Design and Modernity in Asia: National Identity And Transnational Exchange 1945–1990 9781350091481, 9781350091498, 9781350091474

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DESIGN AND MODERNITY IN ASIA

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DESIGN AND MODERNITY IN ASIA NATIONAL IDENTITY AND TRANSNATIONAL EXCHANGE 1945–1990

Edited by Yunah Lee and Megha Rajguru

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 © Editorial content and introduction, Yunah Lee and Megha Rajguru, 2022 © Individual chapters, their authors, 2022 Yunah Lee and Megha Rajguru have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover image © Charles Correa Foundation and Charles Correa Associates. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. ­A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lee, Yunah (Yunah A.), editor. | Rajguru, Megha, editor. | Prakash, Gyan, 1952- writer of introduction. Title: Design and modernity in Asia : national identity and transnational exchange 1945–1990 / edited by Yunah Lee and Megha Rajguru. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022013396 (print) | LCCN 2022013397 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350091481 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350091467 (epub) | ISBN 9781350091474 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Design–Social aspects–Asia–History–20th century. | Modernism (Aesthetics)–Asia. | Postcolonialism–Asia. Classification: LCC NK1472 .D47 2022 (print) | LCC NK1472 (ebook) | DDC 745.4095/0904–dc23/eng/20220521 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013396 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013397 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-9148-1 ePDF: 978-1-3500-9147-4 eBook: 978-1-3500-9146-7 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations vii List of contributors x Foreword  Gyan Prakashxiii Acknowledgementsxvi Introduction: Approaching modern living in Asia, 1945–90  Megha Rajguru and Yunah Lee1 Part I  Constructing National Identities and Modernizing Lives 1

‘Japanese Modern’: A post-war Japonisme crusade  Yasuko Suga17

2

Modernizing Turkey through mid-century modern furniture  Deniz Hasirci and Zeynep Tuna Ultav35

3

A distanced modernism: Identity, unity and authoritarianism in academic campus residential architecture in East Pakistan 1958–71  Ziad Qureshi53

Part II  Modernity and Public Spaces 4

Leisure for the modern citizen: Swimming in Singapore  Jesse O’Neill and Nadia Wagner71

5

Imagining cultural modernity in the global nation: South Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA)  Ilmin Nah87

6

From hygienic modernity to green modernity: Two modes of modern living in Hong Kong since the 1970s  Loretta I. T. Lou105

Part III  Modern Living Discourses and Print Cultures 7

Concrete designs for living proposed by Marg magazine: The materiality and political economy of modernism in India in the early years after independence  Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan123

Contents

8

‘To live or not to live, that is the question’: Spatial symbolism of apartments of the 1980s in Korean literature  Jhee-Won Cha141

9

Sweet treats and foreign foods: Hanako magazine, food and the internationalized women of the Japanese Bubble Economy  Hui-Ying Kerr159

Part IV  Transnational Exchanges: Design across Borders 10 The Cultural politics of the Cold War and living a shibui life  Izumi Kuroishi181 11 The modern kitchen in Korea: Design, modernity and transnationalism  Yunah Lee203 12 Locating modern living: Charles Correa, Asia and the Third World  Megha Rajguru217 Index233

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­I LLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Four Model Rooms prepared by the IARI at the Exhibitions for the Encouragement of Substitutes in Industry. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.2a Exhibition by Mainichi Newspaper Company, 1952. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.2b Exhibition by Mainichi Newspaper Company, 1952. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.3a Model room A in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.3b Model room A in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.3c Model room B in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 1.4 Japanese Show Room at Canadian International Trade Fair, 1953. Courtesy Yasuko Suga 2.1 Florya Atatürk Marine Mansion furniture, İstanbul, by Architect Seyfi Arkan and Architect Fazıl Aysu, 1934. Courtesy DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org) 2.2 Kare metal chairs, 1950s. Courtesy Önder Küçükerman, DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org) 2.3 Kare metal chairs, ‘Burgaz’ and ‘Fishnet’, 1950s. Courtesy DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org) 2.4 Kare metal chairs; Flying Rumi (‘2’) (left), Circle (‘3’) (middle), and Geometric (‘1’) (right). Courtesy DATUMM Archive (www.datumm.org) 2.5 Kare metal coffee tables; Youmou (‘1’) (left) and Utch (‘3’) (right). Courtesy DATUMM Archive (www.datumm.org) 4.1 Yan Kit Swimming Complex, with early-century Chinatown shophouses in the background, 1965. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection. Courtesy National Archives of Singapore, Singapore 4.2 Queenstown Sports Complex, published in: HDB Annual Report, 1970. Courtesy Housing & Development Board, Singapore 4.3 Tiling design at Katong Swimming Complex. Courtesy Nadia Wagner, 2018 5.1 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Gwacheon, South Korea. Courtesy Ilmin Nah 5.2 View of central hall that links the exhibition galleries of the Gwacheon museum. Courtesy Ilmin Nah

22 26 27 28 29 30 31

40 43 44 46 46

74 76 81 94 96

­Illustration

6.1 A Miss Ping On poster issued by the Hong Kong Urban Council, 1959. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong 110 6.2 Beat Filth poster issued by Hong Kong Urban Council, 1975. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong 111 6.3 Hong Kong Is Looking poster issued by the Hong Kong Information Services Department, 1981. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong 113 7.1 Illustration in ‘Architecture and You’ of how the traditional Indian kitchen could be transformed. Courtesy Marg Magazine, India 126 7.2 Watercolour and pen and ink renderings of a house with plan and approximate cost. Courtesy Marg Magazine, India 131 7.3 Photographs depicting how cement could transform village life in India. Courtesy Marg Magazine, India 132 7.4 Advertisement of the Cement Marketing Company of India in the first issue of Marg. Courtesy Marg Magazine, India 136 8.1 Development of Gangnam Seoul, 1983. Photographer Chung-Eui Lim 144 8.2 Geumho 3 dong Slum, 1989. Photographer Chung-Eui Lim 146 8.3 Apgujeong Hyundae apartments seen from the north of the Han river. Photographer Jin Geol Chung 149 8.4 An walkway of the small size (100 m2 and under) apartment with uniform doors along one side. Photographer Jin Geol Chung 153 9.1 Roppongi article, Hanako Magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan163 9.2 Bread Club: ‘British style, elegant afternoon tea friends’, Hanako Magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan 167 9.3 Bread Club: ‘Where to Buy Really Delicious Croissants in Tokyo’, Hanako Magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan 168 10.1 Cover page of the head article ‘Why an Issue on Japan?’ with an image of an interior of a traditional house with figures dressed in traditional kimonos. House Beautiful ‘Discover Shibui the Word for the Highest Level in Beauty’, 1960. Courtesy House Beautiful magazine 188 10.2 Shibui exhibition in Chicago, c. 1961. Courtesy Elizabeth Gordon Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives 189 10.3 Diagram by Taro Amano explaining how shibui relates to other Japanese aesthetic ideas. Courtesy Sohei Amano and Elizabeth Gordon Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives 193 10.4 Takeo Amito’s collection of ‘Japanese Influence American Life: Barbara Hutton’s Life’ marked as ‘architect Mr. Ely, Ives cooperating Takeo Amito’s works, especially Mexico’, Courtesy Takeo Amito’s family collection, Japan 195

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­Illustration

11.1 Diagrams included in the article ‘Planning and Installation of Kitchen’, published in Yeowon, April 1962. Courtesy Seoul National University Library, Republic of Korea 11.2 Photographs showing the kitchen space and fitted worktables and cupboards, included in the article ‘Open House Feature 1: Following the House Owner’s Ideas’, published in Yeowon, October 1964. Courtesy Seoul National University Library, Republic of Korea 11.3 A newspaper advertisement of Oripyo stainless sink. Dong-a ilbo, 11 July 1977. Courtesy Dong-a ilbo, Republic of Korea. Courtesy Enex, Republic of Korea 11.4 The first page of the first article for ‘Sweet Home: The Kitchen in My Home Where the Work Is a Joy’ series, Jubusaenghwal, February 1975. Courtesy Korean National Library, Republic of Korea 12.1 Kanchanjunga Apartments, Mumbai, designed by Charles Correa in the 1970s. Courtesy Megha Rajguru 12.2 Kanchanjunga Apartment interior. Courtesy Megha Rajguru 12.3 Artists’ Village, Navi Mumbai, designed by Charles Correa in the 1980s. Courtesy Megha Rajguru

210

212

213

214 225 228 229

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­C ONTRIBUTORS

Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan is an independent scholar and visiting Professor at various design schools in India. Her research interests centre on the intersections between craft, design and nationalism in India against the backdrop of decolonization and Cold War diplomacy. She has written on the impact of the Bauhaus on design education in India and on the relationship between religion, nationalism and design. Her publications include ‘Moving away from Bauhaus and Ulm’ (2019); ‘Craft and Design in the Hindu Way of Life’ (2018) and ‘Imagining the Indian Nation: The Design of Gandhi’s Dandi March and Nehru’s Republic Day Parade’ (2016). Jhee-Won Cha is an associate lecturer at the Seoul National University. Her research interests focus on Russian symbolism and modernism, modern women’s literature. Her recent research interest is in the history of the cultural interactions between Korea and Russia since the end of the 19th century to the present. Her most recent publications are “Du vrai Russe: Firebird of Ballets Russes” (2020) and “Poetics of Dream in the Lyrical Dramas of Aleksandr Blok: on the Semantic Transformation of Motives” (2020). Deniz Hasirci is Professor at the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. Her research interests include history of modern interior design, Turkish modern furniture and environment-behaviour studies. She is also one of the founding members of the Docomomo-Turkey, Interior Design Committee, with U. Şumnu and Z. Tuna Ultav. She is one of the two project coordinators of the DATUMM: Documenting and Archiving Turkish Modern Furniture (datumm. org) project with Z. Tuna Ultav. She has published in Journal of Interior Design, Journal of Design History, The Journal of Creative Behavior and Creativity Research Journal. Hui-Ying Kerr is Senior Lecturer in the Fashion Management, Marketing and Communication department at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her work explores consumer cultures of the Japanese Bubble Economy through 1980s lifestyle magazines. Hui-Ying’s research interests focus on the cultures of design, consumption and work; decolonizing design history; and the intersectionality of encounters of the local with the international. Izumi Kuroishi is Professor of the School of Cultural and Creative Studies at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. Her research interests focus on architectural ethnography and drawing, disaster housing recovery, resilient community and landscape planning, colonial and postcolonial urban planning, and on the modernization of Japanese architectural design and discourse. Her most recent publications include Constructing the Colonized Land: Entwined Perspectives of East Asia around WWII (2014). Kuroishi has published her research widely, including in the Journal of Urban History and the Encyclopaedia of Asian Design.

­Contributor

Yunah Lee is Principal Lecturer and teaches History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research interests are design history and material culture in Korea and East Asia, transnational and cross-cultural studies of modernity and modernism, representations of national and personal identities, and political agencies and cultural diplomacy of art and design. She is based at the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton and is a founding member of the Korean Design History Society since 2019. ­ oretta Lou is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at Durham University. She L received her DPhil in Anthropology at the University of Oxford and specialises in the study of environment, health, agency, and social movements, with a regional focus on Hong Kong, Macau, and south China. Prior to her role at Durham University, Lou was an Assistant Professor at the University of Macau and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. Her chapter `From Hygienic Modernity to Green Modernity: Two Modes of Modern Living in Hong Kong Since the 1970s’ is partially supported by the University of Macau’s Start-Up Grant (File no. SRG2022-00002-FSS). Ilmin Nah is Assistant Professor at Kookmin University in the Department of Space Culture Design of the Graduate School of Techno Design. Her research interests focus on the historical relationship of power, knowledge and space in museums and visual cultures of East Asia. Her most recent article is ‘Contemporary Art Exhibitions in War Memorials of the Post-Memory Generation’ (2019). Jesse O’Neill is Lecturer in Design History and Theory at the Glasgow School of Art, where he coordinates courses for the school’s Singapore campus. His research looks at the materiality of modernizing lifestyles in the former British colonies of maritime Southeast Asia, and his other research on the history of modern urban environments in Singapore has been published in The Culture of Nature in the History of Design (2019). He received his doctorate from the University of New South Wales and was previously Merewether Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales. Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. He was a member of the influential Subaltern Studies Collective until its dissolution in 2006, and has been a recipient of Guggenheim and the National Endowment of Humanities fellowships. He is the author of several books, including Another Reason (1999) and the widely acclaimed Mumbai Fables (2010), which was adapted for the film Bombay Velvet (2015). His latest book is Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point (2019). Ziad Qureshi is Associate Professor in the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston, where his scholarship is applied via seminars on the history and theory of design and spatial design studios. He taught architecture and design at Iowa State University, the Universidad de Monterrey in Mexico and Arizona State University. He practices architecture professionally in Minneapolis, and previously in Phoenix, contributing to award-winning projects, including work with noted xi

­Contributor

American Modernist Ralph Rapson. His research focuses on transnational architecture and urbanism, contextual change and adaptive reuse, and service-based community outreach. He is co-editor of the International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design. Megha Rajguru is Principal Lecturer and teaches History of Art and Design at University of Brighton, UK. Her research is in South Asian design history, material and visual culture. She has published articles in the Journal of Design History, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, Journal of Museum Ethnography and the Journal of Visual Arts Practice. She is based at the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton and has recently acted as a Trustee and Teaching and Learning Officer of the Design History Society, UK. Yasuko Suga is Professor at Tsuda University in the Department of English, Japan. Her research interests focus on British and Japanese design history and material culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her books include Kinkarakami: The Art of Japanese Leather Paper (2010) and Reimann School: A Design Diaspora (2014). Recently she has published articles and chapters on craft and gender, a ‘bonsai’ village in Japan, Japanese tea culture and prison-made furniture in Japan. Zeynep Tuna Ultav is Associate Professor and the Head of the Department at Yaşar University in the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design. She is also the Vice Director at Yaşar University Graduate School. Her research interests are history, theory and criticism of interior architecture & architecture; and architecture and fiction. Her research articles include ‘The Multiple Stories Behind the Modern Ceramic Coffee Tables of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey’ (co-authored by D. Hasirci) (2020), and ‘Mid-Century Modern Furniture Representing Modern Ideals in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey’ (co-authored by D. Hasirci) (2019). Nadia Wagner is Lecturer in Interior Design at the Glasgow School of Art, where she coordinates studio courses for the School’s Singapore campus. Her research focuses on social atmospheres in urban environments, with a specific interest in the cultural conditions that have produced Singapore’s modern architecture. She has been a contributing author to Cabinet and recently completed her doctoral thesis, titled ‘The Social Production of Atmosphere’ (2021).

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­F OREWORD Gyan Prakash

From Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, we have learned that colonialism was crucially geographical in its operation. It divided up and colonized spaces. Not only was Algiers organized into racialized colonizer and colonized spaces, but a Manichean sociospatial divide also configured everyday life in the colonial city. Fanon wrote, ‘The colonial world is a Manichaean world’ (Fanon 2004: 6). Fanon’s writings insightfully capture how colonial racism seeped into bodily identity and experiences. Similarly, Said brilliantly demonstrated how colonial representations and practices constructed the Orient as a geographical fact (Said 1978: 49–72). ‘Asia’ emerged as a geographical category from the longue durée of colonialism. Recognizing this geographical construction, this volume engages with its postcolonial historical life. Postcolonial not in the sense of colonialism being over and done with but as an afterness that retains elements of its previous history even as it seeks to break from that past. After the Second World War, as Asian nations grappled with their political independence in the Cold War era, which was a continuation of imperialism in an important sense, they also engaged with the promise of modernity. It was a fraught engagement because modernity, too, has a colonial genealogy. Marshall Berman’s account of modernism in Paris is brilliantly dialectical, noting both its uplifting promise of transformation and its dark side of exploitation and despair (Berman 1988). But it is also resolutely diffusionist, positing that modernity originates as a reality in Western Europe and turns increasingly into a fantasy as it travels East. Denied the reality of modernization, St. Petersburg and beyond experienced modernity as an empty promise, a chimera. In fact, modernity was divided and global from its very beginning. While the arcades were transforming Haussmanian Paris with its consumerist spectacle, French colonialism was engaged in imposing a modern colonial and racial spatial order in Algiers. Fanon envisioned that national liberation would build a new modernity from elsewhere. This was evident in his call for a new humanism, which would not be a translation or a mere revision of European humanism. As he said, Europe never stops talking about humanism while killing human beings on every street corner in the world. Thus, he called for an entirely different humanism, built out of the experiences and aspirations of the colonized. Thus, he wrote: ‘For Europe. For ourselves. Comrades. We must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man’ (233). For him, national liberation could not mean simply implanting the Westphalian model of sovereignty to the newly independent nations, but a true emancipation of the people from inequalities and oppressions. It was the failure of the national bourgeoisie in the newly independent nations on this score that led him to pen a trenchant critique of postcolonial nations.

­Forewor

Encapsulated in Fanon’s critique was the steep challenge faced by postcolonial nations to imagine and struggle for a world after empire. It required them to rethink modernity, to pry it loose from its colonial scaffolding. Bandung, the Algerian revolution, the 1966 Tricontinental conference in Havana, all were efforts in this direction. Until the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s that projected market relations as the basis of global relations and development, much of the 1950s and the 1960s witnessed efforts by postcolonial nations to rework the language of modernity, to transform their societies and negotiate the international order. This is the broad historical background against which this volume examines the modernist projects in Asia. The focus on Asia takes into account its long historical construction by colonial knowledge. After the Second World War, the category of Asia was subjected to the Cold War reconstruction of world geography. Asia was construed as a distinct cultural and geographical unit, opposed to the culture and history of the West or Europe, even though the continent included Japan, a country with a history as a robust colonizing and industrialized nation. Modernization theory, however, overlooked colonialism and imperialism in its conception, and swooped in to argue that the ‘traditional’ societies of Asia needed to modernize. Drawing strength from the language of the ‘civilizing mission’ of colonialism, this theory held out capitalist modernity to be the destiny that Asia should aspire to. As nations emerged from the tumult of the Second World War and decolonization, they were asked to engage with the projects of modernity and modernization. But now that these Asian nations were formally independent, it fell upon their leaders to negotiate with the dominant systems of knowledge inherited from colonialism and projected by the Cold War in the post-imperial world. Leaders in colonial Asia were all too aware of the change that the war had unleashed in their societies. After all, As Chris Bayly and Tim Harper have pointed out the war in Asia had lasted longer and had been bloodier than Europe’s civil war. In the crescent extending from Bengal, through Burma and stretching into the Malay Peninsula and reaching Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, the conflict had claimed around 24 million lives in the Japanese-occupied territories. War-related famines had claimed 3  million Japanese and 3.5 million Indians (Bayly and Harper 2007: 7). Wartime mobilization of economic resources and military recruitment had also transformed colonial societies. Not surprisingly, then, the postcolonial leaders approached decolonization with a profound sense of the challenges that lay ahead. Speaking at the inaugural Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in March 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru expressed the sense of a new beginning: ‘We stand at the end of an era and on the threshold of a new period of history.’ With this profound sense of a new beginning, leaders across Asia had to figure out the economic, political and aesthetic choices open to them in designing their nations. It is in this process that the volume’s essays see opportunities for identifying the revision and unravelling of dominant historical constructions of colonialism and the Cold War. What unites the essays is their examination of how modern designs were conceived to function and transform everyday life. The approach is Lefebvrian. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this approach. The quotidian, Henri Lefebvre wrote, is where people are born, live and die. The routines and objects of daily life are forms in which xiv

­Forewor

society is produced and reproduced. It is there that power is exercised and resisted. Thus, this volume explores the operation of the projects of modernity and modernization at this level. It attempts to bring into view how the spaces of the everyday were configured by capitalism. We see how the promises of modernization and modern living intersect with class and gender politics. Ranging from Japan to Turkey, this volume searchingly probes how modernity was experienced in Asia, showing the materialization of design in daily life. We learn not only how the ideology of modernity and modernization were ‘translated’ in Asia but also how everyday practices transformed their designs.

­References Bayly, C. and Harper, T. (2007), Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia, Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Berman, M. (1988), All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York: Penguin Books. Fanon, F. (2004), The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, New York: Grove Press. Said, E. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Vintage.

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­A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has evolved from conversations between us over the years, about our lived experiences and engagements with debates on modernity and design, in India and South Korea. Our sharing of expertise, interest and enthusiasm has been inspirational and supportive. Our initial research dialogues resulted in a joint research project ‘Modern Living in Asia 1945–1990’, funded by the University of Brighton’s Rising Star Scheme (2015–17). This volume is a direct outcome of the international conference with the same title, held in April 2017 at Brighton, and hosted by the Internationalising Design History (IDH) Research Cluster (now the Centre for Design History). First, we would like to thank the authors who have contributed to the book for generously sharing their research, their extraordinary efforts and dedication. Professor Jeremy Aynsley, IDH Director, encouraged this project from its outset, and the IDH cluster for its support with the organization of the conference. We want to acknowledge the generous and timely financial support provided by the Centre for Design History for publication costs. The conference keynote speakers Professor Duanfang Lu and Professor Gyan Prakash shared their research in the forum and were generous with their time and contribution to the discussions over the two days. We would like to thank them, as well as the conference speakers who travelled to Brighton and shared their research. Our special thanks to colleagues: Dr Harriet Atkinson, Dr Annebella Pollen, Dr Lara Perry and Dr Claire Wintle, who chaired panels and were involved in lively discussions. Our undergraduate students in the History of Art and Design Programme helped with the running of the conference. They did an excellent job, for which we are grateful. We are grateful to the peer reviewers of the book, without whose critical and constructive comments this book would not have developed into its current form. Additionally, we are grateful for the time and expertise of Zara Arshad, Zeina Maasri, Charlotte Nicklas, Ceren Özpinar, Kyunghee Pyun and Lesley Whitworth. We would like to thank the Bloomsbury publication team, especially Claire Collins and Olivia Davies, who have supported us throughout the journey of the book. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to our respective families and close friends for providing supportive and caring environments and enabling us to focus on this project. Yunah Lee and Megha Rajguru

INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING MODERN LIVING IN ASIA, 1945–90

Megha Rajguru and ­Yunah Lee

Why Asia? Amid a rise in scholarship on global histories of modern design, the recent focus on Asia is notable (Kikuchi and Lee 2014; Huppatz 2018; Fujita and Guth 2019), highlighting attempts at decentring design history and expanding its scope to include Asia, described as an ‘economic powerhouse’ in a global historical temporality of the ‘Asian Century’ (Gillen 2016: 74). The intentional expansion of the geographic scope of design history and scholarly activism underscores that Asia as a category can offer productive possibilities. Yet, there has been a consensus among historians and geographers equally that Asia as a category is problematic, as it ‘is not embraced wholesale as an identity marker by those governing the region’ (Gillen 2016: 74) and it cloaks cultural heterogeneity and political complexity (March 1974; Kikuchi and Lee 2014; Huppatz 2018; Karim and Lu 2018). These design historians and geographers have attempted to undo the myth of these continents, constructed through borders and formed through tenuous cultural or environmental links, thereby translating geography to ethnography, and studying people and their cultures as interlinked or homogenous. They argue that it is time for scholars to de-naturalize geographical world concepts. Asia or the East, delineated by Edward Said as ‘Oriental’, was based, as he has argued, on a ‘structure of lies and of myths, which if truth about them be told, would simply blow away’ (Said 2019: 6). These lies were formulated and structured within the political edifice, constructing the notion of the Orient in opposition to the Occident. These binaries of the Orient and the Occident, East and the West, with associated characteristics such as the spiritual and the rational, implicated Asia as the ‘other’, as imaginary, knowable and controllable. Martin E. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen argue that the eighteenth-century fascination with the East turned in the nineteenth century to ‘racism cloaked with intellectual respectability’ (Lewis and Wigen 1997: 76) as European powers expanded their colonial might. In the post-war context, the period we are focusing on in this book, binaries persisted in less explicit ways. Within this power dynamic, the identification of Asia as an ‘economic powerhouse’ is once again a vision of the continent, an arbitrarily drawn meta-geography, a vision produced by, albeit a small number of, but nevertheless powerful, politicians from the Global North.

Design and Modernity in Asia

What, then, is the purpose of using the framework of Asia conceptually and as a site for design historical study? Lewis and Wigen attest resisting the denial of geographies and world regions and that these entities (they refer to South Asia and Southeast Asia, for instance) ‘not as natural of suprahistorical entities, but as approximate intellectual constructs, imperfectly reflecting cultural and historical relationships’ and ‘necessary to come to terms with the spatial unfolding of world history’ (199: 14). Ziad Qureshi’s chapter in this book locates the emergence of modernist university campuses in Dacca under the aegis of the Partition, examining the politics of land and its people in postcolonial East Pakistan in 1971. Here, geopolitical histories shaped design in this South Asian region. Therefore, we maintain the idea that Asia as a continent formulated by Europe and reinforced by Cold War politics offers methodological opportunities for studies in design and modernity. With Western Europe, the United States and Japan as centres of power and coloniality, and the production of further meta-geographies: South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia in relation to these, the question, ‘how does geopolitics produce design?’ arises. We argue that national boundaries, transnational networks and politics layer onto design and its encounters in everyday lives in these localities. To write a history of design from Asia and about Asia is to also write a decolonial history. As Karim and Lu (2012) have highlighted in relation to architectural practice, ‘Becoming Asian is to become divergent in a strong way while maintaining healthy connections with diverse placebased histories, cultures and ways of knowing’ (10). As Kuan-Hsing Chen has argued, ‘the formulation of Asia as a method is also an attempt to move forward the tripartite problematic of decolonization, deimperialization and de-cold war.’ Chen addresses the entangled histories of colonization, imperialism and the Cold War ‘that have shaped and conditioned both intellectual and popular knowledge production’ (Chen 2010: 212) and argues for decolonial production of knowledge that looks across Asia, forming solidarities, and thereby gaining agency and active participation in historical processes (Chen 2010: 215). Useful here, for this edited volume, is the point Chen makes about resisting the binary opposition between East and West. Without Asia as an analytic framework or a focus, the framing of Asia or the East as homogenous cannot be disrupted. This book does not claim to represent Asia in its entirety. Scholars in this book are writing histories of design from Turkey (97 per cent of Turkey lies in Asia), India, East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. While they are resisting the binary oppositional framework, and Asia remains the locus of study, they are also showing the ways in which the power of capitalist modernity continued to implicate almost every facet of society and aspect of material lives across these nations: from national to quotidian, from the state to grassroots level. Either embraced or rejected, the idea of the modern and, therefore, materialization of modernity in design were understood as European or American imports, and were constantly negotiated and contended with by people of various ages, genders and classes. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar writes about the rage for modernity: Everything in sight is named modern: ‘modern coffee house,’ ‘modern talkies,’ ‘modern bicycle shop,’ ‘modern tailor,’ ‘modern beauty salon,’ ‘modern bakery,’ 2

Introduction: Approaching Modern Living in Asia

a newspaper called Modern Age, a magazine for the ‘modern woman,’ an advertisement for the ‘modern kitchen,’ a call for ‘modern education,’ an agitation for ‘modern hygiene,’ and so on. Those who submit to that rage for modernity are not naive; they are not unaware of its Western origins, its colonial designs, its capitalist logic, and its global reach. In haphazardly naming everything modern, they are exercising one of the few privileges that accrue to the latecomer: license to play with form and refigure function according to the exigencies of the situation. (2001: 21) The term ‘modern’ in branding and labelling functioned as a marketing tool, producing and fulfilling the desire for modern lifestyles. Authors in this book address these interactions with modernity in postcolonial, Cold War and post-imperial contexts across Asia; in South Asia (Bangladesh/erstwhile East Pakistan and India), in Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey, highlighting how modern life was represented and experienced through design: interiors, print culture, the built environment, institutions, exhibitions and products. Examining the ‘translation’ of modernity in various geographical and political contexts in Asia is one of the core purposes of this volume. The other purpose is to trace the ways in which design was either adopted or imposed in the drive for modernization.

Modernization and modernism in Asia The drive to be recognized as a modern nation on the world stage after a period of colonization and nation-building meant modernization projects were launched across Asia, such as the construction of dams, bridges, factories, high-rise apartments and planning of new cities, development of design policies, and establishing of design institutions and of the profession. Duanfang Lu discusses modern architecture in the ‘Third World’, produced under the guise of development. She argues that ‘design doctrines such as “form follows function” and “building = function x economics”’ (Lu 2011: 9) articulated by early modernists served well for the ‘Third World’, in particular, postcolonial nations, for whom scarce resources were a reality, and an urgent necessity to modernize, imperative. Following on from the denial of historical change, suspension from self-management and the status of being modern, modernization would aver arrival at the destination of modernity from the metaphoric ‘waiting room of history’ (Chakrabarty 2000: 9). Modernism became a vehicle in this process of becoming modern, an attempt to challenge the historicist notion of the ‘not yet’ modern and, ultimately, achieving coevalness. In design terms, it offered the utopian promise of a better future with technological advancements, a break from tradition or the shackles of coloniality and its imposition of cultural forms on its colonies (Prakash 2011: 262). As Edward Soja argues, modernism and modernization interact, and in the mid-twentieth century in nations across Asia, this was particularly the case. Social and economic modernization flared by changing regimes impacted societies and resultantly, as Soja points out, ‘a responsive and cultural and political modernism aimed at making sense of 3

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the material changes taking place in the world and gaining control over future directions’ (Soja 1993: 149). Far from being purely temporal – from the ‘not yet’ modern stage to becoming modern over time or developing – Soja asserts that modernization is a continuous process of societal restructuring that is periodically accelerated to produce a significant recomposition of space-time-being in their concrete forms, a change in the nature of modernity and experience of modernity that arises primarily from the historical and geographical dynamics of the mode of production. (Soja 1993: 149) In other words, modernization is temporal as well as spatial, associated with historical lineages within particular geographies, shaping and reshaping social relations and experiences. It is concrete and physical in its manifestation, and within this context, the implications of design on the experience of modernity and vice versa are profound. Design, in Asian contexts, became a crucial tool for change. In colonial and postcolonial nation states, Hong Kong, India, East Pakistan and Singapore, in postwar and Cold War contexts in Japan and South Korea, and regime changes in Turkey, it was used to restructure infrastructure and gain control over the future of the nations. While these changes were desired and in some cases its effects were critiqued, aspects that the authors examine in this volume, modern design and its experience in everyday life shifted social relations, reflecting what Marshall Berman described as ‘mode of vital experience’ within which the promise of ‘adventure, power, joy growth, transformation’ co-existed with the threat of the destruction of certainty (Berman 1983: 15). A wrestling with modern design and modernity is expressed in virtually all the chapters in this volume, in particular, modernity and its material effects that were embraced, adapted or resisted, and often perceived as ‘Western’ in origin. It formed part of capitalist modernity and the process of modernization functioned within the logic of capitalism, such as nationally staged design exhibitions promised expanding markets and growth, new designed spaces of leisure promised cultural education, comfort and health for improved productivity, or the consumption of design (kitchen appliances, magazines, interiors) offered the promise of improved class status and gender equality. Edward Soja takes a critical view of modernization, the process as capitalism’s ability to develop and survive. He suggests that even in moments of crisis, capitalism reproduces ‘fundamental social relations of production and distinctive divisions of labour relations’ (Soja: 1993: 149), consistently working towards progress (rather than destruction) and that modernization is a vehicle for this, reformulating tradition with an attempt to replace it with modernity. For Asian nations, modernization held a utopian promise of improved futures, tinged with nationalist sentiment and pride, following on from the destruction of the Second World War and colonial violence, as well as Cold War conflict. Looking outwards internationally to individuals and institutions and simultaneously looking inwards and into the past, this process meant a recalibration of societal structures, of class, industry and culture. While Soja does not consider coloniality in his chapter, and he is writing 4

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about Europe, the implications of the logic of capitalist modernity beyond the EuroAmerican geographies call for a close examination of how progress was constructed ideologically and materially, and how ‘Western’ modernity was made geographically and culturally specific. Furthermore, and crucially, in this volume, authors consider how it was experienced through images, objects and spaces. While modernism, as a hegemonic design language of the mid-twentieth century was acclaimed internationally (Lu 2011: 5), the processes of exchange, adoption and translation in cultures and communities beyond the West were far from even. Modernism’s denouements and essences were multiple and varied. A well-known case study exemplifying the frictions emerging from a desire for modern design and the realities of postcoloniality has been explored by Saloni Mathur in her seminal essay ‘Charles and Ray Eames in India’ (2011). She discusses the exchange between India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his government officials, and the Eameses in 1958 in a Cold War context, when the couple visited India, funded by the Ford Foundation, to produce a report on the future of design in India. After travelling in India for five months, Charles and Ray Eames produced a report that Ashoke Chatterjee described as an ‘extraordinary statement of design as a value system’ built from their encounter with India, drawing on the spectacle of Indian life, instead of a ‘feasibility report’ the government officials were expecting (Chatterjee qtd in Mathur 2011: 45). Mathur argues that the Eameses faced the dilemma of modern design in a ‘rapidly industrializing ancient country’ (47). Highlighting the importance of turning to Indian culture and its symbols to solve everyday problems, Charles and Ray Eames presented a methodology and design approach that, in part, survived and lasted in India into the 1970s and the 1980s. A turn to the vernacular in modern design and modernizing the vernacular to address inequities in society shows modernism’s disjuncture in the postcolonial nation and its role in diplomacy, themes that are examined in this book. Another dilemma of modernism is its relationship with class and gender, playing out in particular ways within specific scenarios. In the Asian contexts studied by the authors in this book, modern design was produced ideologically by the educated, mostly male, elites, oftentimes constructed or mass-produced by a labour force. Designers and architects trained in European or American institutions or professionally connected with these were at the helm of the discourse on design. In postcolonial societies in Asia, designers and policymakers viewed poverty as a problem, marker of backwardness and a site for development. The working class or poor or traditional subject represented as not-yet modern or rural featured in industrial development, modern planning and urban development projects in obvious or indirect ways, to improve living conditions or as labour. The South Asian Subaltern Studies group, composed of postcolonial scholars, described this subject as a ‘peasant’, borrowing critically from Eric Hobsbawn’s use of the term in relation to a pre-political, ‘archaic’ class of people. Capitalism, according to Hobsbawn, ‘comes to them from outside, insidiously by the operation of economic forces which they do not understand’ (Hobsbawn qtd in Chakrabarty 2000: 12). Scholars belonging to the Subaltern Studies Group challenged this argument, highlighting the agency of the peasant as a political subject, participating in politics through a variety 5

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of means. Examining modernism’s force in the process of modernization reveals an uncomfortable relationship with such subjects, framed by the notion of poverty, on the one hand, or in need of change. The former mapped onto modernism’s use in development and in the latter, it was used to obliterate ways of living, classified as traditional or backward. In Mumbai Fables, Gyan Prakash discusses the plight of the urban slum Dharavi, in contemporary Mumbai, entirely self-built, impermanent yet thriving economically and socially, ‘under the looming shadow of the bulldozers of “development”’(Prakash 2010: 339). Chapters by Cha and Rajguru in this book address these frictions and reveal modernism’s elitism in such spaces. In her analysis of apartment-living in South Korea, Cha highlights the scepticism and resistance to new ways of life forced upon communities, while Rajguru considers how architects premeditated the lives of the poor and sought to give them agency in the design process, while discounting existing agencies and practices of homemaking in Mumbai. Modernism’s interaction with gender is complex. In All That Is Solid Melts into Air, Marshall Berman discusses in great detail the exchange between Goethe’s Faust, a modern man grappling with modernity’s tumultuous effects, and Gretchen, a young village girl with her ‘childlike innocence, her small town simplicity, Christian humility’ (1983: 53). Berman describes a particular scene in Gretchen’s poor family cottage when he ‘prowls about her room’, admiring her furniture, caressing it and thinking it a ‘kingdom to heaven’, with ‘bounty in poverty’, as a ‘prison’ but ‘what ravishment’. The armchair he sits in is ‘a patriarchal throne’ (1983: 53). The narration develops to a realization of the entrance of modernity’s gifts, the richness Faust brings into this room in the form of jewels, revealing Gretchen’s sophistication as someone who is not completely innocent due to her poverty. She too is experiencing the changes of modernity around her, and the desire for wealth and material goods. As she tries on the jewels, she experiences a change, a transformation and a possibility of developing into someone different. This scene captures acutely, modernity and tradition’s interactions, with material goods as mediators and metaphoric of love, passion, as well as modernity’s advancement. Faust abandons her later in the story. The woman represents tradition here, but, most importantly, this scene highlights the modern patriarchal male’s power. Within the logic of capitalism’s incessant drive towards progression, modernist rational approaches to organization, planning and management place the woman in a similarly ambiguous position. In Asian contexts, domestic spaces typically classified as gendered, such as the kitchen and children’s rooms, were mostly designed by male architects. Yet, and this is well established in design history, women were influential in the debate of modernizing housework. Christine Frederick’s New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management was translated into Japanese in 1913. Prior to this, Hani Motoko, a journalist and founder of women’s magazines Home Companion and Ladies’ Companion, which included advertisements placed by the Tokyo Gas Company selling kitchen devices, was active in writing on domestic economy in Japan (Sand 2003: 82). She modelled methods in domestic book-keeping and managing household accounts, placing the woman of the household in the role of the purchaser of commodities. Motoko also promoted the stand-up kitchen in her journals. The new modern version 6

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kept clothes clean, and enabled orderly and efficient cooking, rather than the sit-down Japanese design, which, while more restful for the cook, was also perceived as less hygienic. The management and regulation of the housewife using scientific principles is part of the story of modernism in post-1945 contexts too, which two authors in this book, Lee and Balasubrahmanyan, discuss. The designs of modern fitted kitchen in postcolonial contexts in South Korea and India were presented as based on scientific principles, as hygienic, and transformative. Another experience of modernity through modern design in Asian contexts is perceived as emancipatory. Forming a premise for research into modernity and women in the inter-war years by scholars who contributed to the edited volume The Modern Girl around the World (Weinbaum et al. 2008), the presentation of self as modern through consumption of commodities was a phenomenon beyond national boundaries and across borders. Yet, whether consumer culture and purchasing power did, in fact, give women power and emancipation is a question that has been asked by Weibaum et al., and is also addressed in our book. The consumption of goods and therefore of lifestyles gave young single women in 1980s Japan hope for agency, enjoyment and leisure, and a desire to shrug off the imposed normalcy of being a wife or mother. These complex negotiations are discussed by Kerr in this book, where the day-to-day experiences and the realities of being ‘office ladies’ with a disposable income were at odds with the structures of society.

Modern living and the everyday Understanding the dilemmas of modernism in relation to class and gender call for microhistory writing and an attention to the everyday. In this volume, the authors address everyday negotiations and experiences of being modern in particular geographies, histories and political contexts. They do this through studying design in a variety of forms and contexts: exhibitions, architecture, modern interiors, printed ephemera, literary discourses, healthy and green living movements, and transnational networks of designers. The authors address how design was shaped in the contexts of modernity and modernization, how designers envisioned ideas of modern lifestyles and how design produced affordances or resistances. Michel De Certeau’s methodology of addressing the practices of everyday life offers a useful framework to consider the ways in which addressing the quotidian is radical in its scope to develop a history that considers as well as moves beyond the structures of power: of the nation state, patriarchy and colonial institutions. De Certeau suggests: Many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking, etc.) are tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many ‘ways of operating’: victories of the ‘weak’ over the ‘strong’ (whether the strength be that of powerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.) clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things. (De Certeau 1988: ix) 7

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For a design historian, such an approach is decolonial, feminist and anti-colonial. It destabilizes the domain of design as innovative and patriarchal (Buckley 2020: 19–29), prompts a re-visiting of the histories of the powerful, and allows for a talking back and a writing from the bottom. Cheryl Buckley argues for a consideration of ‘ordinary’ fashion, of everyday heterogeneous design and its experiences (Buckley 2020: 19–29). Similarly, authors Deniz Hasirci and Zeynep Tuna Ultav in this book cite Turkish architect İlhan Tekeli’s point that the writing of micro-histories is essential for a critical understanding of modernity. They employ this perspective with the aim to develop an understanding of the production and everyday experience of modern furniture in Turkey amid a state-imposed drive towards modernizing design. For design history, when turning to the ‘margins’, to Asia, such an approach is even more pressing for a critical understanding of how capitalist modernity and new formations of nation states along the lines of neo-colonialism operated. De Certeau establishes a difference between production and use (of representations or images), and between established language and enunciation. The former terms in each pair – production and established language – relate to forms of power (the producers of discipline who establish procedures and apparatuses of power), while the latter terms – use and enunciation – refer to the recipients, the subjects, who determine use in their everyday circumstances. They change language, appropriating it and making it useful. Following the revolutionary events of 1968 in France, which De Certeau was inspired by, in his book The Practice of Everyday Life, and other works (Certeau 1986, 1991; Barbieri Jr. 2002), he was attentive to the operation of colonial power. For example, he discussed the imposition of a low-income dwelling onto a North African resident in France, examining practices of translation of the language and ways of living – from French to Kabylia – thereby working with the system, diverting and adapting without leaving it. This methodology is employed by several authors in the book, who trace production and management, as well as processes of adaptation and translation. They do not necessarily pin their approaches to De Certeau’s; however, they address the ways in which various bureaucrats managed modernization and design, translating words such as ‘modern’, ‘design’ and ‘industry’ into policy and processes, across Asian contexts. These were, in turn, negotiated by people: designers, office workers, students, housewives and families in quotidian contexts. If the national planning authorities of South Korea established apartment typology as the new spaces for living, or the British authorities in Hong Kong visualized a new regime for hygiene, the interactions of the citizens with these were complex and varied. This knowledge of everyday experiences of modernity addresses the need for micro histories: how individual or communal histories and geographies, circumstances and experiences collide or coalesce within modernity.

­Methodologies and approaches This book was conceived from the two-day conference Modern Living in Asia 1945– 1990, held at the University of Brighton in April 2017. The case studies, design history methods and methodologies, and themes of modern living and design were debated 8

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and discussed by the presenters and the audience. The question of how we approach design and what counts as design was discussed at length, and shapes the selection of chapters in this book. The authors engage with design from multiple perspectives, not specifically or exclusively as the work of designers and object-based, but also in national modernization, as well as a concept in local discourses. They study industrial design, interiors, architecture and print. From various disciplinary backgrounds, the authors write from places of design history, architecture history, comparative literature and anthropology, examining primary sources, secondary literature and theoretical texts that illuminate histories of design. As such, the methodologies employed by the scholars are historical and critical. For many, theoretical work of scholars from Europe and North America, as well as across Asian contexts, writing in English or local languages such a Turkish, Korean, Chinese and Japanese, informs their critical thinking. These are related to theories of the modernity, the everyday and inter-cultural exchange. While several scholars employ the term ‘West’ and its various permutations, they are by no means regarding it as a monolithic concept or space; rather, they are writing about modernity as seen from the ‘margins’, as imported or often, as imposed. The use of ‘West’ from an Asian perspective represents the binary thinking that emerged from the experiences of modernity in Asia. It has been used as a shorthand term for everything modern, things, images or ideas, that are not local, and are new, regardless of their origins, Europe or the United States. The historical and conceptual formation of the West in Asian culture has been embedded in language, as seen in Lee’s chapter on the Korean modern kitchen in this book. New and foreign ideas and objects were assigned with the Korean word seoyangsik, literally translated ‘in Western style’, and the binary of Korean and non-Korean dress was also linguistically set: hanbok (Korean dress) and yangbok (Western dress). The use of the term ‘West’ in this book, therefore, considers a historical and temporal understanding of diverse cultural products and practices emerging from Europe and North America, owing to colonial and capitalist expansion, while recognizing the limitations that the concept presents. Authors in this book study processes of exchange between people, institutions and with governments in and across Asia, as well as with the United States and countries in Western Europe. They highlight the ways in which exchanges were underscored by economic advancement, modernization processes, and fuelled by aesthetic debates on modern design and improved lifestyles in post-war, postcolonial and Cold War contexts. It is well known that architect German Bruno Taut, British designer and potter Bernard Leach and French designer Charlotte Perriand visited Japan during the inter-war period. Their work in modern design and architecture was produced through their interactions with the processes of making, aesthetic concepts and the visual qualities of Japanese design and architecture. Similarly, authors in this book illuminate the complex histories of design in Asian contexts that were formed through local, national and transnational exchanges. Some of these transnational exchanges were inter-Asian. An examination of how government bodies, designers and other agents of design within local contexts in Asia and from Asian perspectives determined design through visual, conceptual and 9

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material exchange expands histories of design, layering knowledge of the nodes of power onto social and cultural contexts of design, and offering insights into the ways in which modern design was produced and modern living imagined.

Plan of the book The book is not a comprehensive history of Asian modern design and exchange, and we have not attempted to represent every country or region in Asia. Developed from a conference and shaped from existing design historical research across Asia, a focus on modern living in Asia and the role of design and material culture after 1945 in modernization projects shapes this book. It is divided into four sections, tracing themes and methodologies from national perspectives to transnational, addressing modernity’s experience in public spaces and the discourse of modern living in print media. Constructing national identities and modernizing lives The first section of the book focuses on national frameworks of design. The authors provide insights into the instigation and implementation of modernizing projects through policy, cultural diplomacy through exhibitions, and major architectural projects, and examine the ways in which these efforts were experienced by particular groups of people, the new middle classes or the youth. Crucially, the authors never ignore the nation states’ perennial concern with national identity, for which they turned to everyday cultures and ways of living, while also concerned with international diplomacy and the presentation of modernity. Yasuko Suga discusses the Japanese government’s post-war drive to export Japanese goods, and a desperate attempt at presenting an idea of an authentic ‘Japanese Modern’ to the world and at home. Suga describes this project as a failure, as the new design that was exhibited abroad and at home, promoting ideas of authentic Japanese living, did not capture the imagination of the consumers abroad or at home. At home, Japanese housewives were not interested in ‘Japanese Modern’; rather, they were attracted to time-saving domestic gadgets promoted in the new women’s magazines. Similarly, Deniz Hasirci and Zeynep Tuna Ultav trace modernization in Turkey, imposed as policy and implemented by the Turkish government in the mid-twentieth century. Through the case study of a furniture design company Kare Metal, the authors highlight the limitations of the modernization process due to lack of resources in Turkey’s postwar creative economy, resulting in a translation of mid-century modern design using everyday found material. Modernist design was at the core of politics in erstwhile East Pakistan, too. Ziad Qureshi examines student residences and university campus architecture in East Pakistan, following the Partition of 1947 and the resistance of the student body to authoritarian West Pakistan. The modern campus design and its spaces for everyday congregation and uses were intertwined with national politics and regional pride. 10

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Modernity and public spaces Chapters in this section of the book continue to address state power in modernizing cities, towns and citizens. Authors study public spaces, addressing public access to modernity and management of citizens through design. Jesse O’Neill and Nadia Wagner offer a close study of public swimming in independent Singapore with a focus on modernizing the public space and its citizens. They examine designs of swimming complexes in public housing projects and ideologies of physical fitness, addressing the management of the citizen’s body undertaken by Singapore’s public health authorities. Similarly, Loretta I.T. Lou offers critical insights into state campaigns for public hygiene in British Hong Kong in the 1970s, tracing the discourse of hygienic modernity and attempts at instituting civic pride and civic duties. Lou argues that these campaigns led the way for Green Modernity, a green living movement, mobilized by Chinese communities in Hong Kong amid a rise in global discussions for sustainability. The role of the state in modernization projects continues to be addressed in Ilmin Nah’s chapter. Nah discusses the establishment of a new National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea in 1981, showcasing national cultural prowess, while creating a new leisure space for the middle classes. Nah traces museum architecture and town planning alongside new leisure industries and spaces, and in this context, the act of museum visiting was a marker of being modern and meant being cultured. Through its collecting and display strategies, the MMCA showcased itself as a global cultural power, and for the citizens, it became a site for education and personal enrichment. Modern living discourses and print cultures In postcolonial India and South Korea, and post-war Japan, modernity and modern design were instituted, promoted, consumed or critiqued through the print medium. With a rise in newly accessible magazines and production of new content to expand markets and advocate new forms of design and living, modernism was shaped by print culture. Authors in this section study the ways in which the modern living discourse was disseminated through images, page layouts, colours and texts. Albeit part of government initiatives for companies’ branding strategies, ideas of modern living were packaged as free choice, offering promises for better futures and equitable lifestyles. Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan takes a close look at the Marg magazine, first published in 1946 in India. She studies the content of the inaugural issue produced at the cusp of India’s independence and addresses the ways in which modern design was promoted in its pages through articles authored by renowned international architects and designers. In ‘Sweet Treats and Foreign Foods’, Hui-Ying Kerr examines Hanako, a modern lifestyle magazine, first published in 1988 at the height of Japan’s ‘Bubble Economy’. Kerr centres her study on the consumption of modern lifestyles by young single Japanese women or the ‘office ladies’ working in clerical roles for men, examining the representation of food alongside beauty and fashion, and the ways in which consuming modern food was presented as part of a luxurious international lifestyle. Attitudes towards modern

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living, desired or alienating, could also be found in the pages of South Korean fiction in the 1980s. Jhee Won Cha addresses responses towards modern living in apartments as explored by writers of fiction at the time. The author studies characters of the novels and their surroundings, to develop an understanding of the representations of changes experienced by the Koreans amid rapid and destructive modernization, uprooting communities and disrupting lifestyles. Transnational exchanges: Design across borders Authors in this section of the book examine the ways in which modernism was transnational, through networks of exchange, and flows of images and ideas across borders. Owing to modernism’s promises for advancement and progress, it became a vehicle, a language, style and an ideology for modernization projects, taken up by elite designers in the ‘peripheries’, many of whom studied in Europe or the United States and were taught by the masters of twentieth-century modernism. The authors in this section study the ways in which modernism was employed to find new markets beyond national borders with varying effects. It was part of a political economy, intricately linked with national trade bodies, international development organizations and private companies, all concerned with how people lived or how they should live. Izumi Kuroishi critically examines exhibitions and articles of shibui organized by Elizabeth Gordon, editor of the magazine House Beautiful in the United States in the context of the Cold War politics of the 1960s, and the parts played by Japanese and American cultural thinkers and designers in constructing cultural identities and design. The chapter addresses interpretations of shibui and the domestic space in Japan that were taken up within the cultural and political economies in Japan and the US. Yunah Lee addresses the development of the Korean modern kitchen discourse and design, focusing on ideas, objects and materials that crossed boundaries of nations. Through a close examination of texts and images in women’s magazines and newspaper articles, Lee articulates the ways in which the concept of the modern kitchen based on the scientific management of home, efficiency, rationalization and functionalism developed in EuroAmerica was translated, appropriated and negotiated by different actors within Korean national modernization projects and materialized as a modern consumer product. Megha Rajguru’s chapter addresses design produced within the context of development in India, tracing ideologies of modern living that were observant of poor communities and their ways of living, with a view to shaping domestic interiors for Indian families, presented as equitable living. Focusing on the work of architect Charles Correa, the chapter assesses the ways in which the architect saw India developmentally in the Third World, and spiritually, in Asia.

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Introduction: Approaching Modern Living in Asia Berman, M. (1983), All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, London: Verso. Buckley, C. (2020), ‘Made in Patriarchy II: Researching (or Re-Searching) Women and Design’, Design Issues, 36 (1): 19–29. Chakrabarty, D. (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Certeau, M. (1986), Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. De Certeau, M. (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press. De Certeau, M. (1991), ‘Travel Narratives of the French to Brazil: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, trans. Katherine Streip, Representations, 33: 221–6. Gillen, J. (2016), ‘Some Problems with the Asian Century’, Political Geography, 50: 74–5. Huppatz, D. (2018), Modern Asian Design, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Fujita. H. and Guth, C. (2019), The Encyclopedia of East Asian Design, London: Bloomsbury. Kikuchi, Y. and Lee, Y. (2014), ‘Special Issue: Transnational Modern Design Histories in East Asia’, Journal of Design History, 27 (4): 323–34. Kuan-Hsing, C. (2010), Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Durham: Duke University Press. Lewis, M. and Wigen, K. (1997), The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lu, D. and Karim, F. (2018), ‘Mapping Asian Modernism. Convergence in Divergence: Contemporary Challenges in East Asian Architectural Studies’, International Conference on East Asian Architectural Culture (EAAC 2012), Hong Kong, China: Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lu, D. (2011), ‘Introduction: Architecture, Modernity and Identity in the Third World’, in D. Lu (ed), Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity, 1–28, London: Routledge. March, A. (1974), The Idea of China: Myth and Theory in Geographic Thought, New York: Praeger. Mathur, S. (2011), ‘Charles and Ray Eames in India’, Art Journal, 70 (1): 34–53. Parameshwar, G. (2011), ‘On Alternative Modernities’, in G. Parameshwar (ed), Alternative Modernities, 1–23, Durham: Duke University Press. Prakash, G. (2010), Mumbai Fables: A History of an Enchanted City, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prakash, V. (2011), ‘Epilogue: Third World Modernism or Just Modernism’, in D. Lu (ed), Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity, 255–70, London: Routledge. Said, E. W. (2019), Orientalism, London: Penguin Random House. Sand, Jordan. House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Soja, E. (1993), ‘History: Geography: Modernity’, in S. During (ed), The Cultural Studies Reader, 135–50, London: Routledge. Weinbaum, A. E. and Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (2008), The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press.

