the uncanny side of the fairy tale: post-apocalyptic...

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The uncanny side of the fairy tale: post-apocalypticsymbolism in Terunobu Fujimori's architecture

Hyon-Sob Kim

To cite this article: Hyon-Sob Kim (2016) The uncanny side of the fairy tale: post-apocalypticsymbolism in Terunobu Fujimori's architecture, The Journal of Architecture, 21:1, 90-117, DOI:10.1080/13602365.2016.1142464

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The uncanny side of the fairy tale:post-apocalyptic symbolism inTerunobu Fujimori’s architecture

Hyon-Sob Kim Department of Architecture, Korea University, Seoul,

Republic of Korea (Author’s e-mail address:

[email protected])

Having first established himself as an architectural historian, Terunobu Fujimori (b. 1946) isnow more famous for his design work than for his academic publications. He has evenbeen praised as ‘the most influential architect in Japan’ by the critic Kenjiro Okazaki(2006). Fujimori’s popularity is attributable in particular to the fairy tale-like image of hisarchitecture, which tends to appear playful as well as natural and nostalgic. However, thisresearch focuses on the other side of the ‘fairy tale’—specifically, the strangely unfamiliar,even unsettling, feeling that his architecture evokes. Using Freud’s and Vidler’s notions of‘the uncanny’ for analysis, this study identifies the contradictory sentiment residing in thehidden clashes between the natural and artificial qualities of his design. Arguably, theuncanny aspect of Fujimori’s architecture stems from a post-apocalyptic sensibility imprintedin the Japanese unconscious, which is haunted by the trauma of ruin, whether caused bynatural or man-made disaster. This research focus can lead to a broader cultural discoursebeyond the scope of a single architect’s work, relevant to all ‘modern unhomely’ societies.

IntroductionTerunobu Fujimori (b. 1946), who began his career

as an architectural historian,1 is now more popular

for his design work than for his academic publi-

cations, and has even been praised as ‘the most

influential architect in Japan’ by the critic Kenjiro

Okazaki (2006).2 Whilst his achievements as a

history professor at the University of Tokyo contin-

ued to grow, he suddenly made his debut, in his

mid-forties, as an architect with the completion of

the Jinchokan Moriya Historical Museum (1989–

91; Fig. 1). Since then, he has completed more

than twenty buildings, though the number is much

higher if we include his small teahouses and urban

design proposals for exhibitions, which have been

widely reported in many publications.3 Fujimori’s

participation in the 2006 Venice Architecture

Biennale for the Japanese Pavilion (Fig. 2) can be

considered as a watershed moment in his career

since it greatly increased his recognition on the inter-

national stage. His invited exhibitions in Melbourne

(2009), London (2010) and Munich (2012),4 as

well as several projects in Taiwan,5 highlight his

expanding worldwide fame. Peter Cook (2008),

the leading member of the legendary British group

Archigram, stated that Fujimori was the person he

most wanted to meet.6 Fujimori’s work and ideas

occupy a central role in Dana Buntrock’s Materials

and Meaning in Contemporary Japanese Architec-

ture (Abingdon, Routledge, 2010).7 Finally, the

‘communicative and expressive’ form of his design

was given as an example of ‘Radical Post-Modern-

ism’ in Architectural Design (2011) under the aegis

of Charles Jencks.8

90

The Journalof ArchitectureVolume 21Number 1

# 2016 RIBA Enterprises 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2016.1142464

mailto:[email protected])

The basic theme of Fujimori’s design concept,

developed over the past two decades, primarily con-

cerns naturalising the finish of buildings. As mani-

fested in the Venice Biennale catalogue, he

emphasises the use of natural materials and roof

planting, adopting a methodology generally based

on simple workmanship, with some playful

nuances. As a result, his designs appear natural

and nostalgic, and it is these characteristics, often

combined with a fairy tale-like cuteness, that

attract the public’s attention. However, his designs

also assume a quality of unintended unfamiliarity

and are, arguably, even unsettling at times. This con-

tradictory sentiment has been hinted at in the com-

mentary of other architects, albeit vaguely and from

different perspectives without any gloomy connota-

tions. According to Kengo Kuma (1992), Fujimori’s

architecture conveys ‘nostalgia like nothing you’ve

ever seen’,9 and Toyo Ito (2010) remarked that

‘not only does it look vernacular but it also appears

to have flown from an alien world and landed on

its site’.10 This paper insists that the rather strange

emotion evoked by Fujimori’s work deserves more

attention and should be discussed in terms of the

91


Figure 1. Jinchokan

Moriya Historical

Museum, Chino,

Nagano, 1989–91

(photograph by the

Author).

notion of the ‘uncanny’. Sigmund Freud undertook

an aesthetic investigation into the concept of the

uncanny from a psychoanalytical viewpoint in his

essay ‘Das Unheimliche’ or ‘The Uncanny’ (1919),11

thus offering a powerful insight for later cultural

critics and practitioners. Despite his acknowledge-

ment that this category of ‘the frightening’ is not

easily definable, it was clear to Freud that ‘the

uncanny element is actually nothing new or

strange, but something that was long familiar to

the psyche and was estranged from it only through

being repressed’.12 What is notable about this

observation is the original familiarity of the eerie

feeling,13 which is ultimately related to our longing

for our first home—that is, the womb. This charac-

teristic is recognisable in Fujimori’s nostalgic but

somewhat alien design. It was Anthony Vidler who

tackled the notion of the uncanny in architectural

92

The uncanny side of the fairy tale:post-apocalyptic symbolism in

Terunobu Fujimori’s architectureHyon-Sob Kim

Figure 2. Japanese

Pavilion at the 2006

Venice Architecture

Biennale (photograph

courtesy of Peter

Blundell Jones).

hermeneutics. In The Architectural Uncanny

(1992),14 he briefly historicises various ideas about

the uncanny, from pre-Freudian concepts (eg, the

eighteenth-century aesthetic concept of ‘the

sublime’) to post-Freudian ones (eg, the latest

post-structuralist, post-colonial and feminist pos-

itions), pivoting on the Freudian uncanny itself.

Vidler then projects the quality of uncomfortable-

ness onto late twentieth-century architecture and

urbanism, from deconstructivist dismembered build-

ings to ‘homes for cyborgs’, and from ‘post-urban-

ism’ to the ‘psycho-metropolis’, all of which evoke

the different depths and structures of ‘the modern

unhomely’. For Vidler, the ‘social and individual

estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness’

reflected in contemporary architectural and urban

spaces are a critical representation of ‘a fundamen-

tally unlivable modern condition’.15

Yet, Vidler’s frame of the uncanny does not

always appear to fit with Fujimori’s design, and,

at worst, its application risks resorting to the kind

of formalism that Vidler warns against.16 (Contrary

to Vidler’s emphasis on space, Fujimori seems to

have more interest in form, and he has never

used the notion of the uncanny to explain his

designs.17) Nevertheless, this paper maintains that

the odd sensibility tangible in Fujimori’s architec-

ture is worthy of study, partly relying on and

partly bypassing Vidler, let alone Freud, whose

essay ‘The Uncanny’ is itself uncanny.18 This is

because Vidler’s and Freud’s notions of uncanni-

ness are not necessarily fixed;19 rather, they are

flexible and therefore still provide a theoretical

common ground for interpreting Fujimori. More

importantly, Fujimori’s fairy tale suggests a fresh

aspect of the uncanny in the context of the recent

architectural climate.

