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Japanese Occidentalism and the Emergence of Postmodern Architecture

Postmodernism is one of the key themes in 20th century architecture. The Japanese architects of the Metabolist group (Kisho Kurokawa, Kiyonori Kikutake, Fumihiko Maki, and others) rose to international fame in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that certain conceptions of postmodern architecture that emerged at the time were influenced significantly by the Metabolists. In articles and presentations that were directed to a foreign audience, the Metabolists defined “the Japanese” as a cultural opposite to “the Western” and employed a particular rhetoric that bridged the contradictions between modernity and tradition, development and ecology, complex technology and noble simplicity. My argument is based on texts and presentations that Japanese architects wrote in English for an international audience, as well as analyses and reviews by European and North American critics. The Journal of Architectural Education is one of the two most important architectural history journals in the US (together with the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians).