Architecture/Japan

New York: George Braziller, 1963. First printing. VG+/None Crisp, clean, tight. No jacket. 127 pp. Approx. 7.5 x 10in. 20 oz. more information

Offered by Julian Brogi, Bookseller (United States)

Dover, 1966. Very Good Contents crisp, clean. Laminate peeling, front cover. Reprint of the 1930 edition. more information

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New York: Harper & Row, 1980. First edition. Near Fine/VG+ A very crisp, clean copy in lightly edgeworn and price-clipped jacket. 192 pp. 200 illustrations / photographs. Approx. 9 x 11 in. Original, lively and controversial, this book cuts across a whole range of preconceptions about Japanese architecture that have informed successive critical theories in the West. Challenging common but nonsubstantive notions such as "exotic", "oriental", and "eastern", the author re-examines the Japanese house as a complex of cultural influences within which the affirmation of ritual, the ceremonial side of home life, is distinct. This argument naturally entails a re-examination of the terms "Metabolism" and "Post-Metabolism," and of the tenuous relationship between "architecture" and the metropolitan, urban character of Japan as a whole.</p>In an analysis which seeks to interpret not only the general nature of the house and how it functions, but also the dynamics of the urban environment, Chris Fawcett draws on a wide range of sources and illustrations including striking photographs supplied by the many architects mentioned. more information

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Chronicle Books, 1989. Near Fine Contents like new. Light cover wear. 142 pp. Approx. 9 x 12in. Renowned for its tranquility and serenity, its simple, elegant lines, and harmonious use of natural forms, Japanese architecture is admired by designers, architects, and homeowners alike for its easy grace. <i>Japanese Detail: Architecture</i> surveys the essential elements of the Japanese aesthetic. From rough-hewn flagstone paths to the majestic lines of traditional roofs, from luminescent shoji screens and pristine paper walls to intricate latticework and ornate furnishings, this beautiful sourcebook draws together all the exquisite details of a style that is as timeless as it is contemporary.</p>Sadao Hibi is the author of several books on the history and art of his native Japan. His work has also been featured on a series of Japanese postal stamps. more information

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Kodansha Intn'l, 1968. Very Good Clean copy. Binding cracked & weakening. more information

Offered by Julian Brogi, Bookseller (United States)

Kodansha International, 2007. First edition. Fine in Fine DJ Brand new. Save 20%. 136 pp. Approx. 9 x 12 in. 40 oz.</p>The tea house is one of Japan's most original and significant architectural forms: a small, simple space for the tea ceremony that traditionally requires a hearth, straw-mat flooring, and a low entrance.</p>Modern Japanese architects have found the challenge of redefining this highly formalized and constrained idiom almost impossible to resist. <i>The Contemporary Tea House </i>features twenty works that reveal the way world-renowned Japanese architects approach this intriguing subject using materials as disparate as charcoal plastic, and titanium. The participating architects are <b>Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, Terunobu Fujimori, Hiroshi Hara, and Kengo Kuma.</b></p>In his introduction Fujimori gives a historical overview of the tea ceremony and the tea house that puts the modern works in context. Isozaki, Ando, and Fujimori then take a behind-the-scenes look at their works and the creative process. Hara and Kuma contributed captions and brief explanations of their pieces as well.</p>A number of owners use their buildings as a stage for the tea ceremony, while others enjoy them as spaces for meditation and reflection. There are even some who have discovered their tea houses are an optimal place to relax with a drink or a good book.</p>Directed at both the general reader and the specialist, this visually stunning book explores the works of these masters of modern Japanese architecture through superb photographs and informative drawings. more information

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Process Architecture, 1995. Fine Like new. more information

Offered by Julian Brogi, Bookseller (United States)

New York: Walton H. Rawls, 1963. Fair Ex-Library book with usual markings. Contents crisp, clean, unmarked and free of tears. Silk boards are faded and worn at extremities. Interior front hinge is cracked. Small stains, top & bottom of text block which do not intrude upon interior. 292 pp. Approx. 12 x 9 in. 8 color plates and 216 B/W illustrations. more information