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­PART I CONSTRUCTING NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND MODERNIZING LIVES

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­C HAPTER 1 ‘JAPANESE MODERN’: A POST-WAR JAPONISME CRUSADE

Yasuko Suga

Introduction Glossy home decoration magazines continue to attract a readership in contemporary Japan with titles such as Lightning Interior, I’m Home, The Interior, Casa, Hail Mary, Bon Chic and Elle Décor, despite challenges faced by the publishing industry with online resources posing stiff competition. Furthermore, magazines from other fields also stimulate interior design-consciousness, such as Engine, dedicated to driving culture, which contains serialized articles on ‘My Car & My House’ and satisfies car owners’ interest in the aesthetics of interior design. The fact that many interior design magazines have titles in European languages is an indication that the profession of interior design was a Western import after Japan ended centuries of national isolation in the mid-nineteenth century. Almost a century after the term was translated as shitsunai isho, Japan Interior Architects/Designers’ Association was formulated in 1958, founded and led by the interior and furniture designer Isamu Kenmochi (1912–71), and the product designers Sori Yanagi (1915–2011) and Riki Watanabe (1912–2003). By the mid-1960s, interior design was recognized as a professional field, distinguished from architecture, and interior designers would get commissioned work (Katsumi 1986a: 142; Uchida 2011). The origin of modern interior design practice in Japan can be traced back to Kenmochi. In the 1930s, he worked at Kogei Shidosho (Industrial Art Research Institute, IARI) under the Board of Trade, where he was trained by the German modernist architect Bruno Taut. After the war, he designed chairs for the renowned furniture companies Akita Mokko and Tendo Mokko, and his interior designs for Japan Airlines’ Boeing 47, Keio Plaza Hotel and Kagawa Prefectural Government Office (its architect was Kenzo Tange) are legendary in Japanese design history. The rattan chair he designed for Hotel New Japan became an iconic Japanese design, and was selected for the permanent collection at MoMA in New York in 1960 (Mori 2005; Sugasawa 2008). Kenmochi labelled his design experiment in the early 1950s, a modernist interior style based on Japanese traditional aesthetics, as ‘Japanese Modern’ and enthusiastically promoted it as a trump to position Japan on the post-war international design platform. It did not, however, catch a big wave, and it cast a vague shadow over his otherwise flawless success story. Contemporary design critic Masaru

Design and Modernity in Asia

Katsumi (1909–83) sharply observed that the style ‘lacked power’ to stimulate exports (Ogawa 1954: 200). Katsumi’s mention of ‘exports’ clearly demonstrated that the promotion of design had been firmly linked with Japanese economic interests. In fact, design gained its place in society when it was considered crucial for Japan’s exporting industry in the Meiji era (1868–1912). In order to meet the Western demand for Japonisme in the nineteenth century, the government prepared an official book, Onchi zuroku (Catalogue of Design Patterns) in 1876, for use by companies that supplied promising export products (Ito 2006). In the following century, IARI was established in 1928 as a national institution, specifically to deal with design. Having lost in the Second World War, the nation could resume free trading only after the San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951). It hurried to join the International Monetary Fund in 1952, concluded the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with the United States in 1953, and joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1955. When an internationally impressive strategy was needed, claiming a modernized version of national character in design seemed a wise path. And yet, ‘Japanese Modern’ in the 1950s failed to attract both the producer and the consumer. This chapter takes the case of the failure of ‘Japanese Modern’ as a clue to explore postwar Japanese design culture, by looking at contemporary design debates in the IARI’s periodical Kogei News and other publications. It investigates why it failed and how its failure reflected the issues within contemporary Japanese design. ‘Japanese Modern’ has often been discussed mainly in relation to Kenmochi’s personal stories, and Californian design which inspired the concept of ‘Japanese Modern’ (Mori 2005; Kaplan 2013). The chapter hopes to place it in a wider context and contribute insights to existing literature by reconsidering the significance of ‘Japanese Modern’ in terms of trials and errors in design and identity. As one can see in Ryuko Kubota’s counter-argument against Homi Bhabha’s theorization of hybridity, which takes the existence of ‘pure’ or essential culture for granted, the idea of hybridity reinforces an existing hierarchy and, therefore, can be exploited for the benefit of the powerful. The promotion of hybridity by the dominant group, therefore, can be oppressive (Bhabha 1994; Kubota 2016). Japan during the SinoJapanese War was a case in point. Also, before and after that period, representations of Japanese-ness were eagerly sought from a culturally essentialist angle; before the war, to compensate for the lost enthusiasm for Japonisme in the West, and after the war, to regain the temporarily lost national identity (by the US occupation). Visual culture became the primary vehicle for this. This chapter hopes to illuminate the rise and fall of ‘Japanese Modern’ within the wider context of the ever-changing discourse of Japanese-ness.

From redesigned Japanese-ness to Asian hybridity In the nineteenth century, Japanese arts and crafts were good exports in exchange for foreign currencies, but owing to changing trends in modern design internationally, this was no longer the case from the early twentieth century onwards. The Japanese 18

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government addressed this as a national problem and issued ‘A Proposal for Encouraging Kogei’ in 1912, the year Taisho period (1912–26) started, in which the importance of kogei with a view to promoting national industries was stated. One must note that the term kogei, generally translated as ‘craft’, is sometimes misleading, because kogei literally abbreviates the two words kogyo (industry) and geijutsu (art), and combines them into one. It, therefore, embraced the idea of ‘industry’, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. This partly explains why the word dezain (design) did not become a household word until after the Second World War (Izuhara 1996: 19–25). In the 1920s, kogei was discussed on various platforms nationally, acknowledging the functional, practical and popular roles it played. In 1926, the periodical Kogei Jidai (Age of Kogei) was inaugurated, and in the same year Teikoku Kogei-kai (Imperial Kogei Association) was established, and kogei in aesthetic, industrial and economic senses was widely discussed (Inoue 2015: 45). When the Board of Trade established the Industrial Art Research Institute (IARI), a research institution for new kogei, fit for the twentieth century, its official English name used the term ‘industrial art’, rather than ‘craft’. As literally expressed in its name, the prime aim was to industrialize and modernize local craft production up to a standard for purposes of export. Out of a serious political concern about economic depression in the North-Eastern district, Sendai, the central city in the district was selected as the location. The first director of IARI was Kitaro Kunii (1883–1967), who had acted as the headmaster at Toyama Craft School before coming to IARI. He promoted industrialization of local products, and established branch institutes in other districts in need. Kunii, as the director, articulated what he meant by kogei in IARI’s periodicals, Kogei News (issued from 1932). He recognized the functional-only product made by machine as an ‘industrial product’, and the functional product that also aesthetically satisfied the feeling of one’s everyday life as a ‘kogei product’. The kogei product clearly differed from the fine artistic craft product in terms of practicality (Kunii 1932a; Kunii 1936). Representative figures who formulated the modern design arena in Japan, including Kenmochi and the furniture designer Kappei Toyoguchi (1905–91), played a pivotal role at the institute. They accepted the definition and agreed with plans to configure ‘kogei products’ fit for export in modern times. While acting locally by developing local crafts, the institute’s goal as a national organization was global: to represent the modernity of the nation on a par with Western nations. For that purpose, not only did the technology or technique of production matter, but so did visual presentation. In reality, however, stereotypical images such as those of geisha girls and of Mt. Fuji from old nineteenth-century prints and cheap commodities continued to survive abroad. Indeed, one strong reason why Japonisme withered was the ‘decided deterioration’ in the quality of Japanese export products (Furniture Gazette, 1 January 1887, p. 2). In the early 1930s, Kunii had a strong sense of crisis against ‘boring five-storied pagodas or Mt. Fuji or cherry flower’: I­t has been that the export goods of our country were poorly made, bad quality and not fit for use; and design was mostly either conventional or unbearably vulgar 19

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… It is necessary to improve these inferior conditions, and to erase the negative impression held by the foreigner towards our kogei goods, by exporting excellent goods. (Kunii 1932b) ‘Cheap and nasty’ outdated representations had to be at once dropped by innovating and refreshing modern Japanese design. Kunii continued: ‘What is needed is design that does not lose the merit of the uniqueness of Japan but also reflects the spirit of the age’ (Kunii 1932b). From then on, a search for the best balance between tradition and modernity had become an overarching imperative at the institute. What would, however, a new Japanese design look like? Would it be universal and timeless; something that never changes? In fact, the discourse of ‘Japanese-ness’ expressed by the institute varied over the years, reflecting Japan’s changing political climate. It roughly went through three phases: (1) before the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), when IARI emphasized casting away old-fashioned Japanese-ness that originally sold well in the context of nineteenth-century Japonisme, and focused on developing a new modernist look of Japan, attractive enough to sell in the West; (2) during the Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War, when a wider, ‘oriental’ Japanese-ness was discussed, supporting the nation’s imperialist strategy in terms of kogei production; and (3) after the war, when IARI changed its name to Industrial Arts Institute (IAI) and again looked to a modernist Japanese-ness, in which the ‘Japanese Modern’ project was generated. Let us look at the first phase of casting away the old look and building a new visual identity. A cultural essentialist approach was clearly present in the institute’s approach. As building the national economy was an urgent task, and only a very limited number of Japanese designers had first-hand experience with Western countries, the institute’s responsive tactic was to import the foreign gaze. IARI invited Western practitioners to receive advice as to what kind of products could be developed for export, just as official foreign advisors (oyatoi gaikokujin) had given advice to the Japanese government in the Meiji era. The foreign gaze was doubly beneficial, for pinning down aspects of Japanese-ness, viewed from abroad, and for shaping a new form based on Western taste for modern design. German architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938), who fled from Nazi Germany to Japan, worked at the institute for three months in 1933–4. He found great possibilities in bamboo, a stereotypical and indigenous Japanese plant, and shared some ideas on using the material for chairs or lampstands (Shoji 1992: 127). From then on, bamboo became a pivotal material, and during the war it was recommended as a substitute for metals in making springs for chairs or cutlery. In 1940, when Charlotte Perriand (1903–99) was invited from France, she was also captivated with bamboo as a native material (Benton 1998). In 1937, the Sino-Japanese War began, and it developed into the Pacific War in 1941. Japan’s military ambition towards Asia was crystallized in the slogan, ‘Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’: a network of Asian nations independent from the Western colonization. The real intention, however, was to establish imperial power, incorporating other Asian nations within a new hierarchical system (Nakao 2008). Japan ostensibly 20

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

projected itself as the pivot of Asia. Applying such a political condition to culture, cultural essentialism of pursuing Japanese-ness turned into contradiction. What might be a better way to locate kogei in ‘Great East Asia’? The cultural essentialist view gave way to a new discourse stressing the hybrid ‘oriental’ and ‘Asian’ aspects of Japanese taste, by finding commonality in shape and material in Asia and grasping the whole geographic area as an organism. Japan made use of it in the discourse of the synthesis of Asia, and kogei acted as its agency. The director of IARI Kunii now advocated that the national goal was to ‘become the leader of Asia’ through kogei, by stressing the ‘mission of the Japanese kogei as the leader of East Asia’. He maintained that Japanese kogei goods should not only take the place of Western goods, but should also form the Great East Asian cultural sphere, indicate the high level of national power and of culture, encourage other Asian countries to put their faith in Japan and cultivate ‘a sense of belonging’ (Kunii 1942: 47) – thus formulating an Asian hybridity. Here, kogei functioned as a useful tool for smoothening the harsh reality of imperialism. Also, it must be noted that, as the Japanese fascist invasion of China was more and more internationally criticized, boycott movements spread in the UK, its Commonwealth and in the United States, which promoted the refusal of Japanese raw materials and finished goods, including Japanese toys, potteries, glassware and so on (Suzuki 1937: 522). It was a time when Japan had to carefully plan its national presentation, and arguably, it was easier to sell by hiding Japanese-ness for once. The ‘Asian’ look was a front. It was during this time that a design approach, which paved the way for post-war ‘Japanese Modern’, emerged. This involved the presentation of design concepts through interior design as an ensemble of space, rather than freestanding individual objects. One important occasion where this approach was showcased was the New York World’s Fair (1939), where IARI made effective use of traditional materials in creating a set space with a bamboo forest and bamboo chairs. The approach might have been strengthened by the invitation of another foreign advisor, the interior designer Tilly Prill-Schloemann who was invited from Germany in 1939. She had training experience under the architect Bruno Paul, worked as an interior and exhibition designer, and ran an arts and crafts gallery in Berlin. The designer and editor of the magazine Teikoku Kogei (Imperial Kogei) Takao Miyashita (1890–1972), who had met her in Berlin, recommended her to the institute as a professional in ‘interior decoration’. Her mission was to pick up local goods fit for export, to present new forms of representing modern Japan and ‘to design model rooms for various purposes’ (Suzuki 1939: 486). IARI reported an interesting comparison between ‘Mrs. Shloemann’ and Bruno Taut: whereas Taut was ‘always digging into the fundamental’, she taught them ‘how to make up the objects as commercial products’ (Anon. 1940: 28–9), which was perhaps more in line with the institute’s trade-conscious attitude. Emphasizing connections between objects by making more use of ‘model rooms’ at exhibitions was seen as a priority. One occasion was the Board of Trade’s exhibitions for the Encouragement of Substitutes in Industry in 1940, where the IARI not only showed model products using substitute materials for metals (which were prioritized for military purposes) but also prepared four ‘model rooms’ in a zig-zag platform (Illustration 1.1). It is of note that Kenmochi, among others, made a great contribution to it. 21

Design and Modernity in Asia

Figure 1.1  Four Model Rooms prepared by the IARI at the Exhibitions for the Encouragement of Substitutes in Industry. Courtesy Yasuko Suga.

Post-war trials and errors Projection of Asian hybridity led by the IARI was suddenly dropped when Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration following the two fatal atomic bombs in 1945. Occupied, and with all the manufactures strictly under the control of US General Head Quarters, panAsiatic platitude based on its ambition of Great Eastern Asia was no longer possible. It had to substitute the discourse of pre-war Asian hybridity with an alternative ideological backbone for an internationally acceptable national representation. From the occupied period onwards (1945–52), design issues were actively discussed in Japan. Domestically, 22

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

an immediate demand was created for building houses – but not for the Japanese. The Japanese government were commissioned by the GHQ to supply 20,000 Dependents Houses, 950,000 pieces of furniture and domestic electric appliances for the US Army as war reparation (Koizumi 1999; Akio 2011; Uchida 2011: 16–24). Internationally, in 1947, the GHQ permitted Japan the resumption of private foreign trade, which gave the Japanese industry a great opportunity to restart itself. In reality, however, most producers did not know the kinds of goods they should trade abroad. Besides, there was danger of ending up in ‘blind trade’, meaning that the exporting companies had no direct transactions abroad but via a set route through the Department of Trade, which was under the Board of Trade, in charge of foreign currencies, and centralized all trading during the occupation period (Ko 1996: 24). Under such restricted conditions, foreign design policies and practices had to be immediately surveyed for an understanding of the state of affairs. With the new largescale commission from GHQ, the Japanese design world had to understand American ways of living and housing in a short span of time. Under the guidance of the Design Branch of GHQ, IARI designed all the pieces of furniture, and Kogei News immediately took up the role of disseminating design know-hows. The ‘American way of life’, the ‘metaphor of “rich and happy life” ’ (Kashiwagi 1987: 19), materially attracted Japanese citizens and quickly became an aspired target of fashionable living (Suzuki 1948; Uchida 2011: 25). Popular exhibitions attracting large crowds, such as the Culture of American Living (1947) exhibition and the American Home Exhibition (1948), were held in Tokyo. While learning about American consumer culture came through the official commission that produced the exhibitions for the consumer, the institute had to import modern design theory, as well. The United Kingdom became the main source of knowledge. The first overseas institution to be studied was the Council of Industrial Design (CoID) in the UK, reported in Kogei News by an IARI staff member in 1948, the year of establishment of the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The motives and activities of CoID were introduced (perhaps a little idealized) in detail, as well as the Britain Can Make It exhibition (1946) which was said to attract a huge number of visitors and international buyers. Topics related to the CoID followed. Educator and critic Shinji Koike (1901–81), an IARI staff member who actively introduced the term ‘industrial design’ in post-war Japan, reviewed new books from abroad, including the Report of the Conference on Industrial Design (1946) published by the CoID and Federation of British Industries (Koike 1949: 27; Woodham 1983). He criticized the ineffectiveness of kogei display in Japan and praised the exhibition techniques of the BCMI (on the top half of the pages – interestingly, the bottom-halves of the pages carried a review of the American Home Exhibition) and highly valued the British government’s resolution to tackle the problems of design, resulting in the establishment of CoID (Koike 1948: 28–9). In mid-1948, IARI changed its name to a simpler Industrial Arts Institute (IAI), reflecting its investigative attitude towards the international design climate of focusing on ‘industrial design’. In 1950, its mouthpiece changed its name from Kogei News to a more internationally understandable Industrial Arts News. In 1952, IAI changed its Japanese 23

Design and Modernity in Asia

name to Sangyo Kogei Shikensho (literally, Industrial Arts Experiment Institute). The series of relabelling implied more emphasis on ‘industry’. At the same time, the past policy on kogei had to be reconsidered. One way left for Japan to visualize its identity after giving up pan-Asiatic hybridity was by getting back to cultural essentialism of Japanese indigenous visual language. Was not bamboo the material chosen by the foreign advisors? Unfortunately for the institute, this did not go as smoothly this time – a very unexpected blow first came from Britain. In 1949, the CoID invited Japan to exhibit bamboo furniture (Design, 13, 1, 1950). The overall exhibition was positively appreciated, except for one aspect. The exhibition space was shared with a display of Scandinavian souvenirs. Isamu Kenmochi, who went to London as IARI’s Director of the Design Section, stood aghast to hear that the Japanese chairs, which he believed were most authentically Japanese, looked like a ‘copy’ of the Finnish style in the mid-1930s (Toyoguchi 1950). The international schism in views of what Japanese design meant hit Kenmochi hard. Pre-war ways of expressing Japanese-ness did not work on the world stage anymore where Scandinavian designers also actively used natural materials in the modern form. In 1952, right after the San Francisco Treaty, Kenmochi had an opportunity to stay in the United States. He observed how the Japanese visual trend had been brought back by the occupying US soldiers and had spread there as a fashion. To his eyes, the industrial designer Paul McCobb (1917–69) in New York who pursued modern simplicity; the architect and furniture designer T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905–76) who mixed modernity with classical elements; the designer, architect and film maker Charles Eames (1907–78) in Los Angeles known for his plywood products, and the architect and interior designer Alexander Girard (1907–93) in Detroit known for his textile design for Herman Miller all demonstrated some aspects of Japanese taste (Kenmochi 1953). He was also struck by the different ‘levels’ of Japanese taste in practice in the United States. On the one hand, he observed cheap, low-quality Japanese things often portrayed in Hollywood movies in American people’s homes, which he disdainfully labelled as the ‘Japonica style’. On the other, there was a range of high-quality Japanese products, which, he was told by the Americans, was called ‘Japanese Modern’ in the United States. Kenmochi was enchanted by the term and resolved to push it to the front. Back in Japan, he set the keyword at IAI as Kindai Nihon-cho, a literal translation of ‘Japanese Modern’ style, and contextualized it as an advanced form of Japan’s originality in quality export goods (Ogawa 1954: 3). Based on his experience in the United States, he wrote an article dedicated to the theme: ‘Japanese Modern and Japonica Style: Two Roads to Put Japanese Industrial Arts on Foreign Export’, in which he pointed out that ‘Japanese Modern’ meant real quality design goods which were ‘the real things indigenous to the land, demanded irrespective of exoticism, antique taste or taste for rare things’ (Kenmochi 1954: 376). Examples of such design included the works of Isamu Noguchi, a Japanese-American sculptor, painter and designer who had come to IAI in 1950 and collaborated with him (Kenmochi 1950), or of George Nakashima, an American furniture designer who had come to Japan with Frank Lloyd Wright for the construction of the Imperial Hotel (1923) and then worked with Antonin and Noemi 24

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

Raymond based in Japan. ‘Japanese Modern’ design would not ‘deny tradition’ but would not care to follow traditional styles. Rather, he maintained that it would look to the principles that were inherited in Japan (Kenmochi 1954: 379). Reconsidering the elements inherent in Japan met another design-related, and political, concern. IAI’s Research Section, which consisted of Shinji Koike, Masaru Katsumi and two others, were worried about the international conflict over design copy. In the Industrial Arts News, renamed in English from Kogei News in 1951, they raised a big discussion on the influence of this problem in 1952, the year of the San Francisco Treaty, taking up the issue of Japanese companies copying British goods by naively following American buyers’ opinions (IAN, vol. 20 no. 6, 1952: pp.  32–3). The IAI, as a public Japanese body and vanguard in Japanese design, placed significant value and importance on the idea of authenticity or originality. It was of note that significant lexical changes were also observed in Japan then. In the 1950s, the word ‘design’ and ‘industrial design’ became more familiar, much influenced by the Good Design Movement in America and the enlightening activities of British CoID. There is a legendary episode in 1951, where Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, came back from America and shouted that ‘design’ was the word for the coming age, and thereafter it became common in use (Kimura 2001: 257). Finally kogei came to mean only handicraft, shedding the industrial connotation of the word ‘design’. In 1952, IARI changed its title to Industrial Arts Institute (IAI) as noted above. In the same year, Japan Industrial Designer’s Association (JIDA) came into existence. Taking international concerns over originality into consideration, ‘Japanese Modern’ had to project some inherent originality. But at the same time, as Kenmochi had found similar elements in American designers, and as he mentioned the two transnational designers embracing the nature of ‘Japanese Modern’, looking outwards to international design would obviously not help with culturally essentialist representation. From this point on, the visual characteristics of ‘Japanese Modern’ that Kenmochi envisaged became clear: it was transnational, rather than essentialist, and it was modernist. Japanrelated transnationality and modernism in design – the combination was certain to sell abroad. But in practice, it was already realized by the transnational creators like Nakajima and Noguchi. How could the Japanese designer produce a design distinct from these transnational designers? This was where the notion of ‘interior design’ had purchase. The designer Tetuo Matsumoto, who had worked with Kenmochi, recalled how he saw a set of furniture ‘architecturally’, rather than considering each piece of furniture as a separate product (Niimi 2005: 25). The interior designer Uchida, who was a generation younger than Kenmochi, also observed how he wished for the independence of ‘interior design’ from ‘architecture’ but was still unable to capture the avant-garde essence like Katsuki Iwabuchi, who was influenced by Italian minimal art and radical design in the 1960s (Uchida 2011: 118, 121). Not by simply juxtaposing objects in a row, but by spatially producing interior design as one unit could differentiate them from the transnational designers who Kenmochi posited as product designers. Kenmochi went from a product-based ideal to a wider sense of living style, and visualized ‘Japanese Modern’ at some occasions as model 25

Design and Modernity in Asia

rooms at exhibitions. This, however, was to cause further confusion in the understanding of modern living space in Japan.

‘Japanese Modern’ for whom? The idea of, and quest for, modern Japanese interior design was not restricted to Kenmochi. There was a similar attempt at achieving ‘modern Japan’ in the private sector. For example, the Exhibition of Architecture, Art and Craft Conveying the Sense of New Japan, organized by the Mainichi Newspaper Company in 1952, challenged to express a sense of a New Japanese spirit through a unique architectural approach. Isoya Yoshida (1894–1974), known for his experiments in the application of Sukiya-style (traditional Japanese architectural style) to modern architecture, organized the display. He maintained that it was important to ‘utilize the traditional Japanese sense of beauty within the new Japanese architecture and craft’ (Anon. 1952). Abstract works by Sofu Teshigahara (1900–79), the founder of the flower arrangement school, Sogetsu-ryu, were placed at corners and contributed much to producing a sense of new Japanese-ness in

Figure 1.2a  Exhibition by Mainichi Newspaper Company, 1952. Courtesy Yasuko Suga. 26

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

Figure 1.2b  Exhibition by Mainichi Newspaper Company, 1952. Courtesy Yasuko Suga. space. The furniture was designed by Yoshida, and the picture was painted by Hoshun Yamaguchi (1893–1971), the Japanese style painter representative of the era (Illustration 1.2a). The long desk was designed for using chairs and for the traditional floor sitting style (Illustration 1.2b). The chairs were made of bamboo, piano wires and iron. Reflecting the IAI’s contemporary interest in the style, a detailed article featuring the exhibition appeared in Industrial Arts News. The IAI’s exhibitions, led by Kenmochi, also turned to spatial representation, rather than product-based juxtaposition. One such occasion was the Design and Technique show in 1954. The exhibition was to introduce the activities of the IAI from multiple angles. The plan included the explanation and exhibition of good design products collected in the United States, displays of colour research, experimental products and materials and so on, as well as two ‘model rooms’ which the IAI considered as ‘cultural statements’, one showing the newly designed furniture for small homes based 27

Design and Modernity in Asia

Figure 1.3a  Model room A in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga.

on pre-fabricated techniques to make it as affordable for the ordinary household as possible, and another showing new pieces of furniture in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style (Illustrations 1.3a, 1.3b and 1.3c). Through this model room, the IAI aimed at ‘cultural export’ of modern Japanese style (Anon. 1954). ‘Japanese Modern’ was, however, originally inspired to attract the foreign buyer, and did not prioritize Japanese citizens’ consumption trends. While it made a good impact on foreign buyers, it simultaneously revealed the conflicting needs of domestic consumers and the international market. Masataka Ogawa (1925–2005), an art journalist from Asahi Newspaper Company, pointed out that the IAI’s attitude was unclear: were they sincerely trying to improve domestic living standards, or simply thinking about export goods for foreigners? In short, for whom was the ‘Japanese Modern’? (Ogawa 1954: 199). Also, although IAI had started to revitalize local craft industries, the shapes and colours of ‘Japanese modern’ products seemed to have nothing to do with Japanese local materials or traditional techniques (Izuhara1996: 178). The audience was naturally puzzled at the aim of the exhibition. Ogawa was correct in his criticism that, for the Japanese citizens, the concept of ‘Japanese Modern’ failed to present the pragmatic quality of post-war Japanese living 28

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

Figure 1.3b  Model room A in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga.

conditions. Basically, the average people were not living in the world Kenmochi envisaged. They were not interested in the Japanese style, because, to the consumer, the ‘fashionable’ meant ‘American’, even though to many, it was practically only in the world of ideal imagination. In reality, in 1955, the Japan Housing Corporation was established to solve the pressing issue of quantity rather than quality of housing in Japan, due to high economic growth and greater demand in cheap housing. Its task was, first and foremost, the mass supply of small-sized and low-cost tract houses (danchi) as small as forty square-metres with a dining kitchen, a Western-style flushable toilet and a veranda (Kobayashi 1997). Supported by the tailwind of the remarkable economic upturn of ‘Jimmu Boom’ (the most active business condition in hundreds of years was witnessed during 1954–6 and literally marked the end of the post-war condition), the gross national product increased and domestic demand expanded. As a result, the popularity and availability of electric home appliances soared. The year 1953, marked by the first sales of Sanyo’s washing machine, was considered the first year of domestic electric appliances. A washing machine, refrigerator and vacuum cleaner were called the ‘three sacred treasures’ of modern homes. In the 1960s, a car, cooler (air conditioner) and a colour television (together called ‘3Cs’) became symbolic home products, and the image of the American 29

Design and Modernity in Asia

Figure 1.3c  Model room B in the ‘Japanese Modern’ style at ‘Design and Technique’ show, 1954. Courtesy Yasuko Suga.

way of life, where housewives enjoyed conveniences such as electric mixers and juicers, was a decidedly fascinating aspiration for middle-class Japanese people. American sitcom dramas, such as Bewitched, functioned as guidance for the American way of life, showing off large kitchen spaces and rich electric appliances. Living in a danchi block built in suburbs with ‘3Cs’, preferably in the Western style, became an ideal social status. The society welcomed the newly born electrical products  – unquestionably original products with new forms. In such a trend, who would turn to the aesthetics of ‘Japanese Modern’ interior design? It was simply not attractive enough for the general public. Did the ‘Japanese Modern’ style have any attraction in the global market, then? Masaru Katsumi, a leading design critic, was negative even on this point and commented that ‘Japanese Modern’ would not be a huge stimulus of export after all (Ogawa 1954: 199–200). The comment sounded realistic when one observes another occasion the IAI prepared for: the international trade shows and exhibitions in Toronto, Canada, an important business centre city. At the Canadian International Trade Fair in Toronto in 1953, the Japanese showroom was designed by the IAI’s Design Section, to represent the modern beauty of a Japanese house. At this nationally important occasion when many American buyers visited, the Design Section’s aim was to ‘express the Japanese beauty within the contrast and harmony of the exhibited goods’ (Anon. 1953). The showroom used a mobile of Japanese fans and lanterns, together with bamboo chairs, which seems to follow, almost too easily, the typical Western notion of Japan (Illustration 1.4). A novel display included the placing of chairs in the traditional Tokono-ma space, an alcove for the display of decorative artefacts or personal collections. The more prevalent use of chairs in domestic settings was, in fact, a very big change on a national scale after the 30

A Post-War Japonisme Crusade

Figure 1.4  Japanese showroom at Canadian International Trade Fair, 1953. Courtesy Yasuko

Suga.

war, and therefore, the showroom-style exhibition could communicate the change and ‘modern’ Japanese living, as well as its adaptability to the Western-style modern living space. But how much did it matter to the foreign buyer? Perhaps very little. The scale of impact of those international occasions was domestically very limited as ‘Japanese Modern’ was never something that was universally desired in the post-war living space in Japan. A housewife would rather be attracted to the revolution in living brought to her by electric appliances like an iron or a washing machine, as the National (now Panasonic) company advertised in 1953. The women’s magazines like Kurashi no Techo (notebook in everyday life, 1948–) were keen to report such new items rather than furniture and interior design. High-quality ‘Japanese Modern’ was easily associated with the manualbased handicraft, and therefore considered a move away from industrial functionalism and universal modernism. Besides impracticality at home, there was another discordance in understanding and expressing Japanese-ness in interior design: the existence of what Kenmochi termed as ‘Japonica’ style abroad. ‘Japonica’ represented some showy and ostentatious oriental Japanese-ness never selected for the Good Design Show, often seen in theatrical interior design with Japanese-style screens, a lantern and a flower arrangement, much too gaudily placed. Unhappily, these two styles – one aesthetic-conscious and the other commercially prevalent – were mixed even by the Japanese manufacturers at home, 31

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resulting in the continued prevalence of cheap Japanese export goods. Katsumi aptly concluded that the root of all evil lay in such a confusion and that the government lacked a fixed design policy: Arguably the unhappy thing about modern Japan comes from the fact that design issue had never been put on the national stage of discussion as issues of formative art in everyday lives. It has always been discussed in terms of trade, acquisition of foreign currencies, etc., from ad hoc, short-sighted angles. (Katsumi 1986b: 226) In 1962, Katsumi again criticized, and said that ‘to put the aim of design policy on promoting exports is in fact terribly partial’ (Katsumi 1986c: 251). The weakness of ‘Japanese Modern’ reflected an entanglement of speculations of Kenmochi in pursuit of a new and originally Japanese form, the government and the domestic producer who prioritized in selling, and the consumer who did not sympathize with his vision.

Conclusion In post-war Japan, the modernization of design was mixed with the national need to export. ‘Japanese Modern’ style was meant to be a compound of Japanese culture and modern design, but in reality, it precipitated in the discussion of the future of Japanese design. Kenmochi had to fight against the global trend for simpler design and natural materials as presented in Scandinavian design. Besides, Japanese taste was imported and improvised in the United States, both of which worked at a disadvantage to his idea of ‘Japanese Modern’. It was aimed as an expression of a cultural hybrid of Japanese-ness and good modern taste in the West, which could also be promoted at home as original. It, however, lacked a centripetal force both at home and abroad. The gap between the style which Kenmochi aimed to develop as a part of the national strategy to encourage export, the prevalent cheap version of it and also the reality of average domestic lives during the time with a strong aspiration for the ‘American way of life’ in Japan, worked against the ‘Japanese Modern’. It was not until another wave of Japonisme in the 1970s, in the form of ‘high-tech’ cult with industrial products made by Sony and Toyota, that Japan could strongly announce its originality (new technology, new forms) and boost export. Now that the ‘high-tech’ originality of Japanese design has been enjoyed for some decades, the representation of traditional Japanese elements occasionally resurfaces in contemporary society. Especially after Japan started the campaign to host the 2020 Olympics, a re-evaluation of Japanese culture has been fuelled within the political strategy of national projection through arts and culture. In 2006, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry inaugurated the promotion of Shin Nihon Yoshiki (Japanesque Modern) based on the Report on ‘Japanesque Modern’ brand promotion round-table conference. Promoted by ‘Japanesque Modern’ Council, it was an attempt to coalesce Japanese tradition and the avant-garde, not restricted to design, but embracing 32

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the spirit of craftsmanship and sense of welcome. No matter how one labels it, although Kenmochi’s ideal was never realized in the shape he envisioned in his time, a very similar interior design is finally widely shared by the general public, often seen in the feature articles of interior design magazines that encourage the combination of traditional Japanese interior design and minimalist modernism. Perhaps, Kenmochi was too ahead of his times.

References Akio, S. (2011), Washington Heights: GHQ ga Tokyo ni kizanda Sengo, Tokyo: Shincho-sha. Author Unknown (1940), ‘Shinnen wo mukaeru Kogei-kai Kaiko Tenbo Zadankai’, Kogei News, 9 (1): 28–31. Author Unknown (1952), ‘General Outline of the “Design and Technique” Show’, Industrial Art News, 20 (2): 190–6. Author Unknown (1953), ‘Design; The Details of Japanese Show Room at Canadian International Trade Fair: IAI Design Section’, Industrial Art News, 21 (9): 17–26. Benton, C. (1998), ‘From Tubular Steel to Bamboo: Charlotte Perriand, the Migrating Chaiselongue and Japan’, Journal of Design History, 11 (1): 31–58. Bhabha, H. (1994), The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge. Inoue, Y. (2015), ‘Shokoso Kogei Shidosho to Yushutsu Geijitsu’, Geisou: Tsukubadaigaku Geijutsugaku Kenkyushi, 30: 45–54. Ito, Y. (2006), ‘Bankoku Hakurankai no Kogei Dezain’, in Kenichi e Nagata (ed), Kindai Nihon Dezain-shi, 47–61, Tokyo: Bigaku Shuppan. Izuhara, E. (1996), Nihon no Dezain Undo, Perikan-sha. Kaplan, W. (2013), California Design 1930–1965, Cambridge: MIT Press. Kashiwagi, H. (1987), Dezain Senryaku, Tokyo: Kodan-sha. Katsumi, M. (1986a), ‘Kenmochi Isamu to Watanabe Riki’, Katsumi Masaru Zenshu, 4. Kodansha: 142–6. Katsumi, M. (1986b), ‘Korekara no Nihon Kogei’, Katsumi Masaru Zenshu, 2. Kodan-sha: 224–32. Katsumi, M. (1986c), ‘Dezain seisaku wo Kakuritsu seyo’, Katsumi Masaru Zenshu, 2: 248–54. Kenmochi, I. (1950), ‘Kogei Shido ni okeru Isamu Noguchi’, Industrial Art News, 18 (10): 335–9. Kenmochi, I. (1953), ‘“Amerika Tsushin” wo musubu’, Industrial Art News, 21 (2): 33–5. Kenmochi, I. (1954), ‘Japanese Modern & Japonica Style – Two Roads to Put Japanese Industrial Arts on Foreign Market’, Industrial Art News, 22 (9): 374–9. Kimura, T. (2001), Kikigaki Dezain-shi, Tokyo: Rokuyo-sha. Ko, R. (1996), ‘Sengo Fukkoukiniokeru Shousha kyouka seisaku’, Hirosakidaigaku Keizaikenkyuu November 1996, number 19, pp. 23–35. Kobayashi, H. (1997), Nihon niokeru Shugojutaku no Hukyukatei: Sangyo kakumeiki kara Kodo Keizaiseichouki made (Chosa KEnkyu Ripoto no.93242), Nihon Jutaku Sogo Sentaa. Koike, S. (1948), ‘Three Examples of Modern Exhibition Technics’, Kogei Nyusu, 16 (11): 26–9. Koike, S. (1949), ‘Shokan’, Kogei News, 17 (5): 27. ­Koizumi, K. (1979), Kagu to Shitsunai Isho no Bunkashi. Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku. Koizumi, K. (1999), Senryogun Jutaku no Kiroku, Tokyo: Jo & Ge, Sumaino Toshokan Shuppankyoku. Kubota, Ryuko (2016), ‘The Multi/Plural Turn, Postcolonial Theory, and Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Complicities and Implications for Applied Linguistics’, Applied Linguistics, 37 (4): 474–94. 33

Design and Modernity in Asia Kunii, K. (1932a), ‘Honpo Kogyo no Kogei teki Shinten wo nozomu’, Kogei News, 1 (4): 1–2. Kunii, K. (1932b), ‘Yushutsu Kogeihin Tenjikai Shuppinbutsu ni tsuite’, Kogei News, 1 (2): 2–3. Kunii, K. (1936), ‘Sangyo Kogei hin no Isho-ka’, Kogei News, 5 (2): 1. Kunii, K. (1942), ‘Kanto-gen’, Kogei News, 11 (2): 47. Mori, H. (2005), Kenmochi Isamu to Sono Sekai, Tokyo: Kokusho Kanko-kai. Mori, H. (2009), Nihon ‘Kogei’ no Yukue: Bijutsu to Dezain no Botai toshite, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Nakao, K. (2008), ‘Daitoa Kyoeiken Koso no naritachi to Kokueki’, Nihon Daigaku Daigakuin Sogo Shakaijoho Kenkyuka Kiyo, 9: 17–28. Niimi, T. (2005), ‘Interia toiu yutopia: Kenmochi Isamu heno Josho’, in H. Mori (ed), Japanese Modern: Retrospective Kenmochi Isamu, 24–31, Tokyo: Kokushokankokai. Ogawa, M., Wada, I., Katsumi, M., Fukuoka, H., Akashi, K., and Fujii, S. (1954), ‘Zadankai: ‘Dezain to Gijutsu Ten womite’, Industrial Art News, 22 (5): 197–200. Shoji, A. (1992), ‘Bruno Taut no Kogei Katsudo (10): Sendai Jidai ni okeru Take heno Kanshin’, Japan Society for the Science of Design, 93: p. 127. Sugasawa, M. (2008), Tendo Mokko, Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha. Suzuki, I. (1937), ‘Naigai Kogei Sangyo Joho’, Kogei News, 6 (12): 522–6. Suzuki, I. (1939), ‘Shureman-fujin no Raicho to Naichishisatsu Ryoko’, Kogei News, 8 (12): 486–8. Suzuki, M. (1948), ‘On the American Home Exhibition’, 16 (11): 26–7. Toyoguchi, K. (1950), ‘Hihan no Ittan: Note on Japanese Bamboo Products Exhibition in Britain’, Kogei News, 18 (7): 242. Uchida, S. (2011), Sengo Nihon Dezain-shi, Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo. Woodham, J. (1983), The Industrial Designer and the Public, London: Pembridge Press.

34

­C HAPTER 2 MODERNIZING TURKEY THROUGH MIDCENTURY MODERN FURNITURE

Deniz Hasirci and Zeynep Tuna Ultav

Introduction The focus of this chapter is modernization in Turkey, the meaning of modernization and its nuances specific to Turkey and the role of interiors and furniture in defining modern life. We explore these through the example of the Kare Metal furniture company (translated as Square Metal, referring to the metal square/box section, as well as its four founders). Mostly limited to furnishing public buildings in its early days, Kare Metal (1955–62) played a significant role in widening the boundaries of modern furniture in Turkey through its creative use of materials, producing well-designed furniture that was comparable to international examples. This research develops from interviews with designers and their immediate witnesses as key players in the field. Although Turkey spans Europe and Asia, and, therefore, carries the characteristics of both, the development of a new national identity followed Euro-American ideals of Modernism in interior and furniture design. Similar to other Asian countries (India, Japan, etc.), and although it did not have a colonial history, Turkey embraced modernism to construct its national identity through a government-led process (Lee 2001) that could intensely be felt through visible aspects of the environment at various scales, communicating new and modern values. Kandiyoti (2006) defines national identity as a key dilemma for cultural nationalism. While modernization does not necessarily mean Westernization, Turkish intellectuals regarded modernization as almost synonymous with muasırlaşmak, asrileşmek, çağdaşlaşmak (becoming contemporary) or garplılaşmak (becoming Western with influences from Europe and the United States) (Kılıçbay 1985). We use the terminology of East and West in this context. Modernism in Turkey paralleled the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, marking a clear turn to mostly Europe, and also the United States as representations of the West, and a change in lifestyle and culture towards modern ideals that affected all areas, from politics, social life, to art, design and architecture. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic, initiated this ‘civilizational shift’, affecting ‘modes of expression’ in all areas, in particular art, design and architecture that he valued as powerful representations of national culture (Özkan 2013: 5). As highlighted by Gökhan Karakuş, furniture, as an integral part of architecture and interiors, was no exception (2011).

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This was partly visible in the homes of Turkey’s elites through a complete break from tradition, specifically the elaborate design motifs and ostentatious interiors of the Ottoman Empire. Although European furniture first appeared in the homes of the elite during the Ottoman Empire, it had not reached the homes of lower economic groups (Karakuş 2010), which were mostly still using the traditional built-in furniture characteristic of Turkish homes. The Republic era, however, brought modern furniture to Turkey’s middle classes, influencing lifestyle (Tekeli 2007; Karakuş 2011). The sedir/kerevet (a bench with cushions) and the tabla/sini (a large round tray around which a family gathers to eat), and divans, cushions, pillows and rugs, were transformed into Westernized furniture, such as mobile chairs, coffee tables and cabinets, which had not existed before (Hasirci and Tuna Ultav, 2019; Hasirci and Tuna Ultav, 2020). Despite the flow of ideas from the West, and more specifically European nations like Germany, Austria and Italy, Turkey created its own modern furniture, as can be demonstrated through many examples in the 1950s and 1960s, such as the modern, mostly domestic furniture produced by Butik A, Moderno, Interno and Kare Metal. Kare Metal is a particularly significant example, exemplifying how modern design ideals were adopted in the domestic realm, not just residential interiors but also interiors for hospitality. Kare Metal’s unique furniture reflected the fit between the local and industrial materials and techniques, combined within a Turkish context (Karakuş 2011). By amalgamating the sculptural and furniture design worlds, Kare Metal created some of the most iconic modern Turkish furniture pieces that are now recognized internationally. The issue of whether there is both a universal and a local Modernism in relation to furniture design requires further study. Although it is one of the most prominent areas where modernism can be observed, the modern interior in Turkey is difficult to analyse due to lack of research on the subject and insufficient archiving. While there have been more studies since the 1970s on the modern interior in relation to social life and modernizing lifestyles, there is still paucity of information with regard to furniture (Altan Ergut 2010). Meltem Ö. Gürel (2009) has discussed domestic modern furniture influencing modern sociocultural distinction in Turkey, while Önder Küçükerman (2015) has analysed the development of Turkish modern furniture up to industrialization in the 1980s. Karakuş (2013) claims that, with its dynamic and abstract style, Kare Metal deserves a place in history among several modern international designers of the time. We believe that a focus on Kare Metal also generates multidisciplinary knowledge as it prompts a discussion of the role of furniture and interior design, architecture and fine arts, thereby contributing to national and transnational histories of Turkish design. Further, a study of modern furniture design in Turkey, foregrounding key designers and their works that have contributed to contemporary design, helps better understand Turkish design today. Here, we focus on Kare Metal as a distinctive case of mid-twentieth-century Turkish furniture design in its use of local materials and techniques within a modernist design language. Dipesh Chakrabarty (2001) has discussed modernity in relation to its inevitable plurality as a response to capitalism. Partha Mitter (2008) has stated that the most 36

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exciting aspects of modernisms are their plurality and differences. Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoğlu (1993) has discussed multiple histories of the Modern Movement and International Style, and the ways in which the traditional/modern duality was mediated by nationalist ideologies in countries like Turkey as a result of independence movements. While the Kare Metal designers did not openly challenge the national approach, their experimental, artistic and individual expression did indeed challenge nationalist agendas. With the open support given to them by modern furniture companies like Moderno,1 they were quickly identified as one of the first metal furniture producers. Another potential challenge for Kare Metal related to professional boundaries. Architects of the time still viewed interior and furniture design as part of their own expertise and responsibility, regarding furniture as functional and quotidian objects, representing daily life, as well as symbolic of the architects’ creativity (Fındıklı 2017). Well-known architects Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Abdullah Ziya wrote about the pedagogical role of architects in educating the public and the lack of a professional approach in design, which was predominantly led by craftsmen and merchants. They were also indifferent to interior architects and decorators of the time (Eldem 1931; Ziya 1931). Similar views persisted in the 1950s, focusing on the responsibility of architects and their skills in furniture design. A gradual change in attitude, however, became noticeable, with architect Zeki Sayar writing about the need for elegant and functional furniture, and educating and acknowledging decorators (supporting architects) to meet this demand so that they produce a ‘national furniture’ (Sayar 1950). The period of 1923–50 provides a backdrop for our main argument. The political, social and design-related context for the 1950s was prepared by Early Republican ideals of 1923, as well as a global approach encouraged by the architectural motto of ‘internationalization’. We will examine Kare Metal’s practice next, from historical and theoretical perspectives, and through other literature, our oral history and archival research.2

Westernization in Turkey: A theoretical perspective Historically, the meanings and use of the term ‘modern’ have changed. In its original sense, it means present or current, implying as its opposite the notion of earlier, of what is past. It was employed in this sense as long ago as the Middle Ages (Tazegül 2005). A second meaning of the word is new, as opposed to the old. Here, the term ‘modern’ is used to describe a present time that is experienced as a period and which possesses specific features that distinguish it from previous periods, and, according to Gaonkar, the ‘consciousness of an age that imagines itself as having made the transition from old to the new’ (2001: 6). Kare Metal reflected this consciousness. Octavio Paz wrote, ‘modernity is an exclusively western concept that has no equivalent in other civilizations’ (as cited in Heynen 1999). This is claimed to be connected to a European approach towards time as linear, task-oriented, developing 37

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and pointing towards the future, as opposed to the ‘eastern’ view, which regards time as static or cyclical (Gupta 1992; Heynen 1999). Thus, the concept of modern time has also included an ‘operative’ view of history. As stated by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, ‘born in and of the West some centuries ago under relatively specific socio-historical conditions, modernity is now everywhere’ (Gaonkar 2001: 1). Yet, every society can constitute its own modernity with its own dynamics. In this view, cultural modernity comes to permeate everyday life. Achieving this goal implies the internalization of modernity. Social practices and related discourses have enabled societies in Western Europe and North America to shape modern life (Tanyeli 1998). Creative adaptation is not simply a matter of adjusting the form or recoding the practice to soften the impact of modernity; rather, it points to the manifold ways in which people question the present. It is the site, Gaonkar agues, where people make themselves modern through creative adaptation, as opposed to being made modern by alien and impersonal forces (2001: 18). Turkey and several societies beyond the West have used modernization synonymously with Europeanization, Americanization and especially Westernization (Meriç 1983 as cited in Boyacıoğlu 2003). Uğur Tanyeli explains this idea as ‘the conceptual tools that separate them could not be improved for several historical reasons’ (Tanyeli 1998). According to Tanyeli, avoiding this synonym constitutes the base of the idea of modernization without a dramatic change, but persisting in local values, which is simultaneously the process desired by Eastern societies (1998). Modernization or Westernization, adopted nationally in Turkey, was defined as looking towards the West, with the domestic sphere serving this ideal. Turkey’s Ottoman roots were rejected in daily life routines, architecture and design. While the new nation state employed modern designs in the public sphere, it is also important to discuss their manifestations in the domestic sphere.

Westernization in Turkey: A historical perspective Kemalist modernity, begun by and named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, required that post-Ottoman classical styles should be discontinued while establishing the new ideals of the modern republic. Bauhaus-inspired modernism was to be the style of the new regime as acknowledged by architects aligning with the message of the Republic. Accordingly, the modernists chosen to design the new governmental buildings – Seyfi Arkan, Sedad Eldem, Şevki Balmumcu and Ahsen Yapaner – produced large-scale symbolic modern architecture, particularly in the capital Ankara (Özkan 2013). The modern approach to design, colloquially named ‘cubic’ design, developed in a radical way alongside a clear, nationwide political transformation. Kaçel has stated that this was an appropriation and practice that lacked critique, and has called this ‘common sense modernism’ supported by the United States as a part of modern culture or lifestyle in the 1950s up to the 1960s (Kaçel 2011: 167–8). Behçet Ünsal states that ‘cubic’ was a misunderstood term coming from the fact that cubic forms were made with new 38

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materials, such as metal and concrete. According to him, new architecture, however, was not based on Cubism but Rationalism (Ünsal 1935). While furniture in homes varied greatly according to each family’s socio-economic status, after this shift, it took on the role of symbolizing modern life. Modern design became the mediator for the way that Kemalist ideology brought unification and homogeneity to the people, regardless of class or economic status, through democratization. The architects of the Republic hid class differences beneath a ‘unified aesthetic’ with ‘undecorated simplicity’ of the ‘cubic house’ (Bozdoğan 1996: 316). References to Ankara in official and popular publications of [the early Republican period] as ‘The Heart of the Nation’ (Ulusun Kalbi) point to more than its central location within the boundaries of modern Turkey. It was a powerful metaphor for the organic unity of the nation, as in the other nationalist slogan of becoming ‘one body, one heart’ (Bozdoğan 2001a). The desire to be modern extended to a large and new kind of professional class that consisted of military and civilian officials who were the most important members of the newly modernized population of Ankara. This population could not be accommodated in architect-commissioned houses like the elite were, but were housed in newly built small apartment buildings (Bertram 2008). At the Academy of Fine Arts in İstanbul, the only school of architecture in Turkey then, education was modernized along Western, mostly German, lines (Aslanoğlu 2003). Artists, designers and architects such as Clemens Holzmeister (1886–1983), Ernst Egli (1893–1974), Robert Oerley (1876–1945) and Rudolf Belling (1886–1972) were invited from Europe to work professionally and educate young Turkish designers. The break with the First Nationalist Movement represented more than establishing a new movement. The late 1920s showed that references to Ottoman buildings were no longer preferred by the builders of the new nation (Baydar Nalbantoğlu 1993). For example, those established lecturers, such as Architects of the First Nationalist Movement, Mongeri and Vedat Bey, who carried on teaching traditional styles of architecture and design, had their contracts terminated by the Board of Education (Tekeli 2011). Mongeri has been quoted to state that he was educated in the classical école and that he tried to design the Çelik Palas building in Bursa in the modern style, but could not manage it. He added that he saw that European architects were following that route, and so it must be right, which was why he left both his architecture practice and educational position. Following the closing of Mongeri and Tek’s ateliers, Swiss/Austrian modernist Ernst Arnold Egli (1893–1974) was assigned the head of the Architecture Department of the Academy in 1930, and the projects of the Egli atelier followed a ‘functional’ approach (Ünsal 1968: 93). If one tries to understand the Republican experience in terms of a modernization project, it will be easier to comprehend the process of the end of the First Nationalist Movement in Architecture, which was based on traditional values and style, to begin a modern (cubist) architectural deployment. This was not a formal imitation project, but a modernism project starting from the grassroots that was politically influential across Turkey (Tekeli 2011). From the second half of the 1930s, cultural changes in society became more evident as steps taken to achieve modernization were visible immediately in daily life. City planning and building types developed under the influence of 39

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modernism were accepted as a significant step in passing from an Ottoman culture to a European one. Through this directed approach of modernism in every area, the spatial use of homes and furniture types within them began to change, particularly in İstanbul and Ankara (Batur 1998 as cited in Uzunarslan 2010). According to İsmail Hakkı Oygar, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, the view of space and furniture after the Early Republic period was that ‘Interior architecture and furniture decoration is more today’s art, rather than yesterday’s. People have always decorated their homes with furniture; however, they have never placed this much importance in it this publicly’ (Oygar 1932). Both the interior and furniture had become modern subjects. Although the Early Republic era highlighted a powerful visual culture, modern architecture really became visible only after the 1950s.3 The elections of 1950 marked the end of the Early Republican era with the more liberal economic policies and populist politics of the Democrat Party. Modernism here was an elitist move, with the few ‘cubic’ houses built being commissioned and owned by a small group (Yavuz 1992).

Modern furniture in Turkey As Penny Sparke has noted, the development of the modern interior as the interface of modernity reflects the complexity of the concept (Sparke 2008). Given that furniture is a significant component of interiors, it is necessary to focus on it in terms of the evolving lifestyle it represents. Although this is the case, the idea of furniture contradicts the traditional nature of interior space in Turkey. The same type of furniture introduced into İstanbul’s Dolmabahçe and Beylerbeyi Palaces in the nineteenth century as part of

Figure 2.1  Florya Atatürk Marine Mansion furniture, İstanbul, by Architect Seyfi Arkan and Architect Fazıl Aysu, 1934. Courtesy DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org). 40

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Ottoman Westernization could be seen in the city’s homes, especially around the palaces at the end of the century (Boyla 1997). Despite the break with tradition, modernist buildings still included eclectic and/or handed-down furniture. However, Westernized spaces, geometric furniture designs, Bauhaus-style lighting arrangements and shiny surfaces became increasingly common in middle-class homes. Western objects and furniture, such as the music cabinet, daybed or wine rack, became the focus of living rooms as symbols of the West (Tuna Ultav, Hasirci, Borvalı, Atmaca 2015). Geometric forms and new materials were increasingly employed as can be seen in the furniture of the Florya Atatürk Mansion designed as a summer retreat, by Seyfi Arkan and Fazıl Aysu in 1935 as a complete work of modernism (Illustration 2.1). This building carried significance as it was specifically used by Atatürk in his last years for political and scientific meetings and events with guests such as King Edward VIII and Mrs Wallis Simpson. As head of state, Atatürk aimed to deliver the message of modernism through the building, both nationally and internationally. Atatürk also has several photographs in a modern suit and hat or swimming suit, reading or swimming, almost always surrounded by people. Several Turkish presidents after Atatürk continued to use the building until 1988 when it became a museum. Modern, contemporary and movable furniture that was practical, light, unornamented and geometric clearly contrasted with the old heavy furniture of the Ottoman tradition. The popular monthly Modern Turkey Journal (Modern Türkiye Mecmuası) talked about the relationship between modern ideals, and interiors and furniture. The journal defined the term ‘cubic furniture’ through the characteristics of modern, movable furniture: functional, light, easily maintained, undecorated and simple. This was contrasted with the bulky and simple furniture of old houses (Bozdoğan 2001b). Yasa Yaman (2013) defined the aesthetic concerns of this period regarding furniture, first referring to Bauhaus and Breuer. She stated that the cold leather and fabric furniture with structural metal pipes were much lighter, comfortable, clean, flexible, and much less bulky. Furniture needed to be in harmony with the human body, designed ergonomically and placed within a light filled space with sterile white walls and ceiling, concrete, linoleum or granite flooring, and kitchen with lacquered cabinets, forming a new aesthetic. The modern home was presented to be a home with a plan completely different than the traditional Turkish home. These were homes designed for nuclear families, affordable and small, with one floor and preferred to the apartment flat designed for happiness (Eldem 1931; Bozdoğan 1996). The modernism of the Republic was defined as different from the previous modernisms in Turkey as well as other nations’ modernisms. Small, light-filled spaces were prescribed for the new Turkish family comprising a husband and wife with one to three children. The modern style for the interiors and furniture would develop from the modernization of life itself and modern citizenry (Kandiyoti 2006; Yasa Yaman 2013). Some Turkish architects followed the Bauhaus influence of total architecture or the Gesamtkunstwerk approach, which they were familiar with from translated articles or discussions in journals like Arkitekt (Can 2011; Fındıklı 2017). This required that 41

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everything, from the chairs to the paintings on the walls and flowers in the vase, be planned (Bozdoğan 1996). The Turkish architect Celal Esat Arseven wrote in the article entitled Yeni Mimari (New Architecture) (1931) in which he argued that architects’ work had become more wide-ranging to include all aspects of space. Both modernism and ‘total architecture’ are quite similar to the traditional Turkish house with its humble interior, devoid of much ornamentation, with built-in cupboards, niches, wide seating elements and fire places (Küçükerman 2007; Küçükerman 2015). The differences, however, are more easily discussed than the resemblances, due to a lack of documentation and archiving, specifically of everyday life and use of furniture. This study, therefore, aims to expand on the limited research in this area. At this time, Turkish journals, such as Arkitekt (Architect, 1931–80) or Hayat (Life, 1956–80), dedicated articles to how modern homes should be, referring often to Western lifestyles and how interiors shape those lifestyles. Arkitekt was a journal that reflected modernization also with its name, while in 1931 when it was founded, it was referred to with the Turkish word for architect, ‘Mimar’. In 1935, both ‘Mimar’ and ‘Arkitekt’ were used in the title marking a transformation, and in 1936, the name became exclusively ‘Arkitekt’. The extension of the title of the journal also included a change. In 1935, it was Monthly Building Art, Urbanism and Decorative Arts Journal (Turkish: Aylık Yapı Sanatı, Şehircilik ve Tezyini Sanatlar Mecmuası), which was changed to newer versions of the words without changing the meaning. The word ‘decorative’ (that included interior architecture and furniture design) was changed using the contemporary words for decorative arts, which were first Ottoman ‘tezyini’, then European ‘dekoratif ’ and finally Turkish ‘süsleme’ (Turkish: Aylık Mimarlık, Şehircilik ve Süsleme Sanatları Dergisi). The journal clearly reflected these continuous changes throughout the years between 1931 and 1980, ending its publishing life in 1980 with the title ‘Architecture, Urbanism, and Tourism Journal’. Priority was given to European architects for government buildings, and since Turkish architects could not gain the public procurements often taken by German and Austrian architects, which was decided at governmental level, they focused more on domestic. Modernist architects like Seyfettin Arkan, Zeki Sayar, Abidin Mortaş, Abdullah Ziya and Bekir İhsan (Ünal) mainly focused their careers on domestic architecture (Bozdoğan 2001b). Combining Bauhaus simplicity with Art Nouveau’s fluent lines, Art Deco spread in Turkey as it did internationally, leading to the gradual spread of ‘cubic’ furniture in Turkish interiors (Boyla 1997). The interpretation of modernist furniture in Turkish interiors showcased functionality and ease of use, with plain lines and thick-sectioned wooden and metal legs (Uzunarslan 2010).

Mid-century modern in Turkey: Kare Metal Furniture Globally, metal furniture played an important role in developing the modern interior in the 1950s (Küçükerman 2015). The shiny and cold character of this industrial material was primarily accepted into interiors because of the new modern lifestyle it 42

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promised. In Turkey, the use of this material in the completely new area of furniture had to be learned through experimentation to discover its capabilities and limits. For the reason that metalsmiths had not previously designed furniture and furniture makers had not used metal, there was a need for designers who could understand and combine both skills. Sadi Öziş founded the metal workshop Kare Metal with sculptor İlhan Koman in 1953 with the support of Mazhar Süleymangil and Tevfik Öziş (Sadi Öziş’s father). The four corners of a square (Kare) represent the four (Öziş 2021), also in line with the modern and geometric style of the day and extensive use of metal square/box sections in modern furniture (Illustration 2.2). The two artists began to produce metal furniture for the first time in Turkey, and with Sadi Çalık joining Kare Metal in 1958, the workshop put their stamp on history as an agent in Turkey in the modern furniture sector through their metal furniture designs. They were all graduates of the Academy and students of Rudolf Belling. They were also educated in Paris and worked there professionally. This enabled them to study both, classical and modern works, and develop significant international experience, which would help them advance avant-garde sculpture in Turkey, along with another sculptor Kuzgun Acar (1928–1976), also a graduate of the Academy and student of Belling. After Koman left in 1958 and Çalık in 1959, Sadi Öziş continued his experimentation alone until 1967. Öziş also continued sculptural experimentation in this workshop, arousing great interest with his sculpture-furniture creations in the Turkish and European media. In 1962, Öziş founded Galeri-T with Academy graduate painter

Figure 2.2  Kare Metal chairs, 1950s. Courtesy Önder Küçükerman, DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org). 43

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Gevher Bozkurt (1926–2008), which became one of Turkey’s leading consultancies on decoration. He continued working until 1967 (Tuna Ultav, Hasirci, Borvalı, Atmaca 2015). Neptün Öziş, the son of Sadi Öziş, offers the following story of the Kare Metal’s foundation: Sadi Öziş completed his education in France in 1952, and came back; after he returned, he started working in the Academy. During this period, a metal atelier was established in the Sculpture Department of İstanbul Fine Arts Academy, causing İlhan Koman and Sadi Öziş to become acquainted with metal, and they became very excited to work on metal. They worked on metal in this workshop for some time together with Kuzgun Acar and Şadi Çalık, prominent sculptors in Turkey (According to Sadi Öziş, the founders are, himself, İlhan Koman, Sadi Çalık, and as the financial support, Mazhar Süleymangil (Öziş 2005)). Later, they decided to establish their own workshops, and did it in 1955. This was actually a workshop intended for making sculpture. Because they founded this workshop as four people, they named the place Kare Metal, and they continued with their sculptural work in that workshop. (Öziş 2013) While working on sculpture, they realized that they could not make money from this work, as modern sculpture, and specifically abstract metal sculpture, was not popular then as an art form. Thus, the designers turned to furniture, approaching design in an artistic way, creating stylized furniture (Illustration 2.3). It could be stated that the success of metal furniture that came out of metal sculpture, in turn, popularized the art form.

Figure 2.3  Kare Metal chairs, ‘Burgaz’ and ‘Fishnet’, 1950s. Courtesy DATUMM Archive, Turkey (www.datumm.org). 44

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To meet the workshop’s expenses, they chose furniture design and manufacturing, having begun designing as students before founding Kare Metal (Öziş 2012; Küçükerman 2015). They received their first large order for the Kilyos Facilities Project (1959) of Sedat Hakkı Eldem and Orhan Çakmakçıoğlu as their furniture drew the attention of architects of the period. Eldem, who was one of the most well-known architects in Turkey by this time, realized the unique and artistic approach the designers brought to furniture that deviated from furniture designed by most architects and ordered their creative designs. This commission for the widely publicized project shows Eldem’s recognition of furniture designers as opposed to his earlier views in the 1930s, of professional architects leading furniture design. This shift in his views is crucial and significant as it influenced other architects’ perspectives. As mentioned by Neptün Öziş, Sadi Öziş’s son, Koman and Öziş were very surprised as they had not expected to receive such a large order, so they had to change their way of production, and hire new metalsmiths. As a result, Kare Metal became a very large and popular workshop that continued manufacturing furniture for a long time (Öziş 2013). Particular forms were developed early that were simple and geometric, with minimal connection details, derived from the characteristics and production opportunities of metal – particularly, metal sheets, rods and mesh (Karakuş 2011). The users of the furniture were mostly high-profile and wealthy families. As costs were very high, only such families, like Koç and Süren, could afford them (Öziş 2012). Metal masters did not work on furniture then, so they found masters like İsmail Sakız and Ahmet Plevne to work together and learn how to make such furniture. Due to lack of research and resources in human ergonomics, they had to find their own solutions. As Neptün Öziş explains, ‘They sat on sand and drew the proportions of their body to measure it. They did this with different people since people had different heights. For example, my father was short but Şadi Çalık was very tall. They both sat on sand and they thought about how they could make furniture suitable for both of them’ (Öziş 2012). In addition to this workshop, Sadi Öziş established a decoration office in the 1960s with Gevher Bozkurt and Oscar Muharinsky. They decorated the houses of many wellknown families, as well as hotels such as Florya, Kilyos Hotel and Camping, and TUSAN Hotels.4 They also exhibited Kare Metal furniture at the İzmir International Fair (founded in 1936) which showcased state-of-the-art design. In addition to their producing and displaying their own designs, they used other fashionable designs of the period, even copying some, as unlike today, copyright and patenting restrictions did not exist then. Meanwhile, Galeri T, which also belonged to those three partners, opened a showroom to sell Kare Metal furniture. This design association continued until 1966, after which Sadi Öziş closed down the firms and went to France for some time (Öziş 2013). Since there was no furniture industry in Turkey in the 1950s, it is also difficult to discuss techniques such as welding and industrial materials used in the manufacturing of furniture at that time. Furniture was generally made from wood rather than metal, and materials were difficult to source. Due to limited resources, Kare Metal’s furniture designers used materials like water pipes instead of metal sections, electric cables and sieves – in short, whatever they had at their disposal (Illustrations 2.4 and 2.5). In the 45

Design and Modernity in Asia

Figure 2.4  Kare metal chairs; Flying Rumi (‘2’) (left), Circle (‘3’) (middle) and Geometric (‘1’) (right). Courtesy DATUMM Archive (www.datumm.org).

Figure 2.5  Kare metal coffee tables; Youmou (‘1’) (left) and Utch (‘3’) (right). Courtesy DATUMM Archive (www.datumm.org). 1960s, designers discovered square metal sections and combined them with fishing nets in armchairs. Their aim was to make art by using metal and showcasing their creativity through sculptural furniture (Karakuş 2011; Öziş 2013). Their works reflected the styles, movements, arts and life of the time. Stylistically, the furniture can readily be compared to that of other contemporary modernist designers, such as Ray and Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi. Indeed, it perhaps even surpasses their work in terms of creativity, craftsmanship and ingenuity as these Turkish sculptors were working with limited industrial materials and production capacities, using artisanal techniques and found materials. Kare Metal’s work remained unknown internationally, except for a short article written with the help of the network they established while in Paris, in the Parisian journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, edited by André Bloc. This caught the attention of Florence Knoll, who invited Kare Metal to move to mass production. Since Öziş was now working alone, he was unable to respond to this significant offer (Öziş 2013). Having 46

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survived in various interiors for years as iconic pieces of furniture, Kare Metal products were revived when Neptün Öziş signed an agreement with Walter Knoll in 2012 to add Kare Metal furniture to Knoll’s product range, thereby introducing Kare Metal to an international audience in 2016, many years after its peak success in Turkey. Kare Metal furniture came to be considered art pieces since the founders were artists. The agreement with Knoll enabled the Turkish artists to finally gain international recognition, with Knoll likely to keep the furniture and their stories alive for future generations.

Conclusion We have examined the unique contexts and practices of mid-twentieth-century modern furniture design and interiors in Turkey and how these contributed towards the continuous modernization project and process of the new Republic of Turkey. The dominant ideology of modernity at that time required an embracing of the West. This adoption was defined and realized by the State between the years 1923 and 1950, while the mission was later handed over to designers in Turkey. However, as Gaonkar states (2001), this process did not take place through mere imitation, but through various means of questioning the present and defining and redefining modernism individually and collectively, resulting in an alternative modernity. Here, we have discussed the commonalities and peculiarities of modern living in Turkey through reading the micro-history of Kare Metal, which represents the momentary and transient character of modernity that breaks with tradition. The firm’s products lacked the formal characteristics of a national Turkish style. Instead, its designs were rooted in the process of constructing a new national identity, breaking with traditional furniture designs that was defined by wood, classic joinery techniques, and with figurative features such as floral and animal motifs. Moreover, Turkish home interiors that were traditionally formed of built-in furniture began welcoming abstract, geometric furniture made of metal and glass, as well as experimenting with regional or local elements in terms of detailing techniques and materials, such as fishnets, hazelnut sieves and a variety of Turkish woods. The furniture was originally based on sculpture as the designers had only turned to furniture design as they could not sell enough sculptures to support their workshop. Having recognized the need for modern furniture in the new Turkish lifestyle, they began using metalworking techniques they had developed to create sculptures, to produce artistically designed, yet functional, furniture. The Kare Metal name was symbolic and potent, signifying that this was a unique company producing modern, original, geometric and, most distinctively, metal furniture. Although the resulting products may be similar, the production process was different from industrialized counterparts, such as Walter Knoll’s, in their unique handcrafting, enabling them to create free forms while experimenting with the new material, metal. Feeding off Turkish culture and due to lack of resources at the time, they also experimented with other local materials, such as fishnets or hazelnut sieves, inventing design details and connections not seen in Turkish furniture, previously. They also drew 47

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on Turkish culture and named furniture Rumi (a whirling dervish or Anatolian holy person) and Burgaz (word for an ancient town). Consequently, modern furniture that appeared in the public domain in the 1930s started to emerge in the domestic sphere in Turkey during the 1950s (Cooke 2001; Karakuş 2011). Our aim was to study Kare Metal’s role in the realization of Turkey’s own modernity through the use of its own material culture found in daily life. In that sense, the firm represented Turkish meanings and values unique to its age. A revisiting of design history and close analysis of furniture, not as objects with formal stylistic qualities, but as embodiments of cultural histories, have brought into focus changes in physical and social environments and the story of Turkish modern design. Gaonkar argues the pluralization of the experiences of modernity seeing Western discourse on modernity as ‘not one’ but ‘many’, and ‘a shifting, hybrid configuration of different, often conflicting theories, norms, historical experiences’ (2001: 15–17). Parallel to Gaonkar’s discussion on creative adaptation where the present is questioned and a new identity is afforded, the case of Kare Metal, with its variety of unique local qualities, exemplifies how this alternative form of modern furniture design found its place in the story of national Turkish modern design, and subsequently in a global modern design history.

Notes 1

Moderno (1952–66) was a modern furniture company founded by Fazıl Aysu and Baki Aktar in İstanbul. The advances in architecture in the 1950s in Turkey led to a need in furniture production. After visiting Europe, the designers understood the need to develop furniture design and production in Turkey. Their store window became an exhibition for modern furniture changing every week. Moderno supported young artists and designers. İlhan Koman, Şadi Çalık and Sadi Öziş who later founded Kare Metal were among designers for which iron production tools, material and space was provided to design and produce modern furniture (Küçükerman 2013).

2

DATUMM: Documenting and Archiving Turkish Modern Furniture (datumm.org), Scientific research project: A1308001/BAP-A024-K funded by İzmir University of Economics, İzmir, Turkey.

3

The architectural agenda of Turkey in the 1940s emphasized both regional and national components to form a unique Turkish architectural identity.

4

The Ministry of Press and Tourism, the State Pension Fund of the Turkish Republic and the Tourism Bank of the Turkish Republic were founded during the 1950s, when most investment in touristic accommodation was made by the public sector. The Tourism Bank of Turkey, which financed tourism activities, took over important responsibilities in tourism across the country, establishing tourism awareness and creating a trained workforce through hotels built in various places in Turkey (Çavuş and Öncüer 2009; Savaşır and Tuna Ultav 2016: 94).

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­C HAPTER 3 A DISTANCED MODERNISM: IDENTITY, UNITY AND AUTHORITARIANISM IN ACADEMIC CAMPUS RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE IN EAST PAKISTAN 1958–71

Ziad Qureshi

Introduction: A distanced modernism The story of erstwhile East Pakistan prior to the emergence of independent Bangladesh offers a unique lens on South Asian Modernism, and traces a trajectory of nascent nation-building and national identity via architecture. While International Style Modernism transcended regional and political boundaries, the material culture of modernism also took on adapted identities of specificity that both responded to and shaped life in Asia. In East Pakistan, concurrent socio-political developments situate design in a context of change. Specifically, the examination of academic facilities over time in the territory offers a perspective into the application of modern institutional architecture for an agenda of regional identity and unity – in the face of external centralized authoritarian control. After the institution of Martial Law in East Pakistan in 1958, the subsequent construction of multiple university campuses in the territory coincided with a desire by the East Pakistani authorities to both establish cohesive identity and visibly demonstrate a progressive ideal towards education and development through a language of modern architecture. As architectural symbols and activist centres of a growing movement for autonomy, recognition and elevation, the new modern university campuses of East Pakistan would become major figures in the struggle for independence, finally gained on 16 December 1971, and particularly centred upon student residential life. Focused on the spaces of students and faculty, this chapter comparatively examines the intentions, construction and resultants of exemplars of East Pakistani academic campus architecture, illustrating how modern ideals were ensconced in their desire for regional identity that evolved over time as sociopolitical change transformed the territory. The investigation will centre on an analysis of the residential halls of the University of Dacca (1921), the University of Rajshahi (1953) and the Jahangirnagar Muslim University (1970) that were constructed during this period. Demonstrated via these designs, the

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research illustrates how modernism, despite its international aegis and prominent status in West Pakistani architecture 1,600 kilometres away, was able to realize a uniqueness and specificity relative to the sociopolitical realities of East Pakistan.

Modern architecture: The establishment of agendas and identity Within the broader context of modernism, the dual exploration of both shared agendas and independent identities remained a constituent component of its development. Within the sociopolitical discourse on identity in widely diverse South Asia, the definitions of ‘region’ and ‘nation’ are differentiated, with national identity maintaining a broader aegis that generally supersedes the regional, but with regional identities holding closer and more individualized presence to the self. While the national is tied to the nation itself, regional identity is defined by specific cultural, geographic, landscape, cultural and linguistic ties. In architecture, despite the transcendence of International Style Modernism over regional and political boundaries, and the establishment of unified principles of design under the philosophies of the Bauhaus, Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) and other relevant organizations, the material culture of modernism also took on specific adapted identities that both responded to and shaped life in Asia and elsewhere. This motivation to establish agency and identity developed and accelerated particularly in the post-1945 period that coincided with the newly achieved independence of former colonies around the world. The relationship of the construction of identity and modernism has been a prominent discourse in understanding its evolution over time. Initial regional distinctions and dichotomies especially came to prominence when architecture was challenged by climatic and environmental variegation. Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew’s Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone (1956) was informed by their work in West Africa and especially their designs in Chandigarh, the new capital of the independent Indian Punjab master-planned by Le Corbusier. Their discussion offered an innovative perspective on environmentally adapted and moderated modernism to respond to climate specificity. A form of Regional Modernism and their ideas were propagated at the Architectural Association with climate as the first ‘region’ for design consideration. Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa pioneered the deployment of the idea of Tropical Modernism to generate environmentally, culturally and materially sensitive spaces that emphasized the hybridization of tradition and modernity together. The eventual emergence of Critical Regionalism from postmodernism proposed by Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Peter Frampton as a counter to the universality of the International Style completed the trajectory of the criticism of modernism to enable local approaches to the establishment of identity. Recently, multiple theorists and critics have addressed identity as it relates to the act of construction, both metaphorical and literal. This includes sociologist Anthony Smith, who writes in his seminally influential book The Cultural Foundations of Nations: Hierarchy, 54

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Covenant, and Republic (2008) that national identity can be established beyond the ethnic definition and can be constructed via shared history and common experience. These shared histories and experiences can be actively constructed, and the medium of architecture plays a prominent role in this cultural creation. Peter Rowe at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design applied this discourse to an understanding of modern architecture and urbanism in his book East Asia Modern: Shaping the Contemporary City (2005). The book Constructing Identity in Contemporary Architecture: Case Studies from the South (2009), edited by Peter Herrle and Stephanus Schmitz, posits that global uniformity has been met with resistance by elites who attempt to counterbalance the loss of identity with an active restoration of what they think has been lost. Finally, Duanfang Lu thoughtfully analyses individual paths towards distinct ideas of modernity/ modernization in her edited book Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development, and Identity (2010). Focused on non-Western contexts during the expansion period of the Cold War, the book examines how architecture and social development joined with technology and identity construction. These themes of establishing agendas and identities situate the analysis of modernism in Asia, and specifically in East Pakistan and the construction of its national consciousness via architecture, urbanism and design.

Authoritarianism and autonomy in Pakistan The political, social and governmental context of the tumultuous historical period under analysis in East Pakistan is of distinct relevance to understanding the shaping of regional identity, precipitating the establishment of independent Bangladesh in 1971. This regional identity and unity emerged over time in resistance against external centralized authoritarian control over the politics, economics and culture of the erstwhile nation. Following independence from Great Britain that was achieved on 14 and 15 August 1947, respectively, the Indian Subcontinent was partitioned into the new nations of Pakistan and India along religious definitions under the Two-nation theory. The culturally rich provinces of Bengal and Punjab, comprising historically intertwined Hindu and Muslim communities, were sub-partitioned and divided among the two formerly undivided countries. Bengal itself was partitioned into two wings, with West Bengal and the city of Calcutta in India and the province of East Bengal and the city of Dacca in Pakistan. This partitioning led to the creation of two discrete majority-Muslim components of Pakistan, separated on opposite ends of the Subcontinent by the vastness of 1,600 kilometres of Indian territory. This geographic distance would amplify the already deep difficulties of administering the newly independent democratic nation. Notable in the history of East Pakistan is a record of relative neglect and disinvestment from the political power centres in West Pakistan, despite East Pakistan’s Bengali dominance demographically in terms of majority of total population as well as its lucrative export-driven economy centred upon jute and tea. This neglect is evidenced in the solitary post-Partition visit to East Pakistan by the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who arrived in Dacca on 19  March 1948 for this one and only time. He 55

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attended the Convocation of the University of Dacca in Curzon Hall, where he delivered a controversial speech in response to a general strike for language inclusivity, mere months before he died that September. Language equality was a primary driver for disillusion in the province of East Bengal, with Urdu positioned as the sole official language in Pakistan in 1948 despite Bengali being the majority language of not only East Bengal but by overall population in the entirety of the total country. The language protests would become the primary precursor to the establishment of Bengali nationalism, the subsequent creation of greater autonomy for East Bengal in Pakistan and eventually the struggle for the full independence of Bangladesh. Central to the language equality movement, and typical of the role that academies played in the national struggle, was leadership via Bengali students. On 21  February 1952, students from the University of Dacca led a demonstration demanding equal rights for the Bengali language in Pakistan, resulting in a police action that led to multiple student deaths. This significant event enabled by student activation became the catalyst for the establishment of the Bengali Language Movement, with language itself being a primary component of national consciousness and identity. Building upon the language equality issue, increasing tensions between East Bengal and the other provinces of Pakistan in the west, dominated by Pakistani Punjab, were exacerbated by broader economic, political and social inequalities in the distribution of development and capital (Bass 2013: 21). Following the establishment of direct rule in East Bengal by the Central Pakistani Government in 1953, a policy of consolidation, control and centralization was pursued with limited concessions to rising protests against discrimination and inequality. Responsive to this lack of parity, the establishment of the University of Rajshahi as the second University in East Bengal directly resulted from Bengali student protests. In the western wing, the University of Peshawar and the University of Sindh had been constructed, with no parallel investment in East Bengal, resulting in the rising student demands for equal development, leading to Rajshahi’s creation. This echoes the student- and academic-led initiatives agitating for greater investment and development in East Bengal, and the general struggle for developmental resource allocation parity between West and East. Universities were central and essential figures in this history. In 1954, due to rising social unrest and turmoil as well as administrative difficulties, the Central Government under the leadership of Bengali Prime Minister M. A. Bogra established the controversial One Unit initiative. This initiative merged the four western Pakistani provinces of Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the Northwest Frontier Province into a single entity: West Pakistan. The remaining solitary eastern province of East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan. The federal capital was moved from Karachi to Rawalpindi (in preparation for the opening of nearby Islamabad), and reciprocally the Federal Legislature was moved to Dacca. This reorganization extended beyond labels and was intended to diminish the differences between the two wings of the nation, and between the various ethnic groups of Pakistan. The elimination of regional autonomy and increase in overall centralized authority, while originally intended to quell complaints against inequality, actually increased calls for its revocation and rising tensions eventually led to military intervention in the national government. In this context of political and 56

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social turmoil, the results of a hard-fought struggle for equality amid growing national consciousness were finally manifest when the Central Government recognized Bengali as an official language of Pakistan in 1956. The atmosphere of declining social and political conditions was exacerbated by the ineffectiveness of the Central Government to manage the One Unit plan, and the democratic weakness embodied by four different Prime Ministers in a two-year period. In 1958, the governance crisis came to a head with the first open military coup in Pakistan’s history, installing Pakistan Army Commander-in-Chief General Ayub Khan as the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA). The erosion of democratic norms and the centralization of power under the administration of Ayub Khan had a large impact on East Pakistan, where calls for greater autonomy continued with the abrogation of the Pakistan National Assembly that had been comprised of a large majority Bengali elected officials. The period of unstable Pakistani social and political history that was begun by the 1958 institution of Martial Law was marked by increasingly authoritarian control. This growing desire for control from the Central Government was paralleled and opposed by increasing aims in East Pakistan for autonomy and development, positioned by the desire for cohesive identity and the demonstration of progressive ideals towards education and social elevation. As architectural symbols of this growing movement for autonomy and elevation, the construction of new university campuses in East Pakistan during this period coincided with the nascent formation of regional identity and unity. The universities would serve as activist centres, driven by academic life and student movements, and responsive to broader sociopolitical conditions and concerns. In a victory for this purpose, in 1958 groundbreaking began on the new campus of Rajshahi University, with construction completed in 1964. Just one year later, in 1965, Pakistan went to war with India, with the subsequent ceasefire in September leading to student riots over perceived concessions to India. In 1965, amid declining economic growth, a State of Emergency was established nationwide, increasing actions by the government against dissent in an attempted lockdown on opposition and the media. Sentiment grew in East Pakistan that the future was with greater autonomy, centred on the protection of regional interests. In February of 1966, at the Lahore conference of the Awami League (AL) and other opposition political parties, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman posited his six-point Plan, in direct contrast to President Ayub Khan’s initiatives for stronger national integration. This plan intended to empower East Pakistan and called for a weak federation. Mujib sought full regional control of political, economic and fiscal matters moving demands beyond autonomy recognition alone. Although in 1968 the State of Emergency was lifted nationwide, this was followed by an unprecedented scale of unrest and political uncertainty culminating in the 1968 movement and the paralysis of the economy due to labour strikes. After a decade in power, Ayub Khan was driven to resign, handing over power to General Yahya Khan in 1969. Faced with a massive revolt in East Pakistan and the possibility of anarchy in the West, Yahya Khan reinstated Martial Law. In November 1970, one of the deadliest 57

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natural disasters of the twentieth century struck East Pakistan. Cyclone Bhola devastated the territory with 250,000 people killed and a deeply neglectful response by the Central Government to the East Pakistani plight escalating tensions even further. A month later, the general election of 1970 was conducted under the backdrop of national chaos, with the Dacca-based Awami League as the victorious leading party, positioning Mujib to be the next prime minister of united Pakistan. This political development was never to be realized, as in March 1971 talks between Yahya Khan, Mujib and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto broke down. Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party which was the main winning party in West Pakistan, with the collusion of West Pakistani elites, refused to envision a Pakistani government led by the Awami League, an East Pakistani and majority-Bengali political party. By the end of March, fanned by the anaemic aid response to the Bhola disaster by the government and the denial of the democratic accession of Mujib, the Bangladesh Liberation War had begun. Operation Searchlight was initiated by the Pakistani military leadership on 25 March 1971 in an attempt to stem the rise of civil resistance by Bengalis targeting students, nationalists and intelligentsia including university faculty for liquidation. The prominent role of university campuses as ongoing epicentres for agitation against the West Pakistani intervention is evidenced in their contributions to the liberation struggle history. Evidence of its importance, among the primary objectives of the Operation Searchlight military plan was to ‘subdue’ the University of Dacca (Salik 1977: 231). Coordinated attacks on its residential halls, both for students and for faculty, were among the very first moves of the operation, taking place on the first day of action. The subsequent massacres at the University of Dacca killed hundreds of students and faculty on the campus, with Jagannath Residence Hall for minority groups including Hindus and Jahrul Hoque Hall, where the non-cooperation student movement was based, especially slated as primary targets of Searchlight. This was a major milestone in the Liberation War, which eventually led to the formal entrance of India in support of independent Bangladesh and the victory of Indian and Bengali forces over Pakistan two weeks later, establishing the independent nation of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971.

Strategies of centralization: Neutralization, consolidation and organization Defined by modern urban planning strategies, the design of the new federal capital of Pakistan at Islamabad is representative of the contemporaneous context and intentions of the nation’s leadership. Relative to the discourse of constructed identity, this master planning endeavour situates the comparison of Central Government intentions for identity neutralization, the consolidation of power and spatial organization in contrast to emerging regional architectural directions in East Pakistan. Beginning in 1958, a commission was established to investigate potential sites for a new capital, with the intention to vacate the existing capital in Karachi on the Arabian Sea. Primary in the planning process was the defensibility of the location, in contrast to the relative vulnerability of Karachi. By selecting a location outside the defined territories of the 58

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constituent five provinces of Pakistan that would fall under federal administration, an intention to neutralize traditional provincial hierarchies was posited. The neutralization effort was not limited to power and geography alone, but also encompassed identity itself. Strategically positioned to be relatively accessible by all the Western Pakistani provinces, Islamabad was a tabula rasa in the modern sense that would enable the country to transcend the legacy of colonialism and provincialism, with an urban fresh start (Nadiem 2006: 18) Islamabad echoed contemporaneous capital planning developments occurring globally, including Brasilia in Brazil (1960), Gaborone in Botswana (1965) and Abuja in Nigeria (1976), as well as the new regional capital of Indian Punjab at Chandigarh (1960), among others. This approach to urban design allowed for identity itself to be culturally and spatially constructed, rather than inherited. Chandigarh in India, designed by influential modern architect Le Corbusier, is illustrative of the primary principles of modernist planning that were propagated via Le Corbusier’s leadership of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), the main organization for the unified agenda of International Style Modernism. At the CIAM’s fourth conference in 1933, held on-board the ocean liner SS Patris II on a voyage from Marseille to Athens, the translation of modern ideas to urban planning was solidified. This resulted in the later establishment of the tenants of the Athens Charter, dedicated to functional planning defined by organized zones, which would be deeply influential in the formation of cities around the world. Order, health, densification, separation, control and regulation were prioritized, centred upon a unified framework of continuous space and the grid. The masterplan of Islamabad was completed in 1960 by the design firm of Greek architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis. With the initial phases of the new city complete by 1966, the federal capital was subsequently transferred from interim Rawalpindi to Islamabad. Doxiadis’s design is fundamentally modern, defined by Athens Charter principles and the overlay of the grid. It separates urban functions into specific zones, and provided for gradual phased expansion over time, with the intention to ensure rationally planned future growth and consistency. The impact of the Athens Charter design agenda, combined with the broader aspirations of the Pakistani government authorities to centralize its power, illustrates how modern planning offered appropriate strategies for neutralization, consolidation and organization in West Pakistan and the comparative context for the emergence of East Pakistani identity.

Strategies of autonomy: Land, time, unity, identity Approaches to fostering strategies of autonomy are evident in the architectural and urban developments in East Pakistan after the declaration of Martial Law in 1958. Embodied by the work of pioneering and definitive Bengali modernist architect Muzharul Islam (1923–2012), autonomy was facilitated by deploying designs that harnessed modern ideals to advance a desire for regional identity. This growing emergence of national selfawareness and regional specificity was advanced by Islam in his commitment to context, 59

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place, region and environment as they translated to identity. Professor Shamsul Wares, Dean of the School of Science and Technology at the State University of Bangladesh, distils Muzharul Islam’s design philosophy as a concern for land and time. Land includes the sociocultural and political human aspiration, geology and seasons, while time involves technological, environmentally sustainable and progressive ideals (Tini – The Architect 2000). These values combine to enable a consciousness and awareness of the potential for architecture to offer unity and identity. His first public architectural work, Muzharul Islam’s design for the East Pakistan College of Arts and Crafts on the University of Dacca campus (1955), is representative of his contributions to the emerging architectural discourse in East Pakistan. In this early project, Islam establishes and demonstrates his design priorities that impact the human experience. Incorporating concerns for specificity in climatic sensitivity, material selection, contemporary technology, human culture, economy and functional efficiency, Islam echoes the primary tenets of modernism while balancing these varied needs in an architecture that is uniquely defined. The design incorporates a variety of contextually specific responses, including shading and screen devices that filter both sun and views. These devices based upon the vernacular jali lattice are illustrative of the cohesive strategies he employs, encompassing technological, cultural and functional purposes in a cohesive and contextually specific deployment. The human experience is carefully considered, with the thoughtful inclusion of interior and exterior volumes, linked together by a central courtyard. Primary in the design are various spaces for exchange and contemplation, connected with nature, that encourage an environment of openness, flexibility, expression and exchange. Developed throughout his career, these essential values would consistently remain, uniquely contributing to the new and modern architectural language of emergent East Pakistan. Affected by his time studying at Yale University under Paul Rudolph in the United States, Islam was a primary conduit for the invited participation of many international experts during a period of major development in Pakistan. In the 1960s the development efforts by the Government of Pakistan with foreign aid organizations such as the Ford Foundation, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank created a context for extensive new architecture, facilitating the participation by many modern architects and planners. This included Paul Rudolph, Stanley Tigerman, Constantinos Doxiadis, Daniel Dunham, John Zemanek and Louis Kahn. Illustrative of his ideas and among one of his very few publications, Muzharul Islam’s Introducing Bangladesh – A Case for Regionalism emerged very late in his career. In this co-authored article, he advocates that localism, pride in being, a relevance to people and culture, sensitivity to climate and other regional manifestations of architecture are the key (Islam, Kazi and Haque 1985). For Islam, Modern architecture did not conflict with regional aspirations and context in climate and place, as well as efficiency in economy, becomes the ideal path to relevant design. For East Pakistan, sociopolitical autonomy was manifest in an architectural strategy of region. Regional identity and unity were a means to counter centralized authoritarianism, where spaces are designed for exchange, collaboration, conversation and relative inclusivity. During this period the social 60

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conditions of modern design are filtered and maximized, with devotion to its tenets of social relevance, environmental and human wellbeing thorough nature, progress and development including educational elevation, and zeitgeist innovation.

University unity: Autonomy in East Pakistani campus design The modern university campuses of East Pakistan would become major figures in the struggle for independence, inseparable from the Liberation movement. As architectural symbols as well as activist centres of a growing desire for autonomy, recognition and elevation the new university campuses of East Pakistan directly contributed to the atmosphere and facilitation of student- and faculty-led culture. This connection of academic facilities and sociopolitical organization and instigation has long had a presence in Bengali history. The campus of the University of Dacca has been described not only as the epicentre of the entire freedom movement but also as a literal open-air museum of the Liberation War of 1971. From the shade of the Bot Tola banyan tree, where student leadership met and announced the declarations for their initiatives, to the historic Madhur Canteen as a social meeting place for student organizing and protest, the University of Dacca campus was essential as a centre of activity and culture. Student life was organized around the hall structure, with student representation, cultural and literary events, sporting competitions and political unions taking place under this social and physical structure. The halls were decentralized, both politically and spatially at the urban scale, allowing diverse opportunities and discourses to flourish. The design of new, modern residential facilities for the East Pakistani campuses were reflective of this role and status of universities as social and student centres, typically containing architectural programs that included social functions beyond just essential academic needs, such as student meeting spaces, cafeterias and exterior congregational areas. The important and contentious status of university residence halls, vis-à-vis the larger socio-political framework, is embodied by the establishment of Jinnah Hall on the campus of the University of Dacca in 1966. The linearity of the 15,100 square-metre layout was designed in the framework of modernity, with a lightweight massing and thin profile intended to maximize the access to daylight and fresh air while minimizing solar exposure and heat gain. Materially it employed concrete and masonry primarily, with an internal structure that liberated the façade for fenestration and aperture. The six-storey programme included 500 rooms for student living, with a total capacity of around 1,000 residents. Programmatically the design included additional social and infrastructural spaces including a reading room, library, auditorium, sports hall, guest area and multiple canteens. Designed under the careful watch of the central authorities, the programme also included a mosque, offering a feature intended to maximize the religiously oriented shared national unity of Islam. Building upon this intentionality of the Central Government’s ambitions to solidify national unity, the building was notably inaugurated on 14 August 1966, the anniversary of Pakistan’s independence in 1947, and named after Mohammad Ali 61

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Jinnah, the Founder of Pakistan himself. The imposition of shared symbols of national unity via nomenclature and architectural design by the Central Government was met with student resistance. Upon gaining independence in 1971, Bangladeshi University authorities renamed Jinnah Hall to Master Da Surja Sen Hall in 1972, after the Bengali Indian revolutionary who was active in the Indian independence struggle against British colonial rule, in a final act of defiance against this original authoritarian naming and dedication. Jinnah Hall is a demonstration of the relevance of university residence hall architecture to the story of Bangladesh and modernism, via the control of identity and spatial politicization. The campus and residential halls were epicentres of agitation and student-led symbols of resistance, and their prominent status would lead to their martyrdom. The University of Dacca was a primary objective of the intervention by the Pakistani military for pacification during Operation Searchlight. Hundreds of students and faculty were annihilated in mass executions that occurred on the campus and within its halls. In a singular example of one of many such atrocities, on 25 March 1971 a massacre occurred in Jagannath Hall, the designated residential hall for Hindu and other minority students, where dozens were killed. The prominence of student-led activism affected national educational development policies, voicing a means of shaping how education and social elevation were linked. The modern ideals of development, progress and innovation were put forth as prioritized aspects of emerging identity with education being an essential ingredient of this milieu. In the western wing of Pakistan, the University of Peshawar (1950) and the University of Sindh (1951) were constructed, with no parallel in the East and typical of the imbalanced allocation of national resources. Driven by growing student demands for development parity between the West and East, the new University of Rajshahi was established for East Pakistan. This was only the second University in East Pakistan, after the University of Dacca. Located in Rajshahi District in northwestern East Pakistan near the eponymous city, the University of Rajshahi was constituted via the Rajshahi University Act 1953 (East Bengal Act XV). Under the aegis of increased international development aid during this period in Pakistan, the initial campus masterplan was created by American architect John E. Zemanek under service for the US Department of State (US Foreign Operations Administration). The 298.2-hectare masterplan was later finalized by Daniel C. Dunham, with construction begun in 1958 and completed in 1964. Relevant to issues of identity, this campus plan embodies a multitude of modern-oriented design tenets that were well understood by the foreign architects, but which also sensitively coordinate with adaptations to local and regional conditions. The design entails significant preservation of the natural features of the site, including a careful respect of environmental context and the strategic saving of a large mango grove as representations of regional affinities. At the macro-scale, the majority of campus buildings are structured on piloti columns, to mitigate against flooding from the nearby river Padma located to the south. The presence of nature is prominent on the campus, with a wide variety of regional adaptations to provide spaces that are both functional and symbolic in their embrace of the landscape. 62

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This immersion in nature as a condition of the campus design includes a classical formal Mughal botanical garden, with a mosque in its central location. The 17 residential halls of the University of Rajshahi comprise multiple four-storey buildings, each with a 300-student capacity. Their overall massing is linear and thin, to maximize the benefits of solar orientation and cross-ventilation while minimizing heat gain. Pragmatically, daylighting and natural ventilation are prioritized with environmental expense and impact minimized. This linearity of the residence halls allows for social spaces such as meeting rooms, dining rooms and prayer spaces to be located at intersections, end points and circulation cores. The broader programme includes auditoria, dining halls, common rooms, prayer halls, the Proctor’s office and staff accommodations in addition to the requisite student rooms. The presence of this expanded programme embodies the desire to position academic campus architecture at the forefront of questions of the modern ideals of development, progress and identity. Social spaces are ample, with the expectation that the living experience of the residential halls would be humanized, progressive, individual, social and connected to nature (Rafique ‘Daniel Dunham: Pioneer of Modern Architecture in Bangladesh.’: 42). This intention for the architecture to embody modern principles and intentions, and demonstrate an advancement in regionally specific solutions, is further evident in the incorporation of technology into the design. The overall structure was high-tech for its era and unprecedented in this region of East Pakistan, translating the latest in reinforced concrete design to a new context. In its modern design, the residence halls of the University of Rajshahi provide structural innovation that ensures minimized massing, allowing open spaces and ample fenestration. The façade articulation reduces the monolithic quality of the buildings, contributing to an experience that is moderated and human scale. Harnessing technological capabilities, each hall features common balconies with horizontal louvers that further create privacy and connection between residential and social spaces. Notably, the unprecedented technological advancement of the architecture, inherently modern in its intention of progress and development, required the advanced concrete, electrical and plumbing equipment to all be imported (Rafique. ‘Contribution of Daniel C. Dunham to the Profession and Practice in Bangladesh’: 5). Finally, adding to the spirit of growth towards the future, the masterplan provided for designated expansion over time with site pre-allocations and a high-density vision to preserve the natural and spatial openness. Defined by the conditions of modernity the human living experience at the new University of Rajshahi campus was one of exposure to the environmental, social and technological ideals of its context. Like elsewhere in East Pakistan, its corridors, canteens and open spaces became locations of student organization and agitation. The architectural encouragement of expectations of continuing development and regional awareness in campuses like the University of Rajshahi amplified the demands of Bengali students. As epicentres of action and activation, with a growing sense of self-awareness and identity, the universities and their residential communities became targets for destruction. Representative of this prominence, importance and the strategic imperative, the University of Rajshahi was occupied as a Pakistani military headquarters during the 63

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1971 conflict, and Iqbal Day was celebrated and attended by Pakistani military officers there on 21  April 1971 (Bose 2011: 109). In the aftermath of the Liberation War, the second largest mass grave in Bangladesh from the conflict is located on the University of Rajshahi campus, comprising students, faculty and others. Its contemporary residential halls are now named after prominent Bangladeshi historical and cultural figures, including the largest Shahid Habibur Rahman Hall, honouring a mathematics professor martyred in 1971.

Residential resistance: Consolidation in Pakistani campus design The modern ideas of architect Muzharul Islam regarding context, region and identity became manifest in his design of the campus plan of Jahangirnagar Muslim University, located approximately 30 kilometres northwest of Dacca. Continuing the response to demands for increased educational infrastructure and development, the construction of Jahangirnagar Muslim University began in 1966, and was completed in 1970 just one year before the Liberation War, illustrating one of the last examples of pre-independence modern architecture. Its temporal position offers a unique insight into the development of identity and unity near the height of the intensification of centralized authoritarianism, as well as a further evolved application of Islam’s architectural ideas. For the architect, region remains paramount in his concept of modernity, as well as the progressive social, technological and natural perspectives he defines relative to education as elevation. Few elements from the general masterplan were actually built, but constructed buildings include the Mir Mosharrof Hossain Hall student dormitory with its distinctive triangular courts, the staff living spaces of the Readers’ Quarters and the Class IV staff housing – with Class IV being the lowest level in the staff hierarchy. The focus on human and social experience begins with massing and scale as it affects student residential life. The immersion in social and natural spaces as defining characteristics for Muzharul Islam not only of modern design but also of nascent Bengali regional identity is evident in his intentions, at multiple scales of experience. The general campus was originally designed by Islam with an intention to create smaller sub-massings and reduce the overall scale, allowing autonomy and agency as relevant design priorities to the socio-political moment. The design of the masterplan, as well as the individual residential halls, utilizes this relatively low-density massing which blends with the surrounding landscape, positioning siting and topography as key. The sensitivity, engagement and preservation of natural features of the site include a major body of water and many trees. Islam posits nature as a space of thought, contemplation and action – thus potentially enabling the campus to be a space of subsequent agitation. In the original masterplan layout, the student residential halls are located on one end of campus, with the staff residences on the other, and the interstitial space is infilled with administrative and academic programmes. This separation of administration, students and staff allows for discrete zones of campus life to develop, with overall cohesion maintained but autonomy enabled. The trans-scalar integration of these primary ideas, from the masterplan to the 64

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individual spaces, results in thoughtful approaches to individual student rooms as well as the residential hall as a whole. At the overall level, materials are uniform in design, with the same masonry employed for both Vice Chancellor’s house and the lowest-level (Class IV) staff accommodations. Islam’s egalitarian material strategies are representative of the radical socialist, and even controversial Marxist, ideas that were being disseminated among the Bengali intellectual circles of the time. The design of the Mir Mosharrof Hossain Hall student residential building itself is demonstrative of how social concerns are deeply manifest in Muzharul Islam’s notions of modernity. Extensive circulatory and shared spaces are exposed to the natural environment including open breezeways and balconies, which also serve to protect from the sun and mitigate the heat gain. The building façades comprise brise-soleil, punched openings and recessed balconies that connect to both nature and the social dimensions of daily life inside. The spirit of community and commonality is also evident in the design of extensive shared social spaces and an expanded building programme including meeting rooms, auditoria and canteens. Echoing Walter Gropius’s original design for the circulatory spaces at the Bauhaus campus in Dessau, the corridors of Mir Mosharrof Hossain Hall encouraged casual and coincidental interactions between students and faculty in the everyday life of the academy (‘Jahangirnagar University’). The connections, discussions and actions of the buildings’ occupants were encouraged by the architecture and contributed further to the role of the university campus and the residential hall as epicentres of emerging identity, agitation and action. Following independence, and reflective of the socialist and secular preclusions of the Bengali intelligentsia, the religious connotation was removed and the institution was renamed simply Jahangirnagar University in 1971.

Inspired continuities: Bangladeshi design The design of modern academic facilities in East Pakistan prior to the emergence of independent Bangladesh offers a unique perspective into the application of modernism for an agenda of regional identity and unity, against centralized and authoritarian control. By examining the broader design history, the underlying philosophies and relevant examples such as the campuses and residential halls of the University of Dacca, the University of Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar Muslim University, this investigation has provided an analytical framework for comparative understanding of the creation of the identity of a unified and independent nation. The specificity of a Bengali architecture that is deeply linked to context, culture and nature, while simultaneously deploying the seminal social, technological and environmental tenets of modernity, demonstrates how modern design adapted and particularly responded to the socio-political conditions of its time. The desire for regional identity was pursued uniquely in East Pakistan via architecture, enabling cohesiveness, unity and autonomy despite increasingly fragmented and authoritarian conditions, and the attempted imposition of centralized control from a distance of 1,600 kilometres 65

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away. The modern architecture of East Pakistan reflects a connected and contextual relationship with concurrent developments in the socio-political spheres, and shows how architecture was not just respondent to concerns but actively facilitated and agitated for change, providing spaces for motivation and organization that enabled students and faculty of the university campuses to take a leading role in the independence struggle. Newly constructed campus residential architecture, after the declaration of Martial Law in 1958, affected the daily lives of its students and faculty audience, continuing the legacy of Bengali universities as epicentres of discussion, contemplation and activation. This legacy continues with a lasting impact on contemporary generations. The constructed regional and distinctive identity of Modern Bangladeshi design has an ongoing critical role in the future. Many scholars have discoursed on the continuing relevancy of modern Bangladeshi design to the nation, including Rafique Islam, Shamsul Wares, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury and many others. Their valuable scholarship nurtures ongoing and critical assessment of the legacy of this formative period of South Asian history. In the architectural realm, the lasting legacy of the regional, social and natural ideas of Muzharul Islam, and this period of Bengali modernism on contemporary Bangladeshi design is evident in the work of Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury+URBANA, who has directly acknowledged this debt in discussions of his work (Chowdhury 2003). This includes the firms’ internationally recognized examples such as Chittagong University’s Bait ur Rouf Mosque (2007) and the Gaibandha Friendship Centre, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Aga Khan Architecture Award in 2010. The example of East Pakistan, as is the case with many underexplored geographies, offers a valuable and unique perspective towards understanding modern living in South Asia.

References Ashraf, K. K. (1989), ‘Muzharul Islam, Kahn, and Architecture in Bangladesh’, Mimar: Architecture in Development, 21: 55–63. http://thedailynewnation.com/news/94167/ muzharul-islam-kahn-and-architecture-in-bangladesh.html. Bass, G. J. (2013), The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Bose, S. (2011), Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, New York: Columbia University Press. Chowdhury, K. M. (2003), ‘Harmony of Vision’, The Daily Star, 4 (55): 20 July. http://archive. thedailystar.net/2003/07/20/d30720870187.htm Chandan, S. K. (2018), ‘A Campus Forever Linked to Liberation’, The Daily Star, 23 March 2018. https://www.thedailystar.net/star-weekend/spotlight/campus-forever-linkedliberation-1551910 (accessed 22 December 2019). Christiansen, S. M. R. (2012), ‘Beyond Liberation: Students, Space, and the State in East Pakistan/Bangladesh 1952–1990’, Doctoral Dissertation. Northeastern University, Boston USA. https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:1473/fulltext.pdf Daechsel, M. (2015), Islamabad and the Politics of International Development in Pakistan, London: Cambridge University Press. Islam, M., K. A. Kazi and S. Haque (1985), ‘Introducing Bangladesh – A Case Study for Regionalism’, in Robert Powell (ed), Regionalism in Architecture. Singapore: Concept 66

A Distanced Modernism Media/Aga Khan Award for Architecture. https://archnet.org/authorities/499/ publications/3591#item_association ­Islam, R. and M. F. Dunham (2012), Contribution of Daniel C. Dunham to the profession and practice of architecture in Bangladesh. Paper presented at the International Seminar on Architecture: Education, Practice and Research, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2–4 February 2012: 89–99. Islam, R. and M. F. Dunham (2013), Daniel Dunham: Pioneer of Modern Architecture in Bangladesh, Scottsdale: The Book Patch, 38–43. ‘Jahangirnagar University’, Muzharul Islam Foundation, Department of Architecture, University of Asia Pacific. http://www.muzharulislam.com/projects/jahangirnagar_university.html (accessed 20 September 2020). Karim, F. S. (2013), Dreaming of a Nation: Architecture and Cold War Modernization in Postcolonial Pakistan 1947–1971, Chicago: Graham Foundation. Khan, N. R. (2015), ‘Master Architect, Muzharul Islam Revisited.’ contextbd.com. http:// contextbd.com/master-architect-muzharul-islam-revisited-n-r-khan/ (accessed 8 April 2017). Khan, N. R. (2010), Muzharul Islam: Selected Drawings, Dhaka: Sthapattya O. Nirman. Yale Center for British Art, Folio AN119. Mallick, F. H. and Z. F. Ali (2012), Muzharul Islam, Architect, Dhaka: BRAC University Press. Nadiem, I. H. (2006), Islamabad: Pothohar, Taxila Valley, and beyond – History and Monuments, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications. Nirjhar, E. K. (2000), Tini (The Architect). Documentary Film. Institute of Architects of Bangladesh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bREwTDExMY Raghavan, S. (2013), 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Salik, B. S. Witness to Surrender, London: Oxford University Press, 1977, 231. Wares, S. (2014), ‘Remembering Architect-guru Muzharul Islam’, The Daily Star, 3 January 2014. http://www.thedailystar.net/remembering-architect-guru-muzharul-islam-4990 (accessed 8 April 2017). Yanni, C. (2019), Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Zemanek, J. (1968), Audio Interview on 27 March 1968. Burdette Keeland Architectural Papers, University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. https://digital.lib.uh.edu/ collection/2002_005/item/493 Zemanek, J. (2013), Audio Interview on 20 May 2013. Building Houston Collection; William R. Jenkins Architecture, Design, and Art Library, 2013. https://av.lib.uh.edu/media_objects/ cz30ps70h

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­PART II MODERNITY AND PUBLIC SPACES

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­C HAPTER 4 LEISURE FOR THE MODERN CITIZEN: SWIMMING IN SINGAPORE

Jesse O’Neill and Nadia Wagner

The second half of the twentieth century saw the instrumentalization of swimming in Singapore, turning public pools into ideological landscapes. Connections between Singapore’s sporting history and its politics are well established (Horton 2001, 2002, 2013; Aplin 2016), and Ying-Kit Chan (2016) shows how swimming in particular was moulded to political discourse. He argues that politics took greater control of the events of swimming (i.e. the practice of swimming, sports carnivals, etc.) after Singapore’s independence in 1965, using these to strengthen a local political rhetoric of pragmatism and national survival. Chan’s work is valuable, and the aim of this chapter is to make two key extensions to it. First, the chapter highlights an important continuity in the political utilization of swimming between Singapore’s colonial and national governments. Second, it refocuses the object of swimming from the event to its visual representation as a part of Singapore’s designed environment. Our starting point is to consider the public pool for what it offered at face value: an experience and environment of leisure. It was for the purpose of leisure and spectacle that colonial Singapore’s premier swimming organization – the Singapore Swimming Club – erected its new streamlined modern clubhouse in the 1930s (Gagan 1968). At the time, as Bruce Peter (2007) shows, there was an acknowledged connection in British culture between popular styles of modernism and the recreational landscapes that provided brief escape from everyday life. Such associations were brought to Singapore, and the Singapore Swimming Club used an image of modern architecture to transform itself into a pleasure ground for the upper strata of Singapore’s British society. By the end of the decade, the Chinese Swimming Club had followed suit. At the time, sporting clubs were largely divided along racial lines (McNeill, Sproule and Horton 2003: 40), but swimming was also determined by class. Whether it was the British or Chinese club, swimming was something for Singapore’s administrative and economic elites to enjoy in private clubhouses offering the leisure of modern architectural spectacle. This changed during the Second World War, after Singapore was integrated into an expanding Japanese Empire in 1942, where all facets of life, including sport, were subjected to increasingly centralized control. The Japanese administration established the Syonan Sports Association to broaden involvement, promote public fitness and instil

Design and Modernity in Asia

imperial values (Lim and Horton 2011: 906–7). This introduced Singaporeans to ideas of wider sporting access, while also making play and leisure an overt political tool. Despite its image of leisure, sport has long been instrumentalized, and this is a prominent feature of modernity. Sociologist Chris Rojek (1993) shows how bourgeois and capitalist modern culture distinguished leisure from other areas of life, particularly work, but he argues that such distinctions were always fictional. In Singapore, the British administrative class may have swum in an environment that appeared modern and leisurely, but as Horton (2013: 1222) argues, they conceived of swimming through the Victorian philosophy of ‘muscular Christianity’, connecting physical health to morality and using athleticism to promote ideas of duty and hard work. Swimming was for leisure, but leisure found purpose only in relation to work and industrious character. In Japanese Singapore, sport served to develop military capacity and Japanese values. Rojek shows that recreation was a significant, but not a distinct, facet of modern life, and his concept of modern leisure provides an important framing for our approach to swimming. It provides a means to bridge the design of leisure environments with other areas of modernization in Singapore, in particular housing and economic reform. This chapter traces a history of swimming in Singapore from the 1940s to the 1970s, not as a discrete category of leisure, but as the political utilization of a leisure landscape. It draws on a collection of primary sources: newspapers, oral history and political speeches, as well as the designed architecture and promotion of swimming. These types of materials show how swimming was shaped as a discursive object – how it was discussed in official and public capacities, and how it was visualized within the public realm.

