ABSTRACT
Is it [Nobuo Sekine’s Phase-Earth (Isō-daichi)] dividing the earth into
two? No, the earth rather remains one. No, rather, it looks as two, and,
at the same time, as one. Or, it even looks as though there is nothing at
all. Accordingly, when there seems to exist an object, nothing is there,
but when there seems to be nothing, there appears something like an
object. Yet, when one says there is nothing to see, there paradoxically
arises a world to be seen ‘transparently.’ What is seen eventually is
not an object, but a space widening itself, or the true state of the non-
In echoing the Western iconoclastic tradition of Christianity in Japan, the Church of the
Light (1989) is not alone. The effect of the Western iconoclastic leanings of Protestantism
can be verified by an early Protestant church in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture. This church
was founded in 1875 as a Methodist church, and later integrated into the United Church
of Christ in Japan in 1942 (Figure 2.1). Its present form was dedicated in 1906 in an ascetic
spatial atmosphere characterized by the prevailing white plaster finish on the walls and
ceiling and the absence of any ornamental elements except for unostentatious pointed-
arch windows and the arch framing the altar. The sense of spatial emptiness ensuing
from this ascetic atmosphere represents the iconoclastic attitude of Protestantism, as
well as the earlier attitude of Judaism and Byzantine iconoclasm, which continues to
influence Christian architecture. In this perspective, the spatial emptiness of the Church
of the Light can be seen as another Japanese example of the Christian legacy of reductive
emptiness. The church shares the Protestant iconoclastic ideal of voiding figurative
representations and returning to the Word. Its emptiness arises through the elimination
of the inessential, granting a positive and active significance to the emptiness beyond
its derivative inception.
