ABSTRACT
The West’s image of Japanese architecture has acted as a form of distorting lens. This sometimes appeared to reflect Western ideals and at others exaggerated differences in Japanese buildings. These are common responses of the self to the other. As a means of both affirming and developing its own identity, the self is constantly seeking similarity and difference. Japanese architecture could not have been the unfailing source of self-evaluation, validation, and inspiration that it has been to the West had it not been first made, and then made to remain, inherently other.
