Erwin Viray: I have chosen to speak about Chochikukyo for two reasons.

Firstly, it seems to be one of the earliest houses to address, through environmental engineering, the issue of sustainability, which, as we are all aware of, is currently one of the most discussed international topics.

Secondly, I was always very attracted by its transitory character. As a house it's a testimony to a period of dynamic change within Japanese society. Its architecture has both Japanese and Western features. The architect - Koji Fujii was a pioneer in the use of the metric measurement system, which challenged the traditional Japanese Tatami language of spatial planning in residential buildings. Only because of this, the house already feels very different from typical Japanese structures. Nevertheless, its overall character stems directly from the local sensibility and has a lot in common with Sukiya style (1574-1867) architecture - which was partly present in elegant wooden tea ceremony pavilions.

WHAT WERE THE WESTERN AND JAPANESE FEATURES THAT KOJI FUJII MIXED IN CHOCHIKUKYO?

The first two decades of the 20th century in Japan were a period of vivid discussion on the appropriate style, materiality (wood or bricks) and inclusion of western influences in everyday culture. At the time, European techniques and aesthetics were becoming ever more present in the Japanese architectural debate. 

As such, protecting Japan-ness, i.e., the specificity and national character of Japanese architecture, while adapting it to the new conditions, became an important counter topic. Before Chochikukyo was built, the example was set by Japanese nobility, who, when erecting new official palaces, built them in pairs; a Japanese wooden, traditional house and a Western brick version next to it. 

The Western building served as a sort of fashionable pavilion for exotic activities like sitting at a table with chairs etc., an acknowledgement of the novel developments of another culture but at the same time a failure to re-understand or evolve the national way of life. It was therefore surprising, and innovative, that Koji Fujii combined these two „styles” in one house. 

This intention is immediately visible from the exterior of the building - windows wrap around the corners, a well-known modernistic feature, and upon entering, you see electric lighting, directly inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, who was building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo at that time. Also noticeable, is the curved wall opening between the dining room and the living room - a quotation, and something that had not been done in Japan before.

Moreover, the rooms have a specific function, related to the furniture they contain and their location in the house. Spaces were not defined by the laying of mats, but by western measurements that are at once precise but then also abstract to the dimensions of people and cultural movements in space.

I recently skimmed through the book The English House (1904) by Herman Muthesius and realised that the layout of Chochikukyo could have been inspired by Muthesius’ writing. As far as I know the publication circulated among architects in Japan during the 20’s. 

It’s a meticulous work, analysing the qualities of dwellings in which the author describes each specific space of a house as a separate entity. For example, in Chochikukyo the bedrooms are clearly defined in a separate part of the house – which would have been a very avant-guard or ‘European’ decision.

HOW ARE THE INDIVIDUAL ROOMS DEFINED? COULDN’T YOU CHANGE THE FUNCTIONS ACCORDING TO YOUR PREFERENCES?

Usually in Japanese houses, bedrooms and the dining room are not that much different.  A living room can be a dining room, can be a bedroom etc. In Chochikukyo you could theoretically swop the living with the dining room, they are both part of one main space, however, as far as I am concerned, the functions are meant to be where they are. It was very much a Loos’ian way of thinking about domestic space. The public and the private areas are distinguished in their character, grade of opening and access. I think, it was a feature that pushed Chochikukyo even further from the Japanese orthodoxy.

WHAT TYPICAL JAPANESE ELEMENTS REMAIN IN THE BUILDING?

For instance, the preference to have rather dim light. As you might know from the book In Praise of Shadows (1977) by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, in the Japanese context, the spaces between lightness and darkness are traditionally perceived as attractive. Chochikukyo is not a white box soaked with light, as the modern dogma might have prompted, it is instead darker, with Koji Fujii using materials that recalled the interiors of traditional Machiyas. The way of using the thresholds between spaces is also deeply rooted in the ceremonial way of receiving guests in Japan. 

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CEREMONIAL WAY OF RECEIVING GUESTS?

In Japan, there is always a hierarchy or sequence which determines how activities and levels of intimacy are controlled. It’s better to make a room suitable for a diverse spectrum of activities and as such, you would avoid creating thresholds that require guests to receive invitations or directions to enter. The central space in Chochikukyo is a formal space for receiving guests, but it also allows circulation if the adjacent spaces are occupied by other activities. 

