Umělec 2000/4 >> The Japanese Interior Просмотр всех номеров
The Japanese Interior
Журнал Umělec
Год 2000, 4
6,50 EUR
7 USD
Послать печатную версию номера:
Получить подписку

The Japanese Interior

Umělec 2000/4

01.04.2000

Tomodachi no Uranchan (Přátelé Uranové dívky) | japan | en cs

The fatally known clarity of Japanese interior style comes as no surprise. We are so sure of it that we, as Europeans, do not even doubt this fact.

Is what we see in beautiful catalogues reality?
The average Japanese house is mostly unified in style according to contemporary Japanese architecture, employing wood, paper and plastic. Our brick and stone buildings (including prefabricated blocks of flats) represent a huge gap beyond their comprehension. Such homes are considered luxurious in Japan. Today’s young generation in Japan tirelessly flips through magazines and advertising flyers similar to those published by Ikea. Maybe they long for European and American interiors; nevertheless they only have a notion of what that means, coming from whatever available sources they have, such as American films. Reality is something else entirely. Young people who decide to become independent and leave home usually move to a distant village on the other side of the island for a few years. The village, town, or wherever they decide to work provides them with free immigrant lodging. A “temporary solution” is the most obvious and frequent phrase.
Depending on your position and how the local community values your presence and your potential future contribution to the community, they may renovate the house after the former immigrants have left. But they don’t have to. It truly depends on the position you will assume in the society.
American teachers invited by the Japanese government are usually accommodated in the cleanest Japanese interiors I had a chance to see, which included the traditional Japanese toilet. They come with nothing but a suitcase and their native language and they must feel like this is the weirdest thing. The home space is decorated in shades of green and natural wood tones. Instead of carpets, floors are covered with yellowish green mats called tatami. Cabinets are built into walls just like in Adolf Loos’s villa Muller in Prague. The doors slide open and windows are single layered. To them double-layered windows are the ones that include a wooden frame with stretched handmade paper. In the evening, it feels like you are living in a paper lantern.
“Nughi kakuru, Haori sugata no, Kotcho kana!” translates as: When a woman takes off her kimono, she looks like a butterfly.

Horizontal and vertical lines
The entrance to a house is an introduction to other smaller yet original articulate spaces. It consists of a tiny square hallway, and, in the case of larger and more luxurious homes, it is more rectangular. The floor is concrete, occasionally completed with a simple surface coating. Entering a home is a gradual process. While the entry lies on ground level, once you walk inside you have to take off your shoes quickly and then hop up to the residential level of the house, which usually has a clean, glossy wooden floor. The floor’s wooden pattern corresponds with that of the wallpaper. Horizontal and vertical lines gently and neatly intersect. For a moment you almost feel like you know exactly where the lines are taking you. But at the same time you can’t help feeling like you have somehow entered the craziest labyrinth; you know which direction to go, but you’re afraid of the foggy phantom floating just above the floor in this endless hallway.
Everything is kind of mystical. Perhaps it’s due to the fate and history of the house. An interesting fact, however, is that even brand new homes evoke the same feeling.

Customs
You’re inside the house visiting. At an unobtrusive moment the housekeeper arranges your shoes in the hallway so that their tips point at the door. Forgetting to do this is considered improper. Your assigned slippers, too, are aimed outwards so that you can put them on again after having left them before entering a room with carpets or tatami. Incidentally, the largest size they come in is 25 cm. In a Japanese home, you constantly take your slippers on and off; an extra pair resides even in the toilet. The home’s interior is very pleasant but small. Sitting in a room, you will find that it has nothing in common with the stereotypical idea of the clean and empty Japanese interior. The space’s subtlety disables any attempt at organization and you may see clothes, various seasonal tools, equipment, and dishes scattered around.
The classic interior can be found in tearooms and temples.

The Japanese soul and its western timber
European style is called “yofu” while Japanese style is “wafu.” It includes architecture fashion, diet, and housing.
The Japanese “wa” style was not originally defined. The Japanese are known for being very skillful people with the incredible ability to adapt. Depending on the circumstances and era, they either strictly separate the Japanese style from western, or they skillfully mix and create new and improved specific things.
One of the “wa” architectural styles includes “sukiya,” which is characteristic for its fixed form and set production technology, seemingly leaving space for an individual approach. It is based on patterns and their endless combinations. In addition to architects and builders, there were also other masters of this style, including experts at the Japanese tea ceremony, calligraphy, traditional dance, and music. Their skills were then easily applied to designing new homes. It is difficult for today’s architects to imitate the suggestive line because it places emphasis on delicate esthetic sensibility as well as on a professional and deliberate choice of materials.
Wood is not considered just one of many construction materials; for the Japanese it is the basis of all, both in the sense coming to understand it and learning how to control it. In most homes you will find a column forming an independent object or statue. It is usually a huge, naturally treated carved figurative statue connecting the Japanese with nature.





