Teiji Itoh

I can't quite remember when I first was exposed to Japanese gardens but I think it was in a book that I borrowed from Ryde Library when I was about ten years old. But ever since I've been both charmed and captivated by Japanese gardens and architecture and, probably, more broadly, the Japanese aesthetic. I remember, somewhere, reading that with the famous rocks in the stone garden in Ryoan-ji Kyoto that their layout conformed with the golden ratio. (But when I examined it more closely, I could see that they were a bit fast and loose with the truth and there certainly wasn't a perfect fit). Nevertheless I've always wondered if it was possible to put together some rules about layout and planting techniques for Japanese Gardens ...and i have a few books that claim to do just this. Indeed there is a long history of famous gardeners giving advice about their aesthetic principles. This book is one such set of advice...albeit in somewhat broad (and sweeping) principles.
It's well known that one of the techniques used is "borrowed scenery" where the natural location and the views (of forests, mountains etc) is used as a an obvious backdrop to some local feature of the garden...such as a tree or a lake.Teiji Itoh expounds on this technique and various variations of it in the current book. He distinguishes nine ways to capture or command garden elements. These are:
Capturing alive....I think with the idea that the things you are capturing: trees, mountains, ponds, rivers are natural, living things......though we might question if a pond is a living thing in its own right.
Commanding a good view....the idea being that you build your garden where there is existing a good view...it's not something that you can introduce.
Constituting a Shakki (borrowed scenery or borrowed landscape....but in its original form it means a landscape captured alive) garden. The garden needs to be within a building or complex of buildings; need to actually have scenery; need to frame or trim to suit the scenery/view; Need to link the borrowed scenery with the foreground;
Capturing with tree trunks; The device of capturing a distant view of mountains alive by viewing through the trunks of nearby trees is the most common of shakki techniques.
Capturing with woods...an example is cited where the view is captured between two local groves of trees
capturing with posts and eves...something like a framing of the view...constraining the vision ...cutting out some of the sky, for example.
Capturing with the sky. I kind of get the idea that you can frame the sky with (say a lake in the foreground and a horizontal bench of a tree but Itoh, doesn't really explain this very well to my way of thinking. I've even visited his chief example of Shugaku-in in Kyoto and vaguely remember the view that he talks about. But if you are looking for some practical pointers here .....you won't find them. He goes on at length about Chinese painters introducing techniques ...but they were for painters not gardeners. He does try to link the idea of empty space in painting and use of the sky in gardens...but not really successfully to my way of thinking.
Capturing with a stone lantern. Originally used for illumination at night the lanterns came to be used as decorative elements and, in another role, for integrating borrowed scenery with the garden itself. He does have a nice photo of this technique (plate 29).
Capturing with a window. Not much explanation here. Basically, if you've got a view you can put a window in your villa so that you can see the view.
Itoh writes quite a lot about the tea house and tea garden. But makes the point that the garden around a tea room is all about the approach....getting into the right frame of mind for the tea room. The tea room itself is enclosed; it's all about the tea ceremony and doesn't look outwards. However, the tea room garden certainly influenced the development of the courtyard garden and townsfolk, when it came to developing their own gardens used the tea garden as their model...mainly because of the important role that the tea ceremony had come to represent in Japanese culture.
One of the really nice things about this book is the great set of photographs towards the end. Most of them are in black and white but they do show b&W photography off at its best. Some lovely works there. there are also some colour pics but they (surprisingly) are not in the same class as the B&Ws.
I quite liked the book...though it would't be a great handbook to be using to design a Japanese garden. I think I would be looking for something a little more practical. Still happy to give it five stars.… (mais)

With this new and superbly illustrated book, the authors of The Roots of Japanese Architecture and The Essential Japanese House continue their study of one of the world's great architectural traditions. Having dealt in the first book with the fundamental concepts, materials, and techniqes of traditional Japanese architecture in general and, in the second, with the minka or folk-house style, they now turn to the elegant sukiya style: the style which freed architecture from its bondage to the symbolism of status and set it on the road to true individuality of expression. This style may be considered the culmnation of traditional Japanese domestic architecture-so much so that it is what Westerners generally mean when they speak of the beauty and elegance and uncluttered spaciounses of the Japanese house.

