In the Japanese Manner

Near the end of the 19th century, two young architects from Boston went west to open an office in Pasadena and to create something new: a California-style house. Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, M.I.T. graduates, looked at the West Coast landscape and studied the terrain and walked through the streets of the cities. At the beautiful Japanese tea gardens in Pasadena and in the oriental shops of San Francisco, they encountered an influence that had never touched their imagination before--the spell of oriental art.

When the Brothers Greene produced their new style of house (after a careful reading of texts on Japanese architecture), the Japanese influence was plain to see. They made new use of wood (and covered the wood with stain instead of paint); their houses had an openness that blended the interior with the garden and created a concept that in 1957 is known as indoor-outdoor living. They designed low, spreading, overhanging roofs, left the structural details (trusses, framing) exposed as an essential part of design. Their houses were simple, light, graceful, airy and serene. While they built at first only for the wealthy, eventually thousands of bungalows spread across the hills of San Francisco and other West Coast cities in the new California style.

"All Wright." The influence of the Brothers Greene waned after about a decade, but the Japanese style and spirit have survived and grown in West Coast architecture and have spread across the U.S. (see color pages).

U.S. architects and builders probably will never cease to argue about how much of this phenomenon of U.S. architecture, from the Greene brothers to Levittown, is a conscious imitation of Japanese style and how much is the natural growth of a style well suited to the U.S. One great architect who has helped to keep Japanese-like style living and growing with wondrous skill is famed Frank Lloyd Wright, and he would never agree that he was influenced by Japanese architecture (or by anyone else's architecture, for that matter). Says Wright: "All West Coast architecture derived from Wright. There are people who say I derived my architecture from the Japanese, but it isn't so. When I went to Japan, I just found confirmation of my ideas."

"Less Is More." Whether the influence is conscious or indirect. U.S. architects are now achieving some of their most modern results with effects practiced in Japan for 1,500 years. The popularity of the Japanese style has been growing rapidly in the U.S. since World War II. The style fits the principles of modern architects who favor indoor-outdoor living and simplicity, like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's "Less is more." What was considered very Japanese in the Greenes' day is now considered less derivative than simply a basically sound, well-designed modern house.

Houses in the Japanese manner are still rising more in California than in the rest of the country. In Pasadena, Architects Whitney Smith & Wayne Williams have designed homes with features as Japanese as a house on the Nagara. "We're not trying to hide anything," says Architect Williams. "We don't have an exposed beam suddenly stopped by plaster. The eye can follow the line right to its logical conclusion. There's so much chaos and confusion in the outside world today that a person has a right to peace in his own home." Adds Partner Smith: "But we don't call these houses Japanese. They do have elements of Japanese architecture in them, but that's just because we've found those elements to be the best answer to our problems."

One of the most spectacular Japanese style buildings in the U.S. is New York's Motel on the Mountain, conceived by the gifted Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura and largely executed by the energetic young architects Steinhardt & Thompson. Delicately poised on top of a mountain (which Yoshimura found similar to the settings of Japanese country inns), the motel is a complex of 14 buildings joined by covered walks. It has overhanging, many-levelled roofs, exposed beams, balconies and graceful stilts. Nearby are swimming pool, pond and a lake landscaped in Japanese style. Inside, the private rooms are furnished with an eye to simplicity; the public rooms are made flexible in size by sliding shoji panels. To permanent residents of the area it is not the Motel on the Mountain, but "the Japanese motel."

The 84-room motel is the biggest, costliest and easily one of the handsomest examples of Japanese style in the U.S. Its dazzling success may start a new phase of an old trend.

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