Book Review of Revitalizing Japan: Architecture, Urbanization, and Degrowth

In the introduction to this book, Mostafavi discusses the concept of “relational urbanism.” Since Doreen Massey—building upon Raymond Williams' account of spatiality as constituted by stories—developed the idea of “relational space” in terms of concrete involvements, the notion has grown increasingly important to architectural, urban and landscape studies. Massey was, of course, preceded in studying relational orders by figures such as Édouard Glissant, Bruno Latour and Gilles Deleuze. This approach challenges the universalizing abstractions of “time” and “space,” advocating instead for the interplay of multiple, distinct embodiments. Revitalizing Japan makes a valuable contribution to this evolving discourse.

The book follows the authors' Sharing Tokyo (Actar, 2022). While the earlier work observed the phenomena of demographic decline, an aging population, and migration from the regions to major cities, Revitalizing Japan shifts focus to the regions themselves. The authors contrast the globalized, homogenized cities—and their protocols of design and construction—with the opportunities found in the regions, where it is possible to cultivate creative relationships with local constituencies, engage with the rich natural and cultural traditions, and, for architects, reclaim a sense of purpose beyond the manipulation of “form” in service of capitalism.

The essays by contemporary Japanese practitioners that comprise the first half of the book present several examples of creative renewal in contexts marked by abandonment or neglect. Two themes are prominent: the architect as enabler, and architecture as a vehicle of communal commitment. Regarding the former, Kayoko Ota observes in her Postscript the importance of the architect's “expertise in thinking in space” (pp. 315). Activities such as encouraging alternative ways of living, redefining programs, and collaborating with individuals with other skills or local knowledge are central to this kind of spatial thinking. Spatial adroitness, as such, can be taught, and even a certain level of awareness of customs or typical situations can animate otherwise laconic “form.” However, concrete situations revolve around the exigencies of specific people and conditions, requiring a style of practical wisdom that understands what is distributed where, the structures of dependency, how to identify opportunities, the decorum of collaboration, and architectural articulation itself.

If, as Gadamer contends, praxis is always a matter of making do with available resources (i.e., not derived from a theoretical ideal), one can appreciate that the practical wisdom appropriate for Japan's regions might range from the carefully wrought and partially improvised Manazaro Publishing Buildings by Takahito Ito and Miho Tominaga, drawing on local networks (pp. 86 ff.), to the highly ingenious creation of circular economies of wood fabrication via distributed CNC machines by Koki Akiyoshi's firm VUILD (pp. 170 ff.), or Studio CHAr's innovative Mokuchin Recipe website enabling small- to mid-sized realtor companies to refurbish Japan’s ubiquitous, deteriorating wooden rental apartment houses, and capitalizing on what Yutaro Muraji calls “communities of interest” familiar from web-based groups (pp. 150 ff.).

As to architecture as a vehicle of communal commitment, the wonderfully illustrated essays are replete with diagrams, drawings, and photographs not only of architecture but also of meetings, construction collaborations, and the spatial, temporal, and material relationships in play. We learn of the value of small interventions that harness existing potential to support new community life (Jun Aoki, pp. 58 ff.), and take advantage of Ryo Yamazaki's experience with participatory design, in which “the collaboration is more valuable to participatory residents than novel form” (pp. 136 ff.).

Though many interventions favor subtle, long-lasting improvements to quality of life—such as Jo Nagasaka's well-known works, including Matsumoto Jujo (pp. 108 ff.)—others, like Kumiko Inui's substantial Nobeoka Station and Miyamaguchi Ferry Passenger Terminal, emerged from participatory collaboration that reframed the program to incorporate open-ended civic activities (pp. 30 ff.). These accounts reveal architecture as more of a process than a matter of arranging people and forms in “space.” Like any praxis, participatory design involves mobilizing the silent majority, navigating varying levels of competence, and being inventive with funding, construction and supply. Crucially, participants find themselves having to formulate and take responsibility for the nature and conditions of their collective life, rather than assuming they are owed services by anonymous civic agencies. This is an opportunity to recover the traditions to which Toyo Ito refers (pp. 14 ff.), whilst meeting the new historical conditions through innovative configurations.

