Author Description

Traditional Japanese architecture—whether Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines, residences, castles, or teahouses—has become increasingly familiar around the world. Through the media of motion pictures, art books, T.V. documentaries and dramas such as Shogun, as well as through personal experience, more and more people have gained an acquaintance and appreciation of the architecture of premodern Japan. Some may even be able to name or recognize the oldest and the largest wooden structures in existence, which are to be found in Japan at Horyuji and Todaiji respectively. Yet often this knowledge is still rudimentary. Confusion abounds as to what distinguishes Japanese architecture from Chinese or Korean, or even Southeast Asian, not to mention what sets off a Buddhist temple from a Shinto shrine or, say, a residence of the tenth century from one of the eighteenth. Until now, there has been no recourse for those seeking, through a single book, to increase their appreciation of the whole range of traditional Japanese architecture. With the publication of What Is Japanese Architecture?, however, this situation has finally been rectified. Construction, design, carpentry, and the background of Japanese architecture, from prehistory to mid-nineteenth century, are here made available within the covers of a single, compact book. With over 300 drawings that illuminate the essentials of discussion more concretely than words could ever do, and a text that is succinct and always to the point, the book is divided into four parts—one each dealing chronologically with religious structures, residences, castles, and places of entertainment. The reader learns not only how each of these fields of architecture has evolved over the centuries and what distinguishes the buildings of one age from those of another, but something of the historical conditions and the people responsible for these changes as well as the role played by carpentry and methods of construction. The establishment