Japanese architecture
Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space to be customized for different occasions. People usually sat on cushions or otherwise on the floor, traditionally; chairs and high tables were not widely used until the 20th century. Since the 19th century, however, Japan has incorporated much of Western, modern, and post-modern architecture into construction and design, and is today a leader in cutting-edge architectural design and technology.
The earliest Japanese architecture was seen in prehistoric times in simple pit-houses and stores adapted to the needs of a hunter-gatherer population. Influence from Han dynasty China via Korea saw the introduction of more complex grain stores and ceremonial burial chambers.
The introduction of Buddhism in Japan during the sixth century was a catalyst for large-scale temple building using complicated techniques in wood. Influence from the Chinese Sui and Tang dynasties led to the foundation of the first permanent capital in Nara. Its checkerboard street layout used the Chinese capital of Chang'an as a template for its design.
In 894 during the Heian period, Japan abolished kentōshi and began to distance itself from Chinese culture, and a culture called Kokufu bunka which was suited to the Japanese climate and aesthetic sense flourished. The shinden-zukuri style, which was the architectural style of the residences of nobles in this period, showed the distinct uniqueness of Japanese architecture and permanently determined the characteristics of later Japanese architecture. Its features are an open structure with few walls that can be opened and closed with doors, shitomi and sudare, a structure in which shoes are taken off to enter the house on stilts, and sitting or sleeping directly on tatami mats without using chairs and beds.
As the samurai class gained power in the Kamakura period, the shinden-zukuri style changed, and in the Muromachi period, the shoin-zukuri style appeared. This style had a lasting influence on later Japanese architectural styles and became the basis of modern Japanese houses. Its characteristics were that sliding doors called fusuma and paper windows called shōji were fully adopted, and tatami mats were laid all over the room.
The introduction of the tea ceremony emphasised simplicity and modest design as a counterpoint to the excesses of the aristocracy. In the Azuchi–Momoyama period, sukiya-zukuri style villas appeared under the influence of a tea house called chashitsu. At first it was an architectural style for the villas of daimyo and court nobles, but in the Edo period it was applied to ryōtei and chashitsu, and later it was also applied to residences.
During the Meiji Restoration of 1869 the history of Japanese architecture was radically changed by two important events. The first was the Kami and Buddhas Separation Act of 1868, which formally separated Buddhism from Shinto and Buddhist temples from Shinto shrines, breaking an association between the two which had lasted well over a thousand years. Secondly, it was then that Japan underwent a period of intense Westernization in order to compete with other developed countries. Initially, architects and styles from abroad were imported to Japan, but gradually the country taught its own architects and began to express its own style. Architects returning from study with Western architects introduced the International Style of modernism into Japan. However, it was not until after the Second World War that Japanese architects made an impression on the international scene, firstly with the work of architects like Kenzo Tange and then with theoretical movements, like Metabolism.
General features of Japanese traditional architecture
In traditional Japanese architecture, there are various styles, features and techniques unique to Japan in each period and use, such as residence, castle, Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine. On the other hand, especially in ancient times, it was strongly influenced by Chinese culture like other Asian countries, so it has characteristics common to architecture in Asian countries.Partly due, also, to the variety of climates in Japan, and the millennium encompassed between the first cultural import and the last, the result is extremely heterogeneous, but several practically universal features can nonetheless be found. First of all is the choice of materials, always wood in various forms for almost all structures. Unlike both Western and some Chinese architecture, the use of stone is avoided except for certain specific uses, for example temple podia and pagoda foundations.
The general structure is almost always the same: posts and lintels support a large and gently curved roof, while the walls are paper-thin, often movable and never load-bearing. Arches and barrel roofs are completely absent. Gable and eave curves are gentler than in China and columnar entasis limited.
The roof is the most visually impressive component, often constituting half the size of the whole edifice. The slightly curved eaves extend far beyond the walls, covering verandas, and their weight must therefore be supported by complex bracket systems called tokyō, in the case of temples and shrines. Simpler solutions are adopted in domestic structures. The oversize eaves give the interior a characteristic dimness, which contributes to the building's atmosphere. The interior of the building normally consists of a single room at the center called moya, from which depart any other less important spaces.
Inner space divisions are fluid, and room size can be modified through the use of screens or movable paper walls. The large, single space offered by the main hall can therefore be divided according to the need. For example, some walls can be removed and different rooms joined temporarily to make space for some more guests. The separation between inside and outside is itself in some measure not absolute as entire walls can be removed, opening a residence or temple to visitors. Verandas appear to be part of the building to an outsider, but part of the external world to those in the building. Structures are therefore made to a certain extent part of their environment. Care is taken to blend the edifice into the surrounding natural environment.
