Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Izumi Kuroishi
(Aoyama Gakuin University)
Nodoka Nagayama (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Mitsuo Kinoshita (Nara University)
Carola Hein (Delft University of Technology)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Izumi Kuroishi
(Aoyama Gakuin University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Location:
- Lokaal 2.21
- Sessions:
- Sunday 20 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Through the pandemic from the 2019, the Japanese housing systems has been criticized derived from its unsustainable modernization. We focus to the lack of the perspective of Well-being in its housing ideas and design, and will examine it from historical, economical, and architectural perspectives.
Long Abstract:
After the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of 2019, it has been pointed out that three functions in the Japanese housing, 1) foundation for people’s economic security, 2) medium to form relationships with local communities and nature, and 3) physical shelter to protect everyday life, are in crisis, and that this is due to structural problems derived from its modernization. After analyzing the development of institutional systems, social paradigms and planning theories on housing and environment in the history of Japanese modern architecture, we noticed that behind the problems, not only socio-cultural issues but also architectural planning, technology, and design ideas have consistently lacked the perspective of the idea of Well-being from residents’ viewpoint. To the contrary, compared to Japan, in Germany, which established housing welfare system based on the enhancement of the Well-being as the cornerstone of postwar reconstruction, housing security and environment problems did not seem to be as critical as in Japan, even during the pandemic.
A sociologist G. Espin Andersen argued that we need to comprehensively reframe the idea of the right to life of housing as consisting of national political ideals, economic conditions, and housing policy systems. However, through discussions with international housing study scholars, we recognized that the issue of housing and the idea of Well-being should not focus to the economic and policy discussions but have more comprehensive approach including the socio-cultural condition of family, its relationship with nature and community, and the physical quality of living space. Therefore, we would like to examine the social meaning of the idea of the Well-being of housing and its way of reestablishment from an interdisciplinary perspective; One paper is dealing with the socio-historical background of Japanese housing security and idea of the right to life in housing, second paper is dealing with the idea of commodity in housing hold by comparing between German and Japanese post-war situation, and the third paper is dealing with the historical development of the idea of quality of life and of the minimum size of housing volume in Japanese modern architecture.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Sunday 20 August, 2023, -Izumi Kuroishi (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Paper short abstract:
Japan's repeating disasters expose issues related to social support for secured and qualified housing for victims and vulnerable people. This paper examines how these issues were derived from the absence of Well-being idea in the modernization of architectural planning and design.
Paper long abstract:
Continuous natural and pandemic disasters have exposed issues related to social support for dwelling for the vulnerable, and revealed problems of Japanese housing: the lack of the idea of the quality of life and of the comprehensive idea of housing connected with community and natural environment. But the rigidity of the housing systems, concept of the functional planning and welfare role prevented their revisions.
The Japanese government-provided housing system is said to have started in the 1920s after the Great Kanto Earthquake and developed in terms of postwar financial policy but was reduced after the 1970s in accordance with the policy of New Liberalism prioritizing economic development. Historical examination of Japanese housing reveals that the above architectural issues have been resulted from the idea of “modernization” itself. The scientific idea of health and sanitation, Westernization of lifestyle, and industrial rationalization, which were promoted by the government as a new idea of the modern society and good “quality of life” from the end of the 19th century. During the World War II period, the government established its public housing system, and “modernization” was accelerated to emphasize scientific understanding of human body and technological efficiency of production apart from the local reality and shrunk house volume and quality. In the post war period, this war-oriented housing long remained as the prototype, and the issues of the quality of space and Well-being have been transferred to the number of rooms and technological elaboration in its commodification.
This paper will examine how above ideological shift of the quality of living has been processed by focusing to the minimum size housing. It was initially introduced in Japan as a symbol of European modernism, transformed to a symbol of war-time nationalism, and to a representation of Japanese aesthetics in the 21st century. I will explain how its idea was physically interpreted without its original socialist ideology, how its design was elaborated technologically, how ethical and institutional intentions were combined, how people’s spiritual sensitivities, behaviors, relationship with nature and community have been avoided, and how this process caused contradictions in formalizing a comprehensive idea of dwelling.
Mitsuo Kinoshita (Nara University)
Paper short abstract:
Today, the Japanese show the most negative attitude in the world toward a governmental safety net for those who cannot afford decent housing. This paper examines the historical background of this “cold” nation attitude from a long-term perspective.
Paper long abstract:
Today, the Japanese show the most negative attitude in the world toward a governmental safety net for those who cannot afford decent housing. In order to investigate the historical background of this “cold” nation attitude from a long-term perspective, this paper examines what the general standard of housing was in early modern rural Japan, how it was secured by the autonomous village and the authorities, and whether housing security level changed after Japan turned from a decentralized lordship state to a centralized modern state from 1870s onwards.
