Another House Dies
Comments: 3
The neighbourhood becomes an uglier place tomorrow when yet another old house gets demolished. Seeing these places disappear puts me in a dark, extremely misanthropic mood. The built environment in Japan (and most of the natural environment, thanks to a mania for unnecessary public works construction projects like shoring up rivers and mountain sides) is incredibly ugly and utterly soulless. The fabled Japanese aesthetic is long-extinct in actual life although sad remnants taunt us from beneath the lovingly tended bell jars of museums and ‘heritage locations.’ It’s like Disneyland, only even more depressing. Hell, Japan is Disneyland these days. (A curse on that fucking mouse and all who serve him, and Hello fucking Kitty, too!)
I told myself to avoid the extended rant I knew would come until I’d cooled down and the tendency towards melodrama had evaporated, so perhaps I should get back to details here.
In the photograph above you can see the san-gawara style of roof tiling which creates a beautiful pattern of waves lapping onto shore. Carbon from the firing permeates the clay and gives them their colour, although you can find glazed ones that have a more silvery finish. The tiles are traditionally finished with a mica polish to improve their ability to shed water.
Below the eaves the plaster has come away and you can get a hint of the internal construction. Wooden slats pack straw between the walls, which are almost never structural (the weight is borne solely by a handful of vertical beams which provide a high degree of horizontal flexibility during earthquakes).
At the top of the roof sits the oni-gawara, and it is this I hope will occupy a large part of my day tomorrow. Click below for an explanation.
Oni-gawara (demon plates) perform the same function as Western finials and gargoyles: they ward off evil (although perhaps only as long as the occupants have souls worthy of protection). They don’t seem to be able to do much to save themselves, however. I’m going to ask the demolition workers tomorrow if I can get up on the roof and take this one (and maybe one of the secondary ones) before the wrecker’s ball destroys the lot.
Finally, a not terribly flattering shot of the front of the house itself. You can see where the original wooden door and window frames have been replaced with aluminium fittings (the all-too-common triumph of practicality over character):
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Posted to General Rants • 2002.09.03 (Tue) • 19:47
Comments
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.09.03, 22:26
The first time we corresponded, I think, was when you wrote about the destruction of another old house in your neighborhood. This destruction makes me want to cry, or punch someone. I don’t understand how this can happen. There was an interview with Donald Ritchie in the Japan Times the other day in which he said that now that Japan was no longer an economic power, that its currency was aethetics. However, when I a post like this, I feel that Japan is unaware of its own wealth.
Will you try to salvage any of the pieces, such as the beautiful oni-gawara, like I did when the house next door was torn down? Or will it only make you angry every time you look at it. I’m glad I was able to save something, a small piece of the beauty that was Japan.
Posted by jh 2002.09.03, 23:37
M — I thought of you when I posted this and I knew you’d be as dispirited by it as I am. Sorry. But I do take some consolation that you feel the same way, and I’m sure we’re not the only ones (although there are far too few of us, that’s for sure).
Make no mistake: I am definitely going after that oni-gawara tomorrow. I want to be able to show it to my daughter and her children in the future and try to explain to them that there was a time when houses weren’t made out of plastic, when they had characters (and even souls), that people decorated their houses to secure safety from demons and that even if they didn’t believe in demons, they did it anyway because it just seemed like a good thing to do and the house seemed finished that way. I want to make sure that they understand that people lived in houses rather than just inhabited them.
As for Donald Ritchie’s comment, it’s the very idea that formed the backbone of my reaction this afternoon and deserves a post all its own. Which it shall now get.
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