This so-called living room enables the gradation of involvement of spaces in the common life of the house. Thanks to it, you can be aware of what happens in each room, whilst maintaining your autonomy and the privacy of the place you are in. The compartmentalisation of the activities and the spaces enables a subtle mediation of in-between situations. You never intrude either physically or acoustically into a space before being allowed to do so. It’s a very strong characteristic of Japanese social norms.

IN A WESTERN CONTEXT, IT IS PROBABLY NOT VERY CLEAR HOW A TEA HOUSE IS USED. HOW DOES IT WORK?

In the case of the house we discuss, the teahouse is not in the house itself. There is a smaller pavilion behind the house. It has the proper components of a teahouse - there is a pathway to reach it and the necessary devices to purify yourself before entering. The entrance is small. Inside you see Tatami mats, the tokonoma, the place of honour, and the place where the host prepares the tea. The seating is arranged based on who is the guest. A tea ceremony is an elaborate way of celebrating the presence of guests, peacefully distant from everyday activities, and relative to the ever-present beauty of nature.

DOES THE SPACE BUILT ACCORDING TO THE JAPANESE TATAMI SYSTEM SEEM BIGGER, OR SMALLER THAN IT REALLY IS? 

It is difficult to answer directly, the effect of the house is result of a combination of western measurements and eastern atmospheric conditions. Chochikukyo seems to be bigger and higher, probably because of the metric system it follows. For instance, ceiling height, in Japanese space is usually quite low, and is a character that Frank Lloyd Wright equally captured and adopted successfully in some of his buildings. If you go to visit the houses he built in Japan or to some of his houses in the US, you immediately see that the ceiling is low, and the eaves are longer than you would expect. The quality of light inside becomes very subdued, the environment is never particularly bright. It is very different from the works by Mies for instance. In the Farnsworth house light penetrates the plan fully and at worst, you experience even glare. 

I remember a lesson that one Sukiya carpenter gave me. Namely, that the level of the eye is very important. The Tea room for example, is usually a small space and when you enter, standing, it feels very confined, very claustrophobic. But when you kneel and sit down your eye level is very low, and the room suddenly feels much higher. You rarely have this feeling in Western houses which are not usually designed around radical changes in viewpoint; the lowest level you reach is when you sit down on a chair.

HOW DOES CHOCHIKUKYO DEAL WITH THE CONTINUITY BETWEEN INSIDE AND OUTSIDE?

Usually when we speak about the relationship between inside and outside in a house we tend to concentrate on windows, the way they open, how big, or transparent they are and so on. However, as far as I am concerned, the right effect is often very much bound to the composition of what is outside. 

In case of Chochikukyo one should look at how the vegetation is coordinated around the house. Its effect is extremely important on how a sense of depth is created when looking from inside.

The space of the garden might be relatively small, but because of the plants, the species that were selected and the way they have been placed behind each other, a magical depth is created. An illusion. Comparable to the experiments of the Baroque period in Europe, the design produces a special relationship between the inside and outside. 

In Japanese culture, the composition of the garden is strongly orientated to time and space. You create a widening or an enclosure and within it; you choose the plants carefully to perform certain effects in different seasons. I have a book on Chochikukyo, that shows the differences of views you have in summer, spring, autumn and winter. You can see that in the winter when the snow falls, what normally is dark becomes luminous, you have the snow on the black branches. In autumn, everything is in different shades of red and yellow. In summer and spring, you have instead diverse shades of green. Each of these situations has a different impact on your feeling of continuity or enclosure. 

WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF CHOCHIKUKYO ON THE ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTION IN THE 1920’S?

It became very influential in many ways. It created a template for prefabricated modular houses, that are today still very popular in Japan. When you look at how they are assembled and how they define functions and spaces, measurements and circulation, a lot comes from this house by Koji Fujii. 

Shortly after Koji Fujii, many architects started to work on the task of melding both traditional and western elements in to one house. 

For instance, Sutemi Horiguchi went to Holland and studied De Stijl before going on to build the Okada House in 1933, which was a combination of a modernist white box with the windows and roof taken from a traditional Minka. 

Another architect - Kunio Maekawa, worked with Le Corbusier and brought his ideas home. You could find a very strong influence of Frank Lloyd Wright brought over to Japan by Antonin Raymond. He went to work with FLW in the USA and eventually ended up in Japan. 

