ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illuminates the meaning and significance of Watsuji's fudo and its inter-personal dimension. It also seeks to theorize the interstitial dimension between one fudo and another as a way of formulating logic to overcome limits of regionalism. The book deals with an architectural case in reference to fudo and its inter-personal ethics: the spatiality of the Japanese vernacular houses. Surprisingly, Tetsuro Watsuji himself made insightful and distinctive comments on the characteristics of the spatial configuration from the perspective of climate and its social dimension. It discusses contemporary architecture and urbanism with a lens informed by Watsuji's fudo and its ethics. The book examines both Critical Regionalism in which distinctiveness of climate played a significant role and a criticism of Critical Regionalism from the perspective of the linkage between climate and the inter-personal.
