ABSTRACT

Iwao Yamawaki's process of "taking apart" of the sukiya architectural tradition of the middle-class home and carefully reconsidering its elements, along with the aesthetic concepts embedded in them, can be interpreted as a way to reconsider the understanding of the self and intersubjectivity. "Taking apart" for Yamawaki consists of disassembling, testing, and reformulating the elements and principles of sukiya architecture in interaction with the Western modernist idiom, modern materials, and media in an inventive or critical manner. The Yamawakis' designs exemplify the intertwined nature of internationalism and regionalism in modernist architecture, and point to the complexity of regionalist approaches, including the difference between "old" and "new" sukiya, "Japonica" and modernist sukiya. Michiko Yamawaki's in-between painting reconfiguring Abstract Expressionism into Japanese fusama and screen design responds to the problem of Western nihilism and the concept of nothingness—which became a cultural issue to contend with especially during and after the war—proposing a different understanding.