Post-war leisure complexes A British Military Administration took control of Singapore at the end of the Second World War, just as the period of decolonization was beginning. Their initial aims were to restore civic systems and rehabilitate civilians and soldiers, and as part of this, as Aplin (2016: 1367) describes, they proceeded to organize sporting competitions for Asian communities. This essentially continued the principle of open involvement begun under Japanese governance. In many ways, this connects to sport’s longer history in colonial management. As Bale and Cronin (2003: 5) explain, sports were used within colonizing processes to effect social control, structuring bodily practices to ultimately shape outlook and identity. Sport was used to train Britain’s colonial agents (the civil servants and officers returning to Singapore after the war) as well as to condition its colonized subjects (the Malay, Chinese and Indian communities that formed Singapore’s resident population). The Military Administration saw potential for mass organized sport to relieve tensions and return the island to its pre-war imperial order; that is, it was an avenue towards restoring power. This idea continued with Singapore’s civic government when it resumed in 1946 and took charge of the processes of reconstruction. 72

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For the remainder of the 1940s, no formal swimming sites were open to the public. The old private clubs regained control of their properties and seemed set to return to the old order of elite swimming (Gagan 1968: [viii]). The city’s only municipal pools, a sea enclosure at Katong Park and a public bath at Mount Emily (both built in the 1930s), were in disrepair and lacked the resources to be rebuilt. And yet the government did recognize the increasing popularity of organized sports, slowly pursuing their own centralized sporting culture (Aplin 2016). They revived the YMCA and the Singapore Amateur Swimming Association in 1947, and established the Singapore Olympic and Sports Council (Aplin 2016: 1369–70). Swimming and other sports were starting to be considered as part of the wider project of civic reconstruction. Restoration of the municipal pools progressed slowly, until they finally reopened at the end of 1949 (Malaya Tribune 1949a; Straits Times 1949). Both were immediately popular, and by this time even the private Chinese Swimming Club was suffering from overcrowding as ever more people tried to find space in the water (Singapore Free Press 1949). There was growing demand for swimming, and calls for the city to build more pools (Malaya Tribune 1949b; Straits Times 1950). The first new public pool was the Yan Kit Swimming Complex, which opened in 1953 in the urban residential area of Chinatown (Singapore Free Press 1952). Excitement for swimming was showing no decline, and Yan Kit’s crowds swelled beyond manageable limits. Restrictions were introduced as swimmers had their leisure time rotated in twohour shifts, and floodlights were installed to extend opening hours (Chan 2016: 21; Singapore Free Press 1954b). Yan Kit’s success drove plans for even greater swimming access, and by the end of the decade two more pools at River Valley and Farrer Park were completed. Whereas the older private swimming clubs were based on the prestige of limited membership and positioned outside the city centre, the 1950s pools were public and positioned within the city, this accessibility emphasizing their prominent role in civic reform. Swimming was deliberately being made a popular urban experience, securing public pools their position as an amenity of post-war urban lifestyles. Yan Kit Swimming Complex, which replaced an old filtration tank left unusable since the war, was designed by City Architect W. I. Watson in a straightforward streamlined style that echoed the elite pre-war architecture of the Singapore Swimming Club. It featured a low, flat semi-circular entrance building that opened to arched diving platforms (Illustration 4.1) and four pools that lined the top of a hill, overlooking the rooftops of houses below. Its organic and kinetic concrete form spoke of all modern interests in newness and dynamic movement, echoing the athletic body in motion. But most important was how the style of this new building contrasted its residential location, which was otherwise filled with terraced homes built in nineteenth-century colonial fashions that merged traditional European and Chinese styles. For Rojek (1993: 4–5), the modernist construction of leisure was predicated on the misleading idea that it involved an escape from the world of the mundane. Leisure architecture was often used to mark spaces of recreation as distinct and spectacular, reinforcing ideas on the separation between leisure and the everyday. Yan Kit’s streamlined architecture demonstrates this modern principle in the way it juxtaposed the residential city around it. Its entrance 73

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Figure 4.1  Yan Kit Swimming Complex, with early-century Chinatown shophouses in the background, 1965. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection. Courtesy National Archives of Singapore, Singapore. marked the transition into a new kind of environment, and thus an escape from the urban conditions of post-war Singapore. At the far end of the pool, an ‘under-the-sea’ mural of cartoonish sea life helped emphasize the way swimmers were being transported into a new playful and watery environment. As Rojek (1993: 212–3) argues, leisure sites provide a means to experience the contrasts of modernity, or the oscillations between the old and the new. Viewed this way, Yan Kit helped position Singapore within a postwar international project of modernization, conveying reconstruction in the way it made 74

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public leisure out of broken infrastructure, demonstrating the rapidity of change in its contrasting of modern style with the old city. During the 1950s, swimming pools were thus established as a viable public convenience, distinct from the older club cultures and drawing on principles of sports centralization. Singapore’s municipal government had shown its interest in providing new recreational environments, advancing public leisure in a city that faced continuing hardship, and using this to convey an image of urban progress. Although there were only five public pools by 1960, they were hugely popular, and combined with the government’s ideas of sporting inclusivity they helped establish a platform from which public swimming could expand.

Swimming in the public housing estate The locations of post-war pools meant that they mostly catered to urban residents. People outside the city seem to have more commonly enjoyed informal swimming in the sea, lakes and rivers, which we know primarily from numerous reports of drownings in such places (Singapore Free Press 1954a; Singapore Standard 1954a, b; Straits Times 1955, 1956a, b, 1960, 1966). The safety of rural swimming became so problematic that in 1954 the Royal Life Saving Society implored people to only swim in formal pools so that lifeguards could be present, essentially warning against swimming outside the city (Singapore Free Press 1954c). Over time, though, these informal sites diminished as urban expansion brought new pools to old rural areas. In the 1950s, Singapore’s chief urban development body was the Singapore Improvement Trust. It was established in 1927, and after the war, it worked to address urban squalor, poor health and an acute housing shortage (Teh 1975: 4–5). As a colonial institution that applied British planning techniques, the Improvement Trust adopted ideas from the UK parliament’s New Towns Act of 1946, which allowed rural areas to be developed as new urban centres (Home 1997: 69). Planning for a new town in Singapore’s west was soon underway. This was the Princess Margaret Estate, which began construction in 1954, though as work advanced major changes occurred in the political systems that managed it. In the 1950s, the UK progressed plans to decolonize Southeast Asia by integrating Singapore, Malaya and North Borneo into the new state of Malaysia. In 1959, Singapore was granted self-government, leading to a restructuring of its civil service. In 1960 the Singapore Improvement Trust was replaced by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), which was eventually given sweeping new powers and financial support (Turnbull 2009: 317). The HDB continued the Improvement Trust’s existing projects, expanding the new town model to such an extent that within decades it became the dominant expression of the city’s residential environment (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 116). The Princess Margaret Estate’s construction continued under the new name of Queenstown, and by its eventual completion in 1970 a tumultuous period of political independence had taken place. Home rule turned into political independence in 1963 through Singapore’s merger with 75

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Figure 4.2  Queenstown Sports Complex, published in: HDB Annual Report, 1970. Courtesy Housing & Development Board, Singapore. Malaysia, and in 1965, due to the complications of regional politics, Singapore left the merger to establish itself as an independent nation. By the late 1960s, through the HDB’s ongoing work, the housing crisis that initially prompted new town development had abated, and the State shifted its residential focus to improving quality of life. Along the way, it was decided that this life should include a healthy amount of swimming. At Queenstown, the HDB’s first public pool opened in 1970 (Illustration 4.2). It was a small functionalist building with changing rooms and a kiosk. These were adorned by the lone styling effect of a sheet-metal roof folded into diagonal eaves and supported by structural pillars sitting external to its elevation, resulting in a collaged composition of shapes and materials. Around the building were three pools for diving, lap swimming and athletic training. As with other HDB works from the time, the building deals in the modernist language of built structure. The language of mid-century welfare architecture permeated the estate, and the graceful movement of Yan Kit’s post-war moderne was replaced at Queenstown by the glamour of brutality. On opening, Queenstown’s pool met with public fanfare. For residents, the excavation of an old cemetery to make way for a pool, particularly an impressive Olympic-sized one, was especially exciting (Lim 2007). High demand for swimming time continued, and Queenstown operated on rotations of one hour and forty-five minutes to address 76

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overcrowding. Visitors recalled a pool so full with bodies that actually swimming a lap was near impossible (Lau and Low 2017: 52). Introducing a swimming pool to Queenstown was a way of bringing enjoyment to a style of town planning originally conceived as rudimentary ‘emergency’ housing. It was an important gesture in demonstrating the HDB’s transition from a model of utilitarian construction to an attempt at creating recreation, pleasure and community (Lim 1970). Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (1969) discussed this new concern for public housing when he explained that new estates would be ‘better designed to live in and to look at … with amenities that make for gracious living – parks, swimming pools, playing fields, recreational centres, shopping arcades’. Integrating such new amenities within the housing estate reformulated relationships between environments of work, living and leisure. Compared to Yan Kit, Queenstown pool bore no striking difference from the residential architecture around it. Modern architecture was no longer being used to distinguish leisure from other areas of life, and thus visually erased the supposed separation between such categories. This pool was not an escape, nor a striking vision of progress; it was an integral continuation of the modern home, acting to confirm modernization in other aspects of daily life. The HDB were transforming living conditions in Singapore, and from this there was no escape.

Swimming for the nation Beyond leisure and urban reconstruction, it was also thought that swimming might serve a role in racial politics. Since the founding of its British colony in 1819, Singapore had attracted a large immigrant population of various Malay, Chinese, Indian and European communities. For most of its colonial history the social lives of these different ethnic and linguistic communities remained largely divided, but by the 1950s the government started taking an interest in softening communalist divisions in order to prevent potential conflict (cf Aljuneid 2009). By the end of the 1950s, organized physical education in state schools became one of the strategies to achieve this (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 33). Swimming in particular was identified as a popular activity that could run at inter-district school levels, bringing young people from different communities together through shared exercise (Saunders and Horton 2012: 1388–9). After 1965, Singapore’s national government found even greater urgency in improving social integration, particularly after the 1964 riot between Chinese and Malay residents (Turnbull 2009: 291). The State positioned itself as neutral in relation to major ethnic groups, taking a firm stand on ensuring ‘cultural democracy’ within a pluralistic society by promoting policies that were multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-linguistic (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 34–5). The HDB, for example, intended new towns to desegregate the population by relocating people from communalist towns and providing a new setting for different groups to live alongside each other (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 108). Arguably, the modernist architectural language of the HDB enhanced impressions that these were neutral territories, as 77

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the style was devoid of any loaded connotations of race or social hierarchy, instead symbolizing the collective pursuit of modernization (Chua 1991: 204). As common venues within these estates, public pools provided further sites for integration, a point the Minister for Education highlighted at the opening of Queenstown pool when he stated that ‘this complex [. . .] belongs to all of us’ (Lim 1970). New housing estates and their public amenities were used in the construction of national unity across multiple lines of division. In the late 1960s, Singapore’s government aimed to invent a single national identity for the new country, where citizens would identify first as Singaporean, distancing themselves from any allegiances to cultural homelands (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 29). This set the country down a path of cultural and economic modernization based on the paternalistic development strategies of its former colonial system. It established a ‘cultural logic’, as Wee (2007: 59) calls it, ‘a historical narrative based on the very imperative of being modern itself ’. Modernization was carefully managed, and involved a combined reorganization of the nation’s economy, social values, civic discourses and built environment (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 4). Within such a programme of change, any ordinary lifestyle activity could be infused with the drastic urgency of modernization, and the rhetoric of national crisis. This is how swimming and public pools came to encapsulate political objectives in the 1960s and 1970s. As Prime Minister Lee said in 1965, ‘sport is politics’ (Horton 2002: 254), which directly acknowledged that sports could shape relations between people. We can also extend this beyond sporting participation to include the architecture facilitating access to such a political activity as going for a swim, and see the building of these leisure complexes as a political act in itself. The visual integration of Queenstown pool with its surrounding estate therefore becomes all the more important, since it was not just an image of urban progress, but a visible breakdown in discourses that declared leisure as distinct from life and work – all of these areas were equally politicized in the construction of a new Singapore. Government departments were quick to extend on this agenda, with Singapore’s first sports campaign, focusing on swimming proficiency, being launched in 1967 by the Education Ministry (Straits Times 1967). The State used promotions, swimming lessons and the expansion of pool provision to encourage all citizens to spend time in the water. And the HDB eventually decided that pools and sports venues must be standard features of all future new towns (Straits Times 1972). Swimming complexes were to be given 1.5 hectares of land in all future estates (Wong and Yeh 1985: 103), ensuring the HDB’s continued involvement in the architecture of politicized leisure. In addition to the HDB, public pools were also pursued by the Jurong Town Corporation, another government body responsible for developing an industrial town in the west of the island (Straits Times 1968). The Jurong project shows how the politics of swimming extended to the economic functions of nation-building. In the 1950s, a series of reports cast doubt on the future strength of Singapore’s economy, recommending increased industrialization (Cheng 1979: 85–7). The economy relied too heavily on trade, and with increasing labour strikes, high post-war unemployment and a booming 78

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population, the city developed plans to expand manufacturing as a means to diversify the economy and provide jobs. After independence, as Singapore lost access to the Malaysian common market, this project seemed ever more urgent, since economic instability would impact Singapore’s viability as a nation (Kong and Yeoh 2003: 30). The government expanded investment schemes to establish an export-oriented manufacturing sector (Huff 1987: 310–2). The Jurong industrial town was intended as a centre for this lowcost manufacturing, and began to develop in line with new town models, introducing workers’ housing and amenities to make Jurong a fully functioning and self-contained satellite town (Lee 1970). In 1970, just after Queenstown pool opened, so did the first pool in Jurong. A second Jurong pool was added in 1976 at Boon Lay Garden, and a third in 1978 at Pandan Gardens, providing the highest concentration of public swimming venues in any of Singapore’s newly developed areas. Jurong’s swimming surplus reflects the growth of the area, but is also a telling sign of the desired link between swimming and labour. Between 1960 and 1970, industrialization policies had doubled the value of manufacturing as a percentage of Singapore’s GDP, making it the second largest part of the economy; by 1970 more people were employed in manufacture and construction than in any other type of work (Cheng 1979: 96–7). The significance of manufacturing for Singapore’s economy meant that the government needed a continued supply of strong and healthy workers to grow the country’s productive capacity. Sport was seen as a way to secure this, but it would require sports like swimming to be framed with new values. Centralized sports planning in the 1950s saw individual athleticism as a means to pursue Olympic medals and international recognition, but by the late 1960s such ideas were increasingly discredited. In 1973, the prime minister outright dismissed the idea of local sports producing gold medallists as a pointless dream (Horton 2002: 251). The new way of thinking about sport drew focus away from elite athletes in order to emphasize how sport could improve people in ways that contributed to national goals, building social discipline in alignment with the State’s industrializing and modernizing ambitions. As Prime Minister Lee (1966) proposed to a group of Chinese swimmers, the purpose of their sport was to build up the ‘organization and strength and vitality to prevent our society from being destroyed’. It was swimming for national survival. Connecting the themes of national identity, sporting participation and expanded manufacturing is the concept of ‘ruggedness’, which was established as one of the key qualities of the new Singaporean. Chris Hudson (2013: 18) points to the term as a key part of the gendering of national discourses in independent Singapore, where male prowess dominated the survivalist language of the time. The term ‘rugged’ was vague enough, and could be mobilized to infer perseverance against hardship, courage and endurance in the sense of being a hardworking factory labourer, and selflessness in the collectivist sense of foregoing luxury for the benefit of society. The concept played to the government’s economic ambitions to expand manual production, as a rugged citizen would be a productive one. Swimming was no longer an activity for the elite athlete, but for everyone, because it would assist in creating this rugged Singaporean. As Horton (2002: 251) argues, sport in the 1970s was used to mould a strong and productive 79

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workforce and allow the new economy to flourish. Though now a different social, political and economic climate, it was a similar utilization of sport as a means of building good character as had been practised by British and Japanese colonial administrations. Incorporating swimming pools and other sports venues into the new housing estates helped establish personal fitness as part of everyday life and as an obligation to oneself, one’s country and fellow citizens. Through the 1970s the number of public pools more than doubled as new venues were built in suburban developments such as Toa Payoh, Katong, Geylang East and Henderson Road. But the relationship between sport, labour and national survival meant that these pools were more of an economic engine than a landscape of leisure, since going for a swim had been turned into a continuation of work and civic duty. This is why it made perfect sense to multiply the swimming complexes of Jurong, the symbolic centre of Singapore’s factory workforce. They were not recreational additions to the factory, but a logical extension of it, which made recreation a productive industrial exercise and further reduced cultural distinctions between living, labour and leisure.

Sport for all The involvement of swimming in national development necessitated its large-scale adoption, where swimming together might encourage socialization through repeated actions in a public arena. For this, the large public pool is the most logical venue, and here, the lone swimmer makes little sense. Mass involvement had been part of the Japanese and post-war British approaches to public sports, and it infused the early work of the Singapore Sports Council, which in 1973 began the Sport for All and Learn to Play programmes to foster wider athletic participation. After ten years of Learn to Play, over 30,000 people had taken part in official swimming lessons, far more than were involved in other organized classes in tennis and squash, something that the Sports Council attributed to the wide accessibility of public pools (Straits Times 1983). Though perhaps none of the Sports Council’s programmes were so clear in their collectivized vision as the mass participation events. The Mass Swim, for example, was designed to get as many people in the water together as possible. A 1979 poster for the event (Singapore Sports Council 1979) showed the ideal: eight identical figures in the same state of motion propelling themselves through the water.1 With struggle and endurance on their repeated faces they bring individual athleticism to Unitarian precision. The visual repetition of the swimmer in this poster encapsulated a national sporting ideology that had come to avoid the rhetoric of individual success in favour of group contributions to a national system that valued strength and perseverance. That poster encouraged thousands of far less precise swimmers to take part in the Mass Swim that year, where they struggled to keep afloat in public pools while not bumping into each other. And even though reality could not live up to the idealized image, events such as this did serve to identify the popularity of the preceding decade’s participation campaigns, while managing to display all those ‘rugged’ bodies the campaigns helped to create. 80

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In addition to demonstrating the popular adoption of a collectivized outlook to swimming, Mass Swim events also served another function for the built environment, continuing earlier uses of swimming as a symbol of urban progress. This was seen in the 1984 Mass Swim in the Singapore River (Straits Times 1984). Just several years earlier, the idea of swimming in this river would have been very unpleasant, as it was still a commercial waterway filled with boats and filth. But a cleaning of the river began in 1983 as part of continuing urban rejuvenation schemes. That by 1984 there were 400 people willing to dive in and make the 120-metre swim was a powerful symbolic marker of how far the cleaning had gone, showing what improvements had been made to the city’s environment. Similarly, that so many people would attend public pools and get into the water together attested to their attachment to national interests, as well as the developments of physical infrastructure that gave them access to athletic swimming. They convincingly demonstrated the extent to which the government’s aims for sport were progressing, and provided an image of an engaged and participatory national citizenship. In posters for the Mass Swim, large-scale sporting carnivals like the Pesta Sukan (Festival of Sport), and in the media coverage of these events, it was the image of bodies filling the water that provided the greatest sense of dynamism to Singapore’s modern pools. The buildings themselves otherwise tended towards the straightforward and utilitarian, sometimes allowing for small markers of leisure and entertainment like the angled roof line and candy-stripe metal umbrellas at Queenstown. Politically, much greater emphasis was placed on swimming bodies than on the swimming environment, as we find hinted in the architectural decoration of one of the HDB’s pools of the 1970s. Katong Swimming Complex opened in 1975 (Straits Times 1975), and it was one of the simplest architectural swimming sheds, but a rare use of decoration draws further

Figure 4.3  Tiling design at Katong Swimming Complex. Courtesy Nadia Wagner, 2018. 81

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attention to the image of the athletic body. A tiled wall by the children’s pool shows a figure (Illustration 4.3). From the diving board, he projects himself into the water; we see the depth of the water and figures in various swimming postures. In some respects, it looks like the sequencing of a body in motion taking a lap alongside the pool. But some of the awkwardly submerged figures create irregularities in the sequence. It is also possible to see the wall as representing multiple figures swimming together in a precursor to the Mass Swim, or view it through its simple form as a diagram of swimming technique and a visual companion to the Learn to Play scheme. In any case, the tiling draws attention to the fact that pools were made to be filled with bodies, and in this context, against the backdrop of Singapore’s cultural and economic modernization, it was specifically for athletic and ‘rugged’ bodies that incorporated political ambitions into their leisure time. Public pools had made space for public swimming, and the HDB and Jurong Town Corporation turned swimming into a part of the everyday urban landscape, but the value of swimming was its potential effects on the public and the individual bodies that performed at these sites.

Conclusion The decades following the Second World War saw Singapore’s public pools become part of a larger redevelopment scheme that sought to remake both the built environment and the citizen. Whether it was Yan Kit’s transformation of damaged infrastructure into an escapist leisure environment, or Queenstown turning a peripheral cemetery into an extension of residential reform, swimming pools were important markers of urban modernization. Pools offered new ways for people to use their leisure time, and showcased the State’s commitment to improving lifestyles. But access to these venues was loaded with expectations that were carried through political rhetoric and official sports promotions. Sporting involvement came to be framed as a national duty to produce a fit, resilient and integrated citizenship. These pools, therefore, were part of a wider transformation of urban life and public identity. From the late 1970s the survivalist rhetoric of Singapore’s early nationalist politics began to dissipate. The public language of housing crisis was replaced by top-down efforts to establish community identities in modernist estates, and a bottom-up desire for increasingly consumer-led lifestyles. From this time, public swimming pools slowly became more extravagant – returning to architectural entertainment. A new pool in itself was no longer a public luxury, so the architecture of swimming tried to allure and entertain. Thus, alongside the continued growth of public pools, private waterparks appeared, such as Big Splash in 1976, with its fountains and rainbow water slides. Physically, Big Splash did not accommodate the athletic kinds of swimming for national gain that the public swimming complexes endorsed; this was a new venue for the consumer-swimmer, looking more for enjoyment than personal improvement. Swimming in Singapore is a vehicle that helps us understand the adoption of a mid-century modernist ethos that desired the total transformation of both people and 82

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environment. It demonstrates post-war changes in the political ambitions of Singapore, but also the roles that the images and discourse of urban modernization played in national constructions in postcolonial Asia. For Singapore, swimming pools represented (and encouraged) a variation of the modernist values of bodily strength, fitness and leisure, which took their particular local form through Singapore’s emerging national politics. This formalized swimming culture was adopted from early-century British approaches to swimming, and because of Singapore’s uncertain political and economic situation in the mid-1960s, swimming was transformed through mass sporting programmes, resulting in its use as a tool for ‘social engineering’ (Horton 2013: 1222). It was to cultivate collective values of commitment, perseverance and physical strength, but also, we would add, to secure the experience of a modern urban lifestyle within the living conditions of Singapore. Swimming in this setting was used to create new modern citizens – athletic and productive figures – as well as to provide venues for the spectacle of these modern bodies and their collective display. As an outlet for directed recreation, a marker of urban development and a stylistic demonstration of the new, swimming was a thoroughly modern activity for Singapore, and one that was instrumental in the State’s construction of a modern polis.

Note 1 The 1979 Mass Swim poster can be viewed online in the poster collections of the National Archives of Singapore (www.nas.gov.sg). It can be accessed by searching ‘mass swim’ in the archive catalogue, or directly through the address: https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/ posters/record-details/305bfa64-115c-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad

References Aljunied, S. M. K. (2009), ‘Beyond the Rhetoric of Communalism: Violence and the Process of Reconciliation in 1950s Singapore’, in D. Heng and S. M. K. Aljuneid (eds), Reframing Singapore: Memory – Identity – Trans-regionalism, 11–17, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Aplin, N. (2016), ‘Sport in Singapore (1945–1948): From Rehabilitation to Olympic Status’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 33 (12): 1361–79. Bale, J. and Cronin, M. (2003), ‘Introduction: Sport and Postcolonialism’, in J. Bale and M. Cronin (eds), Sport and Postcolonialism, 1–13, Oxford: Berg. Chua, B. H. (1991), ‘Modernism and the Vernacular: Transformation of Public Spaces and Social Life in Singapore’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 8 (3): 203–21. Chan, Y. K. (2016), ‘“Sports Is Politics”: Swimming (and) Pools in Postcolonial Singapore’, Asian Studies Review, 40 (1): 17–35. Cheng, S. H. (1979), ‘Change in Singapore, 1945–1947’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 7 (1–2): 81–113. Gagan, J. A. (1968), The Singapore Swimming Club: An Illustrated History and Description of the Club, Singapore: Times Printers. Home, R. (1997), ‘Transformation of the Urban Landscape in British Malaya and Hong Kong’, Journal of Southeast Asian Architecture, 2 (1): 63–72.

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Design and Modernity in Asia Horton, P. (2001), ‘Complex Creolization: The Evolution of Modern Sport in Singapore’, in J. A. Mangan (ed), Europe, Sport World: Shaping Global Societies, London: Routledge. Horton, P. (2002), ‘Shackling the Lion: Sport and Modern Singapore’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 19 (2–3): 243–74. Horton, P. (2013), ‘Singapore: Imperialism and Post-imperialism, Athleticism, Sport, Nationhood and Nation-building’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 30 (11): 1221–34. Hudson, C. (2013), Beyond the Singapore Girl: Discourses of Gender and Nation in Singapore, Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Huff, W. G. (1987), ‘Patterns in the Economic Development of Singapore’, The Journal of Developing Areas, 21 (3): 305–26. Kong, L. and Yeoh, B. S. A. (2003), The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Construction of ‘Nation’, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Lau, J. and Low, L. (eds) (2017), Great Lengths, Singapore’s Swimming Pools, Singapore: Kucinta. Lee, K. Y. (1966), Speech by the Prime Minister at a Chinese Swimming Club dinner, 5 February. Ministry of Culture Collection, lky19660205, National Archives of Singapore. Lee, K. Y. (1969), Speech by the Prime Minister at the 9th anniversary of the Tiong Bahru Community Centre, 25 October. Ministry of Culture Collection, lky19691025, National Archives of Singapore. Lee K. Y. (1970), Speech by the Prime Minister at the opening of the Jurong Town Residents’ Association, 31 July. Ministry of Culture Collection, lky19700731, National Archives of Singapore. Lim, J. (2007), Interview with Heng Chee How, 3 April. Special Project, Oral History Centre, 003142/01, National Archives of Singapore. Lim, L. K. and Horton, P. (2011), ‘Sport in Syonan (Singapore) 1942–1945: Centralization and Nipponization’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 28 (6): 895–924. ­Lim, K. S. (1970), Speech by the Minister for Education at the First Age Group Asian Swimming Championship at Queenstown Pool, 15 August. Ministry of Culture Collection, PressR1900815d, National Archives of Singapore. Malaya Tribune (1949a), ‘Katong Park ‘Gets Its Face Lifted’, Malaya Tribune, 20 January: 8. Malaya Tribune (1949b), ‘Second Pool Asked’, Malaya Tribune, 1 October: 3. McNeill, M., Sproule, J. and Horton, P. (2003), ‘The Changing Face of Sport and Physical Education in Post-colonial Singapore’, Sport, Education and Society, 8 (1): 35–56. Peter, B. (2007), Form Follows Fun: Modernism and Modernity in British Pleasure Architecture 1925–1940, London: Routledge. Rojek, C. (1993), Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Saunders, J. and Horton, P. (2012), ‘Goodbye Renaissance Man: Globalized Concepts of Physical Education and Sport in Singapore’, Sport in Society, 15 (10): 1381–95. Singapore Free Press (1949), ‘Over-crowding at CSC Pool’, Singapore Free Press, 30 March: 11. Singapore Free Press (1952), ‘New Pool Opens on January 1’, Singapore Free Press, 22 December: 7. Singapore Free Press (1954a), ‘Holiday Swimmers Heed Shark Scare’, Singapore Free Press, 2 August: 1. Singapore Free Press (1954b), ‘Floodlight Swimming in S’pore Pool’, Singapore Free Press, 1 October: 14. Singapore Free Press (1954c), ‘Swim in Safe Pools Is Advice to S’pore’, Singapore Free Press, 5 October: 5. Singapore Sports Council (1979), ‘Mass Swim ’79 [poster], PO0930/98, National Archives of Singapore’. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/posters/record-details/305bfa64-115c11e3-83d5-0050568939ad (accessed 15 November 2019).

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Swimming in Singapore Singapore Standard (1954a), ‘Crowds See Boy Drown’, Singapore Standard, 6 January: 1. Singapore Standard (1954b), ‘Boy Drowned’, Singapore Standard, 19 August: 3. Straits Times (1949), ‘Mount Emily Pool Opens Again’, Straits Times, 2 December: 8. Straits Times (1950), ‘Colony Olympic Pool Suggested’, Straits Times, 3 October: 12. Straits Times (1955), ‘Swimmer Dies’, Straits Times, 9 June: 8. Straits Times (1956a), ‘Two Drown at Picnic’, Straits Times, 24 May: 1. Straits Times (1956b), ‘Boy Drowns in Sea’, Straits Times, 12 November: 1. Straits Times (1960), ‘Boy Drowns in Jurong Pond’, Straits Times, 22 August: 1. Straits Times (1966), ‘Three Boys Drown in River’, Straits Times, 9 October: 1. Straits Times (1967), ‘Swimming Drive Is Important: Ishak’, Straits Times, 7 July: 8. Straits Times (1968), ‘Garden Town to Have 100,000 People: Woon’, Straits Times, 14 December: 9. Straits Times (1972), ‘Swimming Pools and Sports Centres for all New Towns’, Straits Times, 1 September: 7. Straits Times (1975), ‘$3m Katong Swim Complex Opens Next Month’, Straits Times, 24 August: 7. Straits Times (1983), ‘More Take That First Big Splash’, Straits Times, 5 August, Section Two, 1, 5. Straits Times (1984), ‘Splashing Start to the First Singapore Swim’, Straits Times, 16 May: 44. Teh, C. W. (1975), ‘Public Housing in Singapore: An Overview’, in S. H.K. Yeh (ed), Public Housing in Singapore: A Multi-disciplinary Study, 1–21, Singapore: Singapore University Press. Turnbull, C. M. (2009), A History of Modern Singapore 1819–2005, Singapore: NUS Press. Wee, C. J. W-L. (2007), The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Wong, A. K. and S. H. K. Yeh (1985), Housing a Nation: 25 Years of Public Housing in Singapore, Singapore: Maruzen Asia.

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­C HAPTER 5 IMAGINING CULTURAL MODERNITY IN THE GLOBAL NATION: SOUTH KOREA AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART (MMCA)

Ilmin Nah

Introduction1 In recent decades, scholars of social and cultural studies have placed greater attention on the politics and power strategies of modern museums. Benedict Anderson’s postcolonial discussion of modern nation states as ‘imagined communities’ highlights, for example, how the modern museum is an ‘institution of power’ structured to shape visitors’ behaviours, beliefs and taste and, therefore, selects and disseminates cultural symbols and norms that create ‘national imaginary’ (1991 [1983]). This, in turn, inevitably creates a sentimental attachment to the national ethos. Anderson cited Southeast Asia as an example that furthers his argument, showing how historically implemented museums (and specifically in colonized states) were employed to (re)shape the legitimacy of its ancestry and thereby served as a powerful narrator of nationalism in postcolonial nation building. Carol Duncan and Tony Bennett also critically examined the topics of representation, identity and power in public art museums. For Duncan and Bennett, public art museums are not simply neutral spaces for beautiful artworks. Rather, they are ‘disciplinary institutions’ that function as hegemonic educative agencies in service of the white, male, urban middle-class identity, which is largely manifested by the museum’s ‘ritual scenarios’ that are inscribed in architecture, spatial arrangements and displays (Bennett 1988, 1995; Duncan 1991). Having the authority and ability to include and marginalize certain identities and voices embedded in artworks, such edifices are pivotal sites for the historical, political and aesthetic imagining of the nation. From this perspective, national art museums are perhaps more than any other modern cultural product – the most illuminating object of study to understand how national identities are constructed, especially in the postcolonial context of East Asia. Since Western museum culture was first introduced to the Korean peninsula in the late nineteenth century, museums have played an essential role in imagining Korea’s identity and culture. First introduced as a part of Western and Japanese imperialistic policies and activities, Korean museums evolved in a way that was inextricably linked

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to Korea’s turbulent changing historical contexts: Japanese colonization, national division, civil war and military dictatorships. In fact, such gyrations continued until the implementation of democracy in the 1990s. During this long period of turmoil and conflict, and while South Korea was transforming from one of the poorest countries in the world to an advanced information society, modernization and internationalization were the key foci of Korean museums, as they attempted to reflect Korea’s sociocultural advancement and achievements. In particular, it was in the 1980s – while accelerating economic growth and hosting the Seoul Olympics of 1988 – that South Korea’s social and cultural landscape transformed considerably. Thereafter, Korean museums underwent a dramatic renewal by adopting international museum standards.2 While this phenomenon has intensified in the current globalizing context, there is little international scholarship focused on Korean museums’ institutional history in relation to South Korea’s peculiar sociocultural, political and economic contexts, and within national identity rhetoric.3 Since its opening in 1969, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA) has undergone several renewals and even relocated multiple times before becoming established in its current locations in central Seoul and Gwacheon. The Seoul Museum (est. 2013) is dedicated to international contemporary art through active transnational exhibition programmes, while the museum in Gwacheon (est. 1986) organizes exhibitions on Korean contemporary art history. The Deoksu Palace Museum houses exhibitions from the modern art period until the pre-Korean War (from 1900 to 1950). By choosing a critical historical approach, this chapter questions why and how the MMCA launched its new museum project in Gwacheon (a southern suburb of Seoul) during the 1980s and what aspects of modernity were foundational to the project. By considering the multiple threads that have constituted Asian identities over the past century, this chapter reconsiders modernity in all its multiplicity and the diverse ways the modernity developed in different times, locations and diverse contexts. Questions pursued in this study are: What were the socio-historical contexts and characteristics within which the MMCA Gwacheon underwent its successive changes, specifically in terms of its architecture, collections and exhibition design? What were the discursive meanings of the new museum within the urban landscape of Seoul in the 1980s? How did the design and spatial construction of the new museum reflect South Koreans’ changing ideas about modern living at that time? How are we to understand the signification of such a transformation regarding MMCA’s localized contexts and the politics of the period?

The genealogy of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA) of South Korea National art museums grew in popularity in eighteenth-century Europe when the modern concept of the nation state was being consolidated. It was after the French Revolution in 1789 that the first national art museum was established in Paris. In 88

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August 1793, the Musée Central des Arts opened in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre Palace displaying the grand collections of the treasures and property confiscated (in the name of people) from France’s churches, its monarchy and émigrés. By transforming a formerly restricted royal palace into a public space accessible to all – and one in which the treasures of the ancien régime were displayed – the Louvre symbolized the emergence of a new type of modern institution that fully integrated the principle of freedom and equality. At a time when French society was undergoing profound changes in its socioeconomic structure and culture, the Louvre functioned as a space for new middle class aspirations of cultural modernity. In its gallery, elegantly dressed bourgeois gentlemen and ladies ‘rubbed shoulders with artists, working class and simple countryfolk, some proud to be there, other hoping to learn, and some content to be seen’ (McClellan 1994: 12; Abt 2011: 128). However, the museum’s rigorous chronological display was subdivided by the national school and, as such, participated in the larger regulating project of revolutionaries who aimed to transform the masses into a modern citizenry. By assigning democratic purposes to artworks that could ‘form the taste, warm the talent and stimulate artists’ of the nation state, the Louvre became a site of educating and civilizing both artists and patriotic citizens for France’s republican future (Poulot 2000: 29; Prior 2002). Unlike European museums, Korea’s early museums were built later, in the nineteenth century while Western European and Japanese powers were expanding into Korean society. Korea’s first public museum dates back to the Joseon Dynasty’s final years, which were characterized by the growing influence of Western hegemony and Japanese imperialism. After the Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty (the Eulsa treaty) of 1905, which deprived Joseon of its diplomatic sovereignty, in 1907, Emperor Gojong (the dynasty’s penultimate king) clandestinely dispatched three emissaries to the Second World Peace Conference in The Hague, Netherlands, to contest the encroaching Japanese threats on Korea’s territory. By creating symbolic links with international communities, Gojong tried to assert the monarch’s legitimacy to rule Korea as a sovereign state with its own unique history and culture. Korean representatives, however, failed to attend the conference because of Japanese and European obstruction, for they denied Korea the recognition and status as an independent nation. Gojong’s failed conference caused him to be dethroned by Japan; his son, Crown Prince Sunjong, thereby ascended the throne and became the Joseon dynasty’s last king. In 1908, the Japanese imperialists forced Prince Sunjong to move from Deoksu Palace to Changgyeong Palace, which separated him from his beloved family. Surrounded with pro-Japanese Korean politicians, the young king ordered the establishment of the Imperial Household Museum (along with a zoo and a botanic garden) in the Royal Palace. Influenced by museum culture in Europe, the Imperial Household Museum granted public access to royal treasures and is considered Korea’s first modern museum. However, its opening to the public in 1909 also symbolized a country already ravaged by foreign nations’ imperialistic power: it allowed Japan to dismantle strategically the monarchy’s political power by transforming the Royal Palace into a visual complex of leisure (Lee 1996; Lee 1998; Jeong 2003; Lee 2011). 89

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Followed by the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty in August 1910, the Imperial Household Museum was retrograded and renamed as the Prince Yi Family Household Museum (1911). Japan, as Korea’s colonial power, also built a new independent building for the Japanese General Government Museum in Gyeongbok Palace (1915). Additionally, the Japanese built another art exhibition hall in the Deoksu Palace, while destroying hundreds of the palace’s traditional buildings. To fill these exhibition complexes, Japan conducted numerous excavations of local archaeological sites. In 1938, artwork previously belonging to the Yi Royal Family Museum collections were transferred to the new Japanese art museum at Deoksu Palace, and this museum was then renamed as the Yi Royal Family Museum of Fine Art (also known as the Deoksu Palace Museum of Art). To create a sense of legitimacy for Japan’s occupation of Korea (and to promote Japan’s advanced cultural status), the museum’s East Gallery was filled with modern and sophisticated Japanese artwork, which intentionally contrasted with the West Gallery’s display of traditional art and craftwork from Joseon Dynasty. Collections from both the Museum of the Japanese General Government and the Yi Royal Family Museum of Fine Art thus helped contribute to future curations for the National Museum of Korea (NMK), which was established in 1945 after Korea’s independence (Lee 1986a; Lee 1996; Lee 1998; Jeong 2003; Jang 2009). After the Korean War and the country’s division, General Park Chung-hee became the president through a military coup in 1961, and he remained in power for more than fifteen years. Park’s military regime made great strides in reconstructing the national economy by implementing an extremely protectionist policy towards national agricultural and industrial sectors, while relying on low-cost manufacturing exports. Meanwhile, a social awareness of the importance of the arts and culture reappeared at this time, which had been neglected for nearly a century because of the country’s political and social upheaval. By the end of the 1960s, Park’s regime formulated a long-term development plan for promoting culture and the arts with an objective ‘to create a new national culture based on the indigenous national philosophy and the consciousness of identity’ (Kim 1976: 18). To legitimize and consolidate its power, from the 1970s on, Park’s government constantly referenced a shared national culture and an anti-communist sentiment; it even established laws for the Promotion of Culture and Arts (1972), which aimed to create an ‘ethnic national culture’ (minjok munhwa) (Jang 2020: 56–8). Amid this new context, Korea’s first national museum of art opened in 1969 in a small building of the Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul. However, when the museum first opened, it had no pre-arranged collections, which is naturally a necessity for any museum. The museum was founded in 1969, the same year that President Park’s third term was deemed legal without opposition, an act that was confirmed on 17 October 1969 by a highly supervised referendum with a constitutional amendment. Notably, the museum opened only one month after a presidential statement that announced the construction of a national museum of art under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture and Information (Presidential Decree no. 4030, August 1969). During its early years, the museum was used mainly as an event hall, either to be rented to local cultural associations or to host the National Salon organized by the Ministry of Culture and Information (which 90

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represented the official arts). Meanwhile, the museum administration had to manage numerous intrinsic problems: a lack of resources and qualified curators trained in art history and museology; the difficulty of gaining access to reliable information and international research under government censorship; and the incongruous material and technical conditions of the old architecture of the Royal Palace (Lee 1998; Choi 2002; Jeong 2003). This situation persisted even after the museum was relocated to the Deoksu Palace in 1973.

The rebirth of MMCA in Gwacheon Following Park Chung-hee’s assassination by Kim Jae-gyu in October 1979, General Chun Doo-hwan seized political power on 12 December 1979 in a military coup d’état. Contrary, however to such an unstable political context, the 1980s marked a turning point for the South Korean economy. As a result of the consecutive five-year development plans implemented in the Park administration’s early years, by the end of the 1970s, South Korea had transformed from a low-income country to a middle-income country with a total GDP of more than sixty billion dollars; South Korea even became one of Asia’s most developed nations. While South Korea was transforming into a rising international economic player, Chun’s administration launched a construction plan for a new national art museum in 1981. This initiative participated in state-led politics for the preparation of the 1986 Asian Games and, more importantly, of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Indeed, the Olympic Games are an important agent of transformation for all aspects of any nation; they bring international recognition and political prestige to the host country’s government (Guoqi 2011). South Korea was no exception as Seoul Asian Games and Olympic Games were decisive moments that catalysed South Korea’s modernization and internationalization. Furthermore, the 1980s were a decade of domestic political tumult in South Korea as the decade was marked by nationwide movements for democratization against Chun’s dictatorship. In this unstable political context, the government saw numerous benefits from hosting the Asian and Olympic Games in Seoul. It would not only allow South Korea to align with other Western, industrialized and developed countries, but also empower South Korea to establish new diplomatic relations with other foreign countries – notably the communist and emerging nations of South Asia and Africa, which would become future outlets for Korea’s manufactured products. These mega-events provided golden opportunities for South Korea to internally and externally promote its rich political, economic and sociocultural resources, which ultimately established its military regime’s political legitimacy (Kang 2010). Soon after Seoul was chosen for the Summer Olympic Games in September 1981, Chun’s administration launched a vast public campaign for restructuring national identity and culture, specifically aiming to ‘make the Seoul Olympic Games as the Seoul Olympic Games of culture’ (Chun 1983: 50–1). Between 1981 and 1987, the national budget for culture and the arts tripled from 14,284  million Korean won (KRW) to 91

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47,423  million KRW (Oh 1995: 29–74). Among the important presidential plans was transforming the general landscape of the capital by expelling anything that would disturb the city’s aesthetic, as if Seoul were the ‘face’ of the nation. Numerous forms of cultural infrastructure then emerged in Seoul’s public spaces and in different parts of the country: the Seoul Arts Center (1984), Korea’s first and foremost art complex with an opera house, art gallery and theatre; the transformation of the former Japanese General Government Building into the National Museum of Korea (1986); and the Center for Traditional Music in Seoul (1987). The government also reinforced numerous urban infrastructures (new sports stadia, airports, hotels, public transport, etc.) and grand boulevards running through the capital city; each was thoroughly cleaned and sanitized in each period leading up to the international events. Within such a state-led political frenzy for urban modernization and innovation, in 1981, the Ministry of Culture and Information conducted preliminary studies for constructing a new national art museum in Gwacheon, a small mountain village in the southern suburb of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province. The museum was designed to offer a ‘new cultural space’ for the capital’s growing urban middle class population, which had doubled in size over the previous few decades (Hong 2011: 85–102). On 4 December 1982, the steering committee entrusted the museum’s architectural design to Kim Taisoo, an architect who was living in the United States and had graduated from both the prestigious Seoul National University and Yale University. On 1  May 1984, with the main concept of a ‘museum with its sculpture garden’ in mind, the construction officially started with an objective to ‘create a world art museum by our own hands’ (MMCA 2016). Up until the 1970s, Seoul was the symbolic centre of the Korean middle class household, especially the downtown areas of the northern part (Myeong-dong, Jongno, Shinchon, etc.). However, during the 1970s, the capital’s population growth and urban problems intensified. Demand for housing remained high, and the city doubled its economic and administrative districts. With Seoul’s population dispersal policy of the mid-1970s, the development to the south of the Han River (Gangnam) district aimed to have 40 per cent of the population north of the Han River and 60 per cent to the south. This plan involved constructing mega-apartment complexes spanning an area of 8,534,900 square metres in today’s districts of Gangnam-gu, Seocho-gu and Gwacheon (Chosun 1970). Originally, Gwacheon was a settlement of approximately 170 households. Some say it was called the Makgye village because of its clear stream and fresh air, while others say it was named so because Choe Yoo Gyeong (1343–1413), a devoted servant during the Goryeo Dynasty, lived in the region in a humble tent. Locals also claim that the village – located along the basin of Cheonggye Mountain, where the museum stands today – was always filled with plentiful food to eat and clear waters and that it was known as a good place to live (MMCA 2016). By the end of the 1970s, Gwacheon rose to prominence after the government’s decision to move part of its complex south of the Han River. Starting in 1982, the second government complex in Gwacheon housed the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and other bureaucratic 92

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agencies. Eye-catching and up-to-date office buildings and apartment complexes sprang up in Gwacheon, which was then rapidly emerging as a typical middle class residential neighbourhood of Seoul. The construction of a new national art museum was part of that transformation: it was planned as part of a grand urban project that included the construction of Seoul Grand Park, a large entertainment complex that consisted of a zoo, an amusement park (a Korean version of Disneyland), the Seoul Horse Race Park and a national art museum. All such initiatives were planned prior to the Seoul Olympic Games and reflected the popularization of the metropolitan middle-classes’ new recreational preferences. At the end of the 1970s, and during the 1980s, many newspapers reported on the transformed Korean middle class lifestyle, focusing on the weekend leisure boom and the increasing number of car ownership. ‘My car (maika)’ and ‘my home (maihome)’ thus became common expressions that often appeared in newspapers and magazines during this period (Kyunghyang 1978; Kyunghyang 1983; Yang 2012: 439). Celebrating South Korea’s economic prosperity and improved living standards, these articles described how family togetherness around weekend leisure activities emerged as an important attribute of middle class lifestyle (Donga 1981; Donga 1985). Urban middle class families happily set out on weekend and holiday excursions by using their own car or public transportation, either exploring the city’s department stores and cultural infrastructure or enjoying the pleasures of nature within a suburban area. An article in the newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun covered how the increasing number of private cars and hours spent in leisure changed the Korean middle class notion of recreation. In the 1980s, private car ownership augmented the Korean middle class, which had become mobile and had begun camping at beaches, mountains and other leisure parks. The article’s image shows overcrowded parking lots at one recreational theme park on the outskirts of Seoul during the weekend and holiday seasons. They often finished the day by dining on Western-style cuisine, such as hamburgers, fries, cutlets and pizza, each served with a fork and knife at a modern restaurant. The growing ubiquity of cars, apartment complexes and department stores in high-rise buildings were viewed as quintessentially modern and such predominant urban images in the mass media were understood by most as Korean modernity and civilization creating a new era. In the same vein, frequenting exhibitions, museums and concert halls along with the participation in trendy sports (tennis, skating, golf, etc.) became important middle class cultural affectations. Notably, the art museum as a central bastion of high culture was considered a new kind of urban leisure that differentiated itself from more commercial options. Museum visiting was associated with more educational and enlightening processes.

Between modernity and tradition On 25 August 1986, just one month before the opening of the 1986 Asian Games and after two-and-a-half years of construction work by the Daewoo Construction Company, the new national art museum was finally revealed to the public. With a total budget of 93

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twenty billion Korean won (almost twenty-five million dollars), the main building was built within a massive natural park (33,000 square metres) and had a semi-oval form with six exhibition rooms spread over three floors. The inaugural ceremony was held by the presidential couple in front of hundreds of official guests who comprised many renowned politicians and cultural leaders. President Chun’s speech stressed that the museum’s opening aligns with the country’s movement forward to embrace globalization (segyehwa) (Daehan News, n°1608). The local media and newspapers covered this historical event and encouraged people to visit the new museum. As for the building’s design, the architectural plan embraces both modernity and tradition (Illustration 5.1). The building’s exterior, which was built with local granite stones, was inspired by Korean traditional fortresses and lighthouses. As architect Kim Tai-soo recalls, the design fully embraced Korean traditional architecture aesthetics, such as promoting geometry; practicality; frugality and harmony with nature, especially with the surrounding mountains in order to ‘listen to the voice of the earth’ (Chun and Woo 2016: 131–43): I wanted for the whole architecture not to dominate the surrounding mountains and the natural landscape. Respecting the harmony of nature is an important principle of my architectural design. Looking from far way, the height of the museum does

Figure 5.1  National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Gwacheon, South Korea. Courtesy Ilmin Nah. 94

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not exceed that of the background mountains. Seen from the outside, the entire building is completely immersed in nature, yet from the inside, the visitors can feel the possibilities and powers of the creativity of human beings. In other words, it was designed to find the ultimate harmony between what is artificial and what belongs to nature. It was not about showing everything, but revealing slowly and surely the inner beauty and truth. In addition, when you look at it from afar, the building stands out like a traditional fortress, but by observing it more closely, one can experience its contemporaneity. (Joongang Ilbo 1986) An article in the newspaper Donga Ilbo reported on the inauguration of the MMCA Gwacheon in 1986. It featured the museum exterior (architecture and sculpture garden) and interior (white-cube gallery space and circular hall) of the museum and an installation view of the inaugural exhibitions. The interior design was dominated by international modernist museum symbols, such as neutral lighting and white cube gallery spaces with empty walls (Illustration 5.2). Each piece of artwork was displayed and aligned autonomously so that it would be isolated from anything that would prevent a silent contemplation of the works; the collection was beautifully displayed in a modernist gallery designed to relish function and form and to avoid ornamentation. Another striking feature of the architectural design are the helical lamps located in the entrance hall, which extend more than 200 metres long and link the ground floors to the galleries above. This space showcases its collection under natural skylight, whose intensity shifts with the clouds and the seasons. The importance here is ensuring that everything displayed is clean, sophisticated and shining, evoking the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda (New York City). Such architecture perfectly conformed to the international modernist museum norms, thus reflecting MMCA’s desire to be regarded as a significant museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Brian O’Doherty (1986) argues that white cube gallery space is an alienating space in which visitors are invited to experience the elimination of time, location and identity and in which one can more easily interiorize specific normative narrations. Such transcendental principles alongside the tradition/modernity dichotomy of the museum’s architecture can be read as a symbolic narrator of South Korea’s entrance into a new era with a renewed identity of openness to an outside world and culture, yet proud of its own unique past. The new building’s inauguration also brought numerous changes in the museum’s organization. While Director Lee Kyung-sung, a prominent Korean art critic and historian, affirmed the museum’s social mission by (re)establishing the public library and its education department, the museum started to adopt an active international and contemporary collection policy (Lim 2005: 20–2). A simple overview of artists’ names that entered the collections during the 1980s reflects the strong emphasis placed on contemporary and international art (in particular Euro-American art): several pieces by renowned artists such as Joseph Beuys, Claude Viallat, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff and Marcus Lüpertz, were integrated into its collection. Meanwhile, Nam June Paik’s Dadaikseon (The More the Better, 1988), 95

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Figure 5.2  View of central hall that links the exhibition galleries of the Gwacheon museum. Courtesy Ilmin Nah. a gigantic in situ video installation composed of 1,003 television screens was displayed permanently in the circular entrance hall. In addition, Korean abstract and expressionist paintings and sculptures, as well as the conceptual pieces of Kim Gu-lim, whose art combined experimental cinema, performance, painting and photography were included in the collection (Lim 2005: 20–1). All pieces acquired during this period, thus, ranged from early-twentieth-century traditional paintings and sculptures to contemporary media installations utilizing high technology. In this way, the museum asserted the 96

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importance of both the dynamic nature of local artistic creativity and the international and contemporary dimension of art.