Offered by Julian Brogi, Bookseller (United States)

Kodansha International, 2004. Fine in Fine DJ Brand new. Save over 20%. 112 pp. Approx. 7.5 x 10.5in. 22oz.</p>The castles of Japan are both technical and aesthetic marvels. They are technical marvels in that they are perfectly suited to their roles of defensive fortresses and administrative centers in time of war. They are aesthetic marvels in that every curve and line reflects an extraordinary sense of beauty. How these castles came about, how they were built, and what their ultimate fate was, all this is depicted in sensitive prose and eye-opening photography.</p>The great period of castle building in Japan occurred in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when powerful lords such as Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu were striving to unite the nation. This was the time of the famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, who fought on the losing side in one of the decisive battles of this era. Over a hundred awe-inspiring castles were constructed in a short forty years.</p>This book gives not only the background to this era, but also details the essential elements of castle construction, such as location, layout, walls, moats, towers, storehouses, gates, shooting holes, and more. Each of these elements is described and illustrated in such a way as to etch them on the mind.</p>Last is the question of why the samurai of that time took such pains to make their castles things of beauty rather than unadorned, utilitarian strongholds. The answer to this question is found in the fact that the samurai were more than simple fighting men; they were also men of culture who had the power and the resources to express their aesthetic tastes even in the construction of castles.</p>Written in sharp, clear prose, illustrated with powerful, full-color photographs, <i>Castles of the Samurai </i>is the perfect introduction to one of Japan's greatest architectural achievements. The book also contains a wealth of practical information for tourists who plan to visit the sites of the surviving castles.  more information

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New York: Clarkson Potter, 1987. Later printing. Fine in Near Fine DJ As new in lightly shelfworn jacket. 287 pp. Approx. 10x10 in. Color photos throughout. In almost 800 stunning full-color photographs Japanese Style captures the richness and diversity of modern Japan: from architect-designed contemporary homes to centuries-old farmhouses and inns that represent the dual influences of tradition and change. On this densely populated island nation, elegance and restraint have been refined to a high art. Japanese Style holds many lessons, and delights, for Westerners ans is a marvelous evocation of the never-ending romance of Japan. more information

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Kodansha America, 1988. Near Fine/VG+ Appears unread. Name on front endpaper. Jacket lightly faded. 304 pp. Illustrated. Oversize. Approx. 9 x 12 in. The year 1988 commemorated the fourth generation since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 defined Japan's position--political, economic, and cultural--in the modern world. This period of history, which witnessed the rise, defeat, and rebirth of contemporary Japan, has been widely written about. Nevertheless, there remains, in the realm of architecture, an intractable gap in our knowledge of this span of more than a century. It is precisely that breach which Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture (with its more than 400 illustrations) undertakes to repair. It brilliantly charts the course of the art of building in this very old and yet, in a sense, quite new country from the middle of the nineteenth century to the onset of the 1980s.</p>The book successfully sets before the reader, and illustrates in striking manner, the sea change that Japan's architecture underwent as feudal customs and an intense preoccupation with beauty encountered industrialization and modern lifestyles. By what means, then, was the switch-over made from homes of paper and wood to efficient urban complexes of earthquake-proof reinforced concrete? The answer, during the Meiji era, was gaslighting and brick, followed in the second and third decades of the new century by an interval of Art Deco and jazz-age freneticism. On account of his controversial rebuilding of the great Imperial Hotel, the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a participant in these years of so-called Taisho Democracy. Wright was more often than not present in the Japanese capital during this phase of his career, which he lived to the hilt by pursuing his instincts as a connoisseur and an aesthete of the first order. When he was, eventually, dismissed, his versatile assistant, the Czech modernist Antonin Raymond, stepped into the vanguard of Japanese architecture, a position which in many respects he retained well into the 1950s.</p>But even before 1900, the Japanese architectural profession had come into its own, cutting its teeth on palaces and ministries, wrestling with notions of urban planning and municipal improvement. There was a bizarre episode of native expressionism followed by a remarkable rationalism, which in itself constitutes a hitherto unknown chapter in the history of the International Style--here illustrated and comprehensively explained for the first time in any Western language. The high modernism of this period was interrupted by nationalistic adventurism in northeast China and the propagation of the militaristic Imperial Crown style. By contrast, after World War II, the Japan Style evolved in the near classical masterpieces of Maekawa, Sakakura, and Tange, all three emulating the French master Le Corbusier. Yet neither the West nor Japan was prepared for the consequences of the Corbusian "Late Style," which more than any other single factor has led to the present dispensation of so-called postmodernism.</p>David Stewart seeks to explain in a thoroughly new way this sabotaging of Modern Movement ideals by interrogating the early and, then, the mature works of Kazuo Shinohara and Arata Isozaki. The 1960s and early 1970s was thus a period in which a radical aestheticism--or return, in part, to the sukiya ethic--occurred. This is manifest through a dramatic disjuncture with modernism in all the buildings of these two heirs to a Japanese contemporary architectural tradition. The author convincingly links the buildings of these years with a surge of interest in phenomenology, a fascination with the techniques of Russian formalism, and even a Japanese rereading of Proust. Finally, not the least achievement of the book is an explication of "Japanese space," a working notion every Japanese architect is familiar with at an empiric level, although almost totally inaccessible, until now, in the West. more information

