most scandalous incidents in Expo’70 was the relocation of nuclear photographs from the “Wall of Contradiction” exhibition curated by Kawazoe. As a part of the Mid-Air exhibition, wherein Metabolism’s “Future City/ Future Life” show was held, Kawazoe presented a photographic exhibition of the atomic bomb blasts in collaboration with the Metabolist designer Awazu Kiyoshi. In addition to the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the “Wall of Contradiction” section featured various photographs depicting the dark side of the future and technology, such as the environmental crisis, racial and religious bigotry, and continuing warfare, which were not compatible with the Expo’s official theme of progress and harmony. This exhibition was intensively monitored and even censored by fair officials. There was a considerable amount of budget-cutting. Moreover, several images were forced to be removed for being “too graphic and too 279 outstanding to be displayed among the rest of the images.” 81 By referring to the censorship of nuclear representation, leftist photographer Kimura Tsunehisa criticized Expo’70 as a “place for nuclear amnesia.” 82 The “Wall of Contradiction” section in the Mid-air exhibit marked an internal criticism of the Expo’s celebratory narrative of a rosy future. Kawazoe, the most left- leaning member of the Metabolist group, was well aware of the conservative and bureaucratic nature of Expo’70 and explicitly remarked that “it might be a good idea to call the exposition off,” even though he played a crucial role at the Expo as an assistant theme producer. 83 Kawazoe viewed the student protests as a part of the cultural movement that Expo’70 should encompass. 84 Like Kawazoe, Awazu also maintained a critical distance from Expo’70, although he deeply involved himself in this national event by undertaking the layout of the Expo Land as well as the interior display of the Mid-Air exhibit. Awazu was one of the participants in the aforementioned anti-Expo rally of “The Activist Committee of Architects of 1970” along with Isozaki, and he published a series of critical articles about the technocratic and commercialistic aspects of Expo’70 in the radical design magazine Design Criticism (Dezain hihy ō). Leftist critic Miyauchi Yoshihisa called Awazu “a guerilla” who fought against the giant bureaucracy within it. 85 81 Yoshimi, Banpaku Genso: Sengo Seiji no Jubaku, 76. 82 Kimura Tsunehisa, “Genbaku kenb ōsh ō toiu mei no banpaku” [Expo’70 in the Name of Nuclear Amnesia], KEN Series, no.1 (1970): 131-63. 83 Tange and Kawazoe, “Some Thoughts about Expo’70,” 30. 84 Ibid., 31. 85 Awazu, Taki, Hariu, Miyauchi, “Sankasha no ronri to hihansha no ronri,” 178. 280 However, it was more their deployment of rhetoric than their architectural designs that marked the Metabolists as anti-Expo. Their architectural projects added to the bright vision of techno-utopia upheld by fair officials. Under the leadership of Kawazoe, the Metabolists presented the Mid-Air exhibit as an architectural representation of a utopian future. Kurokawa and Maki undertook the future city exhibition, wherein various models and plans of future cities proposed by world-renowned architects were displayed. (Fig. 70) The participating architects in this fantastic future city exhibition include: Moshe Safdie (Canada), Archigram (U.K.), Yona Friedman (France), Hans Hollein (Austria), Gian Carlo de Carlo (Italy), Christopher Alexander (U.S.), Areksei Gutnov (U.S.S.R.), and Maki (Japan). Another part of the Mid-Air exhibit was Kurokawa’s Capsule House as a model house of the future. At a glance, the Capsule House, a suffocating minimal dwelling which was precariously suspended from the steel frame of the Grand Roof 30 meters above the ground, might exude a sense of anxiety. However, after climbing the Mid-air space, visitors encountered a candy-colored showroom into which various electric appliances and modern furniture were packed. In the previous chapter, I trace the ambivalent nature of the Metabolists’ project by focusing on two competing impulses: their anticipation of a technology-driven utopia and their anxiety over a catastrophic end. However, Metabolists’ designs for Expo’70 did not reveal any sense of the anxiety and fear that had constituted integral elements of their futuristic proposals. On the contrary, their designs seemed to embrace the optimism of a 281 consumerist culture in a corporate-dominated society. In this regard, Sawaragi Noi described the Metabolists at the fair as “too bright and too optimistic for avant-gardes.” 86 The entertaining and playful atmosphere of Metabolist designs can also be clearly demonstrated in the Expo Tower, a landmark of Expo’70. (Fig. 71) Kikutake’s Expo Tower was composed of a steel column in the center and nine capsules used as observation rooms and control rooms. The Expo Tower had its precedent in Kikutake’s earlier scheme for the Tower-Shaped City, a high-rise megastructure floating on the sea, published in the 1960 Metabolist manifesto. 