Комментарии

Статья не была прокомментирована

Добавить новый комментарий

Рекомендуемые статьи

Nick Land – An Experiment in Inhumanism Nick Land – An Experiment in Inhumanism
Nick Land was a British philosopher but is no longer, though he is not dead. The almost neurotic fervor with which he scratched at the scars of reality has seduced more than a few promising academics onto the path of art that offends in its originality. The texts that he has left behind are reliably revolting and boring, and impel us to castrate their categorization as “mere” literature.
Terminator vs. Avatar: Notes on Accelerationism Terminator vs. Avatar: Notes on Accelerationism
Why political intellectuals, do you incline towards the proletariat? In commiseration for what? I realize that a proletarian would hate you, you have no hatred because you are bourgeois, privileged, smooth-skinned types, but also because you dare not say that the only important thing there is to say, that one can enjoy swallowing the shit of capital, its materials, its metal bars, its polystyrene…
My Career in Poetry or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Institution My Career in Poetry or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Institution
An American poet was invited to the White House in order to read his controversial plagiarized poetry. All tricked out and ready to do it his way, he comes to the “scandalous” realization that nothing bothers anyone anymore, and instead of banging your head against the wall it is better to build you own walls or at least little fences.
MIKROB MIKROB
There’s 130 kilos of fat, muscles, brain & raw power on the Serbian contemporary art scene, all molded together into a 175-cm tall, 44-year-old body. It’s owner is known by a countless number of different names, including Bamboo, Mexican, Groom, Big Pain in the Ass, but most of all he’s known as MICROBE!… Hero of the losers, fighter for the rights of the dispossessed, folk artist, entertainer…
04.02.2020 10:17
Следующий шаг?
out - archeology
S.d.Ch, Solitaires and Periphery Culture (a generation born around 1970)
S.d.Ch, Solitaires and Periphery Culture (a generation born around 1970)
Josef Jindrák
Who is S.d.Ch? A person of many interests, active in various fields—literature, theater—known for his comics and collages in the art field. A poet and playwright foremost. A loner by nature and determination, his work doesn’t meet the current trends. He always puts forth personal enunciation, although its inner structure can get very complicated. It’s pleasant that he is a normal person and a…
Читать дальше...
out - poetry
THC Review and the Condemned Past
THC Review and the Condemned Past
Ivan Mečl
We are the fifth global party! Pítr Dragota and Viki Shock, Fragmenty geniality / Fragments of Charisma, May and June 1997. When Viki came to visit, it was only to show me some drawings and collages. It was only as an afterthought that he showed me the Czech samizdat publication from the late 1990s, THC Review. When he saw how it fascinated me, he panicked and insisted that THAT creation is…
Читать дальше...
prize
To hen kai pán (Jindřich Chalupecký Prize Laureate 1998 Jiří Černický)
To hen kai pán (Jindřich Chalupecký Prize Laureate 1998 Jiří Černický)
Читать дальше...
birthing pains
Who’s Afraid of Motherhood?
Who’s Afraid of Motherhood?
Zuzana Štefková
Expanding the definition of “mother” is also a space for reducing pressure and for potential liberation.1 Carol Stabile The year was 2003, and in the deep forests of Lapák in the Kladno area, a woman in the later phase of pregnancy stopped along the path. As part of the “Artists in the Woods” exhibit, passers-by could catch a glimpse of her round belly, which she exposed especially for them in…
Читать дальше...
Knihy, multimédia a umělecká díla, která by vás mohla zajímat Войти в e-shop
Content: Andy Warhol: From A to B and back again, Eugéne Ionesco: The killer, Egon Bondy: Oh central Bohemia, diary of a...
Больше информации...
8,05 EUR
9 USD
Crying Fountain, 200, silkscreen print, 50 x 35 cm
Больше информации...
65 EUR
70 USD
Publication about one of the most interesting contemporary Czech artists, painters, and performers. Jiří Surůvka in full-color...
Больше информации...
99 EUR
107 USD
"Musíme mít právo nemít rády muže. Chápu, že to zní krutě ale musíme mít možnost je nemilovat jako celek ale udělat vyjímku u...
Больше информации...
9 EUR
10 USD

Studio

Divus and its services

Studio Divus designs and develops your ideas for projects, presentations or entire PR packages using all sorts of visual means and media. We offer our clients complete solutions as well as all the individual steps along the way. In our work we bring together the most up-to-date and classic technologies, enabling us to produce a wide range of products. But we do more than just prints and digital projects, ad materials, posters, catalogues, books, the production of screen and space presentations in interiors or exteriors, digital work and image publication on the internet; we also produce digital films—including the editing, sound and 3-D effects—and we use this technology for web pages and for company presentations. We specialize in ...
 

Цитата дня Издатель не несет ответственности за какие-либо психические и физические состояния и расстройства, которые могут возникнуть по прочтении цитаты.

Enlightenment is always late.
KONTAKTY A INFORMACE PRO NÁVŠTĚVNÍKY Celé kontakty redakce

DIVUS
NOVÁ PERLA
Kyjov 36-37, 407 47 Krásná Lípa
Čzech Republic

 

GALLERY
perla@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 606 606 425
open from Wednesday to Sunday between 10am to 6pm
and on appointment.

 

CAFÉ & BOOKSHOP
shop@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 606 606 425
open from Wednesday to Sunday between 10am to 10pm
and on appointment.

 

STUDO & PRINTING
studio@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 602 269 888
open from Monday to Friday between 10am to 6pm

 

DIVUS PUBLISHING
Ivan Mečl, ivan@divus.cz, +420 602 269 888

 

UMĚLEC MAGAZINE
Palo Fabuš, umelec@divus.cz

DIVUS LONDON
Arch 8, Resolution Way, Deptford
London SE8 4NT, United Kingdom

news@divus.org.uk, +44 (0) 7526 902 082

 

DIVUS BERLIN
berlin@divus.cz


DIVUS WIEN
wien@divus.cz


DIVUS MEXICO CITY
mexico@divus.cz


DIVUS BARCELONA
barcelona@divus.cz

DIVUS MOSCOW & MINSK
alena@divus.cz

NOVINY Z DIVUSU DO MAILU
Divus We Are Rising National Gallery For You! Go to Kyjov by Krásná Lípa no.37.