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Tokyo: Kodansha Intn'l, 2002. New. New. Save over 20%. 168 pp. 228 x 277 mm. Japanese Country Style introduces sixteen unique and sumptuous homes rescued by Yoshihiro Takishita, a professional antiquarian, and illustrates how his renovations rejuvenated these all-but-forgotten architectural gems. Takishita candidly discusses the thoughts and inspirations that led him to adapt and convert these centuries-old farmhouses for modern living. Chapters on their unique history and construction demonstrate the value of these towering traditional homes, and illustrate their place in Japanese rural life, where several generations often lived under the same roof which allowed for a horse in the stable area and silkworms in the attic. Japanese Country Style also showcases the artful blending of traditional Japanese elements with modern lifestyles. Tatami rooms, Japanese antiques, traditional wooden furniture, and other treasures fill the rooms of these homes, and evoke the understated elegance of country-style living. With over 200 photographs and illustrations of beautifully refurbished folk homes, this volume presents a portrait of a sublime yet simple way of life that will give anyone interested in design and architecture a host it useful ideas.This books adopts a bilingual format, providing both Japanese and English commentary. more information

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Tallahassee: Kodansha Intn'l, 1998. New Brand New. Save over 20%. 204 pp. 189 x 257mm. 24oz. With the possible exception of the woodblock print, no other aspect of Japanese culture has been so widely embraced outside Japan as the traditional Japanese home. Interior decorators, architects, and homeowners from the West have been borrowing from Japanese architecture since Frank Lloyd Wright, yet the fundamentals of the Japanese abode remain something of a mystery. What is the age-old sensibility behind it? Why do luminaries in the field hold it up as one of mankind's most successful blends of function, tradition, and nature? Atsushi Ueda ably answers these questions in Inner Harmony, which became a bestseller in his native Japan and continues to be used in high schools and colleges throughout the country. Breaking down the living space into its primary elements--shoji, partitions, pillars, garden, and so onÑUeda reveals the underlying patterns and hidden harmony that took centuries to evolve: he discusses the ways in which shoji exploit the natural light to create a subdued radiance; the way decorated sliding doors and moveable partitions define one's sense of living space; and the function of a miniature garden as viewed from inside the house as well as out. In the manner of John McPhee and Tracy Kidder, Professor Ueda unravels the concealed concepts at work in the Japanese living space, and brings compelling insights and a long-needed clarity to the subjectÑall in the best tradition of contemporary literary nonfiction. more information

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Yoshio Yoshida, 1993. Very Good+ Crisp, clean, tight. Light cover wear. 162 pp. plus 22 pp. advertisements. Approx. 9 x 12 in. more information

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Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. Very Good Appears unread. Creasing to corner of front cover. Spotting along bottom edge of text block. more information

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