Although his strange primitivism developed

slightly late to be noticed by Vidler, it can be said

that it perhaps belongs to the stage that might

come after what Vidler calls ‘a techno-uncanny’20

(although the chronology is often blurred), consider-

ing the development of post-war Japanese architec-

ture. Fujimori’s architecture should be read within

the Japanese context, which formed the uniqueness

of his uncanniness. The word ‘unheimlich’, or

‘uncanny’, is usually translated as bukimi [不気味]

in Japanese to indicate an ominous sensation (lit-

erally, bu signifies ‘negative’ while kimi means

‘feeling’) and is paraphrased as kimyo-na shin-

mitsu-sa [奇妙な親密さ; ‘strange intimacy’] (the

very Freudian idea).21 Meanwhile, expressions such

as kikai [奇怪; ‘grotesque’ or ‘weird’] and fushigi

[不思議; ‘mysterious’ or ‘strange’] are also some-

times used to convey the meaning. Bukimi has

been associated with diverse Japanese cultural

genres, from pre-modern folktales and fictions to

religious practices and post-war pop culture.22 This

paper will argue that such cultural manifestations

are condensed and reflected in Fujimori’s designs,

explicitly or implicitly.

The present study of the Fujimorian uncanny is

expected to provide a balanced and critical under-

standing of this increasingly popular architect’s

designs. Moreover, the discussion can lead to a

broader cultural discourse, based on Japanese

culture but relevant to all ‘modern unhomely’

societies. Before beginning the investigation,

however, we should first cover the more widely

recognised side of his story.

93


Natural, nostalgic and playful: fabricating theFujimori fairy taleThe fairy tale of Terunobu Fujimori starts with his

debut, the Jinchokan Moriya Historical Museum.

Built in his home village of Chino—part of the

Suwa district in Nagano Prefecture—this museum

was intended to store and display the Moriya

family’s historic materials related to local Shintoism,

with which Fujimori had been well acquainted since

childhood. When consulted on the project, he was

supposed to recommend a suitable architect, poss-

ibly the famous Toyo Ito who had also grown up in

the Suwa area. He decided, however, to take on

the project himself, concluding that the building

could not be properly designed without an adequate

knowledge of the unique vernacular faith.23 Thus,

consideration of the regional context was a precon-

dition for the project from the beginning. More

accurately, it was a good excuse for Fujimori to

break into the world of design. (His interest in

designing a building, which had lain dormant for

twenty years since his graduation from Tohoku Uni-

versity, was revived around that time.24)

As a consequence, the Jinchokan needed to

reflect vernacular tradition, a trait that is effectively

expressed in its naturalistic appearance. The two

masses comprising the building are all finished

with natural or natural-looking materials: split-

wood panels for the exhibition hall exterior and

mud-coloured mortar with cut straw for the

storage mass; this latter material also covers the

whole interior of the building. In addition, the tra-

ditional slate tiles on the sloped roof enhance its

regional identity, and the four tree-like columns pier-

cing the eave at the entrance recall the onbashira

(Fig. 3), or the freestanding wooden pillars that

demarcate the boundaries of Suwa Shinto

shrines.25 Not at all a traditional building, the Jincho-

kan is well matched with the local context and

arouses a profound sense of nostalgia. The building

thus established the direction of Fujimori’s design

methodology and the way his creations would be

perceived in the future.

Realising that subsequent projects would not be

given so easily, Fujimori initiated the design for his

94



Figure 3. Onbashira, or

a freestanding wooden

pillar at a Suwa Shinto

shrine (photograph by

the Author).

own house near Tokyo. This was Tanpopo House

(1994–95), in which roof planting—the other

theme of his architecture, along with the use of

natural materials—was first introduced (Fig. 4). He

attempted the idea of a ‘Grass House’—a pun on

‘Glass House’26—by planting tanpopo, or dande-

lions, on its roof and parts of the walls. Although

the experiment proved unsuccessful when they all

dried up, he continued to apply this idea in diversi-

fied ways in his next designs: for example, Nira

House (1996–97; Fig. 5), Ipponmatsu House

(1997–98) and Tsubaki Castle (2000; Fig. 6).27 Of

course, these buildings also required the use of

natural materials; in fact, roof planting can be con-

sidered a subcategory of this bigger issue. Mean-

while, common people began to perform simple

manual construction work on Fujimori-designed

buildings voluntarily, including tasks such as roof

planting, mud application and copper-sheet

bending. The first such instance involved the plant-

ing of nira, or leeks, on the roof of Nira House.

Since the builders refused to do this unexpected

work, it had to be carried out by the client’s

friends. This resulted in the formation of the

95


Figure 4. Tanpopo

House (‘Dandelion

House’), near Tokyo,

1994–95 (courtesy of

Terunobu Fujimori).

‘Jomon Kenchiku-dan’, or Jomon Architecture

Group.28 As implied by the word Jomon, which

refers to the Japanese Neolithic period, this group

—whose core members are Fujimori’s friends from

the ROJO (Roadway Observation) Society29—

created a myth that laymen enjoy making buildings

by hand using only Stone Age skills. For Fujimori,

the act of building is obviously enjoyable and

playful, and this pleasure in building should be

evident in the final appearance as well. While the

piercing columns of the Jinchokan and the dande-

lions of Tanpopo House are no doubt playful, Fuji-

mori’s playfulness has evolved with the completion

of subsequent buildings. The physiognomic

impression of Lamune Onsen House (2005), for

instance, with pine trees on top of its towers, is

playful, humorous and also very ‘cute’ (Fig. 7).

Nonetheless, the architectural type that best illus-

trates the playfulness of Fujimori’s design is the tea-

house. This stems from the fact that the Japanese

teahouse signifies something beyond its practical

function and is small in size, or can be reduced to

a very small size, if required.30 His own Takasugi-

an, or Too-High Teahouse (2003–04), is distinctive

96



Figure 5. Nira House

(‘Leek House’), near

Tokyo, 1996–97

(courtesy of Terunobu

Fujimori).

for being elevated high off the ground on two long

legs (Fig. 8). In addition, several teahouses made for

the recent exhibitions—such as Black Teahouse

(Melbourne, 2009) and Beetle’s House (London,

2010)—are so tiny and ‘cute’ that they look more

like miniature toys than real buildings (Fig. 9).

Perhaps the finest design that dramatises Fujimori’s

playful vision is Soradobu Dorobune, or Flying Mud

Boat (2010; Fig. 10). Also fabricated for an exhibi-

tion, this time at the Chino City Museum of Art,

which aimed to celebrate the native Chino man’s

distinguished achievements,31 this shell-shaped

teahouse stimulates various amusing associations,

whether nostalgic or futuristic.32 Local people were

invited to participate in the manufacturing process

for this work as well; in particular, the mud-coated

lower shell was well-thumbed by their children.

The mud boat’s most conspicuous feature,

however, is its desire to fly, denying the principal

architectural condition of being rooted in the

earth. Although it cannot truly fly, but is simply sus-

pended by metal wires, the Dorobune is an exemp-

lary case representing the Fujimorian fairy tale in a

humorous way.

97


Figure 6. Tsubaki

Castle (‘Camellia

Castle’), Oshima, Tokyo,

2000 (courtesy of

Terunobu Fujimori).

The clash between the natural and theartificial, and the uncannyEven so, there is always a dark side in fairy tales. As

noted earlier, Fujimori’s natural and nostalgic design

also evokes a strangely uncanny feeling, and the

uncanny is not incompatible with the nostalgic.

Vidler confirmed that the uncanny has been

regarded as a prime ingredient of ‘modern nostalgia’

in relation to the Freudian ‘impossible desire to

return to the womb’.33 It would be interesting to

observe a plausible parallel between the human

desire for the womb and the architecture’s desire

for nature: architecture can be understood by com-

parison with the human destiny to be repressed.

