Japanese architecture

Himeji Castle, on Honshu Island, Japan. Nicknamed White Heron Castle, it was built as a fort in the 14th century with a complex defence system; the inner keep was protected by a maze of passageways, some leading to dead ends, to confuse and entrap intruders.

The Gold Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan. The three-tiered Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) was first built in 1397; the present structure was rebuilt in 1955 after the original was burned to the ground by a crazed student monk.

The buildings of Japan, notably domestic housing, temples and shrines, castles, and modern high-rises. Traditional Japanese buildings were made of wood with sliding doors, screens, and paper windows; they had projecting eaves and harmonious proportions. Temples and town planning derived from 6th-century Chinese sources. Western styles were introduced from the mid-19th century.

Traditional Farmhouses with thatched roofs, earthen floors and raised wooden living areas date back more than 1,500 years and can still be found. In the towns, from the 14th century, the front room, which could be closed off from the street by a lattice screen, might be a shop or workshop, with living quarters at the back and on the second floor. Wood, the most abundant building material, was to some extent earthquake-resistant but fires were frequent. The Japanese had introduced prefabricated components by the 14th century so that a small family home could be erected in a couple of days. The best-known module is the tatami straw mat, the universal floor covering from the 17th century, which is also used to measure room size; however, the size of a tatami mat, around 1 x 2 m/3 x 6 ft, varies somewhat in different parts of the country. Sliding room dividers (fusuma) make the interior space adaptable, and wall panels and paper windows (shōji) can be slid back in hot weather. A narrow veranda encircles the house under the eaves; the steep roofs are thatched, tiled, or covered with cypress bark. The emphasis is on simple, geometric design, uncluttered space, and functional use of natural materials. A town house would have a small enclosed garden; a house with grounds would be oriented to the maximum appreciation of the surrounding nature. The imperial Katsura Palace 1620–58 epitomizes the restrained elegance of the traditional style, in this period also called tea-house style.

Shrines Shintō shrines are built in the style of prehistoric storehouses, raised off the ground on piers, and are characterized by crossed ridge-pole weights (katsuogi) projecting at the top of the gables, and a thatched roof. They are made of untreated wood which is allowed to weather, and rebuilt when necessary. The most important shrines are Izumo Taisha in Shimane prefecture on southwestern Honshū and Ise Jingū in Mie prefecture, on the Ise peninsula. The latter is demolished every 20 or 30 years and a new, identical building erected, a replica of a 7th-century one. The entrance to the grounds of a shrine is marked by a red-painted torii gate shaped like an H with a projecting beam across the top.

Temples Buddhism was brought to Japan in the 6th century from China, and Chinese influence is especially evident in the many-storeyed pagodas and the hipped and gabled, tiled roofs. Although generally single-storey, the most important buildings have double roofs. The design is based on pillars spaced at fixed intervals; the walls are not load-bearing. A feature of many temples is the exposed timber beams and complex brackets (no nails were used). The oldest surviving temple, and the world's oldest wooden building, is the Hyōryū-ji in Nara, about AD 690. An early temple complex would contain a hall where the Buddha image was housed (kondō), a lecture hall (kodō), and a pagoda; later ones may have additional halls, sutra repositories, and a refectory. The central gate (chūmon) has a heavy roof similar to the buildings, and contains sculptures of guardian deities. The outstanding temple of the Heian period (794–1195) is the 11th-century Hōō-dō of the Byōdōin, in Uji near Kyoto, originally built as a nobleman's villa. Its shape is said to suggest a phoenix, and it is mirrored in the lake on which it stands.

Castles The civil wars of the 15th and 16th centuries caused the erection of a number of castles, nearly all of which have been destroyed, though some were rebuilt after World War II. Walled and moated, they were complex stone and wood structures of many roofs and towers, combining solidity with an impression of floating. Himeji, near Osaka, which still stands, has a six-storey keep and two smaller towers; Osaka Castle is said to have had 48 large and 76 small towers. Soon after 1600 the country was at peace and castle building declined.

Town planning The early capitals, such as Nara and Kyoto, were laid out on a Chinese symmetrical grid, with the emperor's palace in the north and a broad avenue leading down the middle from the palace gate to the main gate of the city; each section held a temple and a market square. The modern city of Sapporo is also designed on a rectangular grid, but modelled on US cities. Other modern Japanese cities have grown more haphazardly, and houses are not numbered consecutively along the street but in the order they were built. The enormous devastation of Japan by bombing in World War II left few houses standing, so that modern buildings predominate.

Modern architecture The Japanese emulation of foreign models after the country's isolation ended in the mid-19th century included the erection of Western-style buildings, some designed by foreign architects, such as the American Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, 1916, others by Japanese, such as the huge Versailles-style Akasaka Palace, Tokyo, 1909, by Tōkuma Katayama (1853–1917) and the Bank of Tokyo 1890–96 by Kingo Tatsuno (1854–1919). Notable Japanese architects of the late 20th century are Kenzō Tange, Arata Isozaki, and Tadao Ando. Traditional aesthetics and sensitive adaptation to the site still characterize the best Japanese architecture.