ABSTRACT
For the most part, contemporary Japanese architects follow
the worldwide post-modernist trend in being more conciliatory towards
the past and more critical in their attitude towards notions of technological
utopianism. Some of them, however, give a distinctively Japanese twist to
this general tendency. A number of Japanese architects do not reject the
modern movement because of its particular notions concerning architecture,
but because of its associations with Western forms of rationality and the
technological applications of that rationality. They do not turn to the Japanese
tradition to evoke a nostalgic sense of the familiar, to indulge in irony or to
reinforce a sense of national identity, but as an alternative and counter to
Western modes of logic.
