Mira Locher - Traditional Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements and Forms

Acknowledgments

From the Author

This book could be built only from the teaching, inspiration, support, assistance, and encouragement of many people over many years. They are too numerous to thank individually, but I am deeply grateful to all. The foundation for the book was laid by Tony Atkin, who showed me that first slide of a stone lantern in a lush mossy garden twenty years ago, and Maruyama Kinya, who has been educating and inspiring me ever since. Many wonderful teachers have given me the structurethe columns and beamsfor my research, including Dana Buntrock, Edo Tamotsu, Fujimori Terunobu, Kohyama Hisao, Kuma Kengo, Kusumi Naoki, and Sugimoto Takashi. The walls and the openings in them were built with the support and encouragement I have received, especially from Susan Cohen, Paula Deitz, Joann Gonchar, Ikeda Erika, Amy Katoh, Kimura Sachiko, Zeuler Lima, Sato Noriko, Leslie Van Duzer, illustrator Yamamoto Atsushi, and my colleagues and students at the places I have worked and taught. My parents, Nancy C. Locher and the late Jack S. Locher, taught me to recognize the sound of the hototogisu . They gave me the ability and opportunity to slide open that first door, and they watched quietly as I walked through. The construction of this book would not be complete without the roof, as shelter and symbol, layers bound together by Eric Oey, June Chong and Chan Sow Yun from Tuttle Publishing, editor Noor Azlina Yunus, and photographer Ben Simmons. But most of all, the book could not have been built without my daikokubashira , Murakami Takayuki.

From the Photographer

I would like to sincerely thank Chan Sow Yun, Naoto Ogo, Atsuro Komaki, Atsunori Komaki, Yoko Yamada, Toshio Okada, Kumeto Yamato, Yasaburo Hiraki, Mariya and Mineo Hata, Teiji Shinkei and Son, Ryorijaya Uoshiro Restaurant, Friends of Mikuni, Shoi, Colleen and Oshin Sakurai, Katharine Markulin Hama, Tim Porter, Toshio and Kumiko Wakamei, Takuji Yanagisawa, Yuri Yanagisawa, Yamada Sakan, Dennis Bones Carpenter, Kathryn Gremley, Greg, Maki and Marina Starr, and Rie, Rika, and Tsuneko Nishimura for all their kind support and assistance, and Mira Locher for her inspiring insights and unique perspective on Japan.

Illustrations

The publisher and author are grateful to the following individuals, institutions and publishers for help and permission in drawing and/or reproducing the line drawings in this book: Fujimori Terunobo: p. 41 (top and bottom); Kuma Kengo : p. 36; Murakami Takayuki: pp. 22 (top), 127, 136 (with Yamamoto Atsushi); Yamamoto Atsushi : pp. 17, 18, 22 (bottom), 29 (after Young and Young, Introduction to Japanese Architecture , p. 103), 31, 48, 58 (after Chikatada Kurata, Minzoku Tambo Jiten , Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1983), 60 (after Rudolfsky, Architecture without Architects , p. 132, with permission of Bungeishunj), 65 (after Engel, Measure and Construction of the Japanese House , p. 31), 67, 74, 79 (after an image of minka structure, exhibition room guide, homepage of Hiratsuka City Museum (http://www.hirahaku.jp/tenji-shitsu/p24-25.html), 82, 85, 89, 93 (after Chji Kawashima, Minka: Traditional Houses of Rural Japan , Tokyo: Kodansha, 1986, p. 20), 95, 96, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 115, 118, 119 (top and bottom), 121, 132, 139 (top, after Nihon Minka-en , n.d.), 139 (center), 155, 158 (after Parent, The Roof in Japanese Buddhist Architecture , p. 122, with permission of Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education and Khonji Temple), 163 (after Uesugi-bon rakuch rakugaizu bybu , screen by Kano Etoku, c. 1560), 167 (after Keene, Japanese Garden Design , p. 79), 171 (after Keene, Japanese Garden Design , p. 77), 177, 188 (after Slawson, Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens , p. 136), 197 (after Slawson, Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens , p. 45), 207, 216, 217.

mon shime ni
dete kitte oru
kawazu kana

Coming out
to close the gate,
I end up listening to frogs.

MASAOKA SHIKI (18671902)