Oriental orientalism : Japanese formulations of East Asian and Taiwanese architectural history
View/ Open
Date
27/06/2012Author
Yen, Liang-Ping
Metadata
Abstract
In the West architectural historiography, or writing on architectural history, can be
considered as a modern practice. Its emergence accompanied with the development of
modern nation states. Architecture’s reflection on its historical texts came to find particular
expression in the search for the origins of architecture. The formation of oriental
architectural history tended to follow this pattern. Oriental architectural historiography was
initiated by a Japanese scholar, Chūta Itō. In his formulation, the origins of Japanese
architecture were linked not only with Chinese and Indian architecture, but also with
Classical Greek architecture. In addition, Itō’s theoretical formulation of architectural history
was also followed by other Japanese scholars, and it informed those later scholars who
studied Taiwanese architectural history. That is, the formulations and classification systems
that Itō set out for Japanese architecture framed subsequent scholarship on the architecture of
other parts of East Asia, including Taiwan.
The system that Itō established has been widely regarded as being based on modern and
scientific academic research. This thesis investigates Itō’s system, its significance for
architectural scholarship in other parts of East, as well as its claimed scientific basis. The
thesis pays particular attention to the architectural history of Taiwan in the Japanese colonial
period. The thesis hypothesises that the historiographical tradition that Itō’s work established
was based on an unbalanced colonial relationship of power and uneven structure of authority,
It explores how authenticity in East Asian architecture was authorised, and how hidden
ideologies and methodologies lie behind these historiographical practices. This is the first
ambition of the thesis.
The examination of Japanese construction of oriental and Taiwanese architectural history in
this thesis pays particular attention to the context of Japanese colonialism. In doing so it
draws on a range of contemporary postcolonial theoretical perspectives. In addition, the
particular kind of oriental colonialism, as a materialised colonial medium, Japanese writing
on oriental and Taiwanese architectural history provides an additional perspective on that
current and recent postcolonial criticism expressed through such concepts as Edward Said’s
orientalism, Homi Bhabha’s hybridity and Gayatri Spivak’s strategic essentialism. At a
theoretical level, the thesis argues that since these concepts emerged from the
colonial/anti-colonial operation and negotiation between the west and its colonies, a refined
analysis is required for thinking through Japanese colonialism. To this end, the thesis
supplements postcolonial theory with the idea of oriental orientalism as developed by Yuko
Kikuchi. In so doing, the thesis aims to contribute to an enriched discussion of contemporary
postcolonial criticism in general, and as it applies to East Asian in particular. The exploration of architectural history as the subject of a wider colonial operation and the
revision of the core conceptual tools of postcolonial criticism in the context of Japanese
colonialism in East Asian, and Taiwan, provides further possibilities for the the construction
of identity in those formerly colonised subject in places such as Taiwan. A postcolonial
reading of Japanese writing on architectural history shows both the limitation of postcolonial
criticism, and to question the framework of architectural discourse in the discipline. This
project has to be based on an inquiry into the way in which the other’s architecture has been
formulated and constructed in the discipline of architecture in the light of postcolonial
criticism. Without such an inquiry, we are unable to open the metaphorical ‘space’ to
negotiate the self-writing of Taiwanese subjects on their own architecture and architectural
history.