ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea that whenever architecture is in crisis in the Euro-American hemisphere, architects in Japan offer the way forward, which most often discloses a paradox. Central to any comprehensive assessment of the state of architecture in countries historically positioned external to the Western culture of Humanism and its culmination in the Enlightenment is the issue of modernization. Japan entered the process of modernization during the decades between the two World Wars, expanding its industries thanks to the fact that the project of modernity had not yet been usurped by capitalism. The reception of modernism in Japan, along with various architectural tendencies flourishing since architecture’s encounter with capitalism after World War II, provided Japanese architects with an opportunity to establish a different rapport with modernity. On the other hand, the decades following the war witnessed a commonality shared by both the winners and losers, which had significant implications for architecture emerging under the rubric of nation-building.
