【VIEW OSAKA HOUSES】
Walking along a
familiar back street,
I come across a vacant
lot that wasn’t there before.
What was the old house
that used to be here like?
I can’t quite seem to
remember…
Everyone can relate to
this experience, I think.
What we see, hear, and
remember day to day
is
transient, melting into mist and sinking into shadows.
That’s just the way
it is.
The
cramped, low-slung wood-frame apartment buildings and ready-built
houses
where
so many Japanese people shared joys and sorrows
in
the postwar decades are now disappearing, lost to the passage of time
without ever getting much acknowledgment in records of architectural
history.
I hope that these
photographs of dwellings for the common people of Osaka
will evoke in the
viewer’s imagination
the many lives and
myriad stories that these walls have contained.
Tomatsu Shiro
＜Explanatory
text＞
In
Osaka and the surrounding Kansai region, the phrase bunka
jutaku (literally, “cultural
housing”) means something very different from its original meaning.
“Cultural” here refers to things modern and/or Western, and in
the prewar years bunka jutaku
were grand, architecturally eclectic detached homes mixing Japanese
and imported elements. In the Osaka area, the phrase was later
adopted for a type of inexpensive apartment house widely erected
nationwide in the 1950s and 1960s. Wood-frame, with pressed mortar
siding and kawara
roof tiles, they stretch out lengthways, with rows of doors to
individual apartments closely spaced along their open-air corridors.
I
have been told that this use of bunka
jutaku in the Osaka region was a
quintessentially Osakan, self-effacing ironic reference to the fact
that while still humble (for example, the apartments lacked baths)
they now had individual kitchens and toilets, unlike the wooden
apartment houses preceding them where kitchens and toilets were
shared.
In
the decades following World War II, these cramped wood-frame
apartment houses were rapidly thrown up across Japan, to meet
skyrocketing demand for workers’ housing in its teeming cities.
However, with economic progress and social changes, working families
began moving out of these apartments and into ready-built
single-family homes or so-called “mansions”*. Today the old
wood-frame two-story apartment houses are quietly disappearing from
the urban landscape.
Formerly
home to so many working people and their families, these buildings
are witnesses to history, in which we can still catch echoes of how
people lived in the lean but dream-filled postwar years. I believe
they deserve preservation as a historically important type of urban
residential architecture.
The
dwellings appearing in Houses,
the third part of the View Osaka series, are primarily wood-frame
apartment houses (bunka jutaku),
high-rise apartment buildings, and ready-built single-family homes,
built to house ordinary working people between the end of World War
II and the close of the 20th
century. Buildings like these are ubiquitous in cities throughout
Japan, but the ones shown here were shot in roughly the same area of
Osaka as Part 1 (The Dome)
and Part 2 (Rivers)
of the View Osaka series.
Tomatsu
Shiro
*In
Japan, the word “mansion” does not refer to a large, ostentatious
home for wealthy people, but rather a reinforced concrete, often
high-rise apartment building (also known as “heights,” “corpo,”
“maison,” etc.)
(References)
Noguchi,
Toru, Townhouses of Medieval Kyoto,
Kyoto University Press, 1988
Ishida,
Junichiro and Nakagawa, Osamu, ed., History
of Architecture: Modern Architecture,
Kyoto University of Art and Design, 1998
Azuma,
Takamitsu, Urban Housing,
Kajima Institute Publishing, 1998
Koga,
Shusaku and Fujita, Masaya, ed., History
of Architecture: Japanese Architecture,
Kyoto University of Art and Design, 1999
Ando,
Tadao, Houses,
ADA Edita Tokyo, 2011
＜Articles＞
Notes
on the Third Installment of the View Osaka Series
Tomatsu
Shiro’s View Osaka trilogy is brought to a compelling
conclusion with Houses. In this series Tomatsu, a long-time
resident of Osaka, has created a vivid portrait of the city for
future generations.
The
View Osaka series began with The Dome, occasioned by
the completion of Osaka Dome (since renamed Kyocera Dome Osaka). In
these photos the dome is seen in the distance, descending on the
Osaka cityscape like a colossal silver UFO – at the time everyone
noted the resemblance. Twenty years later, I wonder if I’m the only
one who still thinks the weird structure looks out of place.
The
trilogy continued with Rivers, capturing scenes along the many
waterways of Osaka, and comes to a close with Houses, which
focuses primarily on the bunka jutaku (wood-frame, two-story
apartment buildings) that housed so many in the postwar years but
today have fallen into decrepitude.
Not
an Osaka native himself, Tomatsu has seized on the essence of Osaka
in these images of the area he has long called home. These
photographs are faithful documents but also richly expressive,
poignantly capturing the fading remnants of an era before they
inevitably vanish altogether.
As
someone who has also lived in Osaka for many years and discovered so
much, I profoundly identify with Tomatsu’s vision. Through his
photography he contributes, or returns, something to society, and
this is surely part of the mission of every photographer.
Now
that the View Osaka series is complete, I hope that its images
will reach as wide an audience as possible, and will be a treasured
archive that only becomes more precious with the passage of time.
Tanaka
Jin
Professor,
Department of Photography, TOKYO POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
(formerly
head of Photography Course, Faculty of Art and Design Kyoto
University of Art and Design）
＜日本語＞
歩きなれた路地沿いに突如現われた空き地
果たしてどのような町家があったのか？
俄かに思い出す事が出来ないのは私だけではないと思う。
私達が日頃の暮らしの中で
ふと目や耳にする記憶は
儚く時とともに茫漠たる闇の彼方に沈んでいく。
これは仕方の無いことなのだろう。
戦後、多くの庶民一人ひとりの悲喜交々の生活を眺めて来た
文化住宅という木造アパートや建売分譲住宅などの町家は
建築史の表舞台に固有名詞で登場することもなく
時代の変化とともに消えていく。
大阪の庶民の住宅写真から
日々坦々と暮らしている人々のありさまを
思い巡らして頂けたら嬉しく思います。
東松至朗
撮影期間 ２００９年１１月～２０１４年１０月
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
後書より
大阪に「文化住宅」という和洋折衷の邸宅と真逆の「文化住宅」がある。１９５０年代～１９６０年代、高度経済成長期に建てられた町家の事である。これは大阪以外の都市でも建てられている瓦葺き木造モルタル２階建、各階に長屋状に住戸が並ぶ木造アパートを指す。
木造アパートが大阪近隣で「文化住宅」と名付けられたのは、それまでの木造アパートに風呂は無く台所とトイレを共同使用していたのに対し、台所とトイレが各住居毎に独立して配置され、風呂は無いけれど従来の木造アパートより文化的という大阪独特の自虐ギャグ呼称だと聞いた。
この木造アパートは太平洋戦争後、都市部で爆発的に急増する勤労者の住宅需要に応えてきた。だが、社会と暮らしの変化により勤労者は木造アパートから建売分譲住宅やマンション(注）などに住み替え、木造アパートは役目を静かに終えつつある。
多くの勤労者家族が生活した木造アパートは戦後日本の風俗を語る歴史の証人であろう。歴史的町家遺構として残れば良いと思う。
VIEW OSAKAシリーズ第三部「HOUSES」で取り上げた住宅は、戦後から20世紀末に建てられた勤労者向け住宅で、主に木造アパート（文化住宅）、高層集合住宅そして建売分譲住宅である。これらの住宅は日本の多くの都市部に普遍的に建てられているが、第一部「THE
DOME」、第二部「RIVERS」とほぼ同じ地域を撮影地とした。
記：東松至朗
注）日本の鉄筋コンクリート造の「マンション」、「ハイツ」、「コーポ」そして「メゾン」と呼称される高層集合住宅は、英語で言うアパートメントビルディングのことである。これらは日本独特の表現であり、西洋で言う「お金持ちが建てた邸宅」の意味ではない。
【参照】
野口 徹著 「中世京都の町家」東京大学出版会 １９８８年
大阪市都市住宅史編集委員会「まちに住まう
-大阪都市住宅史-」平凡社 １９８９年
石田潤一郎・中川理編 「建築史ー近代の建築」 京都造形芸術大学 １９９８年
東 孝光著 「都市・住宅論」 鹿島出版会 １９９８年
古賀秀策・藤田勝也編 「建築史ー日本の建築」 京都造形芸術大学 １９９９年
安藤忠雄著「住宅」 ADAエディタトーキョー ２０１１年