Since humankind was banished from Paradise, archi-

tecture—as a projected human paradise—has been

unable to recover the perfect nature; instead, it has

only dreamed of it through artificial nature. Architec-

ture’s desire to return to nature, though never fully

abandoned, is probably an unattainable goal.34

The recognition of this reality cannot help but lead

to impotence in architecture. After all, architecture

has two choices: give up on becoming nature or

pretend to become nature.

98



Figure 7. Lamune

Onsen House, Takeda,

Oita, 2005 (photograph

by the Author).

Fujimori chose the latter (though he still appears

to pursue the ‘ideal relationship between architec-

ture and nature’ without accepting the reality),35

as implied by his statement, ‘I dressed science and

technology in nature.’36 He makes architecture

either look like nature or look natural,37 even

through the use of ‘unnatural’ make-up. In other

words, he does not hesitate to counterfeit his build-

ings to attain naturalness. However, the underlying

unnaturalness is inevitably revealed from time to

time. Arguably, it is this intentional artificiality, intro-

duced to compensate for the architecture’s imposs-

ible desire to return to nature, that generates the

uncanny. In this context, the idea of bukimi-no tani

[不気味の谷] or ‘the uncanny valley’ proposed by

the robotics scholar Masahiro Mori (1970) is worth

noting. According to this theory, the more a robot

looks like an actual human, the more our affinity

for it increases, but only until we experience a

sudden sense of revulsion. (Here, the ‘valley’ indi-

99


Figure 8. Takasugi-an,

Chino, Nagano, 2003–

04 (photograph by the

Author).

Figure 9. Beetle’s

House, as exhibited at

the Victoria and Albert

Museum, London, 2010


Fujimori).

cates a dip in the graph of ‘the human likeness of an

entity’ versus ‘the perceiver’s affinity for it’.)38 Just as

a human replica that looks ‘almost human’ but is not

exactly the same produces an uncanny feeling, Fuji-

mori’s buildings that look ‘almost natural’ but are

critically artificial evoke a similar emotion.

The intentional artificiality of Fujimori’s designs

also began with the Jinchokan, while its spatial qual-

ities, too, assume an uncanny sense. (Fujimori

describes the interior space of this building as ‘a

cave of mud’, where darkness and primitiveness,

along with the display of stuffed animals, evoke a

certain feeling of the grotesque. Despite his

general indifference to space itself in design, he

showed a keen interest in employing a cave-like

space in his design—whose undifferentiated plan

Ito characterised as ‘a plan before planning’39—

and developed his own theory of cave spaces.40

This cave space can be understood as representing

the womb, our first home, which is familiar but

estranged, and therefore uncanny.)41 The mud-

wall appearance of the building would probably be

mentioned first as the element reflecting such artifi-

ciality. This is because the image was created by

applying the above-mentioned fake mud to the con-

crete surface,42 risking discordance between the

internal structure and the outer skin; moreover, Fuji-

mori openly explained why and how he created the

artificial image.43

Yet, the simulation is even more drastic with the

piercing columns in the front. (For the wall, at

least, he had experimented with real mud and

found that mimicking a mud wall was unavoidable.)

This is not simply because the columns look like

trees; it is because they were made to look structural

despite their non-structural character. In truth, the

wooden columns, or posts, just stand independently

without any real connection to the building’s load-

bearing parts. The columns pass through holes in

the roof without actually touching it, and the way

they intersect with the beams is largely for visual

effect. Close observation reveals that the pseudo-

beams from the column side do not reach the wall

but suddenly stop at the exterior cladding plane

(Fig. 11). Certainly, one would be unsettled rather

than excited by this camouflage.44 Furthermore,

the columns have another nostalgic but artificial

100



Figure 10. Soradobu

Dorobune, as exhibited

at the Chino City

Museum of Art, 2010;

now reinstalled near

Jinchokan and

Takasugi-an (courtesy

of Terunobu Fujimori).

element that arouses an uncanny feeling. It is the

metal bird called nagigama, originating from the

blade of a scythe,45 several of which are mounted

on the upper part of the modern onbashira (Fig. 12).

In the Suwa region, it is a Shintoist practice to

replace the onbashira every six years through a

ritual that involves hammering nagigama into a

tree trunk that is to be used as a new onbashira. In

ancient Japan, the bird was a spiritual symbol that

was believed to mediate between this life and eter-

nity.46 Although the Jinchokan’s metal bird may

well be considered a ‘natural’ and successful appli-

cation of vernacular tradition to contemporary archi-

tecture, this strong religious nuance can induce a

sudden fright, especially for outsiders who are unfa-

miliar with the indigenous faith. As Freud put it,

‘everything we now find “uncanny” [… ] is linked

with these remnants of animistic mental activity.’47

101


Figure 11. Details of

the Jinchokan column,

revealing its non-

structural quality

(photograph by the

Author).

As Fujimori designs more buildings, the clash

between naturalness and artificiality becomes more

bold and clever. Let us set aside for now a discussion

of typical roof planting, in which artificiality is

detected rather easily.48 What matters here is the

kind of artificial naturalness that looks almost

natural, elaborately concealing its artificiality. For

example, the rafter-like sticks of the Ku-an

tearoom (2002–03) are just attachments screwed

into the wall with no real structural function aside

from, at best, partially supporting a gutter (Fig. 13).

The wooden columns of Yakisugi House (2006–07)

create the illusion that trees grew and pierced

through the roof (Fig. 14); in reality, the upper

branches above the roof are separate from the

columns under the roof. As indicated by the title of

the 1998 exhibition ‘Y’avant-garde’ (an interesting

combination of avant-garde and the Japanese

word yaban [野蛮], which means ‘barbarism’),49

Fujimori’s design signifies a barbaric avant-gardism

that wildly violates common-sense architectural prin-

ciples. Even though the drastically fabricated natur-

alness of his architecture produces a nostalgic and

playful image, the hidden unnaturalness beneath

the surface generates flashes of discomfort.

If this is the case, how was the natural-artificial

conflict possible for Fujimori? Or, how could it be jus-

tified? A hint is found, again, in the Jinchokan

project. According to Fujimori, he encountered a

dilemma in the design wherein he could not avoid

committing a ‘crime’, either spiritual or architectural.

Because of building regulations, the museum had to

have a reinforced concrete structure, but its outer

expression was another matter. He thought that

exposing the modern materials would constitute a

‘spiritual crime’ since it would betray the Moriya

family’s naturalistic faith. However, hiding the struc-

ture beneath heterogeneous materials would mean

committing an ‘architectural crime’,50 alluding to

Adolf Loos’s ‘Ornament and Crime’ (1908). His

decision to commit an architectural crime for the ver-

nacular clothing was actually predetermined, as

already described. Once the decision was made, he

dreamed of a ‘perfect crime’; and afterwards, his

Y’avant-garde venture developed playfully but

uncannily. In fact, Fujimori’s design uniqueness can

be seen as resulting from the pressure of his own

102



Figure 12. Metal birds

called nagigama on the

Jinchokan column

(photograph by the

Author).

rule that ‘the building should not resemble anyone

else’s building, past or present’;51 this eventually

became a strategic choice for him to differentiate

his architecture from that of others. This strategy is

disclosed at the end of History of Humankind and

Architecture (2005), which he wrote for the

general public: ‘A small minority of architects [in

the twenty-first century] wants to see a fundamen-

tally fresh form, even counterfeiting history, and if

necessary to retreat into history.’52 Although he

never mentions his own architecture in the book,

this sentence is easily read as a justification for his

radical design approach.