87 Unlike the dreary and unfinished ambience of the Tower-Shaped City, which hinted at the horrifying premise of the population explosion and environmental crisis of the near future, the Expo Tower was painted in joyful colors and decorated with festive lighting. The cheerful presentation of the Expo Tower strongly recalled Peter Cook’s visionary scheme for the Montreal Tower (1963), the entertainment tower for Montreal Expo 1967. (Fig. 72) The upbeat mood of the Expo Tower was intensified by its very location. This eye-popping tower was located at the center of the amusement zone, Expo Land, surrounded by various adventure rides and a rollercoaster and thus competing for visitors’ attention. Unsurprisingly, commentators portrayed the Expo Tower as the highlight of the techno-utopian spectacle by describing it as “Kikutake’s sci-fi pop” and “the essence of hoped-for technological advance.” 88 86 Sawaragi, Sens ō to Banpaku, 113. 87 For a detailed analysis of Kikutake’s Tower-Shaped City, see the third chapter of this dissertation. 88 Peter Blake, “Expo’70,” Architectural Forum (April 1970): 31-41; Mildred F. Schmertz, “Expo’70,” Architectural Forum (August 1970): 82. 282 Such observations of the Expo Tower were reiterated by architectural critic J.M. Richard, who criticized the overall atmosphere of kitschy exuberance of the Expo as “too superficial, too ornamental, and merely eye-catching.” 89 To his eye, the architects made desperate use of strange and novel forms in order to underscore the existence their work among the neighboring pavilions, instead of suggesting progressive social ambitions. 90 His description of Expo’70 anticipated various critiques of postmodernism, a new trend in architecture which placed its emphasis on such elements as historical style, local diversity, ornamentation, and popular and playful expressions. A postmodern and post- utopian turn in the 1970s was not unique to Japan but was similar trends in other industrialized nations. Postmodernism was widely disparaged as an apolitical game with freestanding signs which served the very machinations of an ever more totalizing capitalism. To a degree, critical accounts of architectural designs for Expo’70 would be retrospectively confirmed by the architects’ withdrawal into stylistic idioms and the capitalist market within the postmodern context of the 1970s and 1980s. 89 J.M. Richards, “Architecture at Expo’70,” in Nihon bankokuhaku, kenchiku and zokei [Expo’70, Architecture and Form], eds. Tange Kenz ō, Okamoto Tar ō, and Kurokawa Kish ō (T ōky ō: Kobun-sha, 1971). 90 Ibid. 283 The End of Postwar Architecture As soon as Expo’70 ended, Isozaki expressed regret over his participation: I was utterly exhausted with that dubious aftertaste of disgusting bitterness as if I had been engaging in war. I was unable to find an excuse to escape from the Expo and continued my official obligation to the end, although I was emotionally withdrawn from it. The first moment of emotional withdrawal came when I realized that Expo was under the control of technocrats. We were indeed naïve. We had an illusion that Expo would be a great opportunity for us to openly confront modern technology. 91 Isozaki’s remark clearly demonstrated an underlying current of sentiment at that time. Such a sense of remorse was shared by many vanguard artists and architects who participated in Expo’70. Despite his frustration and remorse, however, Isozaki now counts the Festival Plaza as one of his most important designs. Instead of reiterating the widely circulated view of Expo’70 as the demise of the modernist movement and the defeat of architectural avant-gardism, this study illuminates the contributions of Expo’70 to the formation of a new paradigm of architecture and city as a response to radical developments in information and communications technology. If Tange presented the concept of soft environment and tried to give it a physical form, Isozaki made a radical turn to the immaterial and invisible system of communications and network which he termed “invisible city.” Unlike Tange and Isozaki, who were much more interested in urban-scale issues, the Metabolists presented a basic living unit and a new mode of domestic life in an information society. 91 Isozaki, K ūkan-e, 511. 284 After the event ended, their architectural experiments were encumbered by Japan’s economic decline and the growing dominance of the postmodern tendency. The national-scale urban projects that had attracted architects rapidly decreased in number, and young architects could no longer expect to launch their careers under the aegis of national-scale events. The only option left for a new generation of Japanese architects was to work for commercial enterprises or adapt their methods to small-scale design and private houses. 