Designing a home for the Yamato minzoku

Race, housing and modernity in wartime Japan1

Bibliographic Data

ID12349398
AuthorsGregory Clancey (0000-0002-1599-0508, National University of Singapore, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume29
Issue2
Pages123-141
Publication date2005-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10357820500221139
OpenAlexW2007056452
LanguageEN
References cited10

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. My thanks to Kobayashi Yasuko and Elizabeth P.Y. Chee for their help in researching this article, and to Jordan Sand, Morris Low and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Thanks also to Peter Purdue and Tessa Morris-Suzuki for commenting on earlier versions of this paper. 2. I borrow the phrase from Bruno Latour, who invites us to follow the opportunistic and sometimes serendipitous paths technical specialists perform while constructing seemingly self-evident facts and artifacts (Latour, 1987 Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). 3. The centre of this discussion was the journal Kokusai kenchiku [International Architecture], which in the mid-1930s editorialised for pre-fabricated housing and “dry” construction (panelisation) as against the “wet” construction (poured concrete) favoured by the more establishment journal Kenchiku zasshi [Architecture Journal]. This debate between “dry” and “wet” had no real counterpart in Europe, where both were considered progressive techniques by architectural modernists. 4. Quoted in Jûtaku 26(1), p. 5. 5. Quoted in Kamai, 1941 Kamai, Kôjirô. 1941. Shomin jûkyo no kotodomo. Jûtaku, 26(7): 15–18. [Google Scholar], p. 15. 6. Jûtaku Eidan would actually be reborn in the post-occupation period (though with a more restricted mandate) as Jûtaku Kodan. The major product of this revived government housing agency, the kodan jûtaku, which began production in 1956, would draw on many of the planning themes of the wartime kokumin jûtaku. 7. Nishiyama became arguably the most widely read of postwar Japanese housing reformers (a memorial library bearing his name and dedicated to housing issues exists in Kyoto), but other former Jûtaku Eidan architects and planners such as Ichiura Ken would remain in government service and directly influence the shape of postwar housing policy, as well as actual houses and community plans. For Nishiyama's influence on postwar housing see Sand, 2003 Sand, Jordan. 2003. House and home in modern Japan: Architecture, domestic space, and bourgeois culture, 1880–1930, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 373; and on city planning, see Hein, 2000 Hein, Carola. 2000. Nishiyama Uzô and the spread of Western concepts in Japan (article in Japanese). 10 + 1(20): 143–48. [Google Scholar]

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Art history · Government (linguistics · Mandate · Media studies · Modernity · Period (music · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Architecture