Reimagining South Korea through the International Contemporary Art Museum Seen in this light, the new MMCA’s physical and conceptual design follow EuroAmerican standards of the modernist museum. However, if one considers Korea’s tense local and political circumstances surrounding the museum’s opening, one must also broach the military government’s other motivation: concealing its human rights abuses and violations. South Korea’s democratic movement peaked in June 1987 in reaction to the death of a student, Park Chong-chol, under police torture. Paradoxically, within this sinister context, the central element of the Fifth Republic’s cultural policy focused on cultural democratization and internationalization in light of the upcoming Seoul Olympics. The government insisted that Korea reach beyond the simple ideal of industrialization of the 1970s and expanded its goal by promoting a global perspective in citizens’ everyday lives through a nationwide public education and awareness campaign. This ideological position was explicitly reflected in the narratives of inaugural exhibitions. In fact, four exhibitions welcomed visitors under the main theme of ‘Art of the World Today’. Seoul / Asia Contemporary Art 86 (1986.8.25.~12.15.) displayed pieces by artists from diverse Asian countries that participated in the Asian Games (e.g., Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, etc.); French Art of the 20th Century (1986.8.25.~10.31.) illustrated the principal French artistic movement through the 1950s with pieces by Picasso, Matisse and Soulages, Dubuffet; Frederick R. Weisman Art Collections (1986.8.25.~10.10.) presented important pieces from American pop artists, such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Jim Dane; and lastly, Korean Contemporary Art: Yesterday and Today (1986.8.25.~10.3.) represented the evolution of Korean art through the twentieth century by displaying over 700 pieces and covering more than eight decades of Korean art history. The selected pieces were presented as a ‘metaphor’ of Korea’s unhappy history and as an aesthetic embodiment of the Korean people’s suffering (Lee 1986b; Kee 2009: 23). The exhibition’s central narrative revealed how South Korea overcame its tragic past, which is marked by numerous wars and foreign invasions, and how the country reconciled its tradition with the demands of modernity. Organized in close collaboration with participating nations’ highest cultural authorities and featured meticulously selected artwork, these exhibitions were characterized by both internationalist and nationalist characters. By aligning Korean artwork with international masterpieces, the national character of art was widely emphasized. The museum’s photographic archives also provide a rare insight into people’s unprecedented excitement for gentrified cultural and recreational activities, as they waited in endless queues during the summer heat to enter the museum. The newspaper accounts from the 1980s depicted the MMCA as a ‘new cultural complex’ 97

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in nature where citizens could spend time throughout the weekend-family-going-out tradition (Maeil Business Newspaper 1986). At the time, visitors were invited to perceive the museum as a site of international contemporary artistic creation and energy; they were even urged to experience a sense of pride and belonging to a nation, playing an active role in the production and dissemination of major international artistic trends. Indeed, the entire project was intended not only to shape a certain idea of world art history but also for everyday people to imagine the anticipated and idealized role that South Korea would play in the future, featuring among the new cartography of the international artistic scene. Nonetheless, MMCA’s site was difficult to access from Seoul because of its remote location; at the time, local critics and art communities criticized the exhibition halls’ humidity and the unfinished building’s condensation problems (Maeil Business Newspaper 1987). Furthermore, despite the abundance of work displayed, the contemporary minjung art (‘art of the people’) and its representation of the people’s harsh reality under poverty and injustice during Korea’s military dictatorship was intentionally excluded from the show, as if it would disrupt the utopian, imaginary world created by the exhibition’s narrative (Kee 2009: 22–4). Minjung art was a socio-political art movement that emerged in 1980 after the Gwangju uprising, during which hundreds of innocent civilians were massacred by government troops. Inspired by popular and folkloric traditions in reaction to the government atrocities towards the democratization movement, minjung artists promoted their aspiration for democracy through mural paintings, woodblock printings (which could be duplicated easily and cheaply for flyers, leaflets, books and other printed media) and more. By frequently using indigenous and traditional motifs and audacious colours alongside the deliberate disruption of traditional composition, minjung artists desired to create a truly Korean form of modern art, which rejected Western, imperialistic influence. Their struggle to promote both democracy and human rights, however, resulted in violent suppression; most were forced to work under the government’s National Security Law – a severe form of censorship (Kee 2009: 22–4). As South Korea’s first site of national education and an international showcase of the country’s artistic heritage and achievement, such an omission of critical perspective from the MMCA naturally invites us to reflect on the underlying ideological premise of the project. In anticipation of the upcoming Summer Olympics, the new military regime regarded the arts and culture as a golden opportunity for promoting national progress and interests. In the public discourse, South Korea’s cultural modernization and internationalization was presented as an historical necessity that could, in turn, provide political prestige to the regime. Within such an ideological agenda, the implementation of a large-scale art museum stocked with national and international masterpieces provided an opportunity for the state to appear as both ‘aesthetic and legitimate’ (Hong 2010: 8). The museum’s pure white-cube gallery space bleached out Korea’s plurality of voices and erased its conflicting realities, which had been wracked by political chaos and popular discontent. It became a site in which the myth of the nation’s eternal glory was both imagined and idealized: a nation now turned towards the world and its future through cultural power. 98

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Conclusion The MMCA Gwacheon was designed and established in an era by which South Korea had undergone intense industrialization and the rapid expansion of capitalism and seen a significant increase of the urban middle class. This newly dominant class sought after a new way of life in the altered urban landscape before and after the 1988 Seoul Olympics and contributed to the emergence of new cultural practices and modern consciousness. The characteristics of this emerging culture can be summarized as: consumption as means of achieving happiness; democratization of desire and pleasure; the cult of the new; commitment to self-improvement and cultivation, and internationalism as a predominant value in society. The MMCA Gwacheon project and its role in the new modern life in Seoul represents and facilitates some of these features. Since its inauguration, the museum attracted visitors for several reasons such as the education and appreciation of Korea modern art, the excitement about the new monumental architecture and its modern and spacious interior galleries. The museum also served as a popular destination for school trips and many middle-class families’ weekend day trips, due to its location on the outskirts of Seoul, and proximity to the new leisure complex facilities. The MMCA Gwacheon became a place of cultural capital and a site of social belonging where the desire for cultural awakening was interwoven with modern leisure activities. Reflecting South Korea’s new middle class lifestyle and its aspiration for cultural capital, as well as the nation’s quest for cultural hegemony within heightened political pressures, the MMCA’s reconstruction in the 1980s marked a new era for an institution that embodied the country’s tumultuous historical past. It was rebuilt in the specific moment when South Korea began combining corporate capitalism and consumer culture, while adopting an increasingly liberal and international form of politics, which then quickly culminated in the so-called segyewha (globalization) political agenda that Kim Young-sam’s administration launched in the 1990s. Thereafter, South Korea endeavoured to join Western modernity with a ‘world first class (segyeillyu) [status]’ and [to] be acknowledged seriously in the G20, APEC, OECD and other international organizations. Simultaneously, the government implemented diversifying stateled international cultural events in different parts of the country, such as Gwangju Biennale in 1995 (one of Asia’s oldest and biggest biennales of contemporary art) and the Seoul Media City Biennale in 2000 (one of the Asia’s first media art biennales), both of which demonstrate Korea’s legacy of implementing top-down public cultural policies (Lee 2011). One must also understand that such a desire to align Korea with other so-called developed countries was consolidated by the tradition of country’s elites, of whom most were educated abroad as youths (mainly in Europe and the United States) and then occupied high positions and created initiatives for the cultural policies. Localized and imagined by the politico-cultural elites of the times, the MMCA Gwacheon thus acted as a form of public media, to communicate the state’s ideology for displaying a nation’s cultural reinvention as a major global player. 99

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As we have seen, however, the burgeoning number of international mega-events and museums in Korea since the late 1980s staged under the pretext of national development and disciplined prosperity was not without tension vis-à-vis the local contexts. Undoubtedly, such politics and the international meeting spaces nurtured and enlarged the global views of artists and general public, thereby profoundly reshaping South Korea’s cultural landscape. The globalism that reigned over South Korean society from 1980 through the 1990s catalysed young artists to study abroad. Then, in the mid-1990s, the first flow of artists returned to South Korea from Western art universities in North America and Europe. With this new generation of creative and experimental minds, the Korean art scene thereafter saw a new front because of its increasing exposure to the international scene. The MMCA Gwacheon project has therefore forged its particularity within the country’s own political, cultural and intellectual contexts; as such, it is intimately linked to languages, traditions and cultural values, as well as to institutional norms which tend to be highly specific. In this sense, the MMCA’s history (and correlatively of other Korean cultural institutions) is distinguished from that of other neighbouring countries, in particular China and Japan, which have taken different and even antagonistic trajectories in their efforts to modernize and democratize during their nation’s (re) construction. Nonetheless, despite its uniqueness, the MMCA’s story is not exceptional. Indeed, what is true for South Korea’s cultural institutions is also true of other countries in Asia, Africa and South America, which have confronted similar destinies due to colonialization and political crisis. In Korea, no effort was spared to survive and find its place in an increasingly competitive international environment, and the arts and culture were no exception. While the Gwacheon museum’s monolithic architecture emerged in a time when South Korea was awakened to an ambition for global recognition and respect, as the hanllyu (Korean Wave) demonstrates, the country itself stands today as a significant cultural power on the international scene. The nation’s giant technological conglomerates (e.g. Samsung, LG, Hyundai) fund actively creative industries by building their own museums and gallery spaces and by awarding their own prizes. Both of the openings for the MMCA Seoul in 2013 and MMCA Cheongju in 2019 represent, each in its own way, and act as impetuses for the museum’s ambitions to become the new artistic hub in Asia. However, in the constantly changing cultural landscape of contemporary South Korea – which is dominated by consumerism and is a place in which Korea’s past traditions, history and values remain ephemeral – the MMCA, as the creative soul of the nation, must demonstrate how to imagine Korea’s identity and future. Notes 1

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An earlier version of this chapter was presented in Modern Living in Asia 1945–1990 conference at University of Brighton in April 2017 and in Asia: Transcultural Interactions – Past, Present and Future conference at University College Cork, Ireland, in June 2017.

South Korea and MMCA I am grateful to Dr Yunah Lee, Dr Megha Rajguru as well as Dr Kevin Cawley for inviting me and sharing their insightful comments and valuable suggestions for developing my ideas. This chapter is based on some chapters of my PhD thesis (Arts) submitted to the Université Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) in 2018. It is revised and expanded version of a French article published in Revue Emulations in September 2018. See Ilmin Nah (2018: 89–104). 2

It was especially after the establishment of the Korean National Committee of ICOM Korea in 1976 that Korean museums began to transform and be modernized.

3

Recent studies by Sunghee Choi (2011), Jung Joon Lee (2011) and Jang Sang-hoon (2015) explore the evolution of the National Museum of Korea in relation to postcolonial nation-building process over the last few decades. Hong Kal (2011) also examines expositions, museums and urban built environments in both colonial and postcolonial Korea and analyses their discursive relations in the construction of Korean nationalism. See Choi (2011), Lee (2011), Hong (2011). See also Jang (2015).

References Abt, J. (2011 [2016]), ‘The Origins of the Public Museum’, in S. MacDonald (ed), A Companion to Museum Studies, 115–34, Oxford: Blackwell. Anderson, B. (1991 [1983]), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism, London and New York: Verso. Bennett, T. (1988), ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/ Politics, 4. Bennett, T. (1995), The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics London and New York: Routledge. Choi, S. (2011), ‘Re-Thinking Korean Cultural Identities at the National Museum of Korea’, in S. Knell, P. Aronsson and A. Bugge (eds), National Museums: New Studies from around the World, 290–301, London and New York: Routledge. Coi Y. (2002), ‘Deoksugung Misulgwanui Yeoksawa Gungnipgeundaemisulgwan Gusang’ (The History of the Deoksu Palace Museum and the Construction of National Museum of Modern Art), Art & Museum Studies, n. 13. http://www.mmca.go.kr/study/study13/study13_b1.html (accessed 26 June 2020). ­Chun, B. H. and Woo, D. S. (eds) (2016), Gimtaesu Gusuljip (Gim Taesue Oral History Testimony), Seoul: Mati. Chun, D. H. (1983), Pour Une Nation d’avant-garde, Politique pour la Nouvelle Année: Exposé du Président, Séoul: Service coréen d’information pour l’Étranger. Daehan News, n°1608, Digital Archive of Korea Public Policy Broadcasting Services. Duncan, C. (1991), ‘Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship’, in I. Karp and S. D. Lavine (eds), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, 83–103, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Guoqi, X. (2011), ‘The Olympic Games and China’s Search for Internationalization’, in W. M. Tsutsui and M. Baskett (eds), The East Asian Olympiads, 1934–2008: Building Bodies and Nations in Japan, Korea, and China, 137–49, Leiden: Global Oriental. Hong K. (2011), Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism: Spectacle, Politics and History, London and New York: Routledge. Jang, Y. (2009), ‘Gungniphyeondaemisulgwan 40nyeonsa yeongu’ (Forty Years of the History of National Museum of Contemporary Art of Korea), 1, 85–136.

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Design and Modernity in Asia Jang, S. H. (2015), A Representation of Nationhood: The National Museum of Korea, PhD diss. University of Leicester. Jang, S. H. (2020), A Representation of Nationhood in the Museum: The National Museum of Korea, London: Routledge. Jeong, J. M. (2003), ‘Gungnipmisulgwane Daehan Insikgwa Jedojeok Mosunui Geunwoneul Jungsimeuro’ (Study on the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art: Around the Idea of National Museum of Art and the Paradoxes of Institutional Approach), Art & Museum Studies, 14. http://‌www.mmca.go.kr/‌study/‌study14/‌study14_a9.html (accessed 29 June 2020). Kang, S. P. (2010), Korean Culture and Seoul Olympic Studies. Kang, Shin-pyo: His Olympics: The Case of the Seoul Olympic Games, Seoul: The National Folk Museum of Korea. Kim, Y. (1976), Cultural Policy in the Republic of Korea, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France/ UNESCO. Kee, J. (2009), ‘Longevity Studies: The Contemporary Korean Art Exhibition at Fifty’, in Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea, Houston, 17–29, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lee, N. Y. (1986), ‘Les Musées de Corée’, Museum International, UNESCO, 149, XXXVIII (1), 30–5. Lee, I. B. (1996), ‘Urinara Misulgwanjedoui Seongnipgwa Jeongae’ (The Foundation and Development of National Museum of Art), Korean Modern Art history Association, n° 4, (12): 272–97. Lee, I. B. (1998), Misulgwan Jedo Yeongu (Study on Museum Institution), Seoul, Korea: National University of Arts. Lee, J. J. (2011), ‘The National Museum as Palimpsest: Postcolonial Politics and the National Museum of Korea’, in S. Knell, P. Aronsson and A. Bugge (eds), National Museums: New Studies from around the World, 373–85, London and New York: Routledge. Lee, K. S. (1986), Hangukhyeondaemisurui Eojewa Oneul. (Korean Art Today: The National Museum of Modern Art), Gwacheon: National Museum of Contemporary Art. Lim, D. G. (2005), ‘Gungnipyeondaemisulgwan Sojangpum Sujipjedoui Hyeonhwanggwa Gwaje’ (State and Objectif of the Collections of National Museum of art), Art & Museum Studies, 16: 18–35. McClellan, A. (1994), Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris, New York: Cambridge University Press. MMCA Gwacheon (2016–2017), 30 years 1986–2016. ‘As the Moon Waxes and Wanes and Space Transformation Project: Voyage of Imagination’, exhibition brochure. ­Nah, Ilmin (2018), « À la recherche d’une muséographie internationale dans une nation globale », Emulations - Revue de sciences sociales, (26): 89–104. O’Doherty, B. (1986), Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Berkeley: University of California Press. Oh, Y. Y. (1995), ‘Hang’ugui Munhwahaengjeongchegye 50nyeon’ (Fifty Years of the System of the Cultural Administration of Korea), Journal of Cultural Policy, 7: 29–74. Poulot, D. (2000), ‘Tradition Civique et Appréciation de L’œuvre d’art dans les Musées Français des Origines à nos Jours’, J. Galard (dir.), Le Regard Instruit, Action Éducative et Action Culturelle dans les Musées, 21–52, Paris, la Documentation Française: Musée du Louvre. Prior, N. (2002), Museums and Modernity. Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture, Oxford: Berg. Yang, M. (2012), ‘The Making of the Urban Middle Class in South Korea (1961–1979): NationBuilding, Discipline, and the Birth of the Ideal National Subjects’, Sociological Inquiry, 82 (3): 424–45.

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Newspapers Chosun Ilbo, 23 January 1970. Donga Ilbo, 9 November 1981. Donga Ilbo, 16 June 1985. Donga Ilbo, 23 August 1986. Joongang Ilbo, 29 August 1986. Kyunghyang Shinmum, 12 May 1983. Maeil Business Newspaper, 24 December 1986. Maeil Business Newspaper, 14 August 1987.

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CHAPTER 6 FROM HYGIENIC MODERNITY TO GREEN MODERNITY: TWO MODES OF MODERN LIVING IN HONG KONG SINCE THE 1970S

Loretta I. T. Lou

Introduction Hong Kong’s modernity is a unique concoction of colonial legacy, Cold War geopolitics (Chun 2013; Law 2018)1 and a ‘structure of feeling’2 (William 2015[1979]) generated by certain cosmopolitan values. The transition from a Crown Colony of the British Empire (1841–1997) to a Special Administrative Region of China (1997–present) not only made certain lifestyles and urban sensibilities possible, it also made Hong Kong the only Chinese city whose legacy of modernism continued to thrive after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.3 While modern living in Hong Kong often conjures up images of glossy skyscrapers, shiny shopping malls, dense housing estates, cinemas, Cantonpop and a vibrant celebrity culture, such ‘fixed’ perceptions fail to capture modernity as ‘a system of desires’ (Pang 2007: 211). As Laikwan Pang argues, there is not a single universal pathway to modernity. The tremendous force of modernity in the so-called non-Western communities indicates that modernity is ‘made to function in different spaces and times’ (Pang 2007). As a system of desire, the force of modernity is less driven by a mission than by a social condition that continues to make promises, ‘be they in the names of pleasure, comfort, enlightenment, [or] democracy’ (Pang 2007: 212). In this chapter, I examine two under explored modes of modern living in Hong Kong through the history of urban sanitation (hygienic modernity/the desire to be hygienic) and the history of environmental governance (green modernity/the desire to be green). In particular, I am interested in how the Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign in the 1970s disciplined its citizens and forged a sense of belonging and civic responsibility while introducing the Hong Kong people to a rudimentary understanding of ‘protecting the environment’ (waanbao), which started in the late 1980s and began to take root by the late 1990s. The historical sources used in this chapter, namely the archival documents and the campaign posters, were consulted from a number of places: The Hong Kong Government Records Service’s online collection and the collection held at The Hong Kong Public Records Building; The Hong Kong History and Society Website curated by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and The Internet Archive. More recent materials were drawn

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from official documents published by the Hong Kong government and from my longterm ethnographic research on green living in Hong Kong since 2012. Methodologically, both visual and textual artefacts, as well as the historical and social contexts from which they were constituted, are my sites of investigations. I focus particularly on government posters because they are a key site of Hong Kong’s modernity, playing a ‘pivotal role in visually articulating the city’s identity in the changing political and cultural landscape’ (Ho 2010: 1). Moreover, Hong Kong’s official posters have rarely been analysed (Ho 2010: 7), with the exception of David Meredith’s seminal work on health and hygiene posters (Meredith 1997). Meredith argues that official health posters produced between the 1950s and the 1980s were not created out of concern ‘for the wellbeing of the populace’, but as means to inculcate social compliances and conformity despite the colonial government’s overall non-interventionist policies (Meredith 1997: 75). Following this, I examine how hygienic modernity and green modernity were used to transform Hong Kong into a clean, modern and sustainable city in the late twentieth century through the Foucauldian lenses of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault 2010 [1982]) and ‘technologies of the self ’ (Foucault 1988). I then use discourse analysis and what Gillian Rose calls a ‘critical visual methodology’ (Rose 2001) to analyse how a variety of texts, images and practices are socially produced as ‘real or truthful or natural through particular regimes of truth’ (Rose 2001: 29; 136). While visuality4 remains my primary tool for investigation, I also rely heavily on non-visual artefacts, including archival textual records, campaign song lyrics and unstructured interviews conducted during long-term ethnographic fieldwork. I am interested in how being hygienic and being green were promoted as desirable lifestyles, and the kind of human subjects that such discourses produced (Rose 2001: 164), at particular historical conjunctures in contemporary Hong Kong. Finally, since China’s cultural modernity is a dynamic interaction and configuration between representations, ideas and experience (Pang 2007: 209–10), my analysis does not privilege the composition, content and semiology of any one particular text, image or practice, but instead emphasizes the importance of intertextuality, whereby ‘the meanings of any one discursive image or text depend not only on that one text or image, but also on the meanings carried by other images and texts’ (Pang 2007), their general characteristics and the processes of their production and use (Rose 2001: 167).

Hygienic modernity Hygiene and cleanliness have always been an integral part of the Chinese quest for modernity (Rogaski 2004; Furth 2010). Coined by the historian Ruth Rogaski, the term ‘hygienic modernity’ refers not only to how hygiene became a pivotal idea in the expression of Chinese modernity but also how it was incorporated into the ‘derivative discourse’ (Chatterjee 1986) of nationalism based on perceptions of ‘native deficiency’ (Rogaski 2004: 9). Prior to the nineteenth century, the concept of hygiene, or weisheng in Chinese,5 was ‘associated with a variety of regimes of diet, meditation, and 106

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self-medication practiced by the individual in order to guard fragile internal vitalities’ (2004: 1). With the arrival of British and Japanese imperial powers, however, Chinese elites started to question if China’s defeat was due to deficiencies: ‘that which the Chinese lacked, and that which the foreign Other possessed’ (2004: 301). As a result, they embraced weisheng as the basis for ‘how China and the Chinese could achieve a modern existence’ (2004: 1). In practice, this entailed an adoption of modern amenities such as domestic plumbing and flush toilets and new knowledge of germs, diseases and regimes of personal care (2004: 301). It was only then the meaning of weisheng ‘shifted away from Chinese cosmology and moved to encompass state power, scientific standards of progress, the cleanliness of bodies, and the fitness of races’ (2004: 1). In short, hygienic modernity ‘indicates a significance beyond the mere concern for cleanliness’ (2004: 2). From deodorizing Shanghai in the late nineteenth century (Huang 2016) to the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign of 1952 (Rogaski 2004: 285), these endeavours revealed China’s century-long desire and struggle for being seen as a modern and civilized member of the world. Given the foreign and imperial root of weisheng in China, most studies of hygienic modernity focus on the experience of China’s semi-colonial cities (Furth 2010), namely Shanghai and Tianjin (Rogaski 2004; Yu 2010; Huang 2016).6 Naturally, one may wonder why there has been so little research on hygienic modernity in full colonies like Hong Kong, even though there are ample studies on the city’s fight against infectious diseases in history (Pryor 1975; Benedict 1996; Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society 2006; MacPherson 2008; Yip 2009). Strictly speaking, the hygiene and sanitation measures enforced during the Hong Kong plague in 1894 and the SARS epidemics in 2003 were more emergency responses than the drive to hygienic modernity, if hygienic modernity is understood as not only about the scientific and popular conception of hygiene/weisheng but also ‘how weisheng was used to transform a city in order to establish and consolidate its spirit and identity’ (Rogaski 2004: 301). As I will argue in the rest of this chapter, it was actually the Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign in the 1970s that marked the beginning of Hong Kong’s hygienic modernity because that was the campaign that had powerfully fostered a sense of belonging and civic pride among Hong Kong citizens.

The 1894 Hong Kong plague In 1894, the bubonic plague pandemic had spread to Hong Kong from Southwest China. When Hong Kong was declared an infected port on 10 May (Pryor 1975: 62), the colonial government had little interest, thus minimal interventions, in Chinese affairs. Due to various formal and informal racial segregation in the early decades of colonial Hong Kong, the Chinese and Britons (as well as other Europeans) led a very different life (Carroll 2007). When Osbert Chadwick, a consulting engineer to the colonial office, visited Hong Kong in 1882, he warned that a severe epidemic would be very likely if the colonial government did not take immediate actions to rectify the city’s ‘defective’ 107

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sanitary condition.7 Following Chadwick’s advice, the colonial government established the Sanitary Board in 1883 to oversee inspection and disinfection of the Chinese homes (Carroll 2007: 64). At that time, these sanitary measures were extremely unpopular among the Hong Kong Chinese. Unlike the treaty-port elites in Tianjin and Shanghai, who embraced new sanitary practices without reservation (Rogaski 2004: 301), the elite class in Hong Kong, which was made up of mainly landlords and merchants, was indifferent to the nationalistic sentiments that had propelled China’s hygienic modernity. They had little interest to cooperate with the Sanitary Board and were more concerned about the cost incurred should they require to install new sanitation facilities for their tenants (Carroll 2007: 64–5).8 Interestingly, such resistance was not confined to the cost-conscious elites. The poorer population, who were the one most affected by the plague and the abysmal living conditions (Sinn 2003: 160),9 also fiercely opposed the colonial government’s sanitary measures, especially the house-to-house ‘hunt’ for infected people during the epidemic. At that time, there was a profound distrust of foreigners and Western medicine among the Chinese community in Hong Kong. Being quarantined at Hygeia, the hospital ship in charge of European doctors, was an absolute horror for the Chinese. According to an archival document titled ‘Report on the Outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Southern China’, published by the H.M. Consulate, Canton, in 1894: ‘the Chinese have a poor opinion of foreign medicine and a vivid mental picture of the Foreign surgeon as a ruthless demon armed with steel delighting in slashing up the human body.’10 The house-to-house search, however necessary from an epidemiological point of view, was regarded by many Chinese as an invasion of privacy and a disrespect to their women. Needless to say, ‘isolation as a precautionary measure against infectious diseases was strange enough to the Chinese, the idea of being taken to a ship was even more incomprehensible’ (Sinn 2003: 162). Hence, there were all kinds of rumours and conspiracy theories about house inspections. For example, many Chinese believed that the foreigners in Hong Kong were ‘cutting up men’s bodies, removing their liver, testicles and pupils of the eyes.’11 For women and children, rumours had it that they were being chopped up by foreign doctors who made medicine out of their bones and eyes (Platt et al. 1998: 37). For months, the colonial government ignored the fierce protests from the Chinese community and turned down their demands to stop the house-hunt and remove patients from the quarantine ship (Sinn 2003: 168). William Robinson, the Governor of Hong Kong at that time, was uncompromising at first, but he eventually yielded when the Chinese compradors12 of large firms warned him of the economic repercussions of a massive emigration that was already happening (Sinn 2003: 166). The plague in 1894 is said to have several long-lasting effects on Hong Kong society, one of which was the acceptance and wider application of Western medicine. By the end of the nineteenth century, half of the patients at Tung Wah Hospital (a local hospital serving mainly Chinese residents) chose Western medicine over Chinese medicine (Carroll 2007: 66). Not only did the assimilation of Western medicine into Hong Kong society shatter the long-standing segregation between Britons, other Europeans and Chinese, it also destabilized the power dynamics of the colony, forcing the colonial government to put 108

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an end to its hands-off approach to governance and the Chinese become less resistant to Western customs and traditions. These administrative and societal changes have paved the ways for modernization in the decades to come (Carroll 2007).

The Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign (1970s–90s) The idea of hygienic modernity infers more than just a mere concern for cleanliness and public health. It represents a system of desires to be recognized as a modern and civilized member of the world. This unique characteristic is absent in both the 1894 plague and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, yet it was a key feature in the Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign in 1972. As I will argue in this section, the desire for hygienic modernity not only contributed to the formation of a sense of belonging and civic responsibility, it also instilled a rudimentary understanding of waanbao (literally ‘protecting the environment’ in Cantonese) into the minds of Hong Kong citizens. The 1960s to the 1980s was not only a period of social change and social reforms,13 it was also a time when people in Hong Kong first experienced a sense of community. According to the sociologist Tai-lok Lui, the emergence of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983 [2016]) in the 1970s could be traced to the introduction of new social etiquettes, such as, queueing and keeping public spaces clean (Lui 2012: 121). These social etiquettes were an attempt on the part of the colonial government to generate a new form of civic pride based on shared concerns about environmental hygiene (Government Records Services 2018). They were also disciplinary techniques used to produce a form of colonial citizens who recognized their responsibilities but not their political rights (Lui 2012: 122–3). All of these are in keeping with the colonial government’s interests in ‘maintaining a stable and apolitical workforce’ (Ho 2010: 73). This was a significant move in terms of top-down mobilization strategies. Prior to the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign in 1972, sanitary campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s promoted practices of personal and household hygiene without alluding to civic responsibility. Take Miss Ping On as an example. Created by the Public Relations Office at a time when cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases were rife in Hong Kong, the mascot Miss Ping On sought to promote good personal and domestic hygiene such as drinking boiled water, keeping the bin lids closed and brushing teeth in the morning and at night (Illustration 6.1). The predecessor of Miss Ping On was the winner of a government-organized pageant in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A woman from the cleanest district in Hong Kong would be crowned Miss Ping On and awarded a cash prize. Although the pageant had raised awareness of hygiene and cleanliness in some neighbourhoods, the overall impact was limited as Miss Ping On was confined to promoting new hygienic practices in her own district. In order to maximize Miss Ping On’s influence, the Public Relations Office eventually turned it into a cartoon mascot so that they could publicize it through a series of colour posters. As shown in Illustration 6.1, the two Chinese characters ping on, literally ‘safe and sound’, were embedded on the face and the body of a female figure. Semantically, the 109

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Figure 6.1  A Miss Ping On poster issued by the Hong Kong Urban Council, 1959. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong. words ping on carried weight on the general populace because epidemics and infectious diseases could easily wipe out an entire population during this period of time (Pun 2017). By embedding the Chinese characters ping on in the body of the mascot, the public health messages were lucid and direct, leaving little room for ambiguity and misinterpretation. The adoption of a female figure further reinstated the gender stereotype that women, rather than men, were the ones responsible for hygiene and cleaning in the domestic sphere. 110

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Although Miss Ping On had changed certain behaviours in the home, its impact outside the home was far from satisfactory. Without the cooperation of residents, the government’s regular street-cleaning regime (four to eight times a day) had made little difference. In response to that, in 1972, the Urban Council (formerly the Sanitary Board) launched the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign – the first territory-wide clean-up initiative that deployed multichannel medium such as posters, TV adverts, campaign songs and educational activities to remind picnickers, hikers and beach-goers to clean up their rubbish after each outing. Thanks to its signature mascot the Litter Bug (Lap Sap Chung), a green ‘monster’ with two hands, two feet and red dots all over its gigantic body (Illustration 6.2), the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign achieved great popularity in no

Figure 6.2  Beat Filth poster issued by Hong Kong Urban Council, 1975. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong. 111

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time. Designed by colonial officer Edward Arthur Hacker (1932–2013), the then Creative Director of the Information Services Department, Lap Sap Chung was created with the younger citizens in mind. Hacker hoped that the cartoon figure would get children’s attention and nurture a new generation of responsible citizens in Hong Kong (TVB 2018). Following a series of highly creative publicity campaigns, Lap Sap Chung quickly became a household name, especially for those who grew up in the 1970s. Not only was the use of a non-human cartoon figure a breath of fresh air in publicity campaign, but the fact also that Lap Sap Chung was the first publicity figure that had ‘stepped out’ of the graphic poster and ‘stepped into’ the community was totally novel. One of the most dramatic and memorable events held during the course of the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign was the burning down of a 30-foot-tall paper model of Lap Sap Chung on 31 October 1972, a light-hearted ‘public humiliation’ overseen by Governor Crawford Murray MacLehose. As the poster in Illustration 6.2 further demonstrates, both participants and onlookers found the public shaming of Lap Sap Chung engaging and entertaining as they took on the responsibility to expel the Litter Bug. Despite its loathsome appearance, Lap Sap Chung represented a public vice that could be eradicated with collective effort. On the one hand, the rebarbative and contemptible side of Lap Sap Chung evoked public repulsion to littering. On the other hand, its ludicrous and comical side denoted that the menace it posed to the public could be overcome in much the same way that the monstrous figures in children’s cartoons are created to be defeated. This bilateral symbolism worked in tandem with the campaign’s catchy theme song: Litter is disgusting Everyone hates the Litter Bug Litter Bug, Litter Bug Littering damages our city’s image Litter Bug, Litter Bug Let’s work together to eradicate the Litter Bug.14 Entering the 1980s, public shaming and penalty fines remained the major deterrence strategies against littering and spitting. This approach was epitomized by the poster of a pair of glaring eyes, accompanied with the slogan that read ‘Everybody Hates Littering’ (Illustration 6.3). Consistent with the use of female or gender-neutral figures in earlier campaigns, aesthetically, the pair of female eyes looked more European than Chinese, featuring shorter spacing between eyes, more prominent brow bone, deeper contour and thick, long eye lashes. The style was in line with the increasingly Westernized beauty standards of 1980s. When viewed from a Foucauldian perspective, the glaring eyes symbolized a Western(ized) woman’s disciplinary gaze at the Hong Kong Chinese, whose unhygienic habits obstructed the progress of modernization. From the mid-1980s, there had been a significant change in the tone of the campaign. Prior to 1985, the Chinese in Hong Kong were mainly portrayed as litter offenders in the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaigns. But, as efforts to clean Hong Kong started to see results, there was a shift in portraying the Chinese as responsible citizens rather than 112

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Figure 6.3  Hong Kong is Looking poster issued by the Hong Kong Information Services Department, 1981. Courtesy Government Records Office, Hong Kong. uncivilized offenders in all campaign posters and TV adverts. Consequently, the wicked Litter Bug was swapped by the righteous Dragon of Cleanliness (Cing Git Lung); and the slogan ‘Everybody Hates Littering’ was replaced by the more positively sound ‘Everybody Loves a Clean Hong Kong’. By the 1990s, concepts such as ‘care’ and ‘responsibility’ played a vital role during this phase of the campaign. This was particularly obvious in the celebrity-led campaign song ‘Let’s Pitch In’.15 By facilitating rhetoric like we are ‘one big family’ and ‘we’re proud of this place’, the idea that Hong Kong was everyone’s home 113

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started to flourish. Since then, the prevalence of the ‘home’ metaphor led the colonial government to roll out more campaigns based on this theme, such as the ‘Hong Kong Is Our Home, Let’s Keep It Clean’ campaign in 1992, whose slogan was so well received that it is still in use today. The gradual replacement of ‘paternalistic posters’ (Ho 2010: 74) with ‘community-building’ campaigns was partly a response to Hongkongers’ improved awareness of environmental hygiene and partly an active effort to nurture a sense of belonging in Hong Kong in order to counteract Chinese nationalism and propaganda (Ho 2010: 72–3). It is widely accepted that the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign is one of the most influential and successful government campaigns in modern Hong Kong history (Lui 2012). From deterring people from littering to appealing them to their sense of civic pride and civic duties, the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign changed not only people’s attitudes and behaviours towards sanitation and public hygiene but also their mentality about Hong Kong as a ‘home’. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Hong Kong had a population of only 500,000. By 1953, however, the population jumped to 2,500,000 due to a large influx of refugees from mainland China. It was estimated that in just over a year (1949–50), nearly 776,000 mainland Chinese had migrated to Hong Kong for better living. By 1961, 50.5 per cent of Hong Kong residents were born in mainland China, compared to 47.7 per cent born in Hong Kong (Zheng and Wong 2002). The 1990s were the first time when people on this island began to consider themselves as Hongkongers. It was the first time when they saw Hong Kong as more than just a sanctuary away from the chaos of China, but a place where the indigenous people, the immigrants and their next generations could put down root and call this place ‘home’.

Green modernity For the past two decades, the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaign not only forged a sense of belonging and civic responsibility among the Hong Kong people, it also instilled a rudimentary understanding of waanbao – the Cantonese abbreviation for environmental protection – into the minds of Hong Kong citizens. As the notion of ‘sustainable development’ gathered momentum after it was written into the United Nations’ Brundtland Report in 1987, the colonial government finally took steps to enforce a series of environmental regulations, including the legislation of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Ordinance, the introduction of Roadside Air Pollution Index and the installation of waste recycling in housing estates (Phase III) (Hill and Barron 1997: 42). Despite these new policies, official environmental campaigns between the late 1980s and the late 1990s had minimal effect on Hong Kong people’s attitudes and behaviours towards environmental protection. For the most part, the responsibility of environmental education fell on the shoulders of environmental NGOs (Lou 2016). Green Power was one of those environmental NGOs. Established in 1988, Green Power was the ripple of the spirit brought by the ‘Hong Kong Is Our Home, Let’s Keep It Clean’ campaign, but it was no longer satisfied with the kind of low-level ‘environmental 114

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protection’ that aimed at only keeping the streets clean. Unlike the majority of its peers, which were pressure groups that invested most of their energies on advocacy and lobbying (Chiu et  al. 1999; Lai, 2000; Stern, 2003; Hung, 2012), Green Power emphasized the importance of an individual’s lifestyle in fostering environmental and social sustainability. As the then president of Green Power said in an interview: When Green Power was founded, environmental protection (wannbao) was understood as effective sewage treatment, waste management, keeping rubbish off the streets, and air and noise pollution control. These remedial measures, undertaken by our Environmental Protection Department, were reactive and partial. What differed us from other green groups was that we were not only concerned about environmental nuisance, but also green and sustainable living in the modern age. (ATV 2012: 136) The demographic composition of Green Power also warrants our attention. For decades, green groups in Hong Kong were led and run by foreign expatriates and middle class professionals. The Conservancy Association, for example, was founded by mostly academics and foreign elites in 1968.16 Likewise, international environmental NGOs like Friends of the Earth and the World Wide Fund (WWF) were established by foreign businessmen and residents of the colonial class far removed from the Chinese communities. That is why the Chinese used to deride these environmental NGOs as ‘the foreigners’ club’ (Hung 2012) because they privileged the protection of nature over the protection of human welfare. In this regard, Green Power was rather different. Although Green Power was also founded by public intellectuals and middle-class professionals, its founding members were all ethnic Chinese who were born, raised and educated in Hong Kong.17 As I argued earlier, these Chinese intellectuals were among the first generation who felt that Hong Kong was not a refuge but a permanent home. Motivated by a strong sense of commitment to their hometown, these intellectuals devoted themselves to the betterment of the society through advocating green living. In order to mobilize more fellow citizens to support their cause, they strategically adapted the global environmental discourses to the taste of Hong Kong Chinese (Chiu et al. 1999: 68–9; Lai 2000: 280). In doing so, Green Power not only managed to attract previously absent or underrepresented groups such as women or the working class into their human-centred green movement but also diversified the discourses of sustainability and environmentalism in Hong Kong, which until then had been monopolized by a few international environmental organizations. The pioneering work of Green Power has two main contributions to Hong Kong’s environmental scene. First, it provided a fertile ground for the government’s environmental campaigns for the years to come.18 The Big Waster (Daai Saai Gwai) is often lauded as the most impactful public service mascot since the Litter Bug. When introducing the Big Waster to the public in 2013, Poon, a member of the Food Wise Hong Kong Campaign, compared the newly designed anti-waste mascot with the iconic 115

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Litter Bug. He said that in the 1970s, the government had successfully educated people about not littering with the help of Lap Sup Chung. Now the time has come for the government to encourage people to live more sustainably with the negative example of Big Waster, a mascot with eyes bigger than its stomach (Hong Kong’s Information Services Department 2013). While a big part of the Big Waster’s success can be attributed to the creativity of the campaign itself, the public would not have readily accepted it were it not for the foundational work Green Power and other NGOs did in green living education.19 The second contribution of Green Power was that they have sown the seeds of ‘green modernity’ in Hong Kong. In keeping with the theoretical convention of hygienic modernity, I have coined the term ‘green modernity’ to refer to not only the eco-friendly lifestyles but also the implications of how this new way of living is adopted by some people to express their care and sense of duty for Hong Kong. While hygienic modernity clearly demonstrates the disciplinary power of governmentality (Foucault 2010 [1982]), green modernity depends heavily on the exercise of ‘technologies of the self ’ (Foucault 1988), a related Foucauldian concept that emphasizes individual ethical practices, which was co-opted by the Hong Kong government’s own green living campaigns in the 2010s. Even then, practitioners of green living are more inclined to see their proenvironmental actions like waste reduction, recycling and urban farming as a form of ethical self-initiatives rather than a compliance with eco-governmentality. Like hygienic modernity, green modernity produces a new kind of Hong Kong citizen who takes personal responsibility for their city’s environment. In doing so, they are empowered to defend their ‘rights to the city’ (Harvey 2008) and cultivate a meaningful relationship with the place that they call home.

Conclusion In tracing the genealogy of Hong Kong’s hygienic modernity, this chapter illustrates how the Keep Hong Kong Clean campaigns between the 1970s and the 1990s helped forge a sense of belonging and civic responsibility among Hong Kong citizens while introducing them to a rudimentary understanding of environment protection, laying foundation for Hong Kong’s green modernity in the late 1980s. However, the relationship between hygienic modernity and green modernity should not be understood in terms of a linear progression, but a constant contestation about purity and danger (Douglas 1966 [2005]). Instead of replacing one another, hygienic modernity and green modernity are mutually shaping each other’s approaches to how the urban environment should be managed in Hong Kong at different times. While maintaining good personal and public hygiene remains the orthodox practice in Hong Kong since the outbreaks of SARS and amid the COVID-19 pandemic,20 the overwhelming emphasis on germs and diseases sometimes backfires among advocates of green modernity, who argued that such regimented measures gave the impression that the natural environment is a dangerous, alien space full of zoonotic diseases rather than a space where humans co-exist with other species 116

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(Interviews in Hong Kong 2013). Despite the disagreements, what is certain is that these two modes of modernity have allowed the Hong Kong government to manage the urban environment with the cooperation of citizens who have inherited a strong sense of civic duty since the colonial era.

Notes 1

The transformation of Hong Kong into a modern metropolis and free market in the twentieth century was largely encouraged by the colonial regime as a way to neutralize Chinese nationalism in the territory (Chun 2013: 48).

2

One of Raymond Williams’s best-known concept, ‘structure of feeling’ refers to ‘a structure in the sense that you could perceive it operating in one work after another which weren’t otherwise connected – people weren’t learning it from each other; yet it was one of feeling much more than of thought – a pattern of impulses, restraints, tones’ (Williams 2015[1979]: 159).

3

Shanghai used to be a cultural matrix of Chinese modernity in the 1930s; see Lee (1999).

4

Hal Foster defines visuality as ‘how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the unseeing therein’ (Foster 1988a: ix).

5

The Chinese term weisheng is a new term in modern Chinese language that has its origins from Japan. See Lydia Liu (1995: 290), Lili Lai (2016: 74) and Ruth Rogaski (2004) for a further discussion of the changing conceptualization of this classical Chinese phrase.

6

These treaty port cities were ‘semi-colonial’ and were forced to engage with foreign trade as a result of their ‘unequal treaties’ with Western and Japanese imperial powers.

7

See Chadwick’s report (1882) on the sanitary condition of Hong Kong, published by George E. B. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Available at The Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/b2136591x/page/n6 (accessed 20 June 2019).

8

It was believed that if better living conditions were enforced, it would ‘drive up rents, implying that the low wages upon which the colony’s economy depended would also be forced up’ (Sinn 2003: 160).

9

Official records show that the death toll was around 2,500, but the number could have been higher as about 80,000 Chinese left Hong Kong for their native villages in China for fear of dying in the foreign land.

10 See C.O.129/265, pp. 219–20. An online version of the document is available on the Hong Kong History and Society Website, Chinese University of Hong Kong: http://hkhiso. itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/history/system/files/CO129-265,%20p.213-236.pdf (accessed 18 April 2018). 11 See C.O.129/265, pp. 220. 12 A compradore is a person who acted as a middleman between the Chinese businessmen and the colonial government to engage in investment, trade, economic or political exploitation. See Abe (2019). 13 In the aftermath of the 1967 riots, the colonial government had implemented a series of reforms in housing, welfare services, crime control and urban development in an effort to restore the colonial government’s political legitimacy. 14 The lyrics are translated by the author.

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Design and Modernity in Asia 15 Taking advantage of Hong Kong’s growing celebrity culture, the colonial government turned to celebrity endorsement to reach out to the general public for the first time in the 1990s. Alan Tam, the lead singer of the campaign song Let’s Pitch In, was one of the most celebrated Canton pop singers of the time. Owing to his celebrity effect, ‘Let’s Pitch In’ was so popular that even today, the song still strikes a chord with people who grew up listening to it. 16 The Conservancy Association is the oldest environmental organization in Hong Kong. It was founded by Robert N. Rayne and Prof S. Y. Hu of the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Prof Brian Lofts of the University of Hong Kong, Father H. Naylor of Kowloon Wah Yang College, Mr John H. Pain and others. 17 Chau Siu-Cheung, Chan Koon-Chung and Man Si-Wai were some of the most famous founding members of Green Power. 18 The Hong Kong government’s first green living campaign came nearly ten years after Green Power embarked on this initiative. 19 By the 1990s, all green groups in Hong Kong had already adopted Green Power’s lifestyle approach in their outreach work (Chiu et al. 1999: 84; Lai 2000: 278). 20 In the aftermath of the SARS epidemics in 2003, which killed 299 people in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government has established specific guidelines for good hygienic practices, such as washing hands with liquid soap for at least ten seconds and thoroughly cleaning escalator handrails, elevator control panels, door knobs and all public installations with a diluted household bleach solution in the ratio of 1:99 every single day. While some of these suggestions may sound regimented, the Hong Kong people have taken them to heart and adhere to them diligently. As to the COVID-19, the death toll stands at 106 and the number of infections is 4,500 at the time of writing in January 2022.

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Two Modes of Modern Living in Hong Kong Foucault, M. (1988), ‘Technologies of the Self ’, in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, 16–49, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Foster, H. (1988), ‘Preface’, in H. Foster (ed), Vision and Visuality, ix–xiv, Seattle: Bay Press. Furth, C. (2010), ‘Introduction: Hygienic Modernity in Chinese East Asia’, in A. K. C. Leung and C. Furth (eds), Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century, 1–24, Durham: Duke University Press. Harvey, D. (2008), ‘The Right to the City’, New Left Review 53, September–October. https:// newleftreview.org/II/53/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city (accessed 29 January 2020). Hills, P., and Barron, W. (1997), ‘Hong Kong: The Challenge of Sustainability’, Land Use Policy, 14 (1): 41–53. Ho, P. (2010), ‘Designing Identity: Hong Kong Posters and the Colonial Divide, 1963–2003’, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design, Manchester Metropolitan University. Hong Kong’s Information Services Department (2013), ‘Big Waster Sends Eye-Opening Message’, http://www.news.gov.hk/en/categories/environment/html/2013/11/20131108_135340. shtml?pickList=highlight (accessed 21 June 2019). Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society (2006), Plague, SARS, and the Story of Medicine in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Huang, X. (2016), ‘Deodorizing China: Odour, Ordure, and Colonial (Dis)order in Shanghai, 1840–1940s’, Modern Asian Studies, 50 (3): 1092–122. ­Hung, H. (2012), Cong shehui yundong dao jing ying jie bie wanyi: Xianggang huanjing baohu weiji chutan (From a Social Movement to an Elitist Club). https://blogqua.wordpress. com/2012/12/18/p1/ Lai, O. K. (2000), ‘Greening of Hong Kong? Forms of Manifestation of Environmental Movements’, in S. W. Chiu and T. L. Lui (eds), The Dynamics of Social Movements in Hong Kong: Real and Financial Linkages, 259–95, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lai, L. (2016), Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Law, W. S. (2018), ‘Colonial Modernity and the Predicament of Liberalism in Hong Kong’, Global-E, 11 (26). https://www.21global.ucsb.edu/global-e/may-2018/colonial-modernityand-predicament-liberalism-hong-kong (accessed 29 April 2020). Lee, L. O. F. (1999), Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930– 1945, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Liu, L. (1995), Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lou, L. I. T. (2016), ‘Healing Nature: Green Living and the Politics of Hope in Hong Kong’, Doctoral thesis, University of Oxford. Lui, T. L. (2012), Na sicengxiangshi de qishi niandai (The Seventies: A Sense of déjà vu), Hong Kong: Zhonghua Book Company. MacPherson, K. (2008), ‘One Public, Two Health Systems: Hong Kong and China, Integration without Convergence’, China Review, 8 (1): 85–104. Meredith, D. C. (1997), ‘Match & Mismatch: Cross-Cultural Visual Symbolism in Hong Kong Health & Hygiene Public Information Poster Campaigns, 1950–1990’, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Pang, L. (2007), The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Platt, J. J., Jones, M. E. and Platt, A. K. (1998), Whitewash Brigade: Hong Kong Plague of 1894, London: Dix Noonan Webb. Pryor, E. G. (1975), ‘The Great Plague of Hong Kong’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 15: 61–70. 119

Design and Modernity in Asia Pun, K. L. (2017), Xiaoshi Wu zhi (Evanescence), Hong Kong: Zhonghua Book Company. Rogaski, R. (2004), Hygienic Modernity Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rose, G. (2001), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, Oxford: Sage Publications Ltd. Stern, R. E. (2003), ‘Hong Kong Haze: Air Pollution as a Social Class Issue’, Asian Survey, 43(5): 780–800. Sinn, E. (2003), Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. TVB (2018), Lishi shikong on Facebook Watch. https://www.facebook.com/ watch/?v=381230555947215 Williams, R. (2015), Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review, London: Verso. Yip, K. C. (2009), ‘Colonialism, Disease, and Public Health: Malaria in the History of Hong’, in K. C. Yip (ed), Disease, Colonialism and the State: Malaria in Modern East Asian History, 11–29, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Yu, Z. (2010), ‘The Treatment of Night Soil and Waste in Modern China’, in A. K. C. Leung and C. Furth (eds), Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century, 51–72, Durham: Duke University Press. Zheng, Victor W. T. and Wong, S. L. (2002), Xianggang huaren de shenfen rentong: Jiuqi qianhou de zhuanbian. (The Identity of Hong Kong Chinese: Before and after 1997). In TwentyFirst Century Review 73, October. http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/media/articles/c073200207038.pdf.

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­PART III MODERN LIVING DISCOURSES AND PRINT CULTURES

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­C HAPTER 7 CONCRETE DESIGNS FOR LIVING PROPOSED BY MARG MAGAZINE: THE MATERIALITY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MODERNISM IN INDIA IN THE EARLY YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE

Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan

Introduction India gained independence from British rule in 1947 and the combination of circumstances – decolonization and the urgency of securing an improved standard of living for Indians – provided the context for regarding modern architecture, industrial design and planning as avenues of human emancipation and nation building through improvements in the materiality and experience of everyday life. This chapter explores the role played by the Indian journal Marg (1946–present) in developing this discourse in the early years after the country’s independence through proposals of design for living. These designs for living had two attributes: first, they circulated modernist ideas about architecture and design among an English-reading urban elite in India through articles written by European and American architects and designers; and second, they campaigned to transplant modern materials, industrial manufacturing and Euro-American aesthetics in the home, at the workplace and in the planning of cities, presenting them as necessary ways to think about nation building.1 Significant recent scholarship informs the exploration that follows. D. J. Huppatz’s account of modern Asian design charts the paths through which modern design cultures emerged through the introduction of new technologies, materials, techniques and lifestyles, ‘mediated by political and social elites, colonial elites, professional designers and consumers’ in the colonial period (2018: 6). Decolonization reconfigured the relationship between Asia, Europe and the United States as modernization processes were initiated by new national leaders, institutions and corporations. A closer look at these themes emerges in the work of Abigail McGowan (2016a, b), Henrike Donner et al. (2011), Sanjay Joshi (2010), Douglas E. Haynes et al. (2010) and A. R. Venkatachalapathy (2002) who explore the ‘domestic modern’ and middle-class consumption in colonial and postcolonial India and South Asia.

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Complementing these works is the exploration of architecture, development and identity from colonial and postcolonial perspectives in Raymond Quek et  al. (2012), Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Madhuri Shrikant Desai (2012), and Duanfang Lu (2011) while a more specific India focus is found in a range of works – Madhavi Desai, Miki Desai and Jon Lang (2012), Farhan Karim (2012), Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash (2007), and Jyoti Hosagrahar (2005), to name just a few. The role of Marg in shaping the discourse on modern architecture and planning, too, has been the subject of recent scholarship in the writings of Mustansir Dalvi (2018b), Rachel Lee and Kathleen James-Chakraborty (2012), Gyan Prakash (2010), Geeta Kapur (2005) and Annapurna Garimella (2005). These works underline the entangled histories of decolonization and design and the ways in which discourses of modernization and middle-class aspirational consumption are mutually constitutive. Adrian Forty (2013) adds a significant layer when he draws our attention to the phenomenology of materiality, specifically of concrete, and its role in mediating the experience of modernity that changes not just everyday existence but also national self-image and conceptions of social progressiveness. Against this backdrop, Marg’s modernist designs for living are explored in this chapter through the magazine’s specific focus on the promotion of cement and concrete for architecture and interiors, in both urban and rural settings, covering the period from 1946 to 1963. Through this exploration, the chapter argues that modernism as a cultural imaginary in the context of nation building needed material expression in order to become fully real, and Marg played a significant role in concretely articulating both the imaginary and its realization. Tracing the magazine’s linkages with cement and concrete manufacturing and marketing companies through their sponsorship of articles and advertisements, the chapter points to the political economy sustaining cultural imaginaries circulating in the nationbuilding years in India.

Clearing the cobwebs Marg – A Magazine of Architecture and Art commenced publication in October 1946, when political developments were pointing to imminent independence for India. Marg, which means ‘pathway’ in Sanskrit, was published every three months from Bombay (now Mumbai) by MARG (Modern Architecture Research Group), a collective of progressive architects and art historians, who came together ‘with the object of stimulating a popular interest in and appreciation of architecture in India, and to help improve its standard in general’ (‘Marg’ 1946: 17). The founding editor of the journal was novelist and art historian Mulk Raj Anand, who had returned to India the preceding year after having lived in London for about two decades. Contributing editors in the early years included architects Otto Koenigsberger, Andrew Boyd, Minette De Silva, Percy Marshall; textile historian John Irwin; art critic Rudi von Leyden and others such as architects Richard Kaufmann, Benjamin Polk, Eric Mendelsohn and Durga Bajpai; art historians Karl Khandalawala and Stella Kramrisch, and craft experts Pupul Jayakar and Jasleen Dhamija, who wrote articles and editorials from time to time. 124

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A manifesto in the inaugural issue declared that the scope of the journal was visualized to be wide and far-reaching, non-technical, profusely illustrated, not parochial in its outlook but reflecting an all-India character with material covering: 1. Architecture, town, country, and national planning; decoration. 2. Arts and crafts; painting and sculpture; glass; ceramics, textiles; carpet weaving; metal work. 3. Industrial design; photography; commercial art; drama; theatre, cinema; dance; music etc. (‘Marg’ 1946: 17). Funds for the first issue were raised through subscriptions and the Tatas, a prominent Bombay-based industrialist family, provided Marg with office space and assured advertising revenue on the condition that the journal remained an educational, non-profit publication that was accessible through a low selling price, while maintaining largely visual content and high production values (Lee and Chakraborty 2012). However, an advertisement in the same issue indicates that a year’s subscription for the quarterly then cost 16 rupees in India and 18 rupees abroad, making it accessible only to the well-to-do sections of the educated (‘Advertisement’ 1946: 45). The content of Marg each quarter was a mix of articles on ancient and medieval Indian painting, sculpture and architecture; varied forms of music, dance and theatre including folk forms accompanied by articles on photography, film and television as well as on modern architecture, interior design and planning. It is this last category of articles that will form the focus of this chapter. The editorial of the inaugural issue, ‘Planning and Dreaming’, observed that ‘the vast populations of Asia are still subject to foreign domination and enjoy the lowest standards of living in the world’ and radical thinking was needed to plan for, and dream of, a new social order. The collective MARG, and its journal Marg, intended to be the pathway to ‘a true synthesis between the lasting values of our past heritage and the finest impulses of the new modern civilization which has been growing up around us’. The general character of the magazine was to be a ‘humanist one’, placing ‘Man, and his needs and interests, in the very centre of our view of life’, where ‘all the problems of beauty in construction, design, function and human value will be posed’. This content, the editorial collective hoped, would clear ‘the cobwebs out of the minds of our intelligentsia and the middle sections of our population’ so that constructive ideas ‘which are at the moment realised only by a very few may percolate among the vast majority of our countrymen’. It hoped that a new sense of direction would emerge with ‘the help of our fellow citizens, fellow architects and fellow artists’ (Anand 1946: 5–6).