92 It was not a coincidence that Tange, who undertook the most significant public projects in the third quarter of the twentieth century, began to move his sphere of activity abroad immediately after Expo’70 in order to find urban-scale projects to work on. Nevertheless, these Japanese architects struggled to define the coming world and harness its liberating potential through a new form of architecture and city. In the 1970s, these architects continued to develop the concept of the information city. Tange was involved in the design of the Kuwait International Air Terminal (1967-1979), a specific type of architecture which was characterized by the continuous flow of flights, passengers, and information. Isozaki’s interest in the computer-supported space of the Festival Plaza led to the proposal for the Computer-Aided City (1972), a cabled city animated by information exchange. Kurokawa also continued to produce a new residential unit for urban nomads as seen in the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1970-1972), the first capsule structure put into actual use in an urban setting. Pushing against the limit of 92 Hiroyuki Suzuki, “Contemporary Architecture of Japan,” in Contemporary Architecture of Japan 1968- 1984, eds. Hiroyuki Suzuki, Reyner Banham, Katsuhiro Kobayashi (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 10-11. 285 modernist principles with their faith in technological progress and a better future, these architects attempted to maximize individual freedom, mobility, and spontaneity within a redefined concept of order. In conclusion, Expo’70 marked a turning point for the modern movement, which had dominated mainstream Japanese architecture for the first twenty-five years of the postwar era. The trajectory of the modern movement was synonymous with that of postwar architecture, architecture which was defined by the progressive goal of physically and psychologically overcoming the war legacy. Expo’70 was one of the important historic junctures which announced the end of the postwar era in that Japan’s struggle to come to terms with its war memories came to a temporary resolution with the prosperity of its high-growth economy. Architects were relieved of their obsession with the traumatic past and turned their attention to the new concept of architecture and city in the post-postwar period, which unburdened itself from the yoke of war-ridden past. It was time for architects to bid farewell to postwar architecture and envision the next phase of Japanese architecture. 286 Fig. 60 : Nishiyama Uz ō, Conceptual Plan for Expo’70, the first phase plan, 1966. 287 Fig. 61 : Nishiyama Uz ō, Plan for Nara, 1965. 288 Fig. 62 : Tange Kenz ō, Master Plan for Expo’70, 1966. 289 Fig. 63 : Tange Kenz ō, Grand Roof, penetrated by Okamoto Tar ō’s Sun Tower, Expo’70, 1970. 290 Fig. 64 : Isozaki Arata, Festival Plaza, Robots “Deme” and Deku,”Expo’70, 1970. 291 Fig. 65 : Isozaki Arata, operation system, Festival Plaza, Expo’70, 1970. 292 Fig. 66 : Gutai Art Association, Gutai Art Festival, Festival Plaza, Expo’70, 1970. 293 Fig. 67 : Kurokawa Kish ō, Capsule House, exterior view, Expo’70, 1970. 294 Fig. 68 : Kurokawa Kish ō, Capsule House, interior view, Expo’70, 1970. 295 Fig. 69 : Kurokawa Kish ō, Takara Beautilion, interior view, Expo’70, 1970. 296 Fig. 70 : Exhibition view of the Mid-Air Exhibit, Expo’70, 1970. 297 Fig. 71 : Kikutake Kiyonori, Expo Tower, general view, Expo’70, 1970. 298 Fig. 72 : Peter Cook, Montreal Tower, drawing, 1970. 299 Epilogue In 2002, the young Japanese artist Yanobe Kenji (1965- ) visited the former site of Expo’70, where he had spent his childhood. Before his eyes, Expo’70, once filled with the rosy hope of the society, was now being transformed into a deserted ruin. Yanobe had himself photographed against the backdrop of the Expo Tower, a landmark of Expo’70 designed by Kikutake Kiyonori, which was being demolished. (Fig. 73) The abandoned site of Expo’70 that Yanobe captured in his photographic series titled Atom Suit Project (1988-2003) was a relic of the hoped-for future of Japanese society, which the artist has melancholically termed “ruins of the future.” 1 Expo’70 culminated the nation’s optimism for endless economic growth and technological development. However, at the same time, Expo’70 would mark the end of utopia. Soon after the event ended, the society was affected by a series of unfavorable circumstances, such as the oil shock, the environmental crisis, and an economic recession. In particular, the outbreak of the oil shock in the early 1970s, which was caused by conflict in the Middle East and an acceleration of oil price inflation, exerted a devastating impact on the Japanese economy. Along with Expo’70, the era of rapid economic growth was over, and the society plunged into a long recession. Yanobe’s generation grew up 1 See Yanobe’ Kenji’s official website, http://www.yanobe.com; For more discussion on Yanobe Kenji’s work, see Yanobe Kenji and Bayliss Sarah, Survival System Train and Other Sculpture (California: Center for the Arts, 1997); Yanbe Kenji, Kenji Yanobe (Ausstellung: Stadtgalerie Saarbrucken, 2000); Gunhild Borggreen, “Ruins of the Future: Yanobe Kenji Revisits Expo’70,” Performance Paradigm, vol. 2 (2006): 119-131. 