Tange, Taut, & Isozaki
Bruno Taut, Kenzo Tange, and Arata Isozaki have been the three most influential
architects and writers to do work on Katsura Detached Palace. Taut
was the first to approach the site. In 1933, when Taut first arrived
Japan to avoid the Nazis in Germany, the status of Katsura had fallen into
obscurity. It was dwarfed by the more glorious and ostentatious Nikkô,
built during roughly the same era. Taut changed all that. He
strongly disliked Nikkô and found it to be the lowest of the Japanese
architectural sites and conciedered it to be impressive only due to its
grandeur. Katsura, on the other hand, Taut praised unabashedly.
He thought it a work of great skill and artistry. He applauded it’s
efficient use of materials and space as well as its "eternal beauty."
Ultimately, he considered Katsura to be representative of the highest level
of Japanese architecture. For years Taut’s opinion of Katsura remained
the last word on the site and ushered in international as well as domestic
acclamation for the Detached Palace which came to be seen as an exemplar
of modern architecture created many years ago. It eventually came
to be held up as the perfect modern work of functionalism.
Tange saw something different when he looked at Katsura. He saw it
as epitomizing the Japanese architectural and artistic tradition.
This tradition, was, to Tange, a merger of two basic forces within the
Japanese culture: the Yayoi and Jomon. These two cultures,
dating back to the dawn of Japanese history (and pre-history) make up the
two basic forces Tange sees at work in Katsura and throughout Japan.
The Yayoi is the refining and civilizing force that created the delicate
black eggshell thin poetry. It was a culture created by a desire
for order and founded on the need for a more civilized way of living in
order to allow for the growing of rice and use of agriculture—its founding
premises. From the Yayoi culture, Japan obtains its eye for refinement
and sophistication. This culture also came to be identified with
imperial class. The Jomon culture represents the wild and energetic
side of Japan as well as the common people. It is the force that
bubbles and seethes beneath the surface occasionally erupting in a flash
of inspired creation. The Joman culture were a hunter-gathering people
who created lively and organic works of pottery and did not know the more
ridged social system of the Yayoi. They were also very dependent
on and close to nature. Tange saw Katsura as being representative
of these two forces and cultures coming together in one beautifully coherent
work. In this way, Katsura also, for Tange, represented the Japanese
people—a synthesis of passion and refinement at all times tempered by a
love of and kinship with nature, he writes, "It was in the period when
the Katsura Palace was built that the two traditions, Jomon and Yayoi,
first actually collided. When they did, the cultural formalism of
the upper class and the vital energy of the lower classes met. From
their dynamic union emerged the creativeness seen tin Katsura--a dialectical
resolution of tradition and tradition."
The most recent of the three famous architects to approach Katsura is Arata
Isozaki. His opinion of the Palace differs from his two predecessors.
In his work, entitled "Katsura Villa: The Ambiguity of Its Space," Isozaki
supports his belief that there exists no single, cohesive style that governs
over the whole of Katsura. It is neither the epitome of modernism
nor the democratic ideal of Tange. Rather, the whole area contains
a mixture of various techniques and style which together can be said to
create the Ambiguity of Katsura. He sites various different mixed
influences such a the combination of sukiya and shoin influence in the
main house as well as the layout of the main house being a product of shinden,
shoin, and sukiya influences. He also points out that the gardens
around Katsura are both the lake garden of Genji--the shinden style
gardens of the Heian courtiers--and the first of the modern tour gardens.
In summary, Isozaki concludes, "I have not been able to see the Katsura
in the same light as the modernists once did. They selected what
they wanted from the Katsura, its transparence, is functionally designed
space. I have viewed it rather a s a great mixture, as deeply ambiguous.
I have taken its evolution as resulting from accidents and a certain opacity
of design."
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