The collaborative construction of timber traditions in Japanese architecture: Photographic argumentation and alternative historical methods

Even though knowledge of geographically and culturally distant architectures is more often circulated and translated through the dissemination of images than gained by visceral first-hand experiences of actual buildings, places and spaces, there have been limited historiographic analyses of the critical role that architectural photography plays in shaping such understandings. Broadening perspectives, this paper examines explicit collaborations between Japanese architectural photographers and historians as a method through which particular histories about Japan and its architecture have been constructed. The study considers several examples of this genre of publication, and two cases in particular, from the mid-twentieth century and the early twenty-first, wherein the constructed photographic record provided the fundamental armature for argumentation in the fabrication of different accounts of Japanese timber traditions. The publications examined illustrate different variations of this alternative method of discursive construction through integrated image and prose portrayals, reflecting an evolving operative negotiation and articulation of endogenous architectural traditions at different stages of Japan’s post-1945 redevelopment in the economic and cultural frameworks of global modernity. The paper examines Japanese cases, but the findings have implications for broader understanding of how architecture contributes to the global dissemination of cultural practices and knowledge.