The history of Japan is a history of the repeated destruction of villages and cities through wars and natural disasters. In this country, there also exists the tradition of periodic rebuilding of structures, as with the Ise Shrine. Perhaps for these very reasons, the Japanese quite readily demolish old buildings and erect new ones in their place. The evolution of Japanese architecture has been a process of trial and error carried out over the course of successive rebuildings — whether prompted by physical changes in the environment or by shifting customs.
While modernism in the West was the expression of a new age arising from changes in people's consciousness and simultaneous transformations in social structures, Japanese modernism was more the result of external factors than the product of an internal historical process. My intention here is not to engage in cultural comparisons, but in terms of the creation of architecture, a fundamental difference exists between Japan and France. Today in France, the most important issue under discussion in architecture concerns both the quality of the building's own space and the quality of the space around it — the role that the architectural facade plays in shaping the city, and the light that enters a space. These are regarded as important matters. Space is constituted through the relationship of various surfaces: for instance, the precedence of the facade relative to a square or street, the placement of walls that give shape to space, and the placement of horizontal planes. The modernists, including Le Corbusier, opposed spaces that were enclosed by finished walls and concealed by ornamentation. They sought to liberate spaces that had been defined from inside by outside — to create open, continuous spaces sustained by columns and beams, as we see in traditional Japanese architecture, and to achieve simplicity of materials. They used white to render objects abstract, to deny the materiality of the surfaces that constituted space.
In Japanese architecture, what led to the creation of spatial interference and transparency was not theory but attention to the material appearance of materials in space. In Japan, materials themselves are considered fundamentally important, and architects never tire of exploring their latent expressive possibilities. This perhaps partly derives from the tendency of this country's craftsmen to display materials in their naked, natural state. Wherever traditional architecture employs wooden joints and other handcrafted elements — how do we express the specific qualities of materials? How do we show natural materials in such a way that they appear unworked? — these have become vital questions of building detail. These questions have transformed into important factors in the creation of architecture and the emergence of a vernacular architecture. This is utterly different from the approach to architecture in France, as is clearly evident from traditional Japanese architecture.
In the realization of spatial interference — that is, the continuity of interior and exterior floors and ceilings through an intermediary space — and the transparency of spaces, the main elements of traditional Japanese architecture played a role: the continuity of tatami-floored spaces, wooden-floored spaces, and gardens, as well as the introduction of landscape into the interior. Therefore, one can say that the interference and transparency of spaces had already existed in traditional Japanese architecture. These are determined by elements such as freestanding wooden columns, shoji screens, and translucent ceilings: the appearance of materials defines Japanese space. Industrial products such as steel, concrete, and glass, as well as secondary and tertiary materials produced through chemical synthesis, are used in Japanese architecture today. But materials still play an important role in the creation of architecture. The appearance of a material — the quality of space it determines — is the same material object that is perceived. One might call this the "presentation of the material object." It is here that Western architecture and Japanese architecture diverge. One is a proposition of space; the other is a proposition of material objects. This difference remains pronounced in architecture today.
I remember in the late 1980s, leafing through Japanese magazines and seeing the work of architects who were striving to outdo one another in creating attractive effects — it wearied me. Each of these works was beautiful, executed with brilliant details and a precision impossible in France. And yet from all of them something disturbing and vexing was transmitted. What was most obvious was the desire for expression. Not a trace of restraint could be seen in them. In place of the transparency born of modernism, they had merely placed the material object, and that rich spatial interference — the achievement of modern architecture and, before it, of traditional Japanese architecture — was in danger of being lost. We must refrain from giving precedence to the material object and turning it into an incidental product. Let us once more understand that modernity means a sensitivity to the new spirit of the age and an acceptance of new technology. Modernity is neither an effort to attract attention through new technology nor a particular style.