­This is what we have; this is what we could have The inaugural issue’s first article was an anonymously authored illustrated exposition on the characteristics of true architecture entitled ‘Architecture and You’. The opening illustration is a reproduction of Le Corbusier’s 1933 plan for Antwerp of a plaza-like 125

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open space surrounded by high-rise concrete buildings underlined by a paraphrasing of Vitruvius declaring that utility, stability and beauty were the characteristics of building well. This is followed by the declaration that contemporary Indian architecture had not one of these attributes (‘Architecture’ 1946: 7). This pronouncement continues into an analysis of ancient Egyptian and Greek architecture reflecting the social order of their times followed by ancient Hindu and medieval Mughal architecture which reflected spiritual truths, and absorbed foreign influences while remaining anchored in contemporary life and customs. Then, arguing against grafting architectural expressions of a bygone age onto present-day conditions, the article pleads for nationalism in architecture which would be sensitive to local climate and topography, and, more importantly for this chapter, used materials such as stone, brick, wood and fabricated materials such as glass, steel, reinforced concrete and plastics. The building technique would have to take into consideration local traditions and craftsmanship integrated with technological innovations (‘Architecture’ 1946: 8–13). The article concludes with a section on what constituted general standards of living, consisting of images of a pair of kitchen interiors presented side by side (Illustration 7.1). The one on the left is a black-and-white photograph of an Indian kitchen packed with traditional coal stoves, metal cooking pots and kettles captioned ‘This is what we have’.

Figure 7.1  Illustration in ‘Architecture and You’ of how the traditional Indian kitchen could be transformed. Courtesy Marg magazine, India. 126

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To the right was ‘This is what we could have’, a one-point perspective rendering of a Western kitchen showing clean, clutter-free counter tops with a kettle one might find in a European home and a bowl of fruit and drawers below, an oven with a cooking ring on top and cylindrical cooking pots, storage bins with vertical handles, a work table on wheels and a chair for the cook to sit on. This rendering of what the future Indian kitchen ought to be is uncannily similar to Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen of 1926 which was scientifically designed following early-twentiethcentury ideas about efficiency, hygiene and workflow based on time and motion studies (Kinchin and O’Connor 2010). The two illustrations are followed by the pronouncement in capital letters: ‘MODERN SCIENCE AND THE MACHINE SPEAK A COMMON LANGUAGE, WHICH, IN BREAKING DOWN THE OLD REGIONAL AND SOCIAL BARRIERS, GIVES AN EXPRESSION OF LIFE COMMON TO ALL PEOPLES OF THE WORLD’ (emphasis in original). The concluding images are of three iconic modernist buildings, Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Le Corbusier’s Salvation Army Refuge Hostel in Paris and Wright’s Kaufmann House at Bear Run, Pennsylvania (‘Architecture’ 1946: 15–16). The article sums up Marg’s approach: it campaigned for an international style where Euro-American modernism would play the formative role in the postcolonial state. It underlined the urgency to think afresh and creatively about transforming the moribund colonial past by infusing it with scientific industrial modernity. The emphasis on new materials, tools and construction methods became a leitmotif echoed by architects from Europe and America who contributed articles to Marg and whose work was showcased in the journal. While the emerging ‘middle sections’ in urban centres had received interior decoration and architectural advice in the preceding decade through articles and advertisements in local English newspapers and ideal-home exhibitions (see McGowan 2016b; Karim 2012), they were now going to hear from the modernist masters themselves through Marg.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow An advertisement in the inaugural issue inviting annual gift subscriptions promised to bring to the reader ‘new trends in Architecture and Art abroad, for which well-known foreign critics will write for Marg’ (Advertisement 1946: 45). Over the next years, several architects wrote, and were written about, in the journal with three prominent examples discussed here. The first of these articles was by Frank Lloyd Wright, an article entitled ‘On the Right to Be One’s Self ’, an essay on democracy and architecture with an editorial preface that recommended his autobiography for ‘those who want to build for the age of steel and concrete in which we live’. The article (which was the text of speech he had given a couple of months earlier in New York) was about the organic nature of both democracy and architecture and when brought together, ‘a democratic building is at ease, it stands relaxed. It is of human scale and is for and belongs to the people’. The article clearly spoke to a readership on the brink of freedom. However, the accompanying images of 127

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his famous buildings give us a glimpse of exactly how Marg was promoting Wright’s work: Kaufmann House is captioned ‘Concrete and stone over stream’, the description of Johnson building emphasizes its walls of glass tubing, Imperial Hotel’s foundations of concrete pins, a church in Kansas with perforated roof of cement and metal laths. The lyrical text has illustrations focusing almost exclusively on the use of modern materials, particularly cement and concrete (Wright 1947: 20–4, 47). Two years later, the journal showcased Wright’s designs for offices and stores for Calico Mills in Ahmedabad, extolling his use of pre-cast concrete blocks to create the external wall-shell of the building and the concrete floors which were designed to be independent of the wall. The article included line drawings of the proposed building along with plans and an elevation, though the building was eventually never built (Moloobhoy 1949: 14– 16). In 1953, to mark Wright’s eightieth birthday, Marg reproduced an article showcasing his recent work using reinforced concrete blocks (Andrews 1953: 5–10). The essay ‘New India and Building’ was a message to Marg from Richard Neutra, pointing out the building tasks before India – mass housing for industrial workers, hospitals, schools, airfields – and pleading that for the resourcefulness of a great and ancient country to be successfully rejuvenated, the ‘means and methods will have to be of this day and age’ (Neutra 1947: 20). This message was followed by a case study of Neutra’s design for a home in the desert, a concrete and glass building adapted to the desert heat and cold through the judicious use of ‘contemporary materials’ – heat-reflective aluminium, aluminium foil insulation, copper coils – ‘in combination and composition with all the known modern conveniences, utilities and equipment, are solely responsible for the fact that such a difficult spot can be occupied’. The overall message is that just as new materials and building techniques could make an inhospitable terrain liveable, India’s great challenges could be similarly overcome (Neutra 1947: 22–30). In 1955, Neutra contributed another article, ‘City Planning and Architecture in India Today’, where he urged his Indian readers to guard their newly independent ancient country from falling into the pattern of Western consumerism. He recommended a new architecture and planning curriculum so India’s ‘great past’ is not ‘weakened by ready, cheap and feeble ornament’ and by no imitations ‘antique’ or ‘modern’ (Neutra 1955: 98–9). The third prominent architect to write for Marg was Le Corbusier. His article ‘Yesterday Today Tomorrow’ talked of the opportunities before India, having passed through black days and had her autonomy restored and on the threshold of a radiant tomorrow. Homes, industries, leisure centres, dwellings for men, shelters for machines, products, institutions, thoughts and gods would be built with materials indisputably selected from the range of the most efficacious and adapted to the local characteristics – ‘Steel, reinforced concrete, welded to the stone and clay of the regions’ put to work to serve social needs. He believed that accepting the fruits of industrialization would not pose a threat to the continuity of India’s philosophy of life and yesterday-todaytomorrow would meld without anachronism. Illustrating the article were visuals of Le Corbusier’s proposed skyscrapers for Algiers, Palace of the Soviets, a public recreational centre for 100,000 spectators – all buildings which could be built only with modern materials (Le Corbusier 1948: 12–19). 128

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Le Corbusier contributed several articles over the next years, mainly on town planning and urbanism – ‘Le Corbusier on Town Planning’ (1953: 2–3), ‘Urbanism’ (1953:10–18), ‘Contemporary: Le Corbusier’s Ideal of Town Planning’ (1957: 45–7) and ‘The Master Plan’ (1961: 5–19). It is said Mulk Raj Anand played a key role in Le Corbusier’s being invited by Prime Minister Nehru to design Chandigarh. In the thirty-five years Anand continued as editor, Le Corbusier appeared in the journal in editorials – ‘Chandigarh: A New Planned City’ (Anand 1961: 24–4) and in articles on Chandigarh – ‘A Note on Le Corbusier’ (Doshi 1953: 8–9), ‘On the Chandigarh Scheme’ (Drew 1953: 19–23) and ‘Contemporary: Chandigarh: Symposium’ (Jeanneret et al 1957: 48–50). Architectural historians have explored earlier transnational flows in the development of Indian architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries leading to fusions such as the Indo-Saracenic and Indo-Deco styles or revivals of ancient Indian architectural forms (Norma Evenson 1989, Jon Lang, Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai 1997; Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra 1995; Scriver and Prakash 2007; and Dalvi 2018a). Marg proposed a clean break with fusions and revivals (coinciding with the clean political break initiated by independence) with the introduction of the modern international style epitomized by the three prominent modernist European and American architects and planners featured in the journal in the early years. Their contributions to the magazine point to the international design network to which Marg had access. It is also significant that these architect-planners were also keenly aware of India’s independence and the nation building challenges ahead. For example, Corbusier writes of the promise of a new, radiant tomorrow for Indians at a moment when their ‘autonomy [has been] restored’ (Le Corbusier 1948: 12) and Richard Neutra refers to the ‘building tasks of modern India’ (Neutra 1947: 20). Not only did Marg derive its ideas about international modernism from them, but it also used their writings to further the discourse among the ‘intelligentsia and the middle sections of our population’ and through them to ‘the vast majority of our countrymen’. These articles were supplemented by case studies of their work, which were presented as ideals that the new republic ought to emulate. Common to all these individuals was their commitment to new industrial materials and building technologies. But how were these ideas of the ‘modern’ to be made intelligible to the Indian reader, in the Indian context? This was the subject of another series of articles which proposed designs for living in India’s cities and villages.

Design for living Nestled among the articles by Wright and Neutra and Le Corbusier (and other modernists such as Eric Mendelsohn, Richard Kaufmann, Benjamin Polk and Maxwell Fry) were a series of illustrated articles promoting modern architectural and interior decoration designs for the middle class Indian home. Recent scholarship has revealed the contours of the expanding colonial middle class and the emergence of the ‘domestic modern’ in India’s urban centres through articles and advertisements in newspapers 129

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and architecture and civil engineering trade journals (Dalvi 2018a; McGowan 2016a, b; Karim 2012). How Marg joined this conversation is explored in this section. The second issue of Marg carried an anonymous article, ‘What is a Home’ (‘What’ 1947: 93–5, 101, 106). It declared that a home was something ‘much more subtle than the mere use of bricks and mortar and concrete or the luxury of marble and gilding’ but a man-made environment for human living which would go beyond merely fulfilling physical needs and make possible the realization of aesthetic, moral and human values, the harmonious relation of the three primary qualities or the trinity of utility, structure and beauty. A home, whether it was an industrial worker’s city chawl (one-room tenement) or a small shelter in a village, should have a room for living and sleeping, a separate kitchen, a small bathroom, with a latrine if possible, and a small strip of a veranda. The middle-class home would have a living and dining room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, a small storeroom, a bath and a WC, and a small veranda. All these were to be well lit and ventilated with ‘economic “traffic” circulation’, so members of the family, especially the housewife, would not be fatigued by daily household chores, reminiscent of the scientific design of the Frankfurt Kitchen, which we have already seen in an earlier article. Such a utilitarian plan would become a good home, only through a good structure constructed by qualified technicians. The materials would depend on locally available resources such as brick and stone, though ‘the use of cement and concrete has today become common and necessary’. The article warned that it was essential that concrete was made using correct proportions, careful mixing, adequate setting and curing, and so on. As for the third quality, beauty, the unnamed author emphasized that ‘properly designed and constructed concrete will create not only sound, but aesthetically pleasing, structures that bring out the qualities of the materials employed’. The ideals of Vitruvius, thus, were sought to be united and manifest materially in cement and concrete. Watercolour and pen and ink renderings of three houses with plans and approximate costs accompanied the article to make its descriptions visual and real (Illustration 7.2). The urgency of transforming rural India was explored in yet another anonymous article ‘Rural India and Cement’ (‘Rural’ 1947: 44–5). Rural uplift meant not just the provision of parks, schools and dispensaries but better housing through which civic sense could be generated in the masses so they would cooperate to make national planning a success. The anonymous author acknowledged that this moral transformation of a people was a ‘gigantic task’. It is significant that the proposed rural utopia in cement is depicted not through speculative line drawings or evocative watercolours of hypothetical structures but through photographs of actual concrete-paved village roads, cattle sheds, drinking water troughs for animals, a large airy covered market placed with a hygienic cementlined drain, a kitchen with concrete shelves with neatly arranged gleaming metal vessels, silos for grain, dustbins and latrines with soak pits, both made of cement. Illustrating the myriad ways in which cement could improve village life and the rural interior, the article declared cement as ‘the ideal building material for the poor man: it is permanent, trouble-free and economical in the long run’ and the material through which the ‘Indian villager can claim clean and hygienic surroundings as an elementary human right’. It was a claim for full citizenship through cement (Illustration 7.3). 130

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Figure 7.2  Watercolour and pen and ink renderings of a house with plan and approximate cost. Courtesy Marg magazine, India.

Another anonymous article, ‘Design for a Small House’, was a short account of a lowcost, permanent house in concrete designed for ‘a poor man, especially the labour class’ (‘Design’ 1947: 60–1). A unit, consisting of a living room, bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, lavatory and a wide veranda would be cheaper than prevailing costs, ‘not only by the use of cement concrete, which is comparatively cheaper than other building materials’ but also through ‘evolving a very economical design of structure by scientific investigation’. The modest cost was achieved by precast units: concrete hollow blocks for walls, precast concrete T-beams for floors and roofs, cheaper than in situ construction and speedier; lintels and sunshades, door and window frames of pre-cast reinforced concrete, all of which could be made cheaper still through mass production. Thus, the beauty promised by cement in the preceding article could now be achieved inexpensively by the poorest. 131

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Figure 7.3  Photographs depicting how cement could transform village life in India. Courtesy Marg magazine, India. Line drawings accompanying the article showed two interiors, one of a bedroom with a bed along a window with cement jalis (pierced screens) and cement shelves for storage built into another wall and the other a kitchen with a chimney and a steaming pot on what looks like an indigenous wood/coal stove. This low-cost permanent house in concrete was one of the ‘outstanding popular exhibits’ at the Engineering and Industrial Exhibition held in mid-1947 at Madras (now Chennai). Full particulars could be requested for free by writing to the association. Readers were informed that a version with better construction, more doors and windows (‘and these would naturally be made of teakwood’) would be available for ‘middle-class people’ at extra cost. Clearly, different configurations of accessories and the possibility of selection from a choice of materials were made available to cater to the varying aesthetic choices of different classes of consumers. Three years later, ‘Design for Living – Present-day Trends in Architecture’ by the pseudonymous author ‘Solus’, was a meditation on an authentic architecture for the new republic (1950: 26–31). This architecture would be ‘a product of experiment and invention of new methods of construction and new materials’ designed not to ‘recapture’ the rich architectural heritage of India, but be harmonious ‘with the spirit of the age’, correlating ‘with the life of the people, their thoughts and activities, their hopes and aspirations’. Therefore, architecture should be ‘concerned with the creation of a new plan for the new mode of life’, to meet the ‘unprecedented demands of modern life’ – the conflation of decolonization (the new plan) with the modern (the new mode of life). 132

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Solus advocated a new aesthetic deriving from the lightness, strength and mobility of new materials to create a modern architecture which would be ‘a conscious integration of art, science and life with the accent on living’ based on a scientific analysis of ‘the needs of man, the site, and the location’. Such architecture would be emancipatory, transforming health, education, community life and cultural activities. For industrial workers, factories would no longer be inefficient, ugly, soul-destroying enclosures; people would be able to ‘escape from the dirt, ugliness and noise, the disease and squalor, both physical and moral’ associated with slum conditions. Comfort, convenience and hygiene would be ensured through community centres in town and villages along with buildings for education and recreation, hospitals, markets and public buildings, libraries, canteens and crèches. In short, ‘buildings designed for every purpose and planned for the needs of the people using them’. The article carried illustrations of a selection of designs of plans and exterior views of a community centre, a crèche and an open-air village theatre to illustrate how ‘the modern architect gives a “concrete” expression to the regeneration of cultural life of the nation’. The modes of representation employed to visualize ideas of modern living played a critical role in transforming what was essentially a cultural imaginary into a reality that was palpable, promising, possible, within reach. One can identify a progression of image-making in the pages of Marg. The watercolour renderings of bungalows, crèches, community centres, complete with full-grown trees, people going in and out, swings and playgrounds were designed to pique the readers’ minds’ eye, inviting them to aspire to a modern future and invest in it. Plans and elevations suggested that the watercolour renderings were not mere flights of fancy, but could indeed be built. Detailed dimensions with approximate costs of building indicated that these were proposals which could result in real houses. And lastly, photographs of model houses supplied conclusive proof that these were viable proposals. Moreover, readers could visit engineering and industrial exhibitions to actually see these buildings, walk through them, thus making the proposals utterly credible.

Making it concrete In a journal which otherwise prided itself on an impressive line-up of nationally and internationally prominent authors, these anonymous and pseudonymous articles are intriguing. However, a closer examination of the text of the articles reveals a pattern of interconnections. The final line in ‘What is a Home’ was in parenthesis, an italicized phrase stating: (‘By courtesy of the Cement Marketing Company of India’). The article ‘Rural India and Cement’ mentions the ‘active efforts made in a score of villages scattered throughout the country’ by the Cement Marketing Company of India, Limited. The article ‘Design for a Small House’ directly publicized a model house constructed by a provincial branch of the Concrete Association of India, ending with an invitation to readers to write in for free details. And, finally, in ‘Design for Living’, Solus mentions that the illustrations in the article were reproduced from a publication of the Cement 133

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Marketing Company of India, Limited, Bombay, entitled 80 Designs of Buildings for Every Purpose. Why was Marg making space for these organizations in its pages? Part of the answer lies in the history of the use of cement and concrete in India. Reinforced concrete had been used in India sporadically since the late nineteenth century using imported cement and reinforcement, with only the aggregate being obtained from within India. The first factories to manufacture cement were set up in western and central India in the early twentieth century and the manufacturers of steel reinforcement started in 1914. Most of the construction in the colonial period was done by the Public Works Department which built bridges, railway stations, warehouses at ports and millworkers flats. Reinforced concrete was not only used for engineering and architectural projects but also for smaller objects like lamps and fence posts, garden accessories like pots and pavements and interior elements such as jalis. The 1920s and 1930s were focused on developing construction standards, adapting British specifications to India’s tropical temperatures and unskilled workforce. By then, the use of concrete became the preferred material in urban centres like Madras, Bombay and Delhi; the popularity of the Art Deco style in Bombay was intrinsically linked up with the expanding use of concrete by commercial builders and real estate developers in this expanding city (Tappin 2002: 79–98). As the use of cement expanded, the industry consolidated itself. The Cement Manufacturers Association was formed in 1927 to regulate the price of cement in India. The Concrete Association of India was formed in 1927 to promote free technical aid and advice and to educate the public in the use of cement through The Indian Concrete Journal established in the same year for disseminating latest technological progress in the spheres of civil and structural engineering, cement and concrete technologies and construction. The Cement Marketing Company of India Limited was created in 1930 to eliminate internal competition within the industry and increasing demand through a centralized advertising campaign. Ten cement companies merged in 1936 to form The Associated Cement Companies Limited (ACC) which later took over the Cement Marketing Company of India. A key player in all these companies and associations was the industrial house of Tatas which was also the main manufacturer of steel reinforcement for concrete in India, and the principal sponsor of Marg. The content of these anonymous articles also connected Marg to a genre of popular architecture and interior décor advice which had begun to circulate in the 1930s, which took the form of articles in newspapers guiding an English-educated, middleclass readership about matters of modern lifestyles and good taste (McGowan 2016b). Architectural advice also became available in the form of books such as R. S. Deshpande’s Cheap and Healthy Homes for the Middle Classes (1935) and Modern Ideal Homes for India (1939), articles in The Indian Concrete Journal and in ideal-home and industrial exhibitions where visitors could see mock-ups of actual living rooms and kitchens displaying the latest building materials and accessories. The Cement Marketing Company of India also published books: The Modern House in India (1943), Sixty Designs for Your New Home (1946) and 80 Designs for Buildings for Every Purpose (1950), which we have already seen in Solus’s article in Marg, and The Concrete Association of India published Designs for 134

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Modern Living (1966). These publications and the exhibitions sought to popularize a new architectural aesthetic and construction mode based on the physical properties and versatility of cement.

The political economy of modernism A closer examination suggests that the design-for-living proposals are quite entangled with corporate propaganda of the cement companies. We have seen that the article ‘What is a Home’ was directly supplied by the Cement Marketing Company. Of the three illustrations accompanying ‘Design for a Small House’ the first was a line drawing of the prototype two-roomed house designed and built by the Associated Cement Companies (ACC), made from a photograph published in The Indian Concrete Journal of 1946 (see Karim 2012: 3–14). The other two interior views of a bedroom and kitchen were line drawings made of the prototype working class house constructed by ACC exhibited at the Industrial and Engineering Exhibition at Madras in 1947, made from photographs published in The Indian Concrete Journal of 1947 (see Karim 2012: 3–20, 21). Solus’s article ‘Design for Living’ acknowledged reproducing architectural designs from 80 Designs of Buildings for Every Purpose, though a close reading reveals that it also borrowed, sometimes verbatim, from the book’s preface and chapters on community planning and industrial planning and welfare. The rural improvements suggested in ‘Rural India and Cement’ had much in common with the ideal village built in 1945 by ACC as a practical demonstration at Virar, on the outskirts of Bombay. Along with sample village residences, various public structures were built ‘that included cattle sheds, water wells, temples and community rooms’, though it cannot be confirmed that the visuals accompanying the articles are from that project. The modernist designs for living proposed by Marg through international architects needed a material to make them real, and that material was cement and concrete. Yet, this very materiality also points to the political economy of Marg’s modernist credo. The advertisements by the cement manufacturing and marketing companies in the pages of Marg sustained the journal financially. The most prominent advertisement in full colour on the inside-front cover of the very first issue of Marg asks the reader, ‘Planning your new home?’ and presents a catalogue of ‘60 designs for new concrete homes’. The advertiser is the Cement Marketing Company of India looking to popularize the material to the aspiring middle and upper classes symbolized by the loving couple contemplating designs for lavish concrete bungalows of modern design (‘Planning’ 1946). (Illustration 7.4). Marg’s pages were used to promote The Cement Manufacturers Association and The Concrete Association of India through anonymous articles extolling the virtues of a new modernism for a new republic. And the Tatas, who provided accommodation and financial support to the journal were also producers of cement and steel, the materials of nation building and a key player in these trade associations. In fact, it has been suggested that the anonymous author of the article ‘Architecture and You’ in the inaugural issue was Otto Koenigsberger (Lee and James-Chakraborty 2012), who 135

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Figure 7.4  Advertisement of the Cement Marketing Company of India in the first issue of Marg. Courtesy Marg magazine, India. was member of MARG and on the editorial board of Marg, and also the architect for many of the Tata institutions and planner of the Tata’s steel town, Jamshedpur. His work with the Tatas, ‘a nation-building corporation, constructing the skeleton of modern India’, led him to be invited by the first Prime Minister, Nehru, to be Director of Housing (Lee 2012). The preceding pages have explored the entanglements between the international design and architecture fraternity, local corporations seeking to expand their markets 136

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against the backdrop of the nation building agenda of the postcolonial Indian state. In playing a significant mediating role between these actors, Marg not only promoted and sustained the cultural imaginary of modernism but, as the discussion has shown, made its material expression accessible to the emerging middle class in the early years after independence.

Note 1 For further details of the demonstration village see Karim (2012: 5–11 to 14).

References 80 Designs of Buildings for Every Purpose. ([1950] 1966), Bombay: The Cement Marketing Company of India. ‘Advertisement for Marg’ (1946), Marg, 1 (1): 45. Anand, M. R. (1946), ‘Planning and Dreaming’, Marg, 1 (1): 3–6. Anand, M. R. (1961), ‘Chandigarh: A New Planned City’, Marg, 15 (1): 2–4. Anand, M. R. (1963), ‘Living, Working, Care of Body and Spirit’, Marg, 17 (1): 2–3. Andrews, W. (1953), ‘The Recent Works of Frank Lloyd Wright’, Marg, 7 (1): 5–10. ‘Architecture and You’ (1946), Marg, 1 (1): 7–16. ‘Architecture and You’ (1963), Marg, 17 (1): 4–7. ‘Care of Body and Spirit’ (1963), Marg, 17 (1): 59–70. Dalvi, M. (2018a), ‘This New Architecture: Contemporary Voices on Bombay’s Architecture before the Nation State’, Tekton, 5 (1): 56–73. Dalvi, M. (2018b), ‘Mid-century Compulsions: Visions and Cautions about Architecture and Housing in the Emerging Nation State’, Domus India, April 2018. Available online: https:// www.pressreader.com/india/domus/20180412/281681140456832 (accessed 26 September 2018). Desai, M., Desai, M., and Lang, J. (2012), The Bungalow in Twentieth-Century India: The Cultural Expression of Changing Ways of Life and Aspirations in the Domestic Architecture of Colonial and Post-colonial Society, Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate. Deshpande, R. S. (1935), Cheap and Healthy Homes for the Middle Classes of India, Poona: United Book Corporation. Deshpande, R. S. (1939), Modern Ideal Homes for India, Poona: United Book Corporation. ‘Design for a Small House’ (1947), Marg, 2 (1): 60–1. Designs for Modern Living: 32 Architect-designed Houses Shown in Plan and Perspective. (1966), Bombay: Concrete Association of India. Donner, H. (ed) (2011), Being Middle-Class in India: A Way of Life, London and New York: Routledge. Doshi, B. (1953), ‘A Note on Le Corbusier’, Marg, 6 (4): 8–9. Drew, J. (1953), ‘On the Chandigarh Scheme’, Marg, 6 (4): 19–23. Dwivedi, S. and Mehrotra, R. (1995), Bombay: The Cities Within, Bombay: India Book House. Evenson, N. (1989), The Indian Metropolis: A View Toward the West, New Haven: Yale University Press. Forty, A. (2013), Concrete and Culture: A Material History, London: Reaktion.

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Design and Modernity in Asia Garimella, A. (2005), ‘Introduction’, in Annapurna Garimella (ed), Mulk Raj Anand – Shaping the Indian Modern, 18–27, Mumbai: Marg Publications. Haynes, D. E., McGowan, Tirthankar Roy, A. T. and Yanagisawa, H. (eds) (2010), Towards a History of Consumption in South Asia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hosagrahar, J. (2005), Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism, London and New York: Routledge. Huppatz, D. J. (2018), Modern Asian Design, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Jeanneret, P., Manickam, T. J., and Mansinh, R. M. (1957), ‘Contemporary: Chandigarh: Symposium’, Marg, 10 (2): 48–50. Joshi, S. (2010), The Middle Class in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ­Kapur, G. (2005), ‘Partisan Modernity’, in Annapurna Garimella (ed), Mulk Raj Anand – Shaping the Indian Modern, 28–41, Mumbai: Marg Publications. Karim, F. (2012), Domesticating Modernism in India, PhD diss. University of Sydney. Kinchin, J. and O’Connor, A. (2010), ‘Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen – The Frankfurt Kitchen’. Available online: https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/ counter_space/the_frankfurt_kitchen/#highlights (accessed 31 March 2019). Lang, J., Desai, M., and Desai, M. (1997), Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity – India 1880–1980, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Le Corbusier (1948), ‘Yesterday Today and Tomorrow’, Marg, 2 (4): 12–19. Le Corbusier (1953), ‘Le Corbusier on Town Planning’, Marg, 6 (3): 2–3. Le Corbusier (1953), ‘Urbanism’, Marg, 6 (4): 10–18. Le Corbusier (1957), ‘Contemporary: Le Corbusier’s Ideal of Town Planning’, Marg, 10 (2): 45–7. Le Corbusier (1961), ‘The Master Plan’, Marg, 15 (1): 5–19. Lee, R. (2012), ‘Constructing a Shared Vision: Otto Koenigsberger and Tata & Sons’, ABE Journal, 2 | 2012, Available online: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/356. DOI: 10.4000/abe.356 (accessed 3 October 2019). Lee, R. and James-Chakraborty, K. (2012). ‘Marg Magazine: A Tryst with Architectural Modernity’, ABE Journal [online], 1 | 2012. Available online: http://journals.openedition.org/ abe/623 (accessed 3 April 2017). ‘Living’ (1963), Marg, 17 (1): 41–5. Lu, D. (ed) (2011), Third World Modernism – Architecture, Development and Identity, London: Routledge. ‘Marg-Modern Architecture Research Group’ (1946), Marg, 1 (1): 17. McGowan, A. (2016a), ‘Khadi Curtains and Swadeshi Bed Covers: Textiles and the Changing Possibilities of Home in Western India, 1900–1960’, Modern Asian Studies, 50 (2): 518–63. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X14000705 (accessed 8 September 2018). McGowan, A. (2016b), ‘Domestic Modern: Redecorating Homes in Bombay in the 1930s’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 75 (4): 424–46. Available online: https://doi. org/10.1525/jsah.2016.75.4.424 (accessed 8 September 2018). The Modern House in India (1943), Bombay: Cement Marketing Company of India. Moloobhoy, S. (1949), ‘Offices and Stores for Calico Mills: Ahmedabad’, Marg, 3 (2): 14–16. Neutra, R. J. (1947), ‘“New India and Building” and “Desert Residence for Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Kaufmann”’, Marg, 1 (4): 20–1 and 22–30. Neutra, R. J. (1955), ‘City Planning and Architecture in India Today’, Marg, 8 (3): 98–9. ‘Planning Your New Home?’ (1946), Marg, 1 (1): inside front cover. Prakash, G. (2010), Mumbai Fables, Noida: HarperCollins. Quek, R. and Deane, D. with Butler, S. (eds) (2012), Nationalism and Architecture, Burlington: Ashgate. Rajagopalan, M. and Shrikant Desai, M. S. (eds) (2012), Colonial Frames, Nationalist Histories: Imperial Legacies, Architecture and Modernity, Burlington: Ashgate.

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Concrete Designs for Living ‘Rural India and Cement’, Marg, 1 (4): 44–5. Scriver, P. and Prakash, V. (eds) (2007), Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India, London and New York: Routledge. Sixty Designs for Your New Home (1946), Bombay: Cement Marketing Company of India. ‘Solus’ (1950), ‘Design For Living: Present-day Trends in Architecture’, Marg, 4 (2): 26–31. Tappin, S. (2002), ‘The Early Use of Reinforced Concrete in India’, Construction History, 18 (2002): 79–98. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613846 (accessed 16 April 2018). ­Venkatachalapathy, A. R. (2002), ‘In Those Days There was No Coffee: Coffee-drinking and Middle-class Culture in Colonial Tamilnadu’, The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 39 (2–3): 301–16. ‘What Is a Home’ (1947), Marg, 1 (2): 93–5, 101, 106. ‘Working’ (1963), Marg, 17 (1): 46–58. Wright, F. L. (1947), ‘On the Right to Be Oneself ’, Marg, 1 (2): 20–4, 47.

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­C HAPTER 8 ‘TO LIVE OR NOT TO LIVE, THAT IS THE QUESTION’: SPATIAL SYMBOLISM OF APARTMENTS OF THE 1980S IN KOREAN LITERATURE

Jhee-Won Cha

Introduction: Apartments, the symbol of Korean modernity This chapter probes into the reality of modern life in Korea during the postcolonial period through a study of the symbolism of apartments of the 1980s in Korean literature. It pays attention to the social implications of apartments as a holistic symbol of modernity in Korea’s postcolonial period, which mainly involve a materialistic desire to overcome poverty and an ingrained sense of inferiority. Despite the material achievements of Koreans by the 1980s, the tragic events of their inner lives are clearly engraved in the space of the apartment: the loss of homes and native villages, as well as alienation and an existential crisis arising from the sense of ‘no-homeness’ in the apartment. Although apartments represent various aspects of Korean modernity since Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonization, sociological and cultural research on apartments as the distinct residential form of the Korean middle class was scarce until the 1990s. It was only after the translation and publication of French sociologist Valerie Galezeau’s doctoral research on the phenomenon of Korean apartments (2003) into Korean in 20071 that architects and sociologists in Korea began considering the social implications of the apartments they themselves had lived in.2 By contrast, Korean literature published during the first emergence of apartment buildings had recognized apartments as the modern home of the Korean middle class from early on. It depicted modernity found in the designs, construction techniques and in the material culture of apartments, and captured lived experiences of modernity, as well as emotions and feelings of everyday living in apartments. While fiction may be considered imaginary, Alistair McDonald Taylor has argued, ‘imagination is necessary to obtain a full picture of a previous age’ (1938: 462). Literature gives ‘evidence [. . .] as to the manners, thought, and custom which [the writers] knew so well, revealing just those psychological shades in which chronicles and legal or economic records are deficient’ (Taylor 1938: 464). Furthermore, Terry Eagleton noticed that the value judgements by which literature is constituted ‘have close relations to social

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ideologies’ (1996: 14). So, literature which ‘works primarily by emotion and experience’ (1996: 22) can provide a living criticism of those rationalist or empiricist ideologies enslaved to ‘fact’ and its ‘deep social, political and philosophical implications’ make it ‘a political force’ (1996: 17). This chapter, therefore, examines Korean literary works, as they help us to better our understanding of emotions, feelings and lived experiences of modern Koreans in the new modern urban living space of apartments, and to scrutinize the social phenomenon of Korean apartments from the perspectives of contemporary Korean minds.

Symbolism of the apartment in Korean literary works The rise of apartments in the 1980s In the 1960s and the 1970s, when residential apartments were built for the first time in Seoul, they were portrayed negatively in literature, primarily in relation to their designs, including construction of spaces, and their impact on living. Apartments were perceived as ‘abnormal residences’ and ‘bizarre buildings’, which seldom harmonized with the traditional lives of Seoulites. These ‘alien and crude’ buildings were destroying the ‘order of space’ in Seoul and erasing the past lives of its residents (Jeon: 47). Despite these early negative views of apartments, apartment living increased exponentially from the 1980s onwards. Owing to rapid economic growth, large-scale constructions of apartments began in earnest in many districts of Seoul, and apartments became the main form of residence for common Seoulites. Scholarship by historians and critics of Korean architecture address the 1980s as the period when the apartment became a highly desirable residence for Seoulites. Valerie Gelezeau, for example, defined the 1980s as the period of ‘apartment craze’ (2007: 42). The 1980s marks the age of ‘construction’, when economic development and modernization that had started in the 1970s was, to an extent, realized. Gelezeau said that it was the period which could be characterized by such phenomena as the ‘boom in the construction market and real estate market’ and ‘new-town and large-scale apartment complex construction’ (2007: 43–4). Apartments formed 90 per cent of new housing in the 1980s (2007: 91), creating what Gelezeau describes as the ‘Apartment Republic’. The apartment, the ‘home’ of the middle class In Apartment Republic, Gelezeau notices that ‘obviously it was very unique that in Korea the apartment has been considered as the most significant symbol of the city’s middle class’ (2007: 125). Apartments marked middle class life in postcolonial Korea and continue to do so today. The target demographic of apartment construction in the 1970s and the 1980s was the newly emerging urban middle class in Korean society. This mostly constituted of professional workers, such as management executives, office workers, government officials, engineers and bank employers, who, in many cases,

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migrated to Seoul from the countryside for higher education and job opportunities after the Korean war (Oh 2004: 258; Park 2011: 63). They became the important agents and, at the same time, the main beneficiaries of Korea’s rapid economic development (Gelezeau 2007: 116). This middle class inevitably desired new modern and convenient residences, suitable for its economic capability and living standards (I. Park 2013: 20). With housing demand, availability and affordability aligned, apartments became the primary and most desirable of residences, defining modern life in Korea, particularly that of the middle class (I. Park 2013: 21; C. Park 2013: 128). According to Hyun Kim, one of the great critics of Korean modern literature, ‘an apartment was more a way of thinking than just a residential space’ (Kim 1986: 184). Apartment life in the 1980s was not only modern and convenient, it was regarded as decent living, indicating stability and wealth. The materialistic origin of apartments and their sense of ‘no-homeness’ Early criticisms of apartment life in Korean literature focused on the materialistic associations of apartments and their symbolization of the sterility of human life and civilization, especially in Seoul. Most scholars have pointed out that the negative description of apartments in literature stems from such an association between apartments and materialism (Gelezeau 2007: 134–49; C. Park 2013: 19–20; I. Park 2013: 21–2). Briefly put, ‘the apartment is money’ (Gelezeau 2007: 134). As an expensive commodity and a reliable means of investment, the apartment reflects the materialism that was deeply embedded in Korea’s desire for modernity. After decades of exploitation at the hands of Japanese colonialism (1910–45) followed by the Korean War in the 1950s, the past meant nothing but absolute poverty for Koreans. As a result, the strong desire to overcome poverty and build a new independent country also meant the denial and refusal of the past (Son 2011: 244; Park 2011: 170; Gelezeau 2007: 17). The demolition of old villages and houses in the 1970s and the 1980s followed by large-scale apartment construction demonstrates this more than anything. People, especially the newly formed middle class in Seoul, longed for apartments instead of their old and ‘backward’ detached houses. The apartment meant a new kind of success – a wealthy life newly gained after overcoming poverty of the past. Moreover, they meant a modern life free from the feeling of inferiority latent in the mentality of Koreans from the colonial period (Illustration 8.1). The problem, however, is that by destroying old houses and villages, apartments inevitably denied the past and the memories preserved in them. This also led to denying one’s existence itself, which could not be separated from one’s past, memories and experiences. Scholars such as Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Relph, following Martin Heidegger who regarded the home as the essence of human existence, write about the sense of ‘placeness’ created in the home over time, through an accumulation of experiences and feelings (Tuan 2011: 15, 60, 139–240; Relph 2005: 77–100). According to Yi-Fu Tuan, human existence could be explained through the concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’, which are the basic constituents of human surroundings. Whereas ‘space is more abstract’ and 143

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Figure 8.1  Development of Gangnam Seoul, 1983. Photographer Chung-Eui Lim.

anonymous, ‘place’ can be defined as the existential space where human experiences are accumulated and human values granted (Tuan 2011: 15–19). Edward Relph also discussed that ‘placeness’ in home is generated not from a materialistic attitude, but from one’s common or private experiences (2005: 88, 91, 92–3). Old homes and villages, filled with accumulated experiences, are ‘imaged with security’ and ‘eternity’ (Tuan 2011: 54). In this sense, their destruction brought the loss of one’s place, where one’s memories were preserved and one’s identity was formed, giving the sense of security and eternity of life. Apartments, which were built where the old homes and native villages had been destroyed, could not provide this ‘sense of place’ because they were devoid of human experiences and feelings, which could only be obtained with time in one’s past. Apartments failed to constitute and preserve human existence, and on the contrary, by destroying and deconstructing human existence, they give the sense of ‘no-homeness’ and imply the absence of the ‘home’. Moreover, this sense of ‘no home’ was made by the very nature of the space of apartments. Apartments were born mostly from materialistic desire and functional demand in modern Korea. The phenomenon of apartments in Korea was produced by ‘the paradigm of the modern living space design’ which ‘started from the functional classification of life contents’. It aimed to analyse and reorganize living spaces only by rational reason and consider residential space as ‘a machine for living’. It was massproduced, using new technologies of production (I. Park 2013: 271, 273). The space of apartments, which was saturated with materialistic desires and calculated by functional 144

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rationality, embodied the uprooted and unstable ‘homeless’ existence of modern Koreans and, at the same time, incessantly produced their distorted materialistic desires. Apartments of the1980s in literary works In Korean literature, writers note that apartments of the 1980s conceal the suffering and trauma of people from Korea’s rapid, but crippled, economic growth and industrialization. Apartments were perceived as self-portraits of modern Korean society. Here, I explore themes in ‘middle-class’ symbolism of apartments in the stories and the novels of wellknown Korean novelists Wan-Seo Park, In-Sook Kim, Chae-Won Kim, Ji-Young Gong, In-Ho Choi, Dong-Ha Lee, Soon-Won Lee and Chang-Dong Lee. In their works, the spaces of apartments hide a broken and split humanity beneath their modern and wellpresented façades; they hide the phenomena of being rooted out from one’s native town, separated from relatives and old neighbours, fragmented family members and, lastly, solitude and alienation. As Jong-Eop Son has argued: Firstly, apartments, causing the nomadization of indigenous residents who used to live there and forcing people to lose and erase their memories and past lives, have become the ‘mechanism of disposal or denial’. (Son 2011: 244) Although the construction of apartments in Seoul initially had the purpose of improving the living conditions of urban residents and distributing good quality housing to them, in reality, it caused brutal social classification and gentrification (Park 2005: 79–83; Gelezeau 2007: 94–109; I. Park 2013: 20–1). Apartment construction resulted in the destruction of old villages and homes and in an expulsion of the working class communities who lived where apartments were planned to be built (Gelezeau 2007: 57; Son 2011: 252). The natives of the old town daldongne (moon village) could not afford the newly constructed apartments (Illustration 8.2). They had no choice but to lose their homes and move to the outskirts of Seoul or villages further afield with basic infrastructure. During this period, the Korean government had begun privatizing housing construction, passing on responsibility to conglomerate construction companies and investing public resources in the construction industry. As Chul-Soo Park explains: In the 1980s it was noticeable that the joint redevelopment method was introduced for the purpose of promoting redevelopment by private enterprises and the slums were destroyed, [. . .]. As a result, in many areas big complexes of apartments built by the joint redevelopment method substituted the slums or the villages of old, poor houses in the city. [. . .] In this process, apartments [. . .] came to carry not only the meaning of taking the chance of owning houses but also various social, economic, and spatial implications of the Korean society. (2005: 198) 145

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Figure 8.2  Geumho 3 dong Slum, 1989. Photographer Chung-Eui Lim. Apartments were thus built on redeveloped sites, where old houses in poor condition, or houses built illegally, had been destroyed. The heroine of Ji-Yong Gong’s novel At Easter, Sun-Rye, who is forced to leave her native village because of apartment construction and relocate to the suburbs of Seoul, returns, but as a maid for residents of these apartments. Sun-Rye looked at the apartments from a distance like a rainbow while waiting for the bus. The apartments were on a hill that had unclaimed graves …. [W]here did all the graves go? Cheonggu Apartments is where (they) would have picnics back in elementary school … Tancheon would be abound with carp in the spring and all of it is where the young girl lived. Houses disappeared and apartment buildings replaced them …. Sun-Rye had never imagined that she would leave to go to Seoul at a young age, wander in the factories in Suwon, only to return to her hometown to work as a domestic worker. (Gong 2001: 15–16) Apartment-construction was paradoxical – in promising homes to some, it denied them to others. Apartment construction on a large scale implemented ‘home ownership’ for some and resulted in loss of ‘home’ for others. This shook the very foundations of the native residents’ lives, a topic that emerges in the literature of the period. Although the rhetoric of the government and developers emphasized that the buildings were for all of the urban population, in effect, it was very much for the middle class and beyond the 146

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reach of the poor. Additionally, apartments dispose of poor, shameful or warm memories of the past. As Son argues: Apartments were mostly placed where slums and unlicensed houses were displaced or green belts and swamp lands were redeveloped. So the process of placing apartments obviously accompanies ‘destruction’. [. . .] Destruction and disposal will be possible when the justification of things which now exist are denied. (Son 2011: 252) With the disposal of old homes, human experiences and the values embedded in them, which made them one’s home, were also disposed. In In-Sook Kim’s So I Embrace You, the heroine In-Ho loses her native ‘village on the hill’, where memories of her childhood had been preserved. The old, poor village on the hill where naked, poor kids once played in coal ashes was disposed. When it was denied as the legitimate ‘place’ of life, seemingly unable to uphold and cherish human values, In-ho’s past and childhood were also denied. It took In-Ho and her mother a long time after leaving the village on the hill to find their own apartment that was on a permanent lease. These were small apartments [. . .]. Walking down the corridor, she could see the ruins that used to be the village they had lived in. [. . .] they were building luxurious high-rise residential buildings in her village, and the construction site looked colossal and aggressive in the sunset. [. . .] [T]he village on the hill was no more. (Kim 1994: 353) Likewise, to the character Hye-Jin of the following story, People of Seoul by Wan-Seo Park, apartments functioned as a ‘mechanism of disposal’. But, contrary to In-Ho, HyeJin wants to forget her shameful poverty. Having moved into an apartment, she disposed of her shabby past which would remind her of her old village. For Hye-Jin, ‘apartments are the place where life is discharged as waste, not the place where life is being built up with memories’ (Son 2011: 244). Hye-Jin felt a sense of sympathy mixed with contempt for the neighborhood that was still burning coal and did see it [. . .] but as a sad and poor neighborhood. Hye-Jin’s apartment was right in the middle of a big apartment complex in the east of Seoul. [. . .] She was able to go through last winter without having to burn coal or noticing how bitterly cold it was. Her disinterest in the weather naturally turned into disinterest in her neighbors. [. . .] What pathetic people. Her contempt for those people in that shabby neighborhood who would sleep so sweetly on a bed of poisonous lethal gas from burning coal underneath the flat heating stones compelled her to think of them as another race and she felt a strong sense of disconnection from them. (Park 1984: 172) 147

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Other characters, however, such as Ga-Hye in the following story by Chae-Won Kim, realize that when their old homes disappeared, they lost the most important sense of ‘place’ as well as its ‘images of stability and permanence’ (Tuan 2011: 54). Dear beloved people, and dear Ga-Hye, what do you think you are losing? What brings you back to your mother’s house? I feel that all including you are displaced people [. . .] [T]he house where I used to live in a long time ago when I was young is now replaced with an apartment building and we also live in one of the apartments in it. The village on the hill [. . .] was destroyed by bulldozers and replaced with apartments. (Kim 1995: 372) Ga-Hye and her lover feel that they have lost their hometowns. Relph has argued, ‘it is an important human desire to have attachment to place and deep relationship to a place’ (2005: 94). Obviously this attachment and relationship to the place, defined as topophilia by Yi-Fu Tuan, is formed by one’s meaningful experiences (Tuan 2011: 10; Relph 2005: 93). In apartment life, however, a lack of commonality in memories and experiences, compounded by the modular and segregated spaces, causes people to experience displacement and uprootedness. The following story narrates how penetrating the feelings of displaced-ness and uprooted-ness were in apartments through the loss of sensory connection to the traditional dish dongchimi, a watery kimchi commonly enjoyed in the winter. What brings you back to your mother’s house? You once talked about dongchimi you used to eat long ago. I remember it was when we were having dinner at a restaurant. You casually dipped your spoon into dongchimi and then put your spoon down, saying it was impossible to find the taste of old-style dongchimi anymore. You said you wanted to move to a detached house from the apartment you are living in now just to have some of that dongchimi. (Kim 1995: 367–8) Yi-Fu Tuan notes that more than anything else human sensual experiences could transform a strange, meaningless and anonymous space to a familiar, meaningful and concrete place. The human body is the basis where one’s sense of place is produced (Tuan 2011: 28–31). In this sense, the memory of tastes of one’s old homemade food would be cherished as a deep sense of place. The apartment, which abandoned and denied the old traditional taste engraved deeply in the human senses, cannot be one’s home. It is the space of ‘displaced-ness’. Apartments during this period symbolized what was viewed as the false and hypocritical class-consciousness of the Korean middle class whose identity was motivated by materialistic desire. In the 1980s, when economic growth in Korea was in

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full swing and the living standards of Korean urban residents caught up with those of Western developed countries, the ownership of an apartment meant gaining an entry into the proper middle class life (Illustration 8.3). ‘Ah, we’re finally here at our real home,’ [. . .] They really had come a long, tough way to arrive at their first real home. [. . .] [T]heir apartment was at the end of a large-scale complex known as the new development area in Sanggye dong and it was at the corner of the lowest floor of a 15-story building. A house at the corner of the lowest floor of any apartment building meant it had the lowest property value even among the ones of the same size in the same building. However, regardless of its property value, the important thing was that this was ‘their real home’, as his wife put it. (Lee 2006: 114–15) The apartment, thus, meant upward mobility. The question, ‘are you still living in a detached house?’ was not necessarily a question about one’s housing type, but more about whether one had overcome poverty. Although newly built, luxurious and well-equipped detached houses existed during the period, these were few, and were located in affluent areas of the city. For most, an old detached house meant a humble

Figure 8.3  Apgujeong Hyundae apartments seen from the north of the Han river. Photographer Jin Geol Chung.

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and basic residence, where one did not have access to hot water for showers and had to burn coal for cooking. The question might invoke shame and humiliation to the person asked. When Sun-Young saw a new model of a domestic automobile on the street, or a newly-built apartment building, she assumed that Seung-Ho would be living somewhere in Seoul, driving a car like that and living in an apartment like that. (Lee 2004: 221–2; Illustration 8.3) In Twenty-Three and Forty-Six, Soon-Won Lee depicts a consciousness of discrimination and differentiation through Sun-Young’s observations and shows how, to Sun-Young, the apartment complex of the middle class was a distinct world. It was gated and exclusive for people who inhabited such spaces, and they believed that they had entered the different, safe and elegant life of the middle class. The apartment was ‘where one could build the palace or the fortress only for oneself or his/her family if he/ she tightly locked the door’ (Jeon 2009: 95; C. Park 2013: 17). Class segregation resulting from this separation from the outside world is obvious, as illustrated critically and metaphorically by In-Seok Park: the ‘desert-type residential complex’ was isolated from outside, because ‘the desert is required to be equipped with the self-contained living conditions separated by the barriers for the purpose of being protected from the bad surroundings of desert’ (2013: 48). Writers from this period engaged with this spatial and class separation as a problem and explored how the snobbish, materialistic desire of the middle class was hidden within the gated spaces of apartment complex. Apartments were also expected to secure financial profits. Having become the only reliable and stable means of investment in Korean society, they came to define and imply the social class of their residents. Chul-Soo Park reminds: ‘We can agree to the saying that if you are living in an apartment of 50 pyoung (1 pyoung = 3.3 m2) in Gangnam district without any debt, you are living a successful life’ (2013: 21). The apartment directly indicated financial, social and, sometimes, professional status. The following story shows the economic and social meaning of the apartment in the Gangnam area and the 8th school district, where well-known prestigious schools were located. Mrs. Lim, after hearing Mun-Kyung’s story, [. . .] was vehemently against MunKyung selling the apartment. ‘Are you crazy? That apartment is sitting on gold mine right now. [. . .] what will you do after selling that amazing apartment?’ ‘You know that I’ve been having bad luck ever since I moved in there. I’m starting to hate that village too.’ [. . .] ‘[W]ait and see, this apartment you hate will be hitting the jackpot every year. Leases go up every year. The property prices or leases for other neighborhoods increase much slower than those in the school district 8. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to get another house with the increased leases … [A]s long as you don’t provoke or lose out on this goose with the golden eggs, it’s only a matter of time before you become a bourgeoisie yourself. Just wait and see.’ (Park 1989: 104–6) 150

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Here the story shows that the apartment became a form of capital for financial growth and was no longer ‘the place where human experiences and values are accumulated and one’s sense of placeness is formulated’ (Son 2011: 244). Using apartments as investments, as advised by Mrs Lim, was the typical ‘wise and smart’ investment method which most owners of two or more houses in Seoul adopted in order to increase their wealth. The apartment, then, came to define and represent its owner’s social class and status. ‘Once apartments became the parameter substituting all evaluations for money and commodities, what is only left for the next stage is the politics of hierarchical segregation of people by means of the brand and the size of apartments’ (C. Park 2013: 21). After a while, she realized she had to bring her son before it was too late. [. . .] She roughly did her hair and changed her clothes, but her impatience did not allow her luxuries to look good. The flashy stores and the sophisticated outfits the residents were wearing just for a stroll at Hyuk-Ju’s apartment complex looked like a scene straight out of an exotic holiday destination. It was the middle of summer. The women in Hyuk-Ju’s neighborhood looked like a field of flowers in their clothes. She felt that her clothes looked beyond modest, even to the point of shabby, and felt intimidated …. She charged towards Hyuk-Ju’s apartment, out of breath like a puffing freight car. [. . .] A draft of cool wind brushed against the woman’s hair matted on her forehead as the domestic worker opened the door for her. The cool, air-conditioned interior of the house in the sweltering midsummer weather, the uneasiness and anger building up inside the woman felt like a ridiculous coincidence. This sudden discord sent the woman into a daze and she forgot. (Park 1989: 150–1) In this way, apartments separate the indoors and outdoors. Within the barriers of the apartment that the heroine of the above story visited, there is no painful hot weather from which working people in the streets have to suffer. She also lives in the apartment, but in this specific apartment-complex exists another world, completely different from hers. In this sense, not only does economic exchange value exist in apartments, but so does the symbol of social differentiation and classification. In general, standardized residential spaces which were layered with the comfort and luxury of modern amenities led to strict socio-spatial differentiation. Apartment complexes of the upper middle class were differentiated from apartments where the lower middle class or the lower class, or both, lived. In addition, even in the same complex, rich buildings and not-so-rich buildings were differentiated (Gelezeau 2007: 124). Often the size of an apartment was considered as the direct criterion for its resident’s financial status. Sun-Rye, the woman who works as a maid, judges the economic statuses of others by the size of their apartment and feels disgraced when she realizes that the hostess ‘who only lives in a 128m2 apartment’ reproached her sister Jung-Rye for stealing. Sun-Rye 151

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thinks that a person who lives in an average apartment should not blame others so harshly without any reserve. Sun-Rye thought they looked like they lived in a luxurious terrace home but they were living in a 128m2 apartment. Sun-Rye was speechless, thinking about the thousands of dollars the girls would spend on purses. Sun-Rye thought, the amount of money they spend on purses, they should be living in a 300m2 terrace home. Sun-Rye felt wronged when everyone started blaming her younger sister. She wondered if her begging was pointless when Jung-Rye got kicked out. The nerve of that person who only lives in a 128m2 apartment. (Gong 2001: 27–8) This story exemplified the phenomenon of social classification that was tightly bound with the size and location of apartments. The differentiation and segregation by apartment complexes according to their square metres or their location, even within the same apartment complex, produced and spread negative effects on modern Korean society (C. Park 2013: 27). Lastly, apartments represented alienation and distorted human relationships in modern Korean society. Apartments of the 1980s in the literature imply alienation and the psychological breakdown of their residents. In these works, people experience mental dissociation and distortion of the self, or at least deviate from what could be described as a healthy and balanced life. They are cut off from family members, friends and neighbours in their apartments. The following story is about a man who failed to enter his apartment because he forgot the key in the morning. The only way to enter his apartment is through the front door to which the man had no key. He was completely excluded from his own home by the door which separated the inside and the outside. The apartment door was locked. The iron front door, locked solid, seemed like it was obstinately rejecting the return of its owner. The door seemed newly painted. After his long absence, one month and five days to be exact, it looked quite unfamiliar to him. He was utterly exhausted, [. . .] He rang the doorbell again, knowing that it was useless. [. . .] He wondered if his wife had come home yet. The locked door rushed back into his mind. That iron door separated the two worlds. Thinking about himself waiting outside that door, he felt helpless all over again. (Lee 2014: 9) The structure of the apartment makes it a sealed space. The man in the novel could access his home, his apartment, through only one passage, the only door it has (Illustration 8.4). While being able to enter one’s home through only one passage would secure the privacy of the middle class, at the same time, it caused their isolation. In-Seok Park examines an apartment’s design: ‘Owing to its tree structure, the space of apartment building has a uni-linear route of access. The route which leads to a home within the apartment complex from outside is only one’ (I. Park 2013: 47–51).3 152

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Figure 8.4  An walkway of the small size (100 m2 and under) apartment with uniform doors along one side. Photographer Jin Geol Chung.

