Posthistorical traditions in art, design, and architecture in 1950s Japan

This article examines the discussions on tradition in art, design, and architecture in the 1950s Japan. It first explores the historical background of the discussions among artists, architects and art historians from the nineteenth century to the Second World War. The article insists that they attached to Japanese traditions various meanings and values including what should be overcome in the process of Westernization, the roots to which Japanese people felt compelled to return in the age of modernity, and the sophisticated sensibility of the Japanese comparable to Western modern aesthetics. The article then investigates the postwar situations. Following European artists' interest in primitivism, avant-garde artist Okamoto Tarō advocated tradition to make it function as a key factor in the dynamism of the cultural order. Although discussions were not developed and deepened among designers, tradition was actively discussed in a field of architecture. Architects like Tange Kenzō and Shirai Seiichi elevated the tradition debate into the ideological issue, extracting the dichotomy of the Jōmon and the Yayoi and applying them to actual buildings and houses. The tradition debate in architecture meant a new departure in the postwar period, creating important discussions and movements on historical consciousness in the later period, such as the Metabolist movement in the 1960s and the 'Ma: Space/Time in Japan' exhibition in 1978. In this sense, the tradition conceived in the 1950s Japan is best regarded as posthistorical.