Ruin and rebirth: The post-apocalypticsensibilityThe clash between natural and artificial in Fujimori’s

architecture would appear to be intentional, except

103


Figure 13. Ku-an,

Kyoto, 2002–03

(photograph by the

Author).

104



Figure 14. Eastern part

of Yakisugi House,

Nagano, 2006–07

(photograph by the

Author).

that he probably does not want the conflict (which

does not seem to be a conflict at all to him) to be

uncovered, and he absolutely does not intend the

generation of uncanny feelings. This leads us to

ask some critical questions: What does the

uncanny effect symptomise, and how can it be expli-

cated in terms of cultural symbolism? This paper

argues that the answer can be sought through

Vidler’s suggestion of ‘a fundamentally unlivable

modern condition’, especially by relating it to the

poor state of modern technological civilisation,

which might have reached an impasse. Science

and technology is obviously the protagonist that

has spurred progress, but it also poses a potentially

dreadful threat to human beings. Now, the total

destruction of civilisation and a new start can be

imagined, as described in many apocalyptic and

post-apocalyptic fictions.53 ‘The imagination of dis-

aster’, which Susan Sontag (1966) identified in

post-war science fiction films, is generally anchored

in an ‘irresponsible use of science’, typically, ‘the

possibility of nuclear holocaust and its aftermath’.

It is further stimulated by ‘ecological catastrophes’

owing to pollution, global warming and so forth.54

In architectural history, it can be said that Archi-

gram in Britain marked the climax of technological

utopianism in 1960s, whilst the Japanese Metabolist

architects developed their own version of techno-

centrism on the other side of the globe.55

However, Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) warned

about the possible collapse of this gleaming vision

in his dystopian lithograph ‘Another Utopia’

(1973), in which Archigram’s ‘Walking City’ falls to

ruin through a certain disaster (Fig. 15). The only

hope hinted at here is that mother nature’s patient

resilience will endure the tragedy. In the last

decade of the twentieth century, the American

architect Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012) represented

the crisis of modern society in a more straightfor-

ward way. One sketch for the ‘War and Architecture’

project (1992) pictures a seriously bombed skyscra-

per,56 as if predicting the attacks of 9/11, one of

the most symbolic catastrophes in recent history.

Although his architectural prescription for recovery

from ruin was rather metaphorical,57 his recognition

of crisis was based on reality: that is, various types of

ongoing ‘wars’ occurring around the world. These

are earthquakes and commercial battles, as well as

physical wars in the conventional sense. To him,

the problem of the present crisis is that ‘it pretends

there is no crisis.’58

The Japanese people’s experience of ruin may very

well be traumatic, as seen in their fear of both

natural and man-made disasters; the 3/11 calamity

in the Tohoku area was a mixture of the two. Suffer-

ing from earthquakes and tsunamis is chronic in

Japan,59 and the nightmare of atomic bombs and

consequent defeat in the Second World War

haunts the Japanese psyche. This is why many Japa-

nese films concern memories and imaginations of

ruin, as interpreted by numerous commentators.60

The animations by the director Hayao Miyazaki (b.

1941) are no exception. His directorial debut Mirai

Shonen Conan, or ‘Conan, The Boy in the Future’

(1978), depicts a half-primitive, half-industrial

society springing from an earth that has been

heavily devastated by ultra-magnetic weapons

(which are considered much more powerful than

nuclear bombs) and subsequent environmental

changes.61 This post-apocalyptic scenario has con-

105


106



Figure 15. Ettore

Sottsass, ‘Another

Utopia’, 1973,

depicting a disaster that

ruined Archigram’s

‘Walking City’ (Ron

Herron, 1964; courtesy

of Archivio Ettore

Sottsass).

tinued to underlie his later works, notably Nausicaä

of the Valley of the Wind (1984) where the recovery

of a polluted ecosystem is a key issue.62 Interestingly,

the nostalgic buildings and scenery—amid a some-

what distorted setting—seen in Miyazaki’s anima-

tions recall Fujimori’s architecture.63 This allusion

suggests a possible connection between the latter

and ‘the imagination of disaster’, another clue to

the uncanny aspect of his design.

Regarding the connection of Japanese culture

with the experience of ruin, the contemporary

artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) should also be

mentioned since he made a psychoanalytic argu-

ment about it in the 2005 New York exhibition

‘Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subcul-

ture’.64 Two points that are relevant to this research

can be extracted from his insights. First, post-nuclear

trauma (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in

August, 1945, was nicknamed ‘Little Boy’) has pro-

duced complex national emotions of humiliation,

powerlessness and anxiety 65 which pervade Japa-

nese (sub)cultural forms, frommanga and animation

to children’s toys. Furthermore, all of these outlets of

Japan’s so-called otaku, or ‘geek’, tendency assume

bukimi: that is, an ‘air of the grotesque’ or the

uncanny.66 This pop cultural phenomenon naturally

parallels the architectural uncanny, although Mura-

kami rarely crossed into the architectural area.

Second, geek fantasy is reflected in the obsession

with not only drastically violent and sexually dis-

torted forms but also extremely kawaii or ‘cute’ qual-

ities, as epitomised by the ‘Hello Kitty’ character. This

kawaii sense has further evolved into a sympathetic

feeling of yurui, which means ‘loose’ and ‘lethargic’,

such that Yuru Chara (‘Yurui Characters’), local icons

in Japan, signify ‘lovable loser’ and ‘self-deprecating

humour’.67

It is likely that the excessive kawaii-ness in Fuji-

mori’s designs68 is not isolated from this Japanese

cultural context, regardless of its direct link to the

otaku tendency. In this way, his architecture is read-

able with reference to the traumatised psyche of

post-war Japan, which might be called ‘the Japanese

collective unconscious’, as in Murakami’s exhibi-

tion.69 According to Carl Jung, the ‘collective uncon-

scious’, different from the ‘personal unconscious’

that develops from individual experience, is inherited

by the whole of humankind, or a specific group of

people, and occupies a deeper universal layer of

the unconscious.70 Assuming that the Japanese

people’s trauma from disasters is not only possibly

inherited but also actually caused by real experi-

ences,71 Jung’s notion is not seamlessly applicable.

Nevertheless, the idea is still pertinent because we

may consider that the hypersensitivity to potential

catastrophes has formed collectively beyond a per-

sonal plane, originating from not only the conscious

mind but also the unconscious one. In addition, the

Jungian ‘archetypes’, or contents of the collective

unconscious that are often expressed through

myths and fairy tales,72 are likely to share many

‘mythemes’73 with Japanese science fiction stories,

especially those with the typical narrative of salvation

from apocalyptic disaster.

