John Barr
 

The Osaka Gas Building, designed by Takeo Yasui and completed in 1933, reflects Osaka's optimistic embrace of the future at that time.

Between 1932 and 1962 Yasujiro Ozu made a series of films that provide a slice of Tokyo life during the arrival of Modernism in Japan.

The Kagawa Prefectural Government Offices (1958) offered a radical new vision of what Japanese public buildings might be.

The background to the Hiroshima Peace Centre hardly needs to be explained: the first use of the Atomic Bomb and the deaths of over 200,000.

The International House of Japan reflects the changed realities for Japan after WWII.

The real value of Tokyo's Dojunkai Apartments has been ignored in the rush to maximise economic gain from the land that they occupied.

Tokyo Women's Christian University is Antonin Raymond's first major building in Japan.

In the 1951 film, The Man in the White Suit, chemist Sidney Stratton invents a fabric that will never crease or get dirty or wear out.

The widow of Japanese Architect Kiyonori Kikutake has described different facets of her husband's personality, one gentle and reflective.

In the 20th century Katsura Imperial Villa became a kind of touchstone for the essence of Japanese architecture.

Tadao Ando is possibly the most famous Japanese architect of the modern era. But Ando's work is neither modern nor Japanese.

One of the qualities of traditional Japanese architecture rarely acknowledged is that, for the most part, it was built cheaply.

An examination of Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki's essay In'ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows).

For Japanese architects, 1933 was a pivotal year in their search for a Japanese modernism.

The Akatsuka House is perhaps the only example of architecture making a political statement in Japan.

Tō-no-ie (Tower House) is the house designed by Takamitsu Azuma for himself and his family in Tokyo.

The Maekawa House is a product of the seismic political and cultural upheavals that wracked 20th century Japan.

Are we still indulging in 19th century Exoticism and Orientalism in our view of Japan and Japanese architecture?