The Reconstruction of Postwar Japan: Architectural Philosophies as Expression of Japanese Identity through 1970

Abstract

The morning broke in silence. From above, grids of former streets stood in stark contrast to the darkened soil and ash that surrounded them. The few standing structures appeared alien, looming over an otherwise flattened landscape. The trees were toppled and burned; they had been reduced to lifeless husks, resembling figures bent down to weep. In the days following the atomic bombing of August 6th, 1945, almost nothing remained in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The damage brought upon Japanese cities by the end of the war was extensive, far beyond the confines of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two victims of atomic bombs. American forces took advantage of the density of Japan's urban areas, which were often comprised of flammable wood and paper, as targets for widespread fire bomb campaigns. The packed buildings, often in impoverished areas with high populations, acted as kindling for fires that raged beyond control and ravaged wide swathes of land.' In all, over 30 major cities were more than half destroyed, with the coastal city of Fukuyama losing the highest proportion of its area: 80.9%. Tokyo, Japan's burgeoning metropolis, was 51% destroyed. This mass destruction left urban Japan in ruins and a large population homeless. The only choice was to rebuild, but the method for how this was to be achieved was still unknown. After Allied forces left Japan, the newly democratized country was anxious to be accepted by the international community and viewed by its former enemies as an economic and cultural equal. In hopes of assimilating to global standards and burying its stigmatized past, initial state-sponsored reconstruction projects aimed to display this image through Western-based Modernist architectural and infrastructural projects. But an economic boom in the 1960s provided Japan with newfound wealth and confidence; the Metabolist movement emerged as an expression of Japanese identity and a metaphorical rebirth from the ashes. Comparing the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games to the 1970 World's Fair, both globally publicized events, elucidates this shift in expression of identity over a short span of time.