The literature of the period explores isolation within apartments, self-imposed or otherwise. She did not think for a second that the rude ringing of the doorbell was out of character for her husband …. [O]nce she opened the door, the man stumbled and charged against her. The man’s face, hidden in the darkness, poured over her naked breasts. She realized all at once that she was only wearing a piece of underwear the size of a handkerchief and that the man was not her husband. It wasn’t so much the realization that the man wasn’t her husband, but a sense of annoyance. The feeling of annoyance was thoroughly creepy. She felt an urge strong enough to murder and pushed the man in an instant who was about to nosedive into her bosom. The man fell back helplessly like a scarecrow, tripped on his own ankle and fell down the stairs. [. . .] Even though she could not remember what he looked like, [. . .] the creepiness he left behind was as clear as day. [. . .] [T]hat sense of creepiness left behind made it seem like some sort of calamity would come upon her and hurt her. (Park 1996a: 207–10) In this story, people in apartments who are segregated and alienated from the outside, with limited connection to their neighbours and community, are described as sick, depressed, lonely and selfish. They fail to live an honest, normal life. Inter-relationships are represented as distorted and inadequate. The ‘sense of creepiness’ she feels implies

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the inadequacy of the place where she lives. She is suffering from a sense of alienation in her relationship with her husband after a deliberate abortion. Their life in the apartment, which was supposed to be their home, would inevitably break their relationship and intensify her sense of alienation. This sense of alienation is shared with her mother-inlaw. The old woman also suffers from a sense of alienation and maladjustment because she cannot bear the apartment, which is all too different from her old home. The apartment gives the old woman the sense of being displaced from home. Being overwhelmed by these feelings, she begins to suffer from dementia. [H]er dementia started a long time ago. The dementia started ever since she moved into the apartment and she would do humiliating things in front of others without feeling any embarrassment. . . .[A]fter [. . .], she was escorted to the new apartment in a cab. She was surprised at the size of the apartment building at first, but once she realized that they were not going to use the whole building, she started yelling and causing a commotion. “[. . .] Why did you move me out of the home my husband left me to send me here to this line of wretched rented homes? I’m done for. I’m done for. We let the wrong daughter-in-law into our home, look how it destroyed our family. (Park 1996a: 225–6) The old woman’s suffering demonstrates that for her the apartment lacked human experiences and values, and could not be a real home that assured her of her existence. In this inadequate place, the new home, apartment residents lose their own identities and are unable to establish proper relationships. The heroine of the following story, Amidst the Mist by Wan-Seo Park, is a young woman living as the mistress of an old, rich man (she calls him ‘Papa’). Her existential situation was expressed through her apartment. Her lover suggested a large apartment in any of ‘rich’ buildings of the complex, but she wanted a small apartment in a ‘poor’ building because for her; the apartment would be nothing but a kind of ‘hideout’, similar to temporary lodging. The fact that she wants a small apartment shows that the apartment has been perceived as a temporary and transient space (Son 2011: 244). She insists on the first floor for purposes of running away in case of being caught. What is paradoxical, however, is that the apartment protects residents from the eyes of others and, at the same time, it ‘peeps secretly into others’ lives’ (Son 2011: 250). ­ ne day I could feel that the room was empty from his window. Then, I saw his O photo in the newspaper. He was really a wanted criminal. There was a reward for finding him. Unfortunately, nobody would get that reward. He was well under the radar and on the run for five years, but decided to confess to the police in the end. [. . .] [I]t may seem as though I’ve missed out on my reward. [. . .] But I wasn’t upset about the money. I was on the run myself and I wasn’t confident that I would feel free for even a second. [. . .] And it was that everybody was running from something. (Park 1996b: 202–3) 154

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The story above shows the apartment could be ‘a more secure and safer residence than any other one’, but at the same time it is the space where ‘the desire for a secret peep into others’ lives might be evoked’ (Son 2011: 250). The implication of apartments as the space which leads human relationships to distortion appears most often and most substantially through the breakup of family relationships in the literature of the 1980s. The modern apartments for new small families, advertised as ‘home sweet home’, in fact, broke up old family relationships, revealing the distorted spatial nature of apartments. The man in the following story acquires an apartment, which he considers the symbol of success, and while arranging his mother’s room, he dreams of the image of ‘home sweet home’. His mother’s room, however, was not, in fact, for his mother, but for completing his picture of a sweet, thoughtful middle-class family. Your mother is [. . .] arriving at 7:50 p.m. by train. [. . .] [W]hat’s wrong with her visiting her son? We’re living comfortably. Plus, we also have a guestroom that she can stay in. Honey, the guestroom is what I’m worried about. I wonder if we did something pointless. The first apartment he bought had three bedrooms – the biggest room was for the couple and it was given that one of the smaller rooms would be for the children, but it was his idea that the third room was for their grandmother. After buying his first home in Seoul … [I]t was a sentimental decision on his part that he referred to the third room as grandmother’s as he thought of his mother in the countryside, but he never actually thought of having his mother over. [. . .] The couple was able to benefit from the name of the room. Their friends who visited or boring bosses who would visit to see that the couple decorated a room for their mother were touched by their filial piety and saw them in a different light. He was not the one to miss out on stating the following while showing people the grandmother’s room. [. . .] Many people who weren’t as filial were speechless at his words. He was quick with words like a copywriter and gave people a sense of trustworthiness, dependency and sentimentality. ­ oon-Kyung became his accomplice after having figured out what he was doing. Y She … [S]howed off their grandmother’s room. … Yoon-Kyung liked to humbly brag about the grandmother’s room to her friends and neighbors, but was fond of the fact that children would see them as parents anticipating the day their grandmother would come to visit. He was as scared [. . .]. [H]e was terrified when thinking of a city girl like YoonKyung and his mother, a country woman, stricken by poverty and work, stuck with children from an apartment era. (Park 1999: 342–4) This story shows the illusion of a middle class myth of making a ‘sweet home’ in an apartment. The young couple were embarrassed with the reality of the ‘granny’s room’, 155

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which functioned to cultivate a family feeling and educate their children on filial piety (Mi-Sook Jung 2012: 321). He and his wife were surprised and frustrated when his mother audaciously came into his apartment and brazenly told them about her wish to live there forever. It can be said that this story on the crippled relationship of family members illustrates the maleficent influence of the apartment on society. The apartment, as a ‘home sweet home’ was a myth, an illusion. ‘How’ to live in apartments, that is the question for now Apartments, during the 1980s, represent a desire for modernity – overcoming poverty and the accompanied sense of inferiority – as well as an ambivalence towards modern values. While apartments in Korea have been fuelled by the incessant drive for economic development, they have, in return, been critiqued as generating materialistic desire in Koreans. Just as Gelezeau ironically called Korea ‘Apartments Republic’, it is quite undeniable that the apartment is now the most common residential living space in Korea (Lee 2013: 132). Son suggests that for most Koreans in cities, especially in Seoul, the detached house of the 1960s and the 1970s is still considered inefficient and out-of-date, while the luxurious Western-styled detached houses, equipped with modern facilities like those in apartments, is still a dream far from their reality. The luxurious detached houses are expensive and low in efficiency (Son 2011: 243). For the middle and lower classes, the apartment complex remains the only type of housing on offer (I. Park 2013: 71). It is said that nearly a quarter of the population of Korea live in Seoul and there is little scope to produce a different typology of housing, other than the apartment, and thus prompts a call for, as Son suggests, ‘the transformation and renewal of the apartment itself ’ (Son 2011: 261). With this reality in Seoul, it is thought that the negative existential vision of apartments caught in the above stories could be broken through only by redefining and re-establishing our understanding of the apartment not as an efficient space or reliable means of investment, but as a ‘home’ where human existence is secured, as the ‘place’ where human experiences and values can be cherished. Hamlet’s question ‘to be or not to be’ should be understood as one that asks: how to live. The substance of the question, whether to live or not to live in apartments, is much more a question about how to live in apartments. Scholar of Comparative Literature Jin-Kyung Lee states that we should consider ‘the different ways in which spaces embrace us, arrange our experiences, thoughts, and lives in a different way’ (1998: 91). The stories of the 1980s apartments show that the spaces in which people lived were imagined as those that also decided their existence. Notes 1

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Valerie Gelezeau published her doctoral dissertation on Korean apartments as a monograph Séoul, ville géante, cités radieuses in 2003, and the book was translated in Korean under the title of Apartments Republic in 2007. See Gelezeau.

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The insightful and meaningful research from sociological and architectural points of view on apartments in Korea such as those of Chul-Soo Park, In-Seok Park, Sang-In Jeon and HaeChun Park appeared only in the first ten years of the 2000s.

3

Here, In-Seok Park, in explaining the characteristics of the space of apartments, was using Christopher Alexander’s concepts of living spaces, the concepts of ‘tree structure’ and ‘semi lattice structure (network structure)’. The uni-linear and enclosed passage of apartments which have only one passage ‘is compared to Christopher Alexander’s concept of tree structure’ (I. Park 2013: 49–51). According to Christopher Alexander, the difference of living spaces can be explained by the contrast between tree structure and network structure. Both structures differ ‘first of all in route selectiveness, and one of the spatial characteristics of tree structure is that it excludes outsider’s access’ (I. Park 2013: 307–9).

References Eagleton, T. (1996), Literary Theory: An Introduction, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Gelezeau, V. (2007), Apateu Gonghwaguk (Apartments Republic), trans. Hye-Youn Ghil, Seoul: Humanitas. Jeon, S. (2009), Apateue Michida (Crazy for Apartments), Seoul: I-Sup. Jung, M. (2012), ‘Park Wan-seo soseolgwa “Apateu” pyosangui munhwasahoehak: “apateu” pyosanggwa jendeo gudoreul jungsimeuro (The Representation of Apartment and Gender Style in Park Wan-Seo’s Novels)’, Hyeondae Munhak Iron Yeongu (The Journal of Modern Literary Theory), 49: 307–32. Jung, M. (2015), ‘Apateuui soseoljeok jaehyeon yangsang yeongu (A study on the Aspects of Apartment Representation in the Korean Modern Novels)’, Hyeondae Munhak Iron Yeongu (The Journal of Modern Literary Theory), 61: 391–413. Kim, H. (1986), Dukkeoun samgwa yalbeun sam (Thick Life and Thin Life), Seoul: Nanam. Lee, J. (1998), Taljuseon wiui dansangdeul (Aphorisms on the Line of Flight), Seoul: Mun-WhaGwa-Hak-Sa. Lee, P. (2013), ‘Apateu geonchukgwa gonggan jilseoui saengseonggwa pagoe (Apartment Building and Space Creation and Destruction)’, Hanguk Munhak Irongwa Bipyeong (Korean Literary Theory and Criticism), 60: 129–51. Oh, Chang-Eun (2004), ‘Dosisot gaeinui heomuuisikgwa saeroun gamsuseong: Choi In-ho ui Tainui Bang eul jungsimeuro (The Nihilistic Ideas and New Sensibility of a Private Person in Korean Modern City: on In-Ho Choi’s The Room of the Stranger)’, Eomunronjib (The Journal of Language and Literature), 32: 249–70. Park, C. (2005), ‘Daejungsoseole natanan apateuui imiji byeonhwagwajeong yeongu (On Transformation of Images on Apartment Depicted in Korean Popular Novels)’, Daehan Geonchukhakhoe Nonmunjib (Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea), 21 (1): 189–200. Park, C. (2013), Apateu: Gongjeok Naengsowa Sajeok jeongryeoli jibaehaneun Sahoe (Apartment: A Society Where Dominate Public Cynicism and Private Passion), Seoul: Mati. Park, H. (2011), Konkriteu utopia (Concrete Utopia), Seoul: Jaeum&Moeum Publishing co. Park, I. (2013), Apateu Hanguksahoe: DatchinGonghwaguke gatchin dosiwa ilsang (The Apartment Society of Korea: City and Life Pent Up in the Apartment-Complex Republic), Seoul: Hyun-Am-Sa. Relph, E. (2005), Jangsowa Jangsosangsil (Place and Placelessness), trans. D. Kim, H. Kim, and S. Sim, Seoul: Nonhyung Publishing Co. ­Son, J. (2011), ‘Uri Soseol soke natanan apateu gongganui gyebohak (The Genealogy Studies of the Apartment Space That Appeared in Korean Novels)’, Eomunnojib (The Journal of Language & Literature), 47: 243–64. 157

Design and Modernity in Asia Taylor Macdonald, A. (1938), ‘The Historical Novel: As a Source in History’, The Sewanee Review, 46 (4): 459–79. Tuan, Yi-Fu (2011), Gonggangwa Jangso (Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience), trans. Dong-Hoi Gu and Seung-Hee Sim, Seoul: Dae-Yoon.

Literary Works Choi, I. (1982), Jeokdoui Kkot (The Flower at the Equator), Joong-Ang-Il-Bo-Sa. Gong, J. (2001), ‘Buhwal muryeop (At Easter)’, The Quarterly Changbi, 112: 176–95. Kim, I. (1994), Geuraeseo neoreul anneuda (So I Embrace You), Seoul: Chung-Nyun-Sa. Kim, C. (1995), ‘Gyeoului Hwan (Illusion of Winter)’, in Dalui mollak (The Collapse of the Moon), 309–73, Seoul: Chung-A-Chul-Pan-Sa. Lee, C. (2006), Nokcheoneneun ttongi manta (Nokcheon Is Filled with Human Faeces), Seoul: Moonji. Lee, D. (2014), Mun apeseo (Outside the Door), Seoul: Asia. Lee, S. (2004), Seumulset geurigo maheunyeseot (Twenty-Three and Forty-Six), Seoul: Igaseo. Park, W. (1984), Seoul saramdeul (People of Seoul), Seoul: Geulsure. Park, W. (1989), Geudae agikdo kkumkkugo itneunga (Are You Still Dreaming?), Seoul: Sam-JinGhi-Heok. Park, W. (1996a), ‘Uleum Sori (Crying)’, in Uleum Sori (Crying), 205–32, Seoul: Sol. Park, W. (1996b), ‘Mujung (Amidst the Mist)’, in Uleum Sori (Crying), 175–203, Seoul: Sol. Park, W. (1999), Geuui Oeropgo Sseulsseulhan Bam (His Lonely Desolate Night), Seoul: Munhakdongne.

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CHAPTER 9 SWEET TREATS AND FOREIGN FOODS: HANAKO MAGAZINE, FOOD AND THE INTERNATIONALIZED WOMEN OF THE JAPANESE BUBBLE ECONOMY

Hui-Ying Kerr

Introduction In June 1988 the first issue of Hanako magazine (Hanako Magazine 1988) was published, focusing not on fashion, but on lifestyle and leisure for young working ‘Office Ladies’.1 In this, food made up a substantial portion of the magazine framing other leisure pursuits and lifestyles. Yet for a magazine at the height of Japan’s ‘Bubble Economy’2 characterized by conspicuous consumption and aspirational lifestyles, Hanako’s focus on food appears anomalous when applied to its female readership – predominantly single and still living at home. Using Hanako as a lens, this study explores how food was an essential conduit for young women’s consumption of lifestyle and expression of agency, highlighting a changing dynamic among young women in the ongoing renegotiation of their social, professional, national and cultural status, in the opportunities of the Bubble Economy. Women’s magazines in Japan have a long history, charting women’s changing roles and expectations through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the ‘good wife and wise mother’ policies, developing women as housewives, to the female consumer of lifestyle and leisure characterizing attitudes from the 1970s onwards, as consumption diversified (Tanaka in Martinez 1998: 110–13). With high market segmentation, high quantity production, consistent readership and flexible approach with rapid turnover, magazines are a good barometer of cultural zeitgeist in a Japanese market privileging lightweight, smaller publications with lucrative advertising over slower-paced books. However, although some work has been done on consumer magazines in Japan around this period (Skov and Moeran 1995; Imamura 1996; Martinez 1998; Wöhr, Hamill Sato and Suzu 1998), this has not been applied to the study of Hanako magazine, and little has connected consumer magazines to the Bubble Economy of Japan’s 1980s, nor the cultural consumption of food during this period by office ladies. Moreover, while part of a general move away from fashion, beauty and homemaking to include issues of self-identity and development,3 Hanako magazine stands out as one of the first lifestyle magazines characterized by a holistic consumer culture of lifestyle and leisure aimed at single women.

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Furthermore, while there been little in the way of studying the significance of Hanako magazine, the field of Japanese studies has also largely been quiet on the subject of the cultural and social impact of the Bubble Economy. Focusing instead on the impact of the following recessionary decades, the period has often been disregarded for its superficiality and shallow consumption, and blamed for the stagnation of the Japanese economy and lessening of its global power and influence. Yet this research shows that the 1980s can be reassessed for their cultural and social influence, through the gendered experiences of its participants and ephemera characterizing the Bubble.

A note on methodology The research conducted for this chapter was gathered in Japan, 2012, over a nine-month period as part of a larger doctoral project on consumer cultures of the Japanese Bubble Economy. Based on a mix of methods from design history, anthropology and Japanese studies that include intersectionality (Adamson, Riello and Teasley 2011), cultural analysis and qualitative research, it utilizes interviews with subjects who were in their twenties in the Bubble Economy, sourced using the snowball method; and thematic analysis of primary source historic material in the form of Japanese lifestyle magazines, gathered from the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, National Diet Library, Japan, Kobe Fashion Museum Library archives and private acquisition. Of the twelve interview participants in the entire study, one female participant was referenced in this chapter, as a former Office Lady from Panasonic, adding colour and context to the material.4 More focus was placed on the visual and cultural analysis of magazines, in which the ‘right to look’ of low-brow lifestyle consumer lifestyle magazines references Mirzoeff ’s (2011) authoritative position of the historian and agency of the magazine audience in the creation, consumption and meaning-making of culture. Furthermore, utilizing a variety of Japanese cultural studies texts in the analysis not only follows the anti-formalist ‘cultural turn’ of design history of the 1980s (Stuart Hall 1997a: 2 cited in Rose 2016: 2), but also embraces a more culturally nuanced, decentralized reading of the material. While the wider project concentrated on four main titles of Mono, AXIS, Hanako and Brutus, all founded in the 1980s and related to popular material culture, Hanako forms the basis of this chapter, as a title best exemplifying the consumer market of young single women in the Bubble Economy. Specifically, issues from 1988, 1989 and 1990 were focused on, as key years at the very height of the Bubble before the burst spanning the end of 1989 to 1991.

­The Bubble begins In 1986 the Japanese economy exploded. Stimulated by the 1985 Plaza Accord – an international treaty intended to deescalate international trade tensions regarding Japan’s excessive current account surplus – an artificially inflated yen, newly liberalized financial 160

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market and rising stock and property assets led to the development of the Japanese Bubble Economy. In addition to artificially inflating the yen against the dollar, Japan pledged to liberalize its banks and open up more to international markets, creating the conditions for an asset-price bubble. So-called for its dramatic boom and correspondent rise in consumer culture, the Bubble Economy lasted only a period of three to five years, but had an effervescence and dizzying acceleration that burst as suddenly as it appeared, and whose after-effects were felt well into the beginning of the twenty-first century in the form of the recessionary ‘Lost Decade(s)’.5 (Wood 1992; Satō (ed.) 1999; Itoh 2000; Graham 2003; Cargill and Sakamoto 2008; Mosk 2008; Hamada, Kashyap and Weinstein 2011). During the Bubble, opportunities for work and leisure abounded in the economy and new leisure and consumer cultures. One group that appeared to benefit were young, single, working women, encapsulated in the phrases, onna no jidai (women’s era) (Holthus in Wöhr, Hamill Sato and Suzu 1998: 144), and ‘Girls, be ambitious!’ (Harvey in Tobin (ed.) 1992, 145).6 Demands from the accelerated economy, the development of services and tertiary industries, and the introduction of the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunities Law (EEOL), created an environment of increased demand for women in the workforce and an apparent improvement in their working conditions (Dales 2009). Furthermore, with existing gendered privileges of time and few responsibilities, Japanese women were often treated with more leniency at work due to their lack of career prospects. Due to societal expectations of Japanese women to marry in their twenties and become settled housewives (Brinton in Sugiyama Lebra 1992), there were often unofficial barriers to women pursuing long-term careers, with expectations that most women leave the workplace on marriage or maternity. This led to a cavalier attitude of employees and employers alike to female office work, seeing it as a short-term stopover between education and marriage. As a result, it was common for female employees to take liberties, such as avoiding work, leaving early and taking frequent holidays, and which were humoured by their male managers, who found keeping their office ladies happy was more effective in maintaining a well-running office.7 These women thus seemed to have the benefits of disposable time and money to spend on the new consumer and leisure opportunities of the Bubble, and were quickly identified as a new key market for consumption (Kerr 2017). As a new lifestyle magazine focusing on the OL, Hanako magazine breaks from conventional women’s magazine topics of fashion and housekeeping, portraying a complete outgoing lifestyle, of shopping, fashion, beauty, health, music, restaurants, bars and travel, with an emphasis on international consumer leisure. Breaking the established model for women’s consumption of culture through magazines, it also defined a new type of female consumer – one who was sophisticated, individual, independent, well travelled, with disposable income and time for leisure. Aimed at a readership of young working women in their twenties, Hanako’s influence could be seen in the hordes of women clutching copies of the magazine as they navigated their way around international cities and exotic locations in their consumption of leisure through travel at home and holidays abroad (White 1993; Skov and Moeran 1995; Goldstein-Gidoni in Cwiertka and Machotka 2018). 161

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Transitory women and ephemeral consumption While appearing that women had it all, the benefits of women’s newfound power of improved working conditions and consumer influence were mostly illusory. Most companies only paid lip-service to the official directive for gender equality, seeing it as disruptive to the established practice of segregated gender roles at work and home (Brinton 1993; Rosenburger in Imamura (ed.) 1996; Ohtsu and Imanari 2002; Mouer and Kawanishi 2005; Kurihara 2009). With a short career expectancy before marriage, women were effectively excluded from significant roles, resulting in the majority of young women employed as that of the Office Lady or OL (Brinton 1993; McVeigh 1997; Kurihara 2009; Kawano, Roberts and Long 2014). Also known as ‘office flowers’, OLs were administrative ‘clerical, general track’ (ippanshoku) workers whose remit ranged from paperwork and translation duties to making tea for (male) managerial-track (sōgōshoku) colleagues, greeting clients and brightening up the office with their presence (Ogasawara 1998; Kurihara 2009). Meanwhile, Japanese women’s relative freedom and privileges for leisure could be said to be predicated on the very limitations of their gendered status and lack of real economic power. With limited scope for long-term careers, women were restricted in their ability to participate in other opportunities of the Bubble, including asset speculation in stocks, shares and property, access to executive status sports such as golf,8 and networks of cultural and economic significance. Furthermore, being mostly unmarried and living at home, young women had no reason to purchase domestic goods, meaning their influence in the domestic goods consumer-sphere was also peripheral and inconsequential. Young working women’s access to meaningful influence and power was thus reflective of women’s access to this generally in Japanese society, with hard power relegated to the men, and soft power to the women. While much has been written about the soft power of the Japanese housewife that included control over the family finances and consumer power over household appliances (Partner 1999; MacNaughtan in Francks and Hunter 2012), young Japanese women had the added disadvantage of being unmarried, lacking the security and socially sanctioned status of the housewife, and access to this tangible area of influence. In all this, tangibility versus ephemerality is key, indicating differing levels of importance and engagement in society, regardless of initial impressions of consumer power. As such, although young women were touted as the new consumer market of influence, in reality this was as hollow as women’s career opportunities were in practice. In Hanako, this was apparent by how articles were dominated by the topics of travel, food, fashion, entertainment and urban leisure. Of least significance were current events, products, interiors and cars (Kerr 2017), demonstrating that the activities marketed to women were as ephemeral as their income and time were disposable – un-investable, impermanent and transitory.

Foods for women It is in the context of the fleeting and symbolic nature of leisure that food can be approached as an essential element of ephemeral consumption, its very flexibility and 162

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impermanence appropriated for cultural and individual expression. As Cwiertka (2006) explores, food is a conduit for cultural expression, adding to the discourse around identity and nationhood. Furthermore, food and its consumption may be seen more specifically as an expression of gendered identity, in which foods and surrounding associations and practices are encountered and used for gender-specific purposes and strategies.9 However, while privileging the housewife, young unmarried Japanese women have been largely seen as peripheral in this history, observations limited to their consumption of sweets and the serving of tea in offices (Lo 1990; Ogasawara 1998). Yet when examining Hanako, food makes up a significant element within the magazine. Standalone features on food appear second to travel, featuring with as much regularity as fashion, urban leisure and entertainment (Kerr 2017). Moreover, widened to include a broader definition of place as well as food, it is present everywhere, from travel articles detailing where to go, what to eat and where to buy local produce as souvenirs, to the latest fads in food and which department stores to find them in. Advertising too features food, and from types of food to places to go, food is a constant refrain for consumption in the magazine. One example can be seen in a guide to the popular club and entertainment district of Roppongi (Hanako Magazine 1989f) (Illustration 9.1). Dominated by pages of bars, restaurants and food, this issue is replete with photos, descriptions, maps, addresses, telephone numbers and prices of all manner of foodstuffs, ranging from fine dining and traditional Japanese fare to Western pastries and Japanese convenience bento (packed lunch) boxes. Laid out as a practical guide, the magazine uses food as a way to map

Figure 9.1  Roppongi article, Hanako magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan. 163

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the city, a strategy replicated among all the destinations explored by Hanako in other issues. While containing other information pertaining to lifestyle, such as fashion, culture, shopping and advice, Hanako’s mainstay of travel is always accompanied by an abundance of food. Acting as detail to the broad brushstroke framing of tourism, visual consumption becomes equally matched by the portrayal of literal gastronomic consumption. Spanning multiples of double page spreads, Roppongi is systematically and comprehensively mapped out, yet undistinguished by identifying landmarks, public buildings, shop fronts or entrances to the featured restaurants. Instead, the dreamlike gastronomic abundance of food takes centre stage, allowing the reader’s eyes to rove around the visual feast. Without the mundane mediation of physical representations of location, this eye-poppingly colourful vision supplants the city’s reality with an overlay of a tantalizing and sensual banquet of the imaginary. Like the OLs themselves, food is both a constant and a peripheral, present and understated, bringing life and colour to the travel and entertainment articles characterizing the magazine. However, although directed at women, there are very few references to actual cooking. Instead, food is presented as a luxurious consumable, eaten at restaurants, cafes and bought at shops abroad, department stores and specialized shops in Tokyo. Situated against traditional gendered expectations, this lack of cooking instruction appears amiss, explained only by the segregation of gender roles in Japanese society and categories within those roles. As an ideologically central figure, the Japanese housewife holds and maintains the domestic sphere even as her husband, the salaryman, dominates the public sphere of work and industry (Imamura 1996; McVeigh 1997; Germer, Mackie and Wöhr 2014; Dalton and Dales 2016). Kitchens, housework, cooking and other aspects that fall within the remit of home are hers and accessed only on matrimony in a socially sanctioned coming-of-age fulfilment of women. This categorization of women into married and unmarried is further segmented, popularized by terms such as the ‘Japanese schoolgirl’, whose cultural presence has been charted from the Meiji era (Czarnecki in Miller and Bardsley 2005). Many of the categorizations of unmarried women become synonymous with both the modern age and increasing freedoms and visibility of women in the public sphere in Japan. From the Meiji-era (midnineteenth to early twentieth centuries) Japanese schoolgirl to the Taishō-era (early twentieth century) ‘Modern Girl’, and the ‘Business Girl’ (later the Office Lady) of the 1950s, these categorizations reflected the changing roles that women came to inhabit in society, providing convenient figures for cultural commentary to focus on and vilify as representative of declining moral societal values and evil consequences of modern society (Miller and Bardsley 2005). However, these labels also provided handy for new markets of consumer culture to flourish in modern industrial Japan, from consumer goods and lifestyles, to the high segmentation of the magazine market, of which Hanako was part of. Primarily still living at home and without families of their own to cook for, young single women were thus effectively shut out from this type of food, and the lack of cooking instruction in the magazine can be seen as a denial of access to the guarded domain of the housewife. While acting as a proto-wife in the workplace required to 164

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serve male colleagues, bosses and clients, tea, snacks, and to clear ashtrays and wipe down desks, OLs were linked to food through types of preparation and serving, and yet not all foods were accessible to them. Rather food appears as something else in Hanako. Portrayed as fun, frivolous, expensive and exciting, food becomes that of going-out, gifts and travel. While domestic cooking may, through its absence, represent a denial of status, it can also appear as undesired drudgery, based on submission to men and patriarchal hegemony, at work and the home. In both cases domestic food becomes a symbol of submitting to the hegemonic system in which OLs were placed last, competing to enter as more empowered participants through marriage.10 Through Hanako, food thus becomes separated into two types – outside dining, to be enjoyed as young, single, women, and domestic food as housewife-role defining, with the former taking precedence over the latter in the magazine.

Eating and working; eating and dating As suggested, central to women’s relationship with food was their relationship to men. Although a common assumption of OLs was as a key market for consumption, with low wages and insecure work they often practised much frugality, bringing homemade packed lunches or shop-bought food to the office rather than dine out as the men often did (Lo 1990). Likewise, in an interview with a former Bubble-era OL, although reiterating how much fun she had, she was keen to emphasize that also important to her was saving money (Kerr 2017). With women’s wages kept low by their shortterm administrative work, key to OLs’ enjoyment was the system of gifts and treats that characterized gender-relations inside and outside the workplace. Men were often expected to bring gifts to the office, from souvenirs (omiyage) from business travels and seasonal offerings, to regular treats for the OLs, taking the form of foodstuffs that could be shared out such as tea, sweets and pastries. Men were also expected to pay for OLs’ lunches, dinners and drinks when socializing outside work, evening out the unbalanced nature of gendered employment, and fostering bonds of reciprocal obligation, community and hierarchy that form the cultural basis of Japanese work (Lo 1990; Creighton 1993; Ogasawara 1998). Thus, OLs were seen to enjoy themselves at men’s expense, with food one of the ways this was performed. However, this relationship with gender relations and food was complicated further by its ambiguous use. While apparently fostering an unequal power dynamic between men and women, men also used these treats to foster good relationships with the OLs around them and demonstrate managerial ability to their superiors. Women likewise could use food to communicate favour or displeasure to the men in return, affecting the smooth running of the office and aiding or harming a man’s progression chances. An example of this can be seen in Ogasawara’s (1998) detailed account of Japanese office life in the early 1990s, where OLs were observed using traditional gifting of Valentine’s Day chocolate from women to men indicating relative popularity of male colleagues. The men would leave these chocolates piled up on their 165

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desks for demonstration to their managers of their popularity, respect and managerial potential. Likewise, particularly disfavoured managers would be ignored, or even given deliberately broken-up chocolate, to communicate the women’s dissatisfaction. Lo’s (1990) study of OLs in Brother Industries in Nagoya, meanwhile, also noted how men would take great efforts to treat the women to snacks and lunch, in an effort to curry favour with them, and which the women would take full advantage of. Office politics aside, food was also a vehicle for OLs to demonstrate femininity, in a strategic effort to progress gender relationships towards matrimony. With cultural imperatives that encouraged OLs to eventually leave work to become housewives, the majority of OLs were young and single. Inevitably using their time to speculate on marriage and enhance their marital prospects, food was a vital instrument of signalling and courtship, becoming essential props in the performance of exaggerated and coquettish femininity. This tied-in well to their role as front-facing staff, in which a refined deportment was essential, enhanced through etiquette lessons, behavioural guides in lifestyle magazines, and manifesting largely as two main types: that of the ojōsama and burikko style. Translating as ‘ladylike’, ojōsama indicated sophistication, delicacy and upperclass sensibilities that constructed concepts of acceptable Japanese respectability and femininity. Burikko, meanwhile, meaning a performative and artificial childishness and cuteness, emphasized a more regressive and exaggerated femininity playing on desirable innocence to attract men, performed through cultivating an aesthetic of cuteness in the collecting of toys, childish speech and acting up to childlike stereotypes. In the latter, the consumption of ‘cute foods’ was key, with sweets and snacks consumed to give an impression to male audiences of the sweetness and childlike innocence of the eater (Lo 1990; McVeigh 1997; Miller 2006). Thus, while gifts in the office provided by men to the OLs were the result of office etiquette and social dynamics, in their form as sweet foods and snacks, men were unconsciously adhering to sexual power relations and reaffirming gendered stereotypes that women were actively using to attract a marriage partner. Examples of performative femininity can be seen in how desserts and pastries are presented in Hanako. As sweet foods, they fit perfectly within the requirements of acceptable femininity, framed in a way that reflects either the refined tastes of the ladylike ojōsama style, or the cute and quirky burikko style. In ‘Bread Club’, a regular single-page article featuring specific, often European breads as cultural gastronomic items, ‘British style, elegant afternoon tea friends’11 (Hanako Magazine 1989b: 83) (Illustration 9.2), depicts the classic scone set within the context of an English afternoon tea, accessorized with a delicately patterned fine china tea set, glass milk jug, lacquered mahogany tray, breadbasket and sensuous accompaniments jam and cream, tea, flowers and literature. While promoting scones, everything in this piece evokes the refinement, elegance and quality designed to appeal to the ojōsama sensibility and aesthetic. While focused on food, what is really occurring is the visual display of cultural signifiers, of the elegance of afternoon tea through artefacts and props that make up an entire experience. Taking into account Cwiertka’s (2006) analysis of Western European culinary influence on the development of Meiji Restoration Japan, and Tobin’s (1992) 166

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Figure 9.2  Bread Club: ‘British style, elegant afternoon tea friends’, Hanako magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan. reading of French cultural imperialism on the training of Japanese chefs in haute cuisine, Japanese assimilation and appropriation of Western culture as recognized high culture has been well established since the mid-nineteenth century. Applied not just to culinary practices, but the adoption of appropriate dress, dining furniture and the use of Western eating utensils, with the skills and etiquette required to partake in these traditions – these are juxtaposed against the traditional Japanese culinary experience of floor seating, low tables, Japanese dress and use of small individual dishes and chopsticks. It is against 167

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this background that the image can be read – of providing an entire, sensual, fantasized experience in which Western European sensibility is sampled and accessed as an example of haute cuisine. Meanwhile, in the Bread Club article ‘Where to Buy Really Delicious Croissants in Tokyo’12 (Hanako Magazine 1989c: 81) (Illustration 9.3), croissants are presented in the form of cute figurines with heart-shaped sweets for eyes, holding a ‘First Prize’ flag. Positioned on a teacloth bordered with embroidery featuring playing children

Figure 9.3  Bread club: ‘Where to Buy Really Delicious Croissants in Tokyo’, Hanako magazine, 1989. Courtesy Magazine House, Japan. 168

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and flowers, it conjures impressions of childhood kitchens, games, and an earthiness, cheerfulness and naiveté, characterizing OLs as bright and cheery (McVeigh 1997). In this, the burikko aesthetic is appealed to, the pastries representing a sweet nostalgia and energetic promise of childhood. Nevertheless, while adhering to gender norms of female subjectivity, this emphasis on extroverted cheeriness was in direct contrast to traditional Japanese models of feminine modesty and shyness. Instead, OL attitudes of exuberance and liveliness, necessary for the modern running of business, can be framed as a move away from conservative Japanese femininity, and over which both ladylike and childlike sensibilities and aesthetics act as a convenient cover. However, eating did not stop outside the office, and in Hanako, articles and advertising abound with suggestions for places to eat and drink. While OLs did go out for fun, these were also places for romantic overtures to occur, and OLs used these as opportunities to enjoy themselves, at the man’s expense, while ascertaining their potential to be good providers. Louis Vuitton bags, Hermes silk scarves, Tiffany silver-heart necklaces – these were the types of presents lavished on OLs, and expensive foreign food was no exception to scrutiny of a potential suitor’s generosity and means. In interview with the former OL, she reminisced about the delicious, rich Western food enjoyed on her dating adventures during the Bubble Economy, with the implication that the men always paid (Kerr 2017). In this, the experiential education Hanako provided was invaluable, providing knowledge of the best places to go and the most fashionable things to eat and drink in their romantic matrimonial-hunting adventures across the city. While decision-making in dating varied according to the couple and situation, from the interview and female-focused nature of Hanako, with its articles on restaurants, bars and gifts, it appeared that young women were very much invested in experiencing dating as consumer leisure. Furthermore, with the gender-segregation of Japanese magazines, consumer leisure for romance falls more neatly into the Japanese female sphere, with men less likely to be seen openly reading or referencing women’s magazines like Hanako.13 Thus, in the articles that feature food, emphasis is given to not just images of food, but always accompanied by locations, maps, contact details and prices, with plenty of choice that includes expensive Western and traditional Japanese cuisine. Lifestyle magazines such as Hanako can thus be seen as empowering young women with knowledge and vocabulary to even out the odds in a system in which men held financial advantage, enabling them to conduct long-term plans and create a complex game by which men were held to account outside patriarchal structures of work in the new leisure assault course that was the city.

­In the public realm With the domestic sphere effectively prohibited, where Hanako takes its readers for food is in the public realm. From cafes in Paris, to department stores in Tokyo, food becomes very public and visible to all. While denied domesticity of their own, there were also limitations to young women’s engagement in the public sphere. With feminine modesty and a good matrimonial future at stake, young women have traditionally 169

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been denied a place in the public eye. Any sanction of young single women in this sphere was on allowance of it being temporary and transitional (Czarnecki in Miller and Bardsley 2005). The use of department stores, restaurants and cafes thus gives young single women acceptable public spaces acting as both outside and inside. In these places, behaviour is monitored and socially sanctioned, with young women enacting an agency outside of home and work while remaining under the protective cover of an inside space.14 It is against this background that we view the increasing visibility of Japanese women in public leisure activities, rooted in the Meiji-era modernization and increasing urbanization of Japan that saw the Meiji Schoolgirl, the Taisho Modern Girl and the Business Girl take greater prominence in public life, and of which the leisure of Hanako magazine continues. Moreover, in the public–private space of the magazine, other food discourses through articles and advertisements act as public forums where food may be performed and engaged with, out in the open. Here, women’s magazines provide safe spaces for women to engage in cultural dialogue in which alternate visions of lifestyle are imagined as respite from the normal order, whilst acting as guides to cultural life (Rosenburger in Imamura 1996). This is most apparent in the regular articles of ‘After 5 starts with the motto, “10!”’ (Hanako Magazine 1989d: 102–3). Featuring bars and restaurants, real women are presented active in public, adhering to the modesty expected of unmarried women (rarely showing women in the company of men), while simultaneously challenging cultural norms through the enjoyment of respectable women in the nighttime leisure economy.

Food international Hanako magazine’s display and exploration of food through cafes, restaurants and department stores thus becomes more than just a frivolous leisure activity for bored office ladies but is indicative of a changing dynamic and increasing visibility of young single women, in the workplace, consumer sphere and the urban landscape of public life. This is especially so in the way food is displayed through the numerous travel articles that are the mainstay of Hanako magazine. Outnumbering all the other articles and forming the theme of its issues, from its inception, travel has been the main focus of Hanako, popularizing it as an essential guide to foreign travel (Skov and Moeran 1995). While varying in size and subject, the focus is always on leisured consumption, through the hotels, shops, department stores and restaurants summing up the city for the Japanese female tourist. Rather than historic cultural sights and artefacts, ephemeral consumption is key to appealing to Hanako’s demographic, with food playing a significant part. Characterizing the location, food exoticizes and eroticizes the foreign for the female consumer; bright colours and images of delicious food connect directly and sensually, while through abundance, a sense of luxury and plenty. In this, the magazine enacts the overabundance and conspicuous 170

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consumption of American capitalism, which, as Tobin (1992) observed during the heady years of the Economic Bubble, the Japanese were partaking in even as they were experiencing the destinations of the West. For the Hanako reader, international travel is inseparable from her experience of food, drawing her in and framing her understanding and experience of travel and the foreign. However, not all foreign destinations appear the same, and alongside the goods available to purchase, so the foods depicted indicate a categorization and delineation between different parts of the world. From the bourgeois cafes and haute cuisine of Paris and high teas of London hotels (Hanako Magazine 1989e: 18–19; 1990: 10–11) to the street foods of Taiwan and fresh produce of Hawaii (Hanako Magazine 1988b: 26–7; 1989c: 130–1), food is used to reflect an assumption about global hierarchies of cultural and geopolitical importance among differing cities and locations. Just as the abundance and conspicuous consumption in Japanese tourism betrays the internalization of modern Western capitalism – as explored by Tobin (1992) in his study of Japanese tourists in Hawaii enjoying an American experience as both destination and conspicuous consumption – so the characterization and division of countries and cities into ‘refined’ and ‘unrefined’, describe the adoption and assimilation of Western global values that are imperialist and capitalist. In this, countries of economic dominance are privileged not just for their cuisine, but a whole range of other mass-produced goods and services, providing a multilayered culture of enjoyment, while countries of Asia and the global south are portrayed as places of natural resources, of which food that is unrefined, natural and from the street makes up a large part. In articles showcasing London and Paris, while images of food do feature, of central importance are the environments in which the food is consumed. In this, the experience of dining through the theatre of architecture, actors as uniformed serving and culinary staff, and props of lighting, lengths of white tablecloth and napkins, is key. This places emphasis on the atmospheric experience of Western dining, tapping into the Meiji Restoration tradition of accompanying Western dining with appropriate props (Cwiertka 2006), and Western dining as a locus for manufactured cultivated experiences, operating on the level of high cultural logic as much as sensual. By comparison, in the articles featuring dining in Taiwan and Hawaii, images of food play a more central part, their locative environment less of a priority and draw. In the feature on Taiwan, street cooking is used as a cultural reference point, negating any impression of haute cuisine and fine dining of food placed on white tablecloths. Meanwhile, food in Hawaii offers an abundance of fresh produce, direct from natural resources that are untouched by localized claims to cultural or traditional references, and on which the fantasy of an authentic, entirely sensualized experience of untouched nature is imagined. In this way, Western global bias is replicated and reproduced, even while OLs themselves were positioned as marginal, through travelling seeking to escape their own marginality in patriarchal Japanese society. However, food in the international sphere had the additional purpose of being a vital continuation of young women’s education as OLs and future housewives. Required in their forward-facing role to appear sophisticated and elegant, knowledge and familiarity 171

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with international cuisine was an important part of their repertoire that could impress colleagues and clients alike. Linked to the ladylike and cosmopolitan qualities of the ojōsama, this in turn could potentially lead to increased odds for a favourable marriage partner, for whom a housewife well educated in food would be able to provide delicious meals for the household, and choose appropriate gifts and restaurant recommendations that could further a salaryman’s career with his bosses (Ben-Ari, Moeran and Valentine 1990; McVeigh 1997). It is in this spirit that we view not only the restaurant, café and department store recommendations in Hanako, but the articles that feature guides to international food, that include examples, terminology and retailers. In the regular feature of ‘Bread Club’, foreign, often European, breads feature prominently, however, not as recipes to making bread, itself a foreign cultural import to Japan, but as educational guides to what different breads are, how to identify and consume them. For example, German breads feature as the theme for the article (Hanako Magazine 1989a: 83), with identifying labels on what they are, their names and other descriptions, with accompanying visual signifiers for the German pastoral in the background of the patterned rustic tablecloth, leaves and flowers. Likewise, in a different issue (Hanako Magazine 1989d: 99), the educational aspect is seen in the labelling and descriptions of European breads and cheeses, and instruction on how to pair them. In both these cases, rather than instruction on cooking and sourcing, the objective is to inform and educate on culture and its consumption and participation, for which the international plays a significant part. This importance of international food for young Japanese women is also present in other aspects of popular culture. In the shōjo15 novel Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto (1993), food plays a central role in the experiences of the characters, who display integrity through their domestic encounters with food. Although Japan has a long history of adopting and assimilating foreign food (Cwiertka 2006), food references in the novel are nonetheless strikingly internationalist, with foreign foods, dishes and kitchen implements featuring with a regularity and familiarity that portray 1980s Tokyo as international, even in its domestic spaces. This echoes the policies of internationalization (kokusaika), encouraged by government and central to the 1985 Plaza Accord and the culture of the Bubble Economy (Leheny 2003), against which food becomes part of an essential strategy to open Japan up to international forces.16 Foods thus can come from a multitude of places, translated and blended together for easy visual and cultural consumption, becoming part of the Japanese cultural and consumer landscape, similar to how foreign loanwords have been observed to infiltrate language as part of Japanese vernacular and yet still retaining a non-Japanese sensibility (Stanlaw 2004). The foreign foods featured in Hanako carry on a long tradition that, as Cwiertka (2006) observes, extends to other adopted foods, from Korean-derived yakiniku (barbecued meat) and Chinese rāmen (noodles), to Western yōshoku dishes such as tonkatsu (pork cutlet), and pan (bread). In this way, food displays its power to both describe and change the environment, transforming from exotic curiosities to staples in-store, turning Tokyo from a Japanese city into an international one, Japan into a blended melting pot of international influences. While this embrace of the 172

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international into Japanese culture was part of the politically motivated kokusaika zeitgeist, one of the defining characteristics of the culture of the Bubble Economy, it opened doors of opportunity in terms of fun, leisure and experience for young women, who, with their disposable income, time, and single status, were the perfect recipients for the benefits of the internationalism in Japanese cities. However, while these young women were experiencing the widening of their cultural horizons, they were nevertheless still expected to conform eventually to Japanese social norms of giving up work and independent income for marriage, taking up of the role of housewives in a social contract of becoming pillars of society and familial counterparts to the salaryman. Thus, just like foreign loanwords and food, while assimilated into the Japanese vernacular, international norms were still kept separate from the essential fabric of Japanese society, applied to and enjoyed most by those single women who were themselves in a transitional and marginalized state.

Food for thought From exploring Hanako magazine during the Bubble Economy, food takes on a multitude of guises, whether as part of complex gender-dynamics, transgression of space or transformation of the city. While appearing a time of female emancipation and opportunity, food as leisure shows this to be a more superficial application of the official aspirations of the Bubble. Instead, women used food to circumvent the expectations of the patriarchal system as to what was expected of Japanese femininity, while leaning-in to feminine stereotypes, leveraging what they could from the existing system. On a wider scale, taking food into the public and international sphere, Hanako was both challenging concepts of feminine agency and belonging in public, while replicating established ideologies of capitalism and first and non-first world preconceptions. In all of these, the performative act of the international was key, through which could be attempted a transformation of the self, however temporary. Dovetailing into the internationalization of kokusaika, the unanchoring of food from its cultural norms meant the foreign could be assimilated more freely into the Japanese cultural lexicon, demonstrating the international reach of Japanese consumer power, while turning Tokyo into a global hub for culture. However, while Hanako demonstrates the effects of politics and macro-economics on national trends in food and encounters with international cuisine, it also shows how the OL experience of food fragments the national discourse, splintering national consensus through her peripheral and uninvested status. Rather than a simple celebration of Japanese buying power and access to global markets, or a story of gullible consumers, what young women were doing with food was a more complex negotiation of their position as patriarchal subjects and rebellious women, whose desire for the international and consuming of the ephemeral had consequences for the cultural reality of Japanese cities at the level of the tangible and the street. Yet, even while women were accessing the expression of the international through the consumption and enjoyment of food, 173

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they were still unable to realize the full emancipatory potential of kokusaika, required as they were to complete their social obligations into becoming the Japanese housewife and pillar of Japanese society. Thus, international food culture, even while contributing to the consumer boom and open culture of the Bubble, was still a cynical strategy, applied partially and kept apart from the essential players of Japanese society. Nevertheless, as a reflection of the intangible, ephemeral status of young Japanese working women, food perfectly encapsulates their experience of sensual pleasure, delight and yearning for a delicious life to be enjoyed fully, however fleetingly, in the brief, bright moment that was the Japanese Bubble Economy.

Final thoughts As mentioned, intersectionality as a multitude of interpretations was key to this research, and, combined with a focus on the feminine, the low-brow and ephemeral through Hanako magazine, directly challenges the masculine, hegemonic, chronological approach of traditional histories. While adding to knowledge within Japanese history on the Bubble Economy, design history and gender, it also engages with trends of border-area design in design history methodologies (Lees-Maffei and Houze 2010), challenging the Westerncentric focus of conventional design history. As such, it is hoped that this research will complement the overall message of the book, in which the importance and wider implications of Asian design history come to the fore, taking their place as a new centre of focus.

Notes 1

The term ‘office lady’ (also known as ‘OL’) referred to young women who worked in clerical office jobs, and commonly seen as the natural workplace counterpart of the Japanese male office worker, known as the ‘Japanese salaryman’. Making up the majority of Japanese female office workers at the time, their largely administrative and front-facing roles differentiated them from the managerial-track ‘career woman’, the latter making up around 1 per cent of female recruits in the 1980s.

2

Making up the period of Japan’s late 1980s, the Bubble Economy refers to a historic economic bubble in Japan. The Bubble Economy marks the end of Japan’s high economic growth period of the 1950s to 1970s, heralding the beginning of its economic stagnation into the 1990s and beyond.

3

As featured in the strategies of magazines such as An an (An an Magazine 1970) and Non-no (Non-no Magazine 1971).

4

The interviewee was a former Panasonic Office Lady in her early twenties at the time of the Bubble Economy in the late 1980s, and thus part of the representative demographic. Based in the Matsushita Investment arm of Panasonic, her experience of work and leisure during this period was atypical of OLs linked to international and high-end corporate culture. However, it must be remembered that this was not true across the board, with many OLs based in a variety of circumstances that included work, wages and perks of differing levels at firms and workplaces of various sizes, quality and industries.

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The Lost Decades mark the period following the Bubble Economy, in which Japan’s stagnating economy caused by the bursting of its economic bubble from 1989 to the beginning of the 1990s, had corresponding societal effects on employment, its youth and culture in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and whose effects are still being dealt with today.

6

This derives from the popular television serial Nonchan no Yume (1988), which featured a central female protagonist, re-cast in the traditional male heroic role.

7

This was such a well-known phenomenon, that it inspired a manga comic based on the mischievous antics of office ladies, called ‘OL Evolution’ (Akizuki 1990).

8

In the late 1980s, coinciding with the Bubble was an equal and related boom in golf. Acting as a cultural and social signifier of status and success, golf memberships came to embody a key signifier of the Bubble as coveted items of privilege, dominated by men in high corporate positions and during the 1980s boom, even traded on the stock market as assets. See Lockyer in Francks and Hunter (2012) for more information.

9

For example, in Japanese studies, much has been made of the connection of women to food, although this has largely been restricted to the symbolically and culturally significant housewife (sengyō shufu) as counterpart to the heterogenic salaryman and pillar in Japanese society. Through their uptake of domestic appliances such as rice cookers and refrigerators, Japanese housewives have been recognized as important for the development of Japan’s electrical goods industry, and by connection to the miracle economy of the 1950s and 1960s (Partner 1999; MacNaughtan in Francks and Hunter 2012). This concept of the cultural and social importance of the housewife is not exclusive to Japanese society but can be seen in other cultural and historical contexts. See Shoemaker’s (1998) exploration of gender in eighteenth and nineteenth century English society.

10 This ambivalence towards marriage can be seen in research conducted by Dalton and Dales (2016). 11 ‘Igirisu kaze no, yūgana afutanūn tī no tomo’ in Japanese. 12 ‘Kokoro no soko kara oishī kurowassan wa tōkyō no doko de kaerudarou’. 13 Instead, their points of reference came from men’s magazines, and an analysis of a comparative men’s magazine, Brutus (Kerr 2017), uncovered a concern with cultural and consumer object trends rather than ephemeral leisure, indicating women had a greater say and stake in the dating experience than the men. 14 While the gender delineation of public and private space appears particular to the continuing traditions of Japan, it must be noted that this has also been studied in other cultures, examples of which include the gendered division of the household and private space against that of public spaces in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England (Shoemaker 1998), and the subsequent development of more ambiguous public spaces in the form of new social spaces of the nineteenth century throughout Europe (Crossick and Jaumain 1999). 15 Shōjo, meaning, girl or young woman, refers to a category of teenage girl and the cultures that surround her, especially in the field of Japanese novels and comics (manga). These often feature themes, such as romance, emotions, burgeoning sexuality and journeys of introspective personal discovery, that appeal to this demographic. 16 Kokusaika was a governmental policy of internationalization, created to promote greater engagement of Japan with the international community. Stemming from the escalating trade frictions that had led to the signing of the Plaza Accord and the need to open up its domestic markets to foreign imports, the government embarked.

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References Adamson, G., Riello, G., and Teasley, S. (eds) (2011), Global Design History, London and New York: Routledge. Akizuki, R., (1990), OL Shinkanron, Japan: Kodansha. An an Magazine (1970), An an Issue 1, an Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Ben-Ari, E., Moeran, B., and Valentine, J. (1990), Unwrapping Japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective, Honolulu and Manchester: Manchester University Press and University of Hawaii Press. Brinton, M. C. (1993), Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan, Berkley and Los Angeles and Oxford England: University of California Press. Cargill, T. F. and Sakamoto, T. (2008), Japan since 1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Creighton, M. R. (1993), ‘“Sweet Love” and Women’s Place: Valentine’s Day, Japan Style’, Journal of Popular Culture, 27 (3): 1–19. Crossick, G. and Jaumain, S. (1999), Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850–1939, Aldershot: Ashgate. Cwiertka, K. J. (2006), Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, London: Reaktion Books. Cwiertka, K. J. and Machotka, E. (eds) (2018), Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan - A Transdisciplinary Perspective, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. DOI: 10.5117/9789462980631. Dales, L. (2009), Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan, Routledge. Dalton, E. and Dales, L. (2016), ‘Online Konkatsu and the Gendered Ideals of Marriage in Contemporary Japan’, Japanese Studies, 36 (1): 1–19. DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2016.1148556. Francks, P. and Hunter, J. (eds) (2012), The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850–2000, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Germer, A., Mackie, V. C., and Wöhr, U. (2014), Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan, London and New York: Routledge. Graham, F., Fiona, C. (2003), Inside the Japanese Company, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Hall, S. (ed.). (1997), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage Publications. Hamada, K., Kashyap, A. K., and Weinstein, D. E. (2011), Japan’s Bubble, Deflation, and Longterm Stagnation, Cambridge and London: MIT Press. Hanako Magazine (1988), Hanako Magazine Issue 1, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1989a), Hanako Magazine Issue 36, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1989b), Hanako Magazine Issue 37, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1989c), Hanako Magazine Issue 45, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1989d), Hanako Magazine Issue 58, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1989e), Hanako Magazine Issue 65, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. ­Hanako Magazine (1989f), Hanako Magazine Issue 67, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House. Hanako Magazine (1990), Hanako Magazine Issue 125, Hanako Magazine, Tokyo: Magazine House.