300 while looking at the demolition of futuristic structures such as those at Expo’70 and the failure of their promised future. For them, the narrative of “ruins of the future” refers to more than a loss of childhood memory, but reflects as well a larger discourse of crisis in the post-bubble economy years. Though more than forty years have elapsed since its closure, Expo’70 remains a palpable memory for many Japanese. Since the 1990s, it has become a locus of nostalgia in a variety of fields in Japanese society, including literature, art, and popular culture, and souvenir shops still cater to serious collectors of Expo’70’s memorabilia. Including Yanobe, many contemporary artists and writers have revisited Expo’70 as an important motif of their work and paid homage to its bold optimism and rich imagination. The significance of the virtual future city built on the Expo site, however, goes beyond the national symbol of the good old days toward which feelings of nostalgia might be directed. Expo’70 represents a pivotal event in establishing the blueprint for a techno-futuristic representation of Japan. Under Western eyes, Japan has been often described as an exotic futurist site. For instance, the novelist William Gibson, in his classic cyberpunk story Neuromancer (1984), overlapped overcrowded and media- saturated Japanese cities with a cyber-funk SF city. The futuristic mise-en-scene of Hollywood films such as Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999) also featured consumerist, over-urbanized, and highly-computerized Japanese cities as virtual cities of tomorrow. Such urban imaginaries were not merely the product of techno-oriental fantasies projected by Westerners but were also shaped by Japanese architects who hoped to propose a new paradigm of architecture and city, distinguishable from the conventional 301 Western model. Expo’s future city is one of the best places to discuss Japan’s own efforts to imagine its future and to invent its own new identity as one that is technology-driven. The contemporary relevance of Expo’70 is not restricted to the symbolic level of representation. The model city of the information society staged in Expo’70 anticipated the advent of what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have termed “informatization,” a passage from the “domination of industry to that of services and information, a process of economic postmodernization” in the era of globalization. 2 Architects’ dreams of the coming society were realized, albeit partially, in today’s Internet culture, the information superhighway, and the cyber city. 2 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 280. 302 Fig. 73 : Yanobe Kenji, Expo Tower 3, from the series titled Atom Suit Project, 2002 303 Bibliography Alexander, Christopher. “A City is Not a Tree.” Architectural Forum, vol.122, no. 1 (April 1965): 58-62 (Part I); vol. 122, no. 2 (May 1965): 58-62 (Part II). Art Tower Mito. Nihon no natsu-1960-64 [Japanese Summer 1960-64]. exh. cat. 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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Walking out of ground zero: art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs in postwar Japan

Asset Metadata

Creator Cho, Hyunjung (author)

Core Title Competing futures: War narratives in postwar Japanese architecture, 1945-1970

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publication Date 03/30/2011

Defense Date 02/25/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Asia Pacific War,Cold War,Expo'70,Isozaki Arata,metabolism,OAI-PMH Harvest,postwar Japanese Architecture,Tange Kenzō,visionary

Place Name Japan (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Malone, Carolyn (committee chair), Reynolds, Jonathan M. (committee chair), Bleichmar, Daniela (committee member), McKnight, Anne (committee member)

Creator Email hyunjunc@usc.edu,ustay76@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3712

Unique identifier UC1469794

Identifier etd-CHO-4426 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-452670 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3712 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CHO-4426.pdf

Dmrecord 452670

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Cho, Hyunjung

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu