A Critical Eye Towards Japanese Modern Architecture

Abstract

Foreigners' views on Japanese modern architecture rarely appeared in the historiography of modern architecture except in Antonin Raymond's An Autobiography, published in 1973. 1 Raymond, however, was himself deeply committed to design architecture in Japan, so that he did not, in a sense, have enough of a foreigner's neutrality. This paper describes an English architectural iournalist who, conscious of being a foreigner, observed and recorded his impressions of Japan, where he stayed three weeks in 1962. It focuses on his admiration and critique of Japanese modern architecture to illustrate the problems of the modern movement in the postwar period. This could suggest worthwhile actions for conservation to Docomomo Japan.

Keywords

• Japan