A similar narrative seems inherent in Fujimori’s

design, most noticeably in his diploma project at

Tohoku University entitled ‘Bridge: The Method of

Ledoux for Giving Reality to Images through Illusion’

(1971; Fig. 16). Whilst the machine-like streamlined

structure of the bridge influenced by the ‘Walking

107


City’ is fascinating (remarkably so when compared

with the vernacular look of his buildings since the

Jinchokan), no less intriguing is the underlying plot

of ruin and rebirth. A closer look at the project’s

background shows that he proposed, before con-

structing the new bridge, to ruin completely the con-

taminated Hirose River area in Sendai and wait until

nature covered the ruins in lush green vegetation

(see page 02 of Fig. 16).74 This reminds us of Miya-

zaki’s Nausicaä, which was inspired by the mercury

pollution of Minamata Bay,75 and of Sottsass’s dys-

topian scenario mentioned above. It is clear that

the ruin of modern technological society was a foun-

dation for the young Fujimori’s design. However, his

imagery of ruin and rebirth needed a methodologi-

cal medium to be virtualised. That was Claude-

Nicolas Ledoux’s method of ‘illusion’, as mentioned

in the project’s subtitle. Accordingly, Fujimori

copied Ledoux’s eye—‘Coup d’oeil du Theatre de

Besançon’ (c. 1780)—on the cover page of the

project drawings but blanked out its pupil. Whilst

the blank pupil is itself uncanny,76 it can be inter-

preted as an illusory screen onto which surreal

images and narratives are projected to gain reality,

just as the inside-outside inversion of an actor’s

eye in the original Ledoux creates a fantasy that

actualises a fiction on stage.77

Fujimori’s conception of ruin, mediated by

Ledoux’s surrealistic filter,78 is not particularly

special considering the overall atmosphere of post-

war Japan. Above all, the influential Arata Isozaki

(b. 1931), whom Fujimori greatly admired in his

student days,79 is noteworthy. Aside from Isozaki’s

own references to the French revolutionary architect,

he clarified through many designs—eg, the collage

108



Figure 16. Part of

Fujimori’s diploma

drawings (first four

pages from a total of

eight), entitled ‘Bridge:

The Method of Ledoux

for Giving Reality to

Images through

Illusion’, Tohoku

University, 1971


Fujimori).

‘Re-ruined Hiroshima’ (1968) and the executed

Tsukuba Centre Building (1979–83)—and writings

that his architecture ‘start[ed] from the ruins—the

degree zero where nothing remained’.80 Such a

ruin-rebirth idea with certain surrealistic nuances

must be the unconscious base of Fujimori’s own

work. Let us consider ‘Tokyo Plan 2107’ (2002/

2007) as another example (Fig. 17). As a direct

response to global warming and the rise in sea

levels that can cause the submersion and destruction

of modern cities, this project recommends growing

forests and building wooden high-rises with stucco

finishes to absorb CO2 in the air.81 Even though

there is a gap between fantasy and reality, the pro-

posal is meaningful because it reveals his concern

with a potential catastrophe, and also because its

scenery could be considered a perfect stage set for

his fairy tale.82 In other words, his weirdly naturalistic

and peaceful buildings look, in retrospect, as if they

were devised for the post-catastrophic landscape of

‘Tokyo Plan 2107’. They are also comparable to

those of the ecotopic society rebuilt after a cata-

clysm, often illustrated in science fiction, as seen in

Miyazaki’s animations.

Conclusion: a Fujimorian version ofposthistoire architecture?The arguments raised in this paper can be encapsu-

lated in two points. First, Fujimori’s architecture—

which is generally viewed as natural, nostalgic and

109


Figure 17. ‘Tokyo Plan

2107’, 2002/2007


Fujimori).

playful—has an uncanny aspect, and this unex-

pected quality is detected when the hidden clash

between natural and artificial is uncovered.

Second, whilst the camouflaged unnaturalness is

the immediate source of the Fujimorian uncanny,

this eerie anxiety fundamentally originates from

the post-apocalyptic sensibility deeply imprinted in

the Japanese unconscious, which is haunted by the

trauma of ruin. As suggested in the introduction

above, these two points give us a more balanced

view of the architect and help us to interpret archi-

tecture as a whole within a wider cultural horizon.

In particular, this paper reconfirmed the Japanese-

ness of Fujimori’s designs in terms of their uncanny

characteristics and their implications of ruin and

rebirth, their naturalistic features often related to

vernacular faith, frustrated technological utopian-

ism, surrealistic nuances, excessive kawaii-ness,

humour and so on.

The post-apocalyptic symbolism that the uncanny

side of Fujimori’s architecture connotes needs to be

examined—in anticipation of future research—

along with his hypothesis of history. Although he

does not imply any drastic ruin by physical cata-

strophe, he supposes that history might come to

an end in the late-twentieth century, when no

‘essential change and progress’ in human civilisation

could be envisioned.83 It is not coincidental that this

historical view seems to have much in common with

‘the “voids” described by posthistoire philosophy’

that Vidler implicitly suggests as a problematic back-

drop to the architectural uncanny in his fin-de-siècle

context.84 Intriguingly, Fujimori identifies his histori-

cal conception with the state of ‘an asymptotic

curve’ that comes ever closer to ‘an architectural

vanishing point’. On the Cartesian coordinates, the

materiality of architecture can never meet the axis,

even though modernist avant-gardes have cease-

lessly pursued ‘lighter and more transparent space’

towards ‘the ultimate abstraction of the zero

point’.85 His breakthrough for this deadlock, as

quoted earlier, is ‘to retreat into history’ to create

‘a fundamentally fresh form’, using natural materials

in particular and adopting Stone Age techniques in

part.

However, the idea is not to restore history to what

it was but to appropriate it—even by ‘counterfeiting’

it—in his fairy tale-like way. The uncannily nostalgic

form is the outcome of this approach. Considering

that ‘architectural forms’ are the places where the

opposite poles of ‘the absolute negation of the

past and full “restoration” of the past’ inevitably

meet (even in the posthistoire),86 the Fujimorian

form is perhaps located not on the straight line

between the poles but rather somewhere else on a

strange locus between them. This position can be,

but only partly, explained by his design rule of

‘adopting anonymous principles of prehistoric build-

ings not to resemble any architecture in history’. Yet,

there is another critical reason why his design cannot

help but be distinguished even from real prehistoric

buildings (despite his aspirations towards the first

international architecture of the Stone Age). Specifi-

cally, numerous layers and indelible memories of the

rise and fall of human history have been compressed

into and engraved upon the primitive form of his

design in the milieu of ‘the end of history’. Although

there are diversified attempts to fill the void of the

presumable (but controversial) posthistoire, this

would be the Fujimorian version of posthistoire

110



architecture. How fruitful will this mode of architec-

ture prove to be? Perhaps we need a little more time

to find out.

AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by the Basic Science

Research Program through the National Research

Foundation of Korea [NRF 2011-0009942] and by

the 2014-2015 Visiting Scholars Program of the

Harvard-Yenching Institute.

Notes and references1. After finishing his undergraduate work at Tohoku Uni-

versity, Sendai, in 1971, Fujimori entered the University

of Tokyo to study history and completed a PhD in 1980

with a focus on the urban planning of Meiji-period

Tokyo. This work was published as Meiji-no Tokyo

Keikaku (1982). Afterwards, he published numerous

books, notably Showa Jutaku Monogatari [‘Story of

Houses in the Showa Period’] (1990), Nihon-no

Kindai Shisou Taikei 19: Toshi Kenchiku [‘Outline of

Modern Japanese Thought 19: Urbanism Architecture’]

(1990), Nihon-no Kindai Kenchiku [‘Modern Japanese

Architecture’] (1993), Kenzo Tange (2002) and Jinrui-

to Kenchiku-no Rekishi [‘History of Humankind and

Architecture’] (2005).

2. K. Okazaki, T. Fujimori, ‘Saigo-ni Nokoru Kenchiku-

wa?’ [‘What kind of architecture survives to the

last?’] in, S. Sawai, ed., The Fujimori Terunobu

(Tokyo, X-Knowledge, 2006), pp. 119–131.

3. Recent examples include Y. Futagawa, ed., Fujimori

Terunobu Tokuhon [‘Terunobu Fujimori Reader’]

(Tokyo, GA, 2010) and NA Architect, ed., Fujimori Ter-

unobu (Tokyo, Nikkei, 2011). Regarding publications

for international readers, see T. Fujimori, Architecture

of Terunobu Fujimori—Venice Biennale: 10th Inter-

national Architecture Exhibition 2006 Japanese Pavi-

lion (Tokyo, Japan Foundation, 2006a); Fujimori

Terunobu Architecture (Tokyo, TOTO, 2007); M.

