Japan and Modern Architecture, 1945–1970. Discourse in the mid-20th-century Europe. 1960s: Emancipation, Criticism

This text is based on a section from the author’s dissertation titled Japan and Modern Architecture, 1945–1970. Discourse in the mid-20th-century Europe, examining the ideas about Japanese architecture in Western, mainly European discourse between 1945 and 1970. The dissertation maps the discourse on Japan from a comparative perspective. Building on sources from different countries, it identifies the main topics that were associated with Japan in the architectural context and shows their broader significance in the global architectural debate. It deals with the image of another culture: the focus is on both the history of ideas and visual representations, mainly photography. The sources are mostly printed media: architectural magazines and books on architecture in Western languages: English, German, French, Italian, Norwegian and Czech.
What follows are excerpts from chapter II.6. of the original dissertation thesis. They introduce the change in perception of Japan that followed after 1960, and a case study of the writings on Japan by Bernard Rudofsky.