In Tokugawa Japan, it seems that the median size of a peasant house lay in about 15 tsubo (48.6 square meters) for a family of six, and it did not change so drastically until 1940s. This general standard of living was not secured even when people lost their houses by disasters: the authorities did not assist the victims in rebuilding their houses and left the reconstruction of housing basically to the market; village communities provided merely a little hut which had only 6 tsubo (19.44 square meters), far from the general standard 15 tsubo. In early modern Japan, no housing policy existed, security means were extremely limited, and maintaining and reconstructing one’s house heavily depended on the market and people’s self-help.
This tendency toward low level of housing security lasted even after a centralized modern state emerged in 1870s. As one social survey official of Osaka City sighed in 1927 that “the Japanese traditionally don’t care about housing problems,” housing security and policy attracted few people in Japan not only in early modern era but also until the first half of twentieth century.
After World War II, Japan finally enacted housing laws in 1950s to 1960s that provided decent housing, not a hut, for low-income families and the “outcast” minorities. However, unlike Europe and USA, Japan has not yet introduced a universal rental subsidy program, and in 2006 the government insisted that “the human right to adequate housing has not yet achieved a national consensus.” Even in twenty-first century, it seems that “the Japanese traditionally don’t care about housing problems.”
Nodoka Nagayama (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Paper short abstract:
I address both “possession and non-possession” of durable goods after the Second World War in Wes Germany and Japan. I want to clarify that the non-possession during the postwar era is one “form of living and consumption” in the economic miracle.
Paper long abstract:
I address both “possession and non-possession” of durable goods after the Second World War. The development of the possession rate of durable goods has been regarded as the milestone of the postwar economic growth. But thinking about the themes “forms of living and consumption beyond growth” and grassroots networks of collaborative and innovative production and consumption,” we must focus on non-possession or relative low rats of the possession in the postwar era and analyze the social class who did not relatively possess the durable goods, the reason and influence. I want to clarify that the non-possession during the postwar era is one “form of living and consumption” in the economic miracle and one of the grassroots networks of collaborative consumption.
According to the research of Jun Suzuki, the possession rates of durable goods relating to living condition between the late 1950s and early 1970s were up in Japan in general, but with a variation. Regarding the international comparison, possession rates of main durable goods in the USA were high in 1964, compared with main European countries and Japan. Compared with West Germany, the possession rates of TVs and refrigerators in Japan were high around 1964, while those of washing machines were low.
I will deal with the reason of the non-possession of washing machines and TVs in West Germany, especially with the statistics of West Germany. Regarding the possession of the durable goods in general, the convergence between the middle class and the working class did not occur in West Germany as drastically as in the USA. I will compare the style of consumption of the middle class with high income with that of the working class with the high income.
I will also focus on the relative low rates of the possession of the refrigerators in Japan. The relatively late possession of refrigerators in the postwar era should be analyzed in the context of the relatively late housing program in Japan and the relative late introduction of European kitchens. I will show with which motivation Japanese dealers introduced German kitchens to Japan in the 1960s and 1970s.
Carola Hein (Delft University of Technology)
Paper short abstract:
The Japanese architect and planner, Nishiyama Uzo, helped shape housing and planning in Japan in the 20th century. Nishiyama developed housing concepts for the country that were applied in the postwar period. Analysis of his works provides insides into the changing concepts of well-being in Japan.
Paper long abstract:
The Japanese architect and planner, Nishiyama Uzo, helped shape housing and planning in Japan in the 20th century. Through extensive texts--as a theorist, commentator, and translator of foreign practices and as a visionary writer--Nishiyama developed housing concepts for the country that were applied in the postwar period. Nishiyama dedicated extensive writing to the theme of housing: housing planning (Jūtaku keikaku) and theory of residence (Jūkyo ron), and one each to reflections on urban and regional planning (Chiiki kūkan ron) and architecture (Kenchiku ron). Nishiyama resisted the idea that architecture was an elitist medium and instead focused on its social aspects, particularly in the architectural magazine DEZAM. Humanist approaches were at the core of his practice, as is clear as early as a 1948 article, “The Architecture of Humanism.”
Through abundant, detailed sketches of buildings and innovative analytical drawings and maps he created a careful analysis of Japan’s changing housing types over the centuries. His unique drawings offer detailed accounts of neighbourhoods, floorplans, sections, and construction details of traditional Japanese town houses, row houses, apartments, mansions, and wooden apartments in the large metropolises and villages alike. He also carefully examined changing lifestyles and everyday objects of traditional Japanese people from the earliest times of Japanese construction to post-war practices. As such, Nishiyama provided detailed and carefully documented insight into changing lifestyles, as through his drawings and photographs of traditional Japanese row houses, the nagaya.
Nishiyama’s theoretical models were based on a social approach to architecture and planning, with a focus on land use and land control rather than aesthetic preferences. Nishiyama translated his findings from history into housing proposals for the future. He argued for a separation of tatami rooms for sleeping from living/dining/kitchen areas (LDK) with wooden floors. The new organization of housing led to characteristic post-war housing projects: nLDK apartments, with n indicating the number of bedrooms added to the core of Living and Dining-Kitchen. Questions of aesthetics, the design and the scale of buildings, were also a key interest. Analysis of the writings and plans of Nishiyama provides insides into the changing concepts of well-being in Japan.