Buhrs, H. Rössler, eds, Terunobu Fujimori Architect

(Munich, Villa Stuck, 2012).

4. These are the group exhibitions ‘Shelter: On Kindness’

at RMIT, Melbourne in 2009 and ‘1:1 Architects Build

Small Spaces’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum,

London, in 2010, and the solo exhibition ‘Terunobu

Fujimori Architect’ at the Museum Villa Stuck,

Munich, in 2012.

5. See the Fujimori special issue of TOTO Tsuishin [‘TOTO

Communications’], 54, no. 3 (2010).

6. P. Cook, ‘The person I most want to meet’, The Archi-

tectural Review, 1339 (2008), p. 40.

7. This book is basically structured around Fujimori’s

grouping of Japanese architects —‘Red’ (regional or

concrete) and ‘White’ (international or abstract)—and

illustrates a spectrum of the Red group, in which Fuji-

mori is a central figure. For more about the grouping,

see D. Buntrock, ‘Terunobu Fujimori’s Fairy Tales’, in,

M. Buhrs, H. Rössler, eds, Terunobu Fujimori Architect,

op. cit., pp. 50–59.

8. C. Jencks and FAT, eds, Radical Post-Modernism

[derived from Architectural Design Profile, 213] (Chi-

chester, Wiley, 2011), p. 54.

9. K. Kuma, ‘Nostalgia like nothing you’ve ever seen’, in,

M. Fujitsuka, ed., Kenchiku Riffle 001: Jinchokan

Moriya Shiryokan (Tokyo, TOTO, 1992).

10. T. Ito, T. Fujimori, ‘Akogare-to Kenkyu, Genten-to

Sekkei’, in, Y. Futagawa, ed., Fujimori Terunobu

Tokuhon, op. cit., pp. 280–291 (Author’s translation).

11. Etymologically, the English equivalent of ‘das unheim-

lich’ is ‘the unhomely’ but it was translated into ‘the

uncanny’ owing to its semantic proximity to the

German meaning: S. Freud, The Uncanny (London,

Penguin Books, 2003; first published in German in

1919), pp. 121–162.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

111


13. Ibid., pp. 124–125. What distinguishes Freud from

earlier writers such as E. Jentsch, whose reading of

‘The Sand-Man’ by E. T. A. Hoffmann he re-con-

sidered, is his emphasis on the original familiarity of

the unfamiliar. Thus, he overcomes Jentsch’s idea

that something is frightening ‘because it is unknown

and unfamiliar’.

14. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the

Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT

Press, 1992).

15. Ibid., p. x. His thesis implies a reassertion of a strong

political connotation in the late-twentieth century’s

other fin-de-siècle climate, along with the necessity

to rethink modernity itself, when the discussion of

the posthistoire resurfaced. For Vidler’s view of the

issue, see ibid., pp. 13–14, 96–99; see also A. Vidler,

‘Postmodern or Posthistoire?’, Histories of the Immedi-

ate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cam-

bridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2008), pp. 191–200.

16. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., pp. 12–13.

17. Whilst he utilises many theories to explain other build-

ings as an historian, he has said he tries not to say too

much about his own design concepts as an architect

(although he has in fact established some important

principles regarding his architecture), because it can

prevent the seed of an idea from fermenting and devel-

oping: T. Fujimori, ‘Kenchiku-to Shijen-no Kankei-o

Dousuruka?’ [‘How to deal with the relation between

architecture and nature?’], a lecture delivered at the

Symposium ‘Architectural World of Terunobu Fuji-

mori’, Korea University, Seoul (29th March, 2013).

18. Hélène Cixous’s comment (1972), cited in H. Haughton,

Introduction, in, S. Freud, The Uncanny, op. cit.,

pp. vii–lx.

19. For more recent discussions of the uncanny, see

N. Royle, The Uncanny (New York, Routledge, 2003).

20. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., pp. xii,

147–164.

21. The title of Freud’s essay, The Uncanny, op. cit., was

translated as ‘Bukimi-na Mono’, while Vidler’s book,

The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., was translated as

Bukimi-na Kenchiku [‘uncanny architecture’].

22. Above all, the word bukimi can be linked not only to

many mystery stories but also to some vernacular reli-

gion-related practices. One example of the latter is

the sekkyobushi [説経節], an act of reciting narrative

that originated in mediaeval Japan in relation to local

faiths and Buddhism. See M. Kuzuwata, ‘Sekkyo-

bushi-no Kojo: bukimi-na mono-o megudde’ [‘The

Structure of Sekkyobushi: concerning the uncanny’],

Okinawa International University Journal, 3, no. 2

(1999), pp. 71–93. In the modern context, however,

the term is used more often in relation to the trauma

of the post-nuclear disaster and the characteristics

of ‘cuteness’, which are discussed in the latter part of

this paper. See P. K. Saint-Amour, ‘Bombing and the

Symptom: Traumatic Earliness and the Nuclear

Uncanny’, Diacritics, 30, no. 4 (2000), pp. 59–82 and

M. Ivy, ‘The Art of Cute Little Things: Nara Yoshimoto’s

Parapolitics’, Mechademia, 5 (2010), pp. 3–29.

23. Although Ito had grown up in the same rural area, Fuji-

mori thought his urbane aesthetics did not conform to

the characteristics of the region. Several publications

give his account of taking on the project and the

client’s originally different intention. See the publi-

cations listed in notes 2 and 3 above, as well as

T. Fujimori, Tanpopo House-no Dekiru-made [‘Until

Tanpopo House was Completed’] (Tokyo, Asahibunko,

2001), pp. 42–45.

24. Y. Futagawa, ed., Fujimori Terunobu Tokuhon, op. cit.,

p. 54.

25. Concerning the Suwa Shinto shrines and the onba-

shira, see T. Fujimori, Jinrui-to Kenchiku-no Rekishi

(Tokyo, Chikuma-shobo, 2005), pp. 115–132.

26. By contrasting the idea of a ‘Grass House’ with that of

the modernist ‘Glass House’, he distances himself from

112



the contemporary mainstream architects who are

obsessed with the modernist idiom of lightness and

transparency. In Japanese, there is no difference

between the pronunciations of ‘grass’ and ‘glass’.

27. Fujimori traces the origin of roof planting to the Japa-

nese shibamune [‘planted roof ridge’] tradition and

also provides some French precedents. See T. Fujimori,

Architecture of Terunobu Fujimori—Venice Biennale,

2006, op. cit., p. 4. However, his methods of roof

planting are diverse: they include planting vegetation

in a line (Tanpopo House) or one by one (Nira

House), as well as planting a tree on the peak of the

roof (Ipponmatsu House) or turfing the whole roof

(Tsubaki Castle).


pp. 106–111.

29. The ROJO Society, founded in 1986, has observed the

streets and recorded interesting objects with a camera.

It was a co-participant in the 2006 Venice Biennale

Japanese Pavilion and the 2012 Munich Exhibition.

The Nira House’s client, the novelist and artist Genpei

Akasegawa, with Fujimori, are the key members of

the society. T. Fujimori, Objects collected by the ROJO

Society 1970–2006 —Venice Biennale, 2006, op. cit.

30. Sen no Rikyu, the sixteenth-century Japanese tea

master, experimented with creating a smallest possible

tea room, down to an area of 1.75 tatami mats (2.9 m2):

T. Fujimori, ‘Introduction: The development of the tea

room and its meaning in architecture’, in, A. Isozaki,

T. Ando, T. Fujimori, The Contemporary Tea House

(Tokyo, Kodansha, 2007), pp. 7–25.