The second half of the book is devoted to the port town of Onomichi, famously the town from which Shūkichi and Tomi Hirayama leave to visit their children in Tokyo in Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953)—and also the setting for the somewhat cloying anime Kamichu!—an early cinematic premonition of the tension between the major cities and the regions. Founded in the twelfth century, Onomichi has accreted several townships since the 1930's, when it flourished through shipbuilding, fishing and agriculture. Although it has since diversified and established itself as an attractive tourist destination—it sits at the head of the remarkable 60-kilometre Shimanami Kaidō, which connects seven islands in the Seto Inland Sea and includes a bicycle path—Onomichi’s general atmosphere is characteristic of Japan’s regional towns, with noticeable hollowing-out, an aging population, outward migration, and reduced services. Indeed, Onomichi is now part of a string of towns stretching from Okayama to Hiroshima, gathered in the basins at the foot of the hills, along rivers, and facing the sea. One is reminded of Marcel Meili's reading of Switzerland as a city in virtue of the connections, the uses and exchanges of resources, etc. Onomichi itself comprises a plateau of landfill addressing the sea, organized in layers and penetrated by Hondori Shopping Street (covered for about 750-metres of its approximately one-kilometre length), and a substantial hillside settlement that crosses the San-yō train line and National Highway 2 via only a few pedestrian and vehicular bridges, making cross-town communication across this barrier difficult.

We are introduced to Onomichi by an extensive suite of photographs by Kenta Hasegawa, which richly convey the character of the town (although often hard to locate precisely). This provides the context for the interventions proposed by the studios run by Mostafavi at the Harvard GSD, which for several years has taken Japan as a resource for developing propositions that can re-knit disaggregated urban tissue. If the first half of Revitalizing Japan concentrated on the processes of empowerment, this section of the book takes advantage of the degrowth gaps of Onomichi to explore how architectural design might offer new conditions for association, production, continuities, and renewal. The mayor praised the resulting mosaic of interventions as a stimulus to new thinking.

Accordingly, a hybrid workshop-and-community-center complements a ferry terminal that integrates boatbuilding and a sailing school, while an abandoned site facing Hondori Shopping Street has been reimagined as a brewery. Whilst all the interventions capitalize upon remaining fragments or existing foundations, one scheme imports Onomichi's hillside topography to the lower plateau, creating intergenerational housing and a hotel distributed among independent buildings, with interstitial terraces, pathways, and gardens that promote social interaction. The architectural strength of these proposals belies the subtlety with which they emerge from the existing fabric and customs—indeed, suggesting affinities with the studio's previous work in Tokyo, but operating in a more intimate register.

An extensive interview (pp. 302-312) conducted by Mostafavi with urban geographer Matthew Gandy of Cambridge University and author of Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2022), offers a useful overview of principal concepts informing contemporary urban transformations and their scholarly proponents. For example, a discussion of Kohei Saito's notion of degrowth communism (Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023) moved Gandy to observe that terms like “nature” or “ecology” require critical unpicking. He identifies four basic approaches in the literature, for which the difficulty is discovering what they have in common or how they interact at different spatial and temporal scales: a) the prevailing systems-based approaches, now fed by big data, b) observational paradigms linked to natural history, urban botany, and urban ornithology, c) neo-Marxist-inspired urban political ecology emphasizing contested dimensions of capitalist urbanization, and d) multi-species ethnographies, the ecological pluriverse, and ways of living with nonhuman others.

On the one hand, the range of topics and scholars covered in this lengthy interview is extremely helpful, even inspiring. On the other hand, the exchange follows the post-WWII custom of architecture's status in universities, in which architecture reaches out to manifold disciplines, but those disciplines very rarely return the engagement. Architecture is more often the topic to be understood, rather than the vehicle of understanding. Yet, it seems to me that Mostafavi and his many collaborators possess a rich basis for a compelling argument from architecture. For example, the manner in which relational urbanism reconciles social, natural, technical, and ethical concerns might be termed a practical poetics; but the actual processes by which this reconciliation occurs cannot simply be written off to “talent”—even if, as with any praxis, some are more gifted or committed than others. Revitalizing Japan demonstrates that too many precise judgements shape the fate of collective life to consign the matter to the composite of “knowledge” as declared by Vitruvius. That said, there will always be a limit to what can be rendered theoretically or philosophically, because Revitalizing Japan also shows the importance of communication with the concrete conditions of a particular site—and its human and nonhuman constituencies—and the wisdom required to adapt accordingly.