During the 1920s these architects were experimenting a lot, introducing new materials like reinforced concrete, new concepts of living, like furniture, and mixing them with Japanese traditions. 1920 was a pivotal year. A group of students from the University of Tokyo decided to make an exhibition declaring freedom from the conservatism, but also from dominance of Western styles of architecture. They intended to create something free and expressive of the age they lived in, whilst not discrediting Japanese identity. Chochikukyo was built in 1928. It reflected the student’s declaration - a reflection of how to keep the Japanese spirit in an ever changing and evolving modern world.

For my PhD dissertation at the University of Tokyo, I documented and created an archive of student graduation works from Meiji period all the way up to Toyo Ito. Through this I could observe the transformation in materials, construction techniques, social customs and importantly, the perceptions and the influences that gave rise to these changes.

HOW ARE ENVIRONMENTAL PREOCCUPATIONS EXPRESSED IN THE HOUSE?

Dr Koji Fujii was a professor of environmental systems at the University in Kyoto. Chochikukyo became an experiment centered on how you can create healthy domestic spaces, through the management of airflow. 

This preoccupation clearly defined the function of individual spaces. It also had implications on the materials used, and the relationship of the house to the terrain. Chochikukyo, written in Chinese characters 聴竹居means: “listen, bamboo, dwelling.”

There’s a certain slope, looking at it, you can imagine where the air would flow and how this would change during the winter and summer, ventilating the house accordingly and properly. If you look at some of older houses in Japan, they are quite closed, and can be stuffy due to humidity and lack of airflow, especially in winter. The old Machiyas in Kyoto are designed for summer, as people say, because you can open everything and ventilate perfectly, in the winter it was not so easy. Moreover, Kyoto, surrounded by mountains, retains a lot of heat, and the air quality in the houses was never as healthy as one would have wished it to be. Koji Fujii’s innovations were aimed at addressing these issues.

WHAT MODEL OF SUSTAINABILITY DOES CHOCHIKUKYO PROPOSE? 

Now everybody is fascinated with technology, and it’s not wrong per se, I just think that first we should understand ourselves, as human beings, and the ways in which we react to the environment around us. We speak all the time about zero consumption, zero waste, zero emission. It’s clear we can set targets and determine ways of achieving them. 

However, what I think is important, above all these calculations and strategies, is not to forget the human being. That means, as architects, we need to operate in tight connection with culture. Sustainability is only possible if we acknowledge it in our own behavior. 

Reading through the recollections of Koji Fujii’s grandchild (Konishi Shinichi) you encounter memories of being in the kitchen at Chochikukyo, where he was guided by architecture to behave in a certain way. 

He would remember how it was very efficient for them to collect the organic waste, and later use it to fertilise the garden. In a very subtle way, architecture can somehow guide you through everyday life and make you practice things differently or perhaps in a better light. 

Often in Japan, when you’re in a garden or on a pathway you will find, placed carefully in the middle, a stone with a rope on it. Usually, this sign means that you are not to go further. There are many little signals like this that are inherent in Japanese behaviour, engrained in our culture. In my mind, simple calm signs such as these, could be useful in guiding people to do certain things that are better for the environment. 

I see this kind of soft strategy potentially more successful than talking only about numbers and statistics.  Chochikukyo became famous because of its technically advanced solutions and the emphasis Koji Fuji put on them through his writing. However, I think there are more important qualities within the house, that make it sustainable. Namely, the qualities of the environment around, the respect towards patterns of traditional behaviour, discreet innovations that nourished curiosity without overwhelming it.

Chochikukyo is an example of a broader vision. Not only is the house interesting itself, but it has a relationship to its environment. Similarly, to Kenzo Tange, Koji Fuji was aware that when you deal with architecture, it’s not just about an object. It crosses all scales and deals with the city.

WE HAVE PASSED THROUGH AN EPOCH OF DISCUSSION ABOUT STYLE AND ARRIVED AT THE POINT OF SUSTAINABILITY. ARE WE DONE WITH STYLISTIC ISSUES?

People seem to be looking for authenticity. Because of the climate emergency there is a need to look at ourselves and investigate where we’re standing, rather than discussing about abstract issues. There are complex things happening around us. And we can observe that the topic of form slides down the hierarchy of importance. It will of course remain part of the discussion, but it will be questioned to what extent it supports the quality of the much wider environment.

06.11.2021