31. See T. Maeda, F. Uehata, eds, Fujimori Terunobu-ten:

Suwa-no Kioku-to FUJIMORI Kenchiku (Chino, Chino

City Museum of Art, 2010).

32. For discussions of the Dorobune, see Y. Futagawa, ed.,

Fujimori Terunobu Tokuhon, op. cit., pp. 268–273 and

H. Kim, ’The Exciting Architectural Adventures of the

Future Boy, “Terubo”: Terunobu Fujimori Architecture,

as viewed from Dorobune’, SPACE, 536 (2012a),

pp. 16–21.

33. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., p. x.

34. The subject of architecture was the ‘imitation of

nature’ in the Classical and Renaissance worlds, as

manifested in Alberti’s treatise (Book 9). Also, the

modern movement and the subsequent architecture

of the twentieth century connoted a reliance on

natural analogy. For the relationship between nature

and architecture, as well as the usefulness and perni-

ciousness of the analogy in architecture, see

P. Steadman, The Evolution of Designs: Biological

analogy in architecture and the applied arts (London,

Routledge, 2008; 2nd ed.). Recently, owing to the sus-

tainability issue, (the question of) nature has resurfaced

in architectural discourse, but not without accompany-

ing ‘complex social, political, cultural dimensions’. For

the ongoing diversified approaches to this theme, see

P. S. Cohen, E. Naginski, eds, The Return of Nature:

Sustaining Architecture in the Face of Sustainability

(London, Routledge, 2014). On the other hand,

closer to Fujimori’s context, the Japanese researcher

Taro Igarashi investigated the relationship between

architecture and plants in his book, Kenchiku-to Sho-

kubutsu (one chapter of which comprises an interview

with Fujimori). In the introductory essay, he stresses

that seemingly naturalised architectures and their

environments, such as tree houses and gardens, are

inescapably artificialised. T. Igarashi, ed., Kenchiku-to

Shokubutsu [‘Architecture and Plants’] (Kyoto, INAX,

2008), pp. 5–18. Originally devised to overcome

nature, architecture is anti-natural in itself despite its

efforts to imitate nature.

35. T. Fujimori, Architecture of Terunobu Fujimori—Venice

Biennale, 2006, op. cit., p. 4. In the recent Korea Uni-

versity lecture (2013) mentioned above (note 17), he

clarified that his goal is to reconcile man-made build-

ings with God-created nature (eg, plants).

113


36. T. Fujimori, ‘Toward an Architecture of Humankind’,

Fujimori Terunobu Architecture (Tokyo, TOTO, 2007),

pp. 16–45.

37. In this paper, the former means that his building

mimics the formal appearance of nature; the latter

means it appears as if it were formed reasonably and

logically within its circumstances, regardless of nature

per se. Both types of unnaturalness are equally impor-

tant in this research.

38. M. Mori, ‘The Uncanny Valley’, IEEE Robotics & Auto-

mation Magazine, 19, no. 2 (2012), K. F. MacDormand,

N. Kageki, trans., pp. 98–100; original Japanese

version: ‘Bukimi-no Tani’, Energy, 7, no. 4 (1970),

pp. 33–35. The Author became familiar with this

theory when a participant in discussion at a symposium

at Korea University in October, 2012, in which the

Korean cultural critic Jung-Kwon Chin delivered a

lecture on the uncanny valley.


pp. 87–91.

40. T. Fujimori, Tanpopo House-no Dekiru-made, op. cit.,

pp. 196–206.

41. For an in-depth analysis of Fujimori’s cave theory, see

the Author’s recent article: H. Kim, ‘A Study on the

Concept of a Cave in Terunobu Fujimori’s Architecture’

(text in Korean with English abstract), Journal of Archi-

tectural History, 95 (2014), pp. 7–17.

42. However, this mud-wall image does not create an

uncanny feeling because its appearance does not actu-

ally differ from that of a real mud wall: see Mori’s graph

of the uncanny valley.

43. Fujimori Terunobu Architecture, op. cit.

44. For further discussion, see H. Kim, ‘A Study on the Pier-

cing Column of Terunobu Fujimori Architecture’ (text

in Korean with English abstract), Journal of Architec-

tural History, 85 (2012c), pp. 35–44.

45. T. Fujimori, Tanpopo House-no Dekiru-made, op. cit.,

pp. 125–127.

46. T. Fujimori, Jinrui-to Kenchiku-no Rekishi, op. cit.,

pp. 101–102.

47. S. Freud, The Uncanny, op. cit., p. 147.

48. Although the plants on his buildings—eg, Tanpopo

House, Nira House and Ipponmatsu House—look

natural, their artificiality is easily recognisable.

49. T. Fujimori, Terunobu Fujimori Y’avant-garde Architec-

ture (Tokyo, TOTO, 1998).

50. T. Fujimori, ‘Toward an Architecture of Humankind’,

op. cit.

51. Ibid.


p. 168 (Author’s translation).

53. For a concise introduction to apocalyptic and post-

apocalyptic fiction, see M. K. Booker, A. Thomas, The

Science Fiction Handbook (Chichester, Wiley-Black-

well, 2009), pp. 53–64.

54. Ibid.

55. Differently from Archigram, with its ‘counter-cultural

values’, the Metabolists were rather inclined towards

realistic issues supporting their governmental policies:

A. Isozaki, ‘A comment from Arata Isozaki’, in,

P. Cook, ed., Archigram (New York, Princeton Archi-

tectural Press, 1999), p. 4.

56. This sketch was published in Lebbeus Woods,War and

Architecture (New York, Princeton Architectural Press,

1993), p. 13 and is still available from his website

http://lebbeuswoods.net [accessed 15/12/15].

57. Although quite ambiguous and metaphorical, his

suggested recovery process for a ruined building

follows the order of ‘injection’, ‘scab’, ‘scar’ and ‘new

tissue’: ibid., pp. 20–37 and Radical Reconstruction

(New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), p. 16.

58. L. Woods, Radical Reconstruction, op. cit., p. 13.

59. Because of the disasters, however, Japan could

develop a discourse of seismicity in culture and

modern technology. Gregory Clancey shows how con-

tinual earthquakes formed modern Japan in terms of

114



http://lebbeuswoods.net

cultural politics as well as architecture: G. Clancey,

Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese

Seismicity, 1868–1930 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Univer-

sity of California Press, 2006).

60. For example, see S. J. Napier, ‘Panic Sites: The Japanese

Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira’, Journal

of Japanese Studies, 19, no. 2 (1993), pp. 327–351

and M. Broderick, ed., Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima,

Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film

(London, Routledge, 2009). S. Sontag’s essay ‘The

Imagination of Disaster’ (1966) was reprinted in the

latter.

61. This animation series, which first appeared on NHK in

1978, was based on the American writer Alexander

Key’s science fiction novel The Incredible Tide (1970),

now available in e-book format (New York, Open

Road, 2014). One of the most noticeable images in

the animation is Conan’s house composed of a

crash-landed spaceship and a primitive hut, which is

reminiscent of Sottsass’s ‘Another Utopia’.

62. For an overview of Miyazaki’s works, see Helen

McCarthy, Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Ani-

mation (Berkeley, CA, Stone Bridge Press, 1999).