The sukiya style, originating in the ceremonial teahouse under minka influence, was expanded to include private residences, restaurants, and inns. It is beyond a doubt the most sophisticated style developed throughout the long history of Japanese architecture. Through its extremely functional planning, its sensitive use of materials, and its aesthetic consciousness, it has exerted a strong influence on modern architecture and has extended this influence to Western architecture as well. Indeed as the book points out, the arthcitect of today has much to learn from such early sukiya creations as the celebrated Katsura villa, even though that masterpiece was built more than three hundred years ago. In a very real sense the value of the sukiya style are still alive and valid today.

As he progresses through the book, the reader is invited to look first as a detailed presentation of an outstanding modern structure in sukiya style-a private residence in Kyoto-for a basic understanding of the style. In the second part, he is taken on a journey of exploration into the history of the style and is provided not only with colorful background information concerning its development but also with views of its essential characteristics. Here he is introduced to noteworthy sukia achievements among the teahouses and villas of the feudal period and to such modern versions of the style as the exclusive restaurants of the present day. In the third part he is given the opportunity to observe in detail the most typical features of the style and their role in creating a total atmosphere of restrained elegance and superlative craftsmanship.

Since the book concerns itself as much with architectural function as with architectural design and craftsmanship, it gives considerable attention to the social environment in which the sukiya style evolved, as well as to its applicability in the rapidly changing world of today. The elements of function and design are illustated and discussed in fascinating detail, and the social background is vividly painted in.

A further feature of the book is the fact that the bookdesigner-Ikko Tanaka, one of Japan's leading graphic designers-played an important and creative role from the outset of the plainning of he book. It is seldom that words and photographs and physical components of paper and ink are welded into such a coumplete and satisfying whole, and in a very real sense the book becomes the joint work of writer, photographer, and designer.

Here, then, in an engagingly informative text and 154 pages of illustrations-96 pages of black-and-white gravure photographs, 33 pages in color, and 25 pages of detailed architectural drawings-the essence of the sukiya style is revealed. The text, expecially adapted for this English version, and the detailed commentaries on the photographs, newly added, emphasis both the aesthetic and the technical aspects of the style. The Elegant Japanese House is thus a book of prime importance for expert and layman allike. For the professional architect it will undoubtedly serve as a frutiful source of ideas, for the discriminating general reader it will serve as an introduction to a world of viual and intellectual delight.

Teiji Itoh and Yukio Futagawa are best known outside Japan for their two earlier books, The Roots of Japanese Architecture (1963) and The Essential Japanese House (1967), the latter having earned them the Mainichi Press Cultural Publication Award.

Mr. Itoh, who was born in Gifu Prefecture in 1922, obtained his doctor's doctor's degree at Tokyo University, where he majored in architecture. From 1947 to 1965 he held the position of Associate Research fellow of the Institute of Industrial Science at that university. In 1965, after two years as visiting professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, he returned to Japan to devote full time to the profession of architectural critic. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Japanese art and architecture and on city planning. At present he serves as a columnist for the Asabi, a member of that newspaper's book-review committee, and a regular contibutor to the Sunday Mainichi.

Mr. Futagawa was born in Osaka in 1932. He took his degree in art from Waseda Universiy in 1955, and in that year presented a oneman show of his photographs at the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art. Subsequently he published three books and joureyed through the Americas, Europe, and Asia, winning wide acclaim for a traveing exhibition of his architectural photographs, first shown n Mexico City and later in other important cities of he world. Other exhibitions and honors have followed, and, like Mr. Itoh, he has come to enjoy a high reputation both at home and abroad. He is presently engaged in an ambitious photographic project: a fifeen-volume work on contemporary architecture throughout the world.

Contents

Guide to ilustrations
Author's foreword
Part One The Sukiya style exemplified-Kitamura Residence
Part Two The realization of the Sukiya Style
1 Origins-Sen no rikyu and his house at Juraku-dai
2 Cultural coexisence-The Sukiya versus the decorative style in Momoyama Architecture
3 Emancipation from the symbolism of status
4 Sakui-Creative originality
5 Konomi-Design according to individual taste
6 Mitate-The discovery of new values
7 The Sukiya style versus status-symbol Architecture
8 Characteristic Sukiya techniques and materials
9 The refinement of detail
10 Functional planning
11 Colorful presentation
12 Modern limitations
13 Modern trends
Part Three Highlighs of the Sukiya syle
1 The diagonal-line approach
2 Conciseness of composition
3 Pivoting space
4 The flexible interior
Acknowledgments
Locations of outstanding Sukiya style buildings
Commentaries on the photographs
Glossary index… (mais)