The use of construction modules keeps proportions between different parts of the edifice constant, preserving its overall harmony..
Even in cases as that of Nikkō Tōshō-gū, where every available space is heavily decorated, ornamentation tends to follow, and therefore emphasize, rather than hide, basic structures.
Being shared by both sacred and profane architecture, these features made it easy converting a lay building into a temple or vice versa. This happened for example at Hōryū-ji, where a noblewoman's mansion was transformed into a religious building.
Prehistoric period
The prehistoric period includes the Jōmon, Yayoi and Kofun periods stretching from approximately 5000 BCE to the beginning of the eighth century CE.During the three phases of the Jōmon period the population was primarily hunter-gatherer with some primitive agriculture skills and their behaviour was predominantly determined by changes in climatic conditions and other natural stimulants. Early dwellings were pit houses consisting of shallow pits with tamped earth floors and grass roofs designed to collect rainwater with the aid of storage jars. Later in the period, a colder climate with greater rainfall led to a decline in population, which contributed to an interest in ritual. Concentric stone circles first appeared during this time.
During the Yayoi period, the Japanese people began to interact with the Chinese Han dynasty, whose knowledge and technical skills began to influence them. The Japanese began to build raised-floor storehouses as granaries, which were constructed using metal tools like saws and chisels that began to appear at this time. A reconstruction in Toro, Shizuoka is a wooden box made of thick boards joined in the corners in a log cabin style and supported on eight pillars. The roof is thatched but, unlike the typically hipped roof of the pit dwellings, it is a simple V-shaped gable. Some authors credit the raised structure designs of this period to contact with the rice-cultivating Austronesian peoples from coastal eastern China or Taiwan, rather than the Han.
The Kofun period marked the appearance of many-chambered burial mounds or tumuli. Similar mounds in Korean Peninsula are thought to have been influenced by Japan. Early in the period, the tombs, known as "keyhole kofun" or Zenpokoenfun, often made use of the existing topography, shaping it and adding man-made moats to form a distinctive keyhole shape, i.e. that of a circle interconnected with a triangle. Access was via a vertical shaft that was sealed off once the burial was completed. There was room inside the chamber for a coffin and grave goods. The mounds were often decorated with terracotta figures called haniwa. Later in the period mounds began to be located on flat ground and their scale greatly increased. Among many examples in Nara and Osaka, the most notable is the Daisen-kofun, designated as the tomb of Emperor Nintoku. The tomb covers and it is thought to have been decorated with 20,000 haniwa'' figures.
Towards the end of the Kofun period, tomb burials faded out as Buddhist cremation ceremonies gained popularity.
Asuka and Nara architecture
The most significant contributor to architectural changes during the Asuka period was the introduction of Buddhism. New temples became centers of worship with tomb burial practices quickly becoming outlawed. Also, Buddhism brought with it the idea of permanent shrines and gave to Shinto architecture much of its present vocabulary.Some of the earliest structures still extant in Japan are Buddhist temples established at this time. The oldest surviving wooden buildings in the world are found at Hōryū-ji, northeast of Nara. First built in the early 7th century as the private temple of Crown Prince Shōtoku, it consists of 41 independent buildings; the most important ones, the main worship hall, or Kon-dō, stand in the centre of an open area surrounded by a roofed cloister. The Kon-dō, in the style of Chinese worship halls, is a two-story structure of post-and-beam construction, capped by an irimoya, or hipped-gabled, roof of ceramic tiles.
Heijō-kyō, modern day Nara, was founded in 708 as the first permanent capital of the state of Japan. The layout of its checkerboard streets and buildings were modeled after the Chinese capital of Chang'an. The city soon became an important centre of Buddhist worship in Japan. The most grandiose of these temples was Tōdai-ji, built to rival temples of the Chinese Tang and Sui dynasties. Appropriately, the 16.2-m Buddha or Daibutsu enshrined in the main hall is a Rushana Buddha, the figure that represents the essence of Buddhahood, just as Tōdai-ji represented the centre for imperially sponsored Buddhism and its dissemination throughout Japan. Only a few fragments of the original statue survive, and the present hall and central Buddha are reconstructions from the Edo period. Clustered around the main hall on a gently sloping hillside are a number of secondary halls: the Hokke-dō, and the storehouse, called the Shōsō-in, and the adjoining Kōfuku-ji. This last structure is of great importance as an art-historical cache, because in it are stored the utensils that were used in the temple's dedication ceremony in 752, as well as government documents and many secular objects owned by the imperial family.