63. See T. Igarashi, ‘Time-Bridging Architecture’, in Archi-

tecture of Terunobu Fujimori and ROJO—Venice Bien-

nale, op. cit., pp. 12–15; S. Sawai, ed., The Fujimori

Terunobu, op. cit., pp. 101, 129; and H. Kim, ‘The

Exciting Architectural Adventures of the Future Boy,

“Terubo”’, op. cit. Fujimori even contributed a series

of articles on architectural materials to Neppu [‘Hot

Wind’], the monthly magazine of Miyazaki’s Studio

Ghibli, between July, 2012 and July, 2013. However,

Fujimori argues that he only recently got to knowMiya-

zaki’s animation, denying any possible influence.

Author’s recorded interview with Fujimori at his Koga-

kuin University office, Shinjuku, 7th December, 2011.

64. The eponymous book accompanied the event:

T. Murakami, ed., Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s

Exploding Subculture (New York, Japan Society; New

Haven, Yale University Press, 2005).

65. For him, the trauma basically originates from the cata-

strophic aftermath of the atomic bombings, but it also

stems from the contradictory relationship with the

USA, which as both protector and repressor has pre-

vented the country—the ‘little boy’ state—from

growing up.

66. The otaku culture, which is the subject of this Exhibi-

tion, was initially categorised as a subculture but is

now merging with the mainstream. Regardless of its

status, it ‘remain[s] unable to shed’ a sort of ‘bukimi’

or uncanny feeling, according to Murakami. As

described in the Introduction, Freud’s ‘unheimlich’ is

usually translated as ‘bukimi’ in Japanese, but Muraka-

mi’s original Japanese ‘bukimi’ was translated as ‘gro-

tesque’ in the bilingual book. T. Murakami, ed., Little

Boy, op. cit., pp. 132–134.

67. Ibid., pp. 82–87, 136-138: the term was coined by the

popular illustrator Miura Jun.

68. Although Okazaki had praised Fujimori’s architecture

highly (see Note 2 above), he later became more

reserved in his enthusiasm due to Fujimori’s growing

inclination towards kawaii-ness. (Author’s recorded

conversation with Okazaki at his home in Kokubunji,

near Tokyo, 6th August, 2012.) However, this paper

maintains that his design deserves more attention

because of its kawaii-ness, which represents one pole

of contemporary Japanese culture. For Japanese

kawaii culture, see M. Ivy, ‘The Art of Cute Little

Things’, op. cit. and M. Okazaki, G. Johnson, Kawaii!

Japan’s Culture of Cute (Munich, Prestel, 2013).

69. The critic Roberta Smith reports that Murakami’s Exhi-

bition reflects the Japanese collective unconscious:

R. Smith, ‘Japan’s Collective Unconscious: From a

Mushroom Cloud, a Burst of Art Reflecting Japan’s

Psyche’, New York Times (8th April, 2005), pp. B27,

B31.

115


70. C. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Uncon-

scious: The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 9,

Part I, 2nd ed. (New York, Princeton University Press,

1969), pp. 3–53. Although Jung’s analytical psychol-

ogy was both praised and harshly criticised, as shown

by A. M. Dry’s The Psychology of Jung: A Critical

Interpretation (London, Methuen, 1961), the idea of

the ‘collective unconscious’ has influenced our under-

standing of culture and the human mind.

71. A typical criticism of Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’

concerns its Lamarckian standpoint regarding the

inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, his

idea is not easily dismissed since it can also be explained

through the more widely accepted evolutionary theory

of mutation and natural selection. C. S. Hall,

V. J. Nordby, A Primer of Jungian Psychology

(New York, New American Library, 1973), p. 40, and

A. M. Dry, The Psychology of Jung, op. cit., p. 108.

72. C. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Uncon-

scious, op. cit., p. 5. According to Jung, ‘archetypes’

correspond to ‘motifs’ in mythological research, ‘rep-

résentation collectives’ in the psychology of primitives,

‘categories of the imagination’ in comparative religion,

and Adolf Bastian’s ‘primordial thoughts’ (pp. 42–43).

There are numerous archetypes, eg, those of birth and

rebirth, death, the mother or Earth Mother, the child,

God, the demon, the wise old man, (objects of)

nature, etc.

73. Let us borrow Lévi-Strauss’s term despite his dismissal

of Jung. Their opposing approaches to a myth—say,

‘syntactic’ (Lévi-Strauss) versus ‘semantic’ (Jung)—

make no difference for the purposes of this paper.

According to the former, ‘mythemes’ are irreducible

units in a myth—like ‘phonemes, morphemes, and

sememes’ in linguistics—and their relationships are

diversely bundled to produce diverse

meanings. C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology

(New York, Basic Books, 1963), pp. 206–231.

74. This scenario was mentioned in his conversation with

Ito: T. Ito, T. Fujimori, ‘Akogare-to Kenkyu, Genten-to

Sekkei’, op. cit.

75. H. McCarthy, Hayao Miyazaki, op. cit., p. 74.

76. Coincidently, this alludes to Hoffmann’s ‘Sand-Man’,

who was thought to have plucked out the eyes of

naughty children. In Freud’s reinterpretation of the

story, ‘fear for the eye’ is another form of ‘fear of cas-

tration’, the primary source of the uncanny. (See Note

13 above.)

77. The eye is the point of ‘contact between actors who are

watched and the audience who is watching’, and the

proscenium arch between the stage and the seats of

the Besançon theatre forms a visual frame that corre-

sponds to the eyelid and pupil. C. Freigang, ‘Claude-

Nicolas Ledoux’, in, T. Nebois, ed., Architectural

Theory from the Renaissance to the Present (Cologne,

Taschen, 2003), p. 326 and A. Vidler, Claude-Nicholas

Ledoux: Architecture and Utopia in the Era of the

French Revolution (Basel, Birkhäuser, 2006), p. 88. For

further discussion, see H. Kim, ‘Illusion of Ruin and

Rebirth: A Study on Terunobu Fujimori’s Diploma

Design’ (text in Korean with English abstract), Journal

of the Architectural Institute of Korea: Planning and

Design, 287 (2012b), pp. 203–210.

78. Fujimori’s direct adoption of surrealist motifs is found

in the Ku-an, where he installed a drooping grass

band in the courtyard inspired by Salvador Dalí. For a

surrealist interpretation of Fujimori, see K. Okazaki,

‘Surrealist Architect Terunobu Fujimori’, Eureka, 499

(2004), pp. 98–102.

79. T. Fujimori, Architecture of Terunobu Fujimori—Venice

Biennale, op. cit., p. 6.

80. This was the only choice in architecture for Isozaki,

who had experienced the disaster of war in his early

years: A. Isozaki, ‘Writing on Architecture’, in,

K. T. Oshima, ed., Arata Isozaki (London, Phaidon,

2009), pp. 6–9.

116



81. For more about the project, see T. Fujimori, ‘Toward an

Architecture of Humankind’, op. cit., pp. 8–15.

82. Also, see the Roof House (2007–09), in which the roof

itself forms a picturesque scene, as well as ‘New York

2109’ (2009) and ‘Vegetable City’ (2010).


pp. 164-168.

84. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., pp. 13–

14, 96–99 (see note 15 above). Fujimori’s words ‘the

end of history’ [rekishi-no owari] directly allude to

Francis Fukuyama’s famous book of the same title

(1992), although they have little in common aside

from the phrase. For further discussions of the posthis-

toire, however, see L. Niethammer, Posthistoire: Has

History Come to an End? (London, Verso, 1992) and

P. Brantlinger, ‘Apocalypse 2001; or, What Happens

after Posthistory?’, Cultural Critique, 39 (1998),

pp. 59–83.

85. T. Fujimori, Jinrui-to Kenchiku-no Rekishi, op. cit.

86. A. Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, op. cit., pp. 13–14.

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