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Sweet Treats and Foreign Foods Imamura, A. E. (ed) (1996), Re-imaging Japanese Women, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Itoh, M. (2000), The Japanese Economy Reconsidered, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kawano, S., Roberts, G. S., and Long, S. O. (2014), Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty, Honalulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Kerr, H.-Y. (2017), Envisioning the Bubble: Creating and Consuming Lifestyles through Magazines in the Culture of the Japanese Bubble Economy (1986–1991), PhD diss. The Royal College of Art and Design, London. Kurihara, T. (2009), Japanese Corporate Transition in Time and Space, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lees Maffei, G. and Houze, R. (eds) (2010), The Design History Reader, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury. Leheny, D. R. (2003), The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Lo, J. (1990), Office Ladies, Factory Women: Life and Work at a Japanese Company, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Martinez, D. P. (1998), The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture; Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McVeigh, B. J. (1997), Life in a Japanese Women’s College: Learning to be Ladylike, London and New York: Routledge. Miller, L. (2006), Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Miller, L. and Bardsley, J. (eds) (2005), Bad Girls of Japan, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mirzoeff, N. (2011), ‘The Right to Look’, Critical Inquiry, 37 (3): 473–96. Mosk, C. (2008), Japanese Economic Development: Markets, Norms, Structures, London and New York: Routledge. Mouer, R. E. and Kawanishi, H. (2005), A Sociology of Work in Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Non-no Magazine (1971), Non-no Issue 1, Non-no Magazine, Tokyo: Shueisha. Ogasawara, Y. (1998), Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Ohtsu, M. and Imanari, T. (2002), Inside Japanese Business: A Narrative History, 1960–2000, New York and London: M.E. Sharpe. Partner, S. (1999), Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer, Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Rose, G. (2016), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, 4th edn. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC: Sage Publications Ltd. Satō, K. (ed.) (1999), The Transformation of the Japanese Economy, London and New York: M.E. Sharpe. Shoemaker R.B. (2013), Gender in English Society 1650–1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres?, New York: Routledge. Skov, L. and Moeran, B. (1995), Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, Surrey: Curzon Press. Stanlaw, J. (2004), Japanese English: Language and Culture Contact, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ­Sugiyama Lebra, T. (ed.) (1992), Japanese Social Organisation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Tobin, J. J. (ed.) (1992), Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

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­PART IV TRANSNATIONAL EXCHANGES: DESIGN ACROSS BORDERS

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­C HAPTER 10 THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF THE COLD WAR AND LIVING A SHIBUI LIFE

Izumi Kuroishi

Introduction After the Second World War, cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States accelerated due to the US government’s Cold War political strategy to democratize Japan as a protective barrier against Communist nations. American lifestyle and culture were introduced in order to promote mutual understanding between Japan and the United States, and to support the recovery of the Japanese economy by encouraging exports to the United States. In the meanwhile, Japan and Japanese culture were reintroduced in the United States after a period of hostility during the Second World War. Japan’s historical crafts and architectural culture, promoted by a handful of art enthusiasts and architects at the end of the nineteenth century and prior to the war, were reintroduced by the returning American soldiers, triggering a Japanese boom in interior design magazines aimed at the American public. The introduction of the concept of shibui in the influential post-war American home magazine House Beautiful in August and September 1960, organized by then-editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon, was an example of how this concept was reinterpreted to improve American interior design. House Beautiful is a US magazine on the arts and crafts tradition of interior design, featuring mid- to upper-class interiors and housing in general. In 1960, Elizabeth Gordon, editor of House Beautiful, published and edited two special issues titled ‘Discover Shibui: The Word for the Highest Level in Beauty’ for the August issue, and ‘How to Be Shibui with American Things’ for the September issue of the magazine. The publication aimed to deepen an understanding of the culture of traditional Japanese architecture and introduced the American public to shibui, a sense of beauty relating to tea culture that even the Japanese had gradually forgotten in the modernization of their lifestyles. From 1961, Gordon continued to introduce shibui to American consumers by organizing exhibitions across the United States, from Philadelphia, Dallas to San Francisco to Newark to Honolulu. Recently scholarships on these House Beautiful issues on shibui have been developed in the fields of modern Japanese design and architectural history and acknowledge that there are clear Cold War cultural politics at stake here. However, in order to examine the meanings of interior design and space in relation to shibui, it is necessary to consider

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transnational exchanges and discourses related to it. In particular, given the influence of cultural politics in lifestyles, spatial forms and their ethics during the Cold War, it is necessary to examine the relationship between shibui and the debates related to the living space in Japan and the United States in the same period. In light of the above, this study examines the cross-cultural exchange of the Japanese historical aesthetics of shibui not only as an issue of design philosophy but also of the socio-political relationship between the interior space and lifestyle psychology. This includes the characteristics of historical interiors that Gordon referred to, and their relationship with contemporaneous Japanese housing.

Research methods and methodology Instead of following conventional architectural history’s recognition of post-war Japanese modernization as Americanization, this chapter tries to clarify the political power mechanism in Gordon’s translation of Japanese traditional architectural culture by examining recently available materials of US records on the Cold War. This study is based on archival research of historical materials in both the United States and Japan, such as the Gordon collection in the archives of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution and the Maynard L. Parker collection of the Huntington Library. Between 2015 and 2019, I visited other six libraries and archives in the United States to consult correspondence, periodicals and existing scholarship, Cold War historical records at the National Archive and Record Administration, and the Library of Congress. In Japan, I visited four libraries and the Osaka Anthropology Museum and interviewed the officer of the Kyoto City archive; relatives of Eiko Yuasa, a Kyoto city employee who supported Gordon’s tour in Kyoto and publication of the special issues; and Takeo Amito, a Japanese architect who designed an Americanized Japanese Sukiya-style house and indirectly provided concrete references for the special issue.1 Art historian Monica Penick has given a comprehensive explanation of the background and procedures of Gordon’s shibui project and its relationship to her pursuit of American design (Penick 2017). A close examination of the project from a Japanese perspective, however, highlights that Gordon’s introduction of the concept transformed the meaning of shibui and exposed the dissonance in cultural politics. The reactions of the readers of the special issues and visitors to the travelling exhibition of shibui objects, expressed through correspondences, were positive and negative (Gordon collection, Freer/Sackler, Smithsonian), indicating that there were two extreme political views of these. One view was that Gordon’s exhibition and the articles were resources to adapt Japanese aesthetics and spatial culture to post-war life in the United States and to reaffirm them in the modern international community. The other was that they were tools for the United States, turning Japanese culture into consumer goods and usurping its historical integration with people’s social space. Borrowing from Foucault’s discussion on the political and rhetorical formation of epistemology (Foucault 2005), this study examines how Gordon, and Japanese 182

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thinkers and designers, collaborated in transforming and recreating American and Japanese cultural identities and logics of their design. Henry Lefebvre has argued that such political conflicts have consistently configured our social space (Lefebvre 1992). Gordon’s and her Japanese counterparts’ interpretations of traditional culture and aesthetics of domestic space in Japan were instrumentally represented in the journals and exhibitions through texts, photographs and objects at the height of the Cold War. I argue that these exemplify Henri Lefebvre’s argument and require further examination of the motivations, mechanisms and effects of the process and the hidden meaning of the application of Japanese historical aesthetics to American design. In order to analyse the cultural translation of design in the journal texts, objects and photos, this study turns to the ideas of Hans G. Gadamer (Gadamer 1975): his interpretation between word, object and their social factors. In the literal interpretation and translation of Japanese traditional lifestyle, aesthetics, space and objects, texts by Gordon and Japanese counterparts reveal their cognitive gaps and conflicts derived from the differences between American and Japanese social values and lifestyles, and the influence of Cold War politics. Particularly, Gadamer has described how, in the limitation of logics, there are creative interpretations by thinkers, bridging words, experience and objects. Therefore, by referring to Jacques Rancière’s structural analysis of the politics of aesthetics (Ranciere 2013), this study analyses the mechanism of the literal interpretations of the idea of shibui and their application to the objects and space by Gordon and Japanese counterparts. This cultural translation process, especially from the reciprocal aspect, is further analysed by Homi Bhabha, who examines it as the interplay of cultural politics in a place dominated by an external power and as an assimilating behaviour afforded to the images given by the dominator to the dominated (Bhabha 2004). Bhabha states that it is a moment of suppression and dissimilation of the theme and content of cultural tradition, and an act of communication, relocating and segmenting the original to deprive its authenticity. He found it is also a positive interplay between the dominator and the dominated to overcome the solidification of the boundary of binary opposition between them, and argued that it is important to examine how, why and where the ideas are shifted in the process. This chapter investigates the reasons for the polarized views of Japanese aesthetics, and discusses the mechanism of the political nature of aesthetics during the Cold War period by questioning why Gordon featured shibui in a very influential American interior design magazine over two issues and how Japan responded to it. The chapter examines what this publication and its ripples meant for the post-war modernization of Japanese architecture and design.

US government Cold War cultural policies and Japan The US Occupation policy towards Japan after its defeat in the Second World War has been divided into two phases: immediately after the war and during the Cold War. The United States viewed the shortage of adequate housing and daily 183

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necessities of Japanese people as responsibilities the country had to shoulder, and pursued a policy of punitive measures. When the Cold War began and the Korean War broke out in 1950, Truman stepped up cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States, and launched a policy that drastically changed the attitude of the US Occupation forces towards Japanese life and culture (Fujita 2015). The emphasis of the Occupation policy was shifted from the initial democratic reconstruction of Japan to convincing the Japanese that their independence, security, cultural progress and prosperity could be achieved only through the collective security system provided by the United States. Bradford insisted that in order to prevent the Japanese people from feeling inferior, American citizens were to emphasize common interests rather than differences in living standards and social customs between Japan and the United States. The new policy also stressed the need to express awareness and respect for Japanese culture, taking into account the feelings and thoughts of the Japanese people, and bearing in mind the basic orientation of Japan’s ‘strong desire to be recognized as an individual and as a nation’ (Fujita 2015). At the same time, President Eisenhower decided to introduce the intellectual and cultural richness of the United States to Japan. During the Cold War, the cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States, and the appreciation of Japanese culture in the United States, were heavily framed by this political agenda and psychological strategies in the East Asian region. In the field of architecture, from 1948, the Occupation forces started dispatching housing material from the Occupation camps for constructing ward housing for the Japanese, and providing technical guidance to Japanese builders, designers and architects (Information Program Housing Project 1948). They held the Lifestyle Design from America exhibition in 1948 in Tokyo and the American Exhibition in 1950 in Kobe. The exhibitions visually introduced American contemporary housing to the Japanese, even though it had little impact on the actual reconstruction of Japanese housing (Koshizawa 2005a). In January 1951, the US Department of State sent a peace mission to promote bilateral cooperation between Japan and the United States, headed by John F. Dulles, and asked John D. Rockefeller III to prepare a research report on Japanese and American culture. In 1952, Rockefeller became President of the Japan Society, a private, non-profit organization founded in 1907 to promote mutual understanding between the United States and Japan. In 1956 he founded the Asia Society and the Asian Cultural Council, as well as a cultural exchange programme. Rockefeller supported the Sukiya House exhibition, an exhibition of a Japanese house at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1954. He supported the reproduction of a Sukiya house by Junzo Yoshimura, a pupil of the Czech architect Antonin Raymond, who had extensive experience in Japan, in a project called ‘Housing Today in America’, which was being held at MoMA at the time. This exhibition was to show the American public a cutting-edge house design for the post-war housing reconstruction. Being included in this exhibition, Sukiya house was intended to show a contemporary application of the universal principles of traditional Japanese architectural culture. Arthur Drexler, who 184

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supervised the MoMA exhibition, said that there was nothing to see in modern Japanese architecture, but highly appreciated the geometry of traditional Japanese architecture that conformed to the principles of modernism and its compatibility with proportionality and nature (Drexler 1966). This condemnation of the architectural designs of Japanese contemporaries as mere imitations of the West, with nothing to see in them, echoes the words of Bruno Taut, who went into exile in Japan in 1934 to teach Japanese designers the principles of modernist design and to encourage them to re-evaluate their historical forms. With US support for the reconstruction of Europe after the war and into the Cold War, American-European contacts were flourishing, and the new director of MoMA, Philip Johnson, was attempting to shape the currents of American post-war modernist design under the influence of Gropius, who had defected to the United States during the Second World War. This coincided with the shift in the focus of the architecture section at MoMA, led by Edgar Kaufmann and Elizabeth Bauer Moc, from the regional and populistic Americanism to International Style Modernism.2 Beneath Drexler’s admiration for Japan’s historical architectural culture lay the psychological strategy of Cold War politics and the ideological biases towards the architectural aesthetics of the European modernist movement, which rejected the decorative aspect of Japanese historical buildings and dismissed the realities of Japanese architecture and lifestyle. Under this changing scene for the future styles of American architecture design, Elizabeth Gordon utilized the aesthetics of Japanese architecture and lifestyle in House Beautiful in order to express her concerns about the overwhelming modernization of American design by elite Europeoriented internationalist architects and intellectuals.

Background and purposes of Gordon’s shibui issues The concept of shibui was already widespread among European and American architecture and art professionals in the 1950s. It was first introduced to Englishspeaking design circles as a traditional Japanese aesthetic in The Gardens of Japan by Jiro Harada (Harada 1928). In The Lesson of Japanese Architecture, Harada also introduced the Japanese aesthetic of architecture, landscape and object design, referring to the Book of Tea by Okakura Tenshin, which introduced Japanese aesthetic concepts based on Zen thought to the English-speaking world (Harada 1936). This was followed by Muneyoshi Yanagi, who introduced the concept of shibui as ‘deep, humble and quiet feeling’, a key concept in the theory of Mingei (folk art), together with wabi and sabi. By the 1930s it was known in the European sphere as the representative aesthetic concept for historical Japanese architecture and design (Emoto 2020). It is for this reason that Walter Gropius found a manifestation of the concept of shibui in Japanese wooden architecture when he visited Japan in the 1954 under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation (Ogi 1956). Frank Lloyd Wright, who was deeply devoted to the ideas of Tenshin Okakura, described the characteristics of Japanese architecture 185

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and expressive art as ‘organic architecture’ (Nute 1994). It was Gordon’s project that attempted to return the knowledge among these architects and artists to the interior spaces of the general public. In order to understand Gordon’s motivations towards the promotion of shibui, it is necessary to look at her previous projects. After Gordon became editor-in-chief in 1941, she worked on many projects related to new housing design, including topics such as the Pace Setter House, climate control, post-war housing and American style between the 1940s and the 1950s. Design proposals with emphasis on American tradition and regionality were featured in the theme of the new American house and the new regionalism. These projects clearly indicate her sense of obligation to improve housing and living standards in the United States. In her 1953 article, ‘The Threat to the Next America’, Gordon criticized the influence of European modernist architects on American architectural society. Penick explains that, from this essay, Gordon began to explicitly connect personal taste in design to the political and social well-being of America, and her writing was politically charged to play perfectly in the McCarthy era (Penick 2017). In this article, Gordon criticized German architect Mies van der Rohe’s idea of ‘less is more’ as ‘promoting unlivability, stripped-down emptiness, lack of storage space and therefore lack of possessions’ without a consideration of the good life, and damaging people’s self-confidence. Her attacks on the masters of modern architecture, such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, were subsequently criticized by the majority of the American architectural community in journals such as Architectural Forum and Progressive Architecture (Penick 2017). In Gordon’s defence, Frank Lloyd Wright supported her view strongly by claiming that she had clarified the problem of American architecture (Penick 2017). He sent his student John deKoven Hill to House Beautiful as an architectural editor in 1953, to be responsible for feature articles exploring American architectural styles from a perspective aligned with Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas (Penick 2017). From the 1940s onwards, Gordon perceived that the problems of American interior design were excessively focused on comfort, practical and aesthetically pleasing values, and the pursuit of the richness of the consumer’s overall lifestyle (Penick 2017). After the Second World War, Gordon further criticized the materialistic nature of American design for its economic prosperity, and sought a new logic to organize and support the values of comfort, convenience and function in domestic space as the fundamentals of American lifestyle (Penick 2017). The special issues on shibui in 1960 are full of philosophical ideas and images of Japanese historical lifestyle and architectural spaces with references to Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘organic’ architectural philosophy. Frank Lloyd Wright had died in April 1959, and these issues obviously aimed to tribute to his lifetime contribution to American architecture and design. Japanese historical lifestyle and aesthetics were assimilated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas and reorganized as an alternative to European modernism to compensate for the lack of organic totality and spirituality of everyday life in American domestic housing design. 186

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­Gordon’s visit to Japan and the shibui issues Gordon had visited Japan seven times (twice in 1959, twice in 1960 and three times in 1961 and 1962). Having been informed of basic knowledge of Japanese culture before her travels by British potter Bernard Leach and American artist Frances Blakemore, both of whom knew Japanese art and culture well, she read many books on Japanese art. Owing to the presence of the Japan Society in New York, established in 1907, there was a strong network in the city among intellectuals who appreciated Japanese culture. Gordon made contacts with various Japanese cultural producers, such as architect Junzo Yoshimura; art critic and collector Muneyoshi (Soetsu) Yanagi; a Japanese architectural student of Frank Lloyd Wright, Taro Amano; and various Japanese sponsors of arts. In Japan, Eiko Yuasa, a Kyoto City official, accompanied her on many visits to various places: Katsura Imperial Villa (Katsura Rikyu) as an exemplar of Japanese historical architecture; Tawaraya, an elite Japanese restaurant and inn; and streets and markets in Kyoto, where she interacted with Japanese people. Supported by Kyoto City, Yuasa accompanied Gordon back to the United States and helped her finish the special issues on shibui. Yuasa’s special and longterm support for Gordon signifies that her visits to Japan were supported by the Japanese government, cooperating with the cultural strategy of the United States. The special feature on shibui, published in August 1960, reported on historical architectural spaces in Japan, analysed wooden structures and introduced how people lived in them. It also introduced a kind of unity found in Japanese living spaces, from decoration to interior space, garden, food and clothing, seasonal changes in the garden and the charm of the details of everyday life (Illustration 10.1). The feature started with a question: ‘Should we learn about the ways and values of a foreign culture?’ Gordon repeatedly stated that Japanese aesthetics would make up for the shortcomings of the American aesthetic paradigm, and would improve people’s lives. She insisted that the sense of beauty could be seen in the combination of things, rooms and colours, and that since the eighth century, Japan had been making use of it. She discussed aesthetics in the way of living, of speaking and of wearing a kimono, without distinguishing between beauty and practical use. She explained that the purpose of learning was not to imitate the Japanese way of doing things, but to learn the spiritual attitudes and sense of values that gave rise to such sensitivity and consciousness of the Japanese way of life, and to improve the American way of doing things. According to Gordon, the most obvious manifestation of that sense of beauty was the tranquillity that exists in the beautiful objects of the home, in gardens, and daily life, not an austere simplicity or denial, but the effort to integrate highly controlled and diverse elements into the whole. She explained that Japanese houses were the most flexible with plenty of storage space, and that Americans could learn from their structure and space. In response to Yuasa’s guidance about Japanese traditional aesthetics, Gordon focussed on the concept of shibui and articulated her thoughts. For Gordon, it was important for one to be able to describe every aspect of life from objects, clothes, behaviour, gardens and cooking; to express all aspects of form, colour, sound and the five senses, and to recognize the value of the imperfect thing and to live an aesthetic life. By emphasizing 187

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Figure 10.1  Cover page of the head article ‘Why an Issue on Japan?’ with an image of an interior of a traditional house with figures dressed in traditional kimonos. House Beautiful ‘Discover Shibui the Word for the Highest Level in Beauty’, 1960. Courtesy House Beautiful magazine.

the importance of the way of life and spiritual conditions behind the aesthetics, she suggested that these values were not made by a professional architect but by common people, which she stressed to emphasize the priority of the home owners’ taste in their house design over that of architects. The feature in the September issue of House Beautiful dealt with the Americanization of shibui. As a way to understand and incorporate the Japanese artistic values of shibui 188

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into the United States, Gordon adopted a method of creating organic ideas from the nature of the materials found in Wright’s and Tiffany’s work, which signified that she eventually depended on these familiar works in transferring Japanese aesthetics into the American products. She discussed a possible formulation of colour combinations, textural patterns and design patterns with applicable details, formal compositions and information of products with an index of their makers.

House Beautiful, shibui exhibitions and visitors’ responses In 1961, with Japan Air Line sponsorship and the US government support, House Beautiful held exhibitions of shibui objects in various locations in Philadelphia and elsewhere across the United States. The exhibitions revolved around exquisite Japanese kimono textiles with embroidery, techniques of colouring and woven patterns, photographic images of Sukiya house interior and gardens, and Japanese traditional and folklore crafts which Gordon had purchased and brought back (Gordon collection, Freer/Sackler, Smithsonian) (Illustration 10.2). The combination of these images and objects, and their settings with quiet lighting, were carefully designed. Gordon aimed to

Figure 10.2  Shibui exhibition in Chicago, c. 1961. Courtesy Elizabeth Gordon Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.

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promote these aesthetic images to local affiliates and introduce new interior materials, objects and imagery to middle-class House Beautiful readers. From the contents of the exhibitions, it is clear that the purpose and outcome of the exhibition was a material manifestation of a particular lifestyle through layers of objects and decorations, tailored for the general readers of the magazine. The correspondence from readers of the House Beautiful special issues and visitors to the exhibition is kept in the Freer and Sackler Archive, Smithsonian Institution. The letters show that there were many enthusiastic and positive reactions, praising exquisitely presented detailed information on Japanese beauty in its interiors, gardens and lifestyle, and appreciation towards Japanese people, as well as towards Gordon’s way of introducing Japanese culture effectively to the American people (Gordon collection, Freer/Sackler, Smithsonian). Many of them described Gordon’s explanation of the aesthetic experience in Japanese houses as a future influence on American culture, which would encourage them to praise their own aesthetics in place of technology, and led them to be familiar with Japanese ancient culture. Two scholars of Japanese culture, however, criticized Gordon’s publication, stating that it was a ‘classic expression of the ignorant yet patronising American’, and showed ‘the snobbish, narrow-minded, naive attitude’, and ‘superficial and consistently misused the term of shibui’, and even judged that ‘you [Gordon] represent Japan rather as it is not. You have chosen traditional aspects of Japanese life, taken them out of context, and let them stand for present-day Japan. This exotic version of the country, popularised by [Lafcadio] Hearne and others, is indeed unrealistic’ (Saunders 1960). Japanese scholars’ negative reactions were derived from their comprehensive knowledge of Japanese culture, both historic and contemporary. What is more important to note here is that there was a clear indication that Gordon’s interpretation of shibui was based on her editorial translation of Japanese culture in the project, which even intellectuals in the United States criticized.

Methodologies of Gordon’s interpretation of Japanese aesthetics The purpose of these special features and exhibitions was to extract effective solutions to problems, such as American consumerism, from the Japanese culture of living and to translate them into a method and language which was easily understood by the American public. French philosopher Jacques Rancière describes the mechanism of politics of aesthetics as a process of segmenting, extracting, translating, encoding and rearranging the components individually into different logical systems (Rancière 2013). Gordon’s special issues and exhibitions attempted to restructurize the aesthetics of shibui in her visual presentations, selection of the elements and literal translation of the philosophical concept of shibui into American vocabularies of housing design. The exhibition featured extravagant Japanese traditional textiles and expensive crafts, such as lacquered tools of the tea ceremony, woven lattice baskets and Imari and Mashiko ceramics, suggesting the possibility of applying them to American interior spaces. But the effect was limited because the exhibition presented only fragmentary visual information 190

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of Japanese aesthetics. It worked as a sample exhibition for manufacturers, designers and readers, who were important clients of the interior design trade press. Images displayed as purchasable interior styles in photographs, and objects such as pieces of textiles and ornaments could not represent the psychological or the social discourse of interiors developed with habitual manners. They could not represent stylistic canons or social hierarchies of the underlying aesthetic behaviour of shibui or social meanings of the relationship between the body, costumes and objects. By substituting Japanese historical aesthetic logics of life for functionalistic values, and making them a matter of material choice, regardless of social and cultural contexts, Gordon’s exhibition replaced the original meaning of shibui with decorative design. The meaning of ‘tranquillity’, a characteristic of the spatial expression of the concept of shibui presented in the exhibition, differed from its original context in Zen philosophy and in the history of Japanese living spaces. In these, tranquillity was the expression of solitude and frugality; of a spirit of repressed desire and a life of minimal objects and space, harmonious and sustainable. In Gordon’s work, however, the fundamental meaning and historicity were eliminated, replaced by an aesthetic of simplification and reduced to a decorative dimension. Another significant characteristic of Gordon’s method is her attempt to restructure aesthetics with translated languages. In her text ‘We Invite You to Enter a New Dimension: Shibui’ in the August special issue, Gordon explained the need for the logic of life and the effectiveness of understanding it by translating aesthetics into words (House Beautiful, August 1960: 88–95). It shows her interest in understanding the overall structure and values of Japanese lifestyle culture by objectifying and encoding them. Gordon mentioned Yanagi’s and Yuasa’s contributions to her understanding of shibui. The correspondence between Gordon and her Japanese collaborators held at the Smithsonian suggests that she was inspired by the semantic structuring of the concept of shibui by Yanagi and the introduction of Shuzo Kuki’s ‘Structure of the Iki’ by Taro Amano (Gordon collection, Freer/Sackler, Smithsonian). These were turning points for her method of encoding and rearranging Japanese culture in the American value system.

Contributions of Muneyoshi Yanagi and Taro Amano to Gordon’s shibui project From August 1952 to December 1959, Yanagi, Hamada and Bernard Leach repeatedly travelled in the United States, gave lectures in various places, attended international craftsmen meetings and played an important role in the Russell Project for the introduction of Japanese Mingei (Ajioka 2015). While he promoted Mingei in the United States after the Second World War, Yanagi simplified his previous concept of Mingei into the issue of the nature of materials, techniques and daily functions of objects, and conveyed it in accordance with the American values of life (Yanagi 1982b). As Yanagi was supported by the Japanese government and the Japan Society in New York City, it is likely that Gordon would have known about Yanagi’s Mingei movement before she started working on the shibui issue. 191

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Like his reinterpretation of the concept of Mingei, Yanagi changed his interpretation of shibui from the pre- to post-war period. It is said that upon Gordon’s request, Yanagi thought deeply about shibui and put it into writing (Yanagi 1968). As a result, his interpretations of the meaning of shibui in 1960 changed greatly from an earlier iteration in 1942. In ‘What Is Folk Art?’ published in 1942, Yanagi described shibui as a set of binary conflicts of an ambiguous sense of value, and as a concept closely related with Mingei. He discussed that shibui was the ‘beauty of service alive in a modest quiet form’ which was the ultimate beauty of the concept of Tao by Lao-tzu, and that it was created by the ‘people who are uneducated and mediocre’ (Yanagi 2006). In 1960, Yanagi summarized shibui as ‘The beauty [that] combines the beauty of nature with that of freedom, and the beauty suited to the function and material of an object’ (Yanago 1960). Yanagi’s definitions of shibui can be summarized as follows: a standard word for expressing beauty, a familiar everyday language, a concrete image in accordance with shibui objects and events. The elements of the nature of shibui are as follows: ‘simplicity’, ‘connotation’ and ‘internality’, ‘humility’, ‘silence’, ‘naturalness’ or ‘necessity’, ‘safety’ and ‘conventional’, ‘fracture’ or ‘freedom’ (Yanagi 1968). A comparison of the interpretations of the two different times reveals that in 1942, Yanagi denied the decorative, whereas he clearly embraced it in the later iteration referred to by Gordon. The concept of shibui in 1942 was equated with socially disadvantaged humbleness of everyday objects, which became the theoretical basis of Mingei (Yanagi 1942). It was completely removed in 1960 and transformed into ways of formal expression. The latter writing in 1960 introduced three new meanings: ‘adapted to the function and material of object’ or, more specifically, ‘the beauty of nature and of freedom’ and ‘the practical way of combining the beauty of defects and static control’ (Yanagi 1968). In the end, the latter interpretation reverses the passive aesthetic function of shibui shown in the former. In the latter case, the meaning of overcoming social class structure and being free from various bipolar conflicts has been transformed to those of functionalism. This shows how Yanagi transformed his concept of shibui from 1942 to 1960, when he responded to Gordon’s enquiry about its meaning. This translation by Yanagi, in keeping with Gordon’s intention of introducing the concept of shibui to the American public, eliminated the philosophy of life of solitude, frugality and the suppression of desire, which originally underlay its characteristics of spiritual harmony and sustainability, and replaced it with rationality and functionality. As Rancière’s analysis of the politics of aesthetics argues, Yanagi segmented, extracted, translated, encoded and rearranged the components of the concept of shibui into different logical systems of American design. Taro Amano, Japanese architect and student of Frank Lloyd Wright, had several conversations with Gordon during her first visit to Japan, which continued after the special issues were published. Taro Amano studied with Frank Lloyd Wright in Thaliassen in 1952–3, and after returning to Japan he introduced Wright’s ideas to the Japanese architectural education system. As an architect, he designed buildings that were inspired by and respected the emotions and humanity of the people who lived there every day. The full extent of his contact with Gordon is unclear, but it is likely that Amano helped Gordon understand the concept of shibui in relation to Wright’s concept 192

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of ‘organic architecture’. Gordon’s archive contains Amano’s various diagram sketches that organize relationships of several Japanese aesthetic ideas such as iki, wabi, sabi, aware and shibui, as well as an explanation of the Japanese philosopher Shuzo Kuki’s diagram titled ‘Structure of the Iki’ (Illustration 10.3) (Gordon collection, Freer/Sackler, Smithsonian). Kuki understood and structured the relationship between psychology, space, behaviour and sense in a diagram (Kuki 1979). He explained the iki aesthetic as a dynamic balance of human totality, in which he integrated the multipolar relationship between different phases of the above concepts. In Kuki’s diagram, each concept of Japanese aesthetics was literally analysed, simplified in its translation from Japanese to English, and rearranged in a visual structure. Compared with Kuki’s diagram, Amano’s was not complete, but

Figure 10.3  Diagram by Taro Amano explaining how shibui

relates to other Japanese aesthetic ideas. Courtesy Sohei Amano and Elizabeth Gordon Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. 193

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he explained shibui as a concept to organize other concepts’ active interrelationships by using Kuki’s three-dimensional diagram. It can be inferred that this method by Amano was consistent with the concept of shibui as a set of diverse bipolar confrontations presented by Yanagi in 1942, and was reflected in Gordon’s explanation of shibui as a concept to connect interior spaces, objects, clothes, behaviour, garden, cooking, etc., and to express all other elements of shape, colour and the five senses. Kuki studied under Martin Heidegger and Henry Bergson in Germany and France, respectively, and merged European philosophy and Japanese ideas. Thus, Amano’s introduction of Kuki’s diagram to understand shibui from a structural perspective assisted Gordon to derive the concept of shibui as a universal aesthetic idea to integrate various elements into the whole.

A new image of Sukiya space The architect who provided a point of reference for the contemporary realization of Gordon’s image was probably not Junzo Yoshimura, with whom she had a direct relationship, but rather Takeo Amito, who designed homes for American Occupation soldiers after they returned to Japan in the 1950s, making use of Japanese Sukiya architecture. Gordon is believed to have contacted Junzo Yoshimura in 1959. Yoshimura had worked at the Tokyo office of architect Antonin Raymond from 1931 to 1942 and had worked in the United States between 1940 and 1941. After the Second World War, he was involved in the design and construction of the Sukiya house at MoMA and worked on several other projects in the United States. Through these experiences, he created his own style and design philosophy, combining the advantages of Japanese Sukiya and American functional architecture. With his transnational background, Yoshimura kept a distance from both traditional debates on Japanese architecture and German modernism, and took a position unrelated to the stylistic trends or commercialism (Yoshimura 1976). Penick states that Yoshimura and Gordon did not see eye-to-eye on the aesthetics of Japanese architecture, probably because Yoshimura, who had struggled to harmonize Japanese and American architecture from the pre- to the post-war in political confrontation, was aware of the cultural politics of the United States, utilizing a superficial understanding of Japanese historical architecture and aesthetic and its commercialization (Penick 2017). Another Japanese architect who influenced Gordon’s projects on shibui was Takeo Amito, who worked for the US Occupation’s Design Branch. In the September 1960 issue of House Beautiful, the case of a Japanese-style house built in the United States for an Occupation officer was published in the name of an American architect Elvin Ilys. The house was, however, designed in collaboration with Takeo Amito (Illustration 10.4). Amito worked for the post-war Occupation forces in the design of dependent housing, such as those built in Washington Heights, Tokyo, and acquired practical knowledge and theory of American architectural design (Amito 1999). At the same time, he designed several villas and residences for army officers on the US mainland. The characteristic features of Amito’s design were the rationality and functionality of architecture suited to 194

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Figure 10.4  Takeo Amito’s collection of ‘Japanese Influence American Life: Barbara Hutton’s Life’ marked as ‘architect Mr. Ely, Ives cooperating Takeo Amito’s works, especially Mexico’, Courtesy Takeo Amito’s family collection, Japan.

American tastes, the comfort of Japanese space, beautiful details and material expression, and the expansive development from interior to exterior based on the consistent body measurement. The homes featured in Gordon’s special issues were attractive to American readers not because they were designed by an American architect in Hawaii, but because they were designed by a Japanese architect, Amito, who had already learned the method of cultural amalgamation of architectural spatial composition and lifestyle 195

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values through the designs of American dependent housing. Amito designed to fuse the attractiveness of Sukiya space with the logic of American housing without being captivated by Japanese tradition. This encouraged Gordon to think that the spatial and cultural fusion of Japanese and American aesthetics was actually possible.

The impact of Gordon’s special issue After the Second World War, Japanese architects were conscious of the trend of internationalization in the architectural field and tried to reconstruct the aesthetics of Japanese architecture and their cultural identity, based on Japanese tradition or heritage. Then, under the name of Dento Ronso (traditional dispute), they tried to conceptualize ‘authentic traditions’ and developed it in a modern way (Nagao 1972; Fujioka 1990). Kenzo Tange, a leading architect, played an important role in the Dento Ronso and repeatedly took up and reinterpreted the Katsura Imperial Villa. Simultaneously, he compared the characteristics of the Yayoi and Jomon periods of ancient Japanese culture with those of Sukiya and the folk house, insisting that the ‘origin of Japanese culture’ always existed in Japanese architecture from ancient times to the present day (Tange 1956). Although this controversial claim by Tange and others was not directly related to the influence of American architecture in Japan, such a statement asserted cultural uniqueness based on regionality and symbolism, and protested against international criticism of modern Japanese architecture, such as that by Drexler. Therefore, when Gordon’s special issues were published, Japanese designers and architects quickly showed both positive and negative responses towards her interpretations of Japanese traditional architectural culture. The Smithsonian archive includes letters praising the issues edited by Gordon from the Japanese architect Yoshinobu Ashihara (Ashihara, H. and Y.). Ashihara, as one of the first group of Fulbright scholars, entered the graduate school of architecture in Harvard University in 1952. Even though he studied Bauhaus modernism in the United States, he was conscious of the representational value of Japanese aesthetics in post-war international society (Ashihara 2000). In a commentary in the Japanese journal Geijutsu Shincho, another Japanese architect, Yoshiro Taniguchi, also praised Gordon’s special issue highly for its survey of the aesthetics of Japan and the introduction of the attractiveness of Japanese architecture from a different perspective beyond modernism (1960: 12), an Orientalist one. He, however, lamented that such approach expressed the superiority of Westerners to the Japanese for not being able to understand Western architectural culture. His reaction should be derived not only from Japanese architects’ disappointment for not being recognized equally by Western architectural critiques but also from the difficult realities Japanese architects faced in housing reconstruction. In the same journal, an Italian architectural historian Bruno Zevi also criticized Gordon that the shibui issue is her countermeasure towards European modernism and that the idea of shibui widely accepted in the West should be reinterpreted more productively in current post-war new architectural expression of Kenzo Tange’s beautifully casted concrete walls (Zevi 1961). 196

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Records in the Smithsonian archive also reveal that officials from the Japanese government and Japan Air Lines, which carried out cultural projects, praised the special issue and the exhibition because they made a significant contribution to the international promotion of Japanese culture and aesthetics in an attractive and effective manner (Japanese Embassy 1960). They represented the cultural characteristics of Japan in the post-war world as inheriting the decorative luxury, craftsmanship and historical aesthetics that underpinned Japonism. In other words, in Japan, companies and international bureaucrats believed that the image of Japonism was still effective for their post-war international cultural representation and export industry. With such instrumentalization of traditional aesthetics, Japanese manufacturers exported products of poor quality in Japonism-like style to the US market (Kenmochi 1954). The industrial designer Isamu Kenmochi, who raised serious debates on the relationship between populism and ethics of designing, did not appreciate Gordon’s special issue of Geijutu Shincho (Kenmochi 1960). Gordon’s shibui issue showed the gap between the awareness of problems in the exchanges between Japanese and American architectural and design discourses in the 1950s and the 1960s. Japanese architects and designers, however, simultaneously continued to seek support from the United States for design education, industrial knowhow and financial support, and desired respect from the American design industry for Japan’s cultural uniqueness. Their critical reactions towards Gordon did not continue, and were replaced with active uses of the expressions and interpretations of traditional Japanese aesthetics, such as those presented by Gordon, in their international design promotion discourse. For example, Teiji Ito, an architectural historian and critic who was a central member of the World Design Conference in 1960, designed its ‘Bi’ catalogue, by combining letters of traditional aesthetics, traditional objects and modern design. This is similar to Gordon’s method of converging Japanese and American aesthetic discourse in interior and living spaces. The analysis observed in Ito’s Japanese Design Theory, published in 1966, and his logic to reinterpret Katsura Imperial Villa, folk houses and urban spaces in Japan, were similar to the method and perspectives presented by Gordon (Ito 1966). Beginning with the World Design Conference, Japan’s post-war design innovation ultimately started from Cold War cultural dialogues and mechanisms represented in Gordon’s method and perspective of reinterpreting traditional aesthetics of Japan. Yanagi later lamented, ‘Japanese architects are trying to create new architecture by imitating the architecture expressed by Americans who are interested in Japanese culture, and they are not trying to deepen their understanding of their own culture’ (Yanagi 1981), even though Yanagi himself contributed to that transition.

The reality of peoples’ living space and the concept of shibui In relation to the needs of people and the state of architectural design at the time, the meaning of shibui was different in Japan and the United States. Meghan McLaughlin Warner, in an interview with a magazine of the time, points out that the American public 197

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did not necessarily welcome Gordon’s feature (Warner 2010: 133–54). In the United States, in order to resolve its own internal problems of the conflict between European modernism and nationalism due to Cold War cultural policies, the post-war image of a prosperous American life that integrates people beyond racial issues and the craving for cultural uniqueness with spirituality and historicity, the concept of shibui was referred to, transformed and expressed. In Japan, on the other hand, housing reconstruction was under way in the midst of economic difficulties. Due to small-scale and poor living environments caused by urbanization and lack of resources, historical culture and aesthetics were denied in institutional policy, and functionalism based on Euro-American modernism was ethically pursued. This situation was followed by the introduction of American consumerist lifestyle culture through Cold War policies. As a result, the contradictions and confusion that foreign architects have pointed out in Japan’s post-war period were brought about. It was truly a situation of living shibui, but people could no longer accept it. What Gordon’s shibui special issues and the subsequent reactions of architects revealed was that, in a period of change in living conditions and social values, architects, designers and critics were pursuing aesthetic ideals that was alien to the people’s spiritual poverty and problems of life, and attempted to seek life values through transnational cultural exchange. Instead of facing to the reality of housing issues derived from the gaps between the historical lifestyle and newly constructed poor housing, architects and critics could not find their clues in the relationship between policy intentions, the media and the market. To put it another way, the popularity of the concept of shibui symbolized the contradictions between the various ideological positions and their realities in this international cultural and political exchange, and further encouraged the creation of a new formative logic and values assigned to living spaces. Gordon’s interpretation of Japanese aesthetics reveals post-war cultural conflicts in both American and Japanese design, such as between modernism and populism, authenticity of tradition and universality, aesthetics rooted in social values and visual attractiveness, and functionality in a regional context and economic efficiency.

­Conclusion In launching a project enquiring into the logic of post-war American life and an ideal form of housing, Elizabeth Gordon turned to the Japanese concept of historical aesthetics shibui for inspiration. Her endeavour in presenting shibui to American audiences in House Beautiful raised two issues. The first was the manipulation of the meaning of the shibui concept through a pragmatic translation of language, and the second was a limited socio-historical understanding of Japanese lifestyle and living space by placing emphasis on the visual and objects of shibui in order to appeal to the readers’ interests. As a result, the concept of shibui was transformed, conforming to functionalistic and 198

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visually oriented American values, and Gordon’s fundamental intention to apply the comprehensive aspect of Japanese aesthetics to solving problems of American lifestyle was not realized. Detailed reading and analysis of the process of Gordon’s cultural translation and application of shibui into the American lifestyle, and the reactions of US consumers, exemplified not only the effect of Cold War cultural politics in the post-war interior design debates but also the internal issues of the design community in the United States caused by the conflict between European and American modernism and by the loss of spiritual confidence in modernism due to excessive consumerism. The post-war historical narrative based on the process of Americanization in Japan as an evolutionary modernization with the generous support from the United States needs to be re-examined. Reading the gaps and conflicts in the interactions between Gordon and her Japanese collaborators sheds light on the other side of the history of modernization of Japanese architectural design in the post-war era. The Japanese collaborators in Gordon’s project presented diverse tactics, in De Certeau’s sense, of the dominated in protecting their cultural identity by assimilating to the dominator: Yanagi’s Oriental Orientalism, Amano’s structuralization of Japanese historical aesthetics within European philosophical frames, Amito’s practical amalgamation of Sukiya with American functional space, Yoshimura’s new naturalistic Japanese style and Ashihara’s utilization of undermined Japonism as a brand image for his international style design. Even though Drexler and Gordon appreciated Japanese traditional culture as an opposition to American culture, both were trapped by the idea of Japonism and the international understanding of Japanese culture, which was also influenced by the image of Japonism. On the contrary, the tactics of the Japanese architects and designers were more dynamic, and their responses in relation to changing post-war cultural and political conditions were more creative, and were sustained in the longer term. This study suggests that while the Cold War cultural politics has had an ongoing impact on Japanese society and culture, nationally and internationally, the hidden conflicts, tactics and subjective cultural self-amalgamation during the so-called relationship of mutual understanding between the United States and Japan after the Second World War demand further research and reinterpretation in order to reframe cultural meanings and identities of Japanese aesthetics and architecture.

­Acknowledgements This study was supported by Kajima Research Institute Fund and Japanese Science Research Fund. The research was helped by Dr Louise Court of The Freer/Sackler Archives, Smithsonian Institution and members of the National Archive and Record Administration. Specifically, the author appreciates the daughter of Takeo Amito and the son of Taro Amano for their generosity in sharing their material. 199

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Notes 1

Archival Research was mainly conducted between 2015 and 2019 in Elizabeth Gordon collection, Archives of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, National Archives and Records Administration, Far East Command Engineering Section, and The National Archive and Record Administration. Periodical study and other wider scope research was conducted in Maynard L. Parker collection of Huntington Library, Library of Japan Society, Library of Modern Museum of Art, The Library of Congress, Osaka Anthropology Museum, The Japan Architectural Academy Library, Japan National Congress Library, Columbia University Library and Canadian Center of Architecture. Research and interviews were conducted at Amito’s daughter’s house, the relatives of Eiko Yuasa and the city museum of Kyoto in 2018.

2

In 1955, MoMA changed its directorship of architecture section from Philip Johnson to Drexler, and the director of Interior design Edgar Kaufman, who was close to Frank Lloyd Wright and had organized the series of Useful Design and Good Design Exhibition, left MoMA.

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­C HAPTER 11 THE MODERN KITCHEN IN KOREA: DESIGN, MODERNITY AND TRANSNATIONALISM

Yunah Lee

Introduction Since the late 1950s, kitchen spaces and their designs have gone through the most distinctive and rapid transformation in the Korean home (Republic of Korea). This involved numerous national modern housing projects with improved provision of basic infrastructure and facilities, such as water supply, sewage systems and energy sources of gas, electricity or oil for cooking and heating. Between the 1960s and 1980s in Korea, the kitchen was established as a space central to home life and modernized to be functional and efficient for cooking and living. The design of modern kitchen was established in the form of a fitted kitchen with modular units and furnished with new materials, facilities and utensils, which visually and materially symbolized a modern lifestyle. The history of the modern kitchen in Europe and North America has been extensively written, charting the conceptual, ideological, visual and material changes since the late nineteenth century. The development of scientific management of home is considered central to the inception of the modern kitchen. Christine Frederick’s scrutiny on housework, culminated in the seminal 1919 publication, Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home, was based on ‘a belief in the power of science to improve the human condition that constituted the decisive stimulus in changing the way people thought about kitchen routines’ and ‘precipitated a train of professional design thinking which became an important factor in the development of the fitted kitchen’ (Freeman 2004: 29). European modernism and functionalism, especially during the interwar period, provided the modern kitchen with distinctive visual and material forms, inscribed with efficiency of labour in the kitchen, and complemented scientific approaches to the layout of the kitchen. The concept and form of Grete Schütte-Lihotzky’s canonical modern fitted Frankfurt kitchen of 1926 was a material realization of ideologically charged modernism’s utopian visions for a better living, alongside modernist architecture’s development of standardized housing projects, which left a global legacy in both temporal and geographical senses. The Kitchens of Tomorrow, developed in the United States during the 1930s and the 1950s, similarly promoted efficiency by pushing forward innovation and technology in the kitchen. The ideologically charged promotion of the American dream kitchen and consumer culture

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in the 1950s positioned the kitchen space and its design in the popular imagination of the modern interior (Oldenziel and Zachmann 2009). Studies on Korean kitchens have been conducted by researchers in home economics, architecture and interiors, and ethnography. They have explored the historical evolution of kitchen spaces and facilities, focusing on traditional arrangements in different regions (ethnography), the relations between the kitchen and other spaces at home (architecture and interiors), and the design of the kitchen space and equipment for an efficient workspace for housewives (home economics) (Ham 2002: 66–7). Since the early 2000s, more comprehensive studies on the kitchen placed the evolution of the modern kitchen in the discourse of modernization and modernity in Korea during the twentieth century (Ham 2002 and 2005; Jung and Kim 2009; Do 2017; Kang 2019). The social and cultural meanings of the kitchen, especially with the consideration of kitchen as a living space and lived experiences of the actors who occupied the kitchen for working and living, were explored from the disciplinary perspectives of sociology, culture, media and gender studies (Kim and Kim 2008; Joen et al. 2009; Do 2017). These studies utilized articles and stories related to kitchens in women’s magazines and newspapers and carried out interviews in order to capture the experiences of various actors, architects, housing developers, designers, academics and the users of the kitchens. Modern housing discourses and the discussion of women’s culture in women’s magazines between the 1950s and the 1970s have been significant in determining how Korean women encountered and navigated the symptoms and material manifestations of modernity and dominant ideologies of modernization and national rebuilding (Kang 2006; Kim and Kim 2008). This chapter focuses on two women’s magazines, Yeowon (Women’s garden) and Jubusaenghwal (Housewife’s life). Yeowon, published from October 1955 to April 1970, was read by a broad range of readership from young singles to housewives. It is a valuable resource for researchers because it is the only women’s magazine published in the 1950s and early 1960s. Jubusaenghwal, first published in 1965, and still in publication, is aimed at housewives aged between twenties and forties as its main readership (Kim and Kim 2008: 113). Photographs and drawings in these magazines are significant resources to further the understanding of designs and materials of the modern kitchen when there is little actual material evidence of kitchen from the period that has survived to show how they looked and how they were constructed. In this sense, images substitute the actual modern kitchens that were made and used. The modern kitchens on these media are also the representation of the modern kitchen de facto. The contents of magazines introduced and visualized the concept and design of the modern kitchen by showcasing newly modernized kitchens in the homes of Korean elites in photographs, advising readers on the design elements that made a kitchen modern, and how to achieve one, both conceptually and materially. The newspapers further perpetuated and popularized these ideas through texts and images among the public. Although the modern kitchen was a reality only for some, it carried a promise and possibility of the real for many through its representation in the media. Built upon existing studies on the modern kitchen, and the Korean modern kitchen in particular, this chapter focuses on the historical development of the modern kitchen 204

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space and its design in Korean urban dwellings from a transnational design historical perspective. By examining photographs, diagrams and advertisements of the kitchen and kitchen furniture as well as texts in the articles from woman’s magazines and newspapers discussing interiors and kitchen design, the chapter investigates agencies of different people in the making of modern kitchen design. It explores the ways in which architects, housing-planners and home economists formulated the concepts, ideals and designs of the modern kitchen, and how the public responded to, and appropriated, new ideas and products of the modern kitchen and its function as well as design, in their own lived experiences of the space. It discusses how they negotiated the idea of modernity and modern living that had been inscribed in the new kitchen space, objects and images.

Modern kitchen in national and transnational contexts As a kitchen in the domestic environment harbours the most susceptible space for new changes in design, technology and society, it is also a place where various ideologies of national and institutional policies in the making of a good home manifest implicitly and explicitly through technologies, visual and material forms, and bodily embodied experiences (Parr 2002: 660). The development of the modern kitchen in Korea is closely connected with national modernization and industrialization projects since the late 1950s. The question of what was modern and how ideas of the modern kitchen were materialized in the visual and material vocabulary of modern design and modernism, however, cannot be simply addressed within the framework of a national discourse. This chapter investigates the ways in which the Koreans negotiated ideas of the modern within kitchen spaces through the adoption and appropriation of ‘Western’ and modernist thinking of efficiency, functionalism and technology in the kitchen. Here, the concept of ‘entangled modernities’ proposed by architectural historian and theorist Duanfang Lu is a useful interpretive frame, ‘in order to go beyond the assumption of exclusive European authorship in the making of modernity and to emphasize sites of encounter, crossing and negotiation’. Lu argues that the concept of ‘entangled modernities’ stresses the multiple meanings of the modern from their inception at different locales and their tangled relations (2012: 232). I propose that the Korean modern kitchen is a site of entangled modernities, where different actors, such as housing developers, academics, designers and consumers, encounter and negotiate the idea of modernity. Fiona Paisley and Pamela Scully attest that transnational history pays attention to ‘the significance of people, goods, technology and culture in the making of modernity’ (Paisley and Scully 2019: 1) and ultimately aims to ‘understand ideas, things and people and practices which have crossed national boundaries’ (3). The idea of the modern kitchen is transnational, formed and developed through ideas, things and people that had crossed national boundaries. In the Korean context, it is ultimately interwoven with the idea and experience of modernity, which most closely aligned with concepts, systems, things and practices that were brought into Korea from abroad since the late 205

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nineteenth century, and popularly ascribed as ‘Western’, ‘European’ and/or ‘American’. The colonial past and the intricate relations between coloniality and modernity in Korean history complicate transnational movements between Korea and other nations. The chapter traces the historical emergence of the modern kitchen, its conceptual ideas and materialized forms as transnational border crossings between Korea, Japan and the United States.

Modern kitchen and consumption This chapter also explores the modern kitchen as a site of consumption (Meah 2016). During the infamous kitchen debates between the US Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, Nixon argued that the American kitchen showcased in the American National Exhibition in Moscow symbolized luxury and comfort that was available for ordinary Americans. This signals the shift from ‘ideas to aesthetics, as the role of design changed from creating an ideal world to creating a consumer culture’ (Scanlan 2011: 342. cf. Meah 2016: 48). In regard of consumption in relation to modernity, Judy Attfield explained what she meant by modernity in her book Bringing Modernity Home. Based on Marshall Berman’s broad definition of modernity as a ‘body of experience’, Attfield used the term ‘modernity’ to indicate ‘the way in which consumers found ways of adopting to the changing conditions of existence through consumption choices’ (2007: 146). By examining photographs and advertisements of modern kitchens, kitchen furniture and appliances, and articles from women’s magazines featuring professional advice for ideas of modern kitchen design and space organization, the chapter charts the shifts in the discourse of the Korean modern kitchen from scientific management and efficient working space, to a site of consumption and space for living, emphasizing the well-designed and well-equipped modern fitted kitchen as a sign of happiness experienced by the housewife and her family.

Kitchen and modernity/modernization in Korea The emergence of discourse on and the development of modern kitchen in Korea after the Korean War (1950–3) cannot be separated from the discourse on housing and the processes of nation rebuilding. A series of economic development plans and government campaigns aimed to build essential infrastructure, material bases and living environments for the people. It also promoted new ways of everyday living with slogans featuring key words such as ‘rationalization’, ‘scientific thinking’ and ‘simplification’, to improve not only material conditions but also intellectual and spiritual states (Do 2017: 161). Due to rapid post-war urbanization causing shortage in housing and producing poor housing conditions, the government kick-started housing projects with foreign aid in 1954, constructing a variety of housing stock, including housing estates and apartments. To improve hygiene and sanitation in the home, the modernization of the kitchen and 206

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toilet was the primary concern for the Korean government (Ham 2002: 9–11). The issue was discussed in government policy documents and promoted through educational brochures and films made by governmental bodies. A short educational film, Better Kitchen (Gaeryang Buoek Mandulgi), in 1959 to demonstrate how to modernize a traditional Korean kitchen, is a good example of how the government approached and promoted the modernization of the kitchen. The blackand-white 12-minute film, directed by Sangbong Kim, was produced by the Bureau of Public Information as part of a programme promoting the importance of hygiene and better sanitation at home. The programme included topics such as better kitchens, clean hygienic water from well, how to care for patients at home, how to eliminate vermin and animal disease, and so on. The archival records for the film reveal that it was ‘designed as a graphic presentation of the best and most practical idea for improvement in Korean Kitchens developed by the Home Economics progress’ (Bureau of Public Information 1959). In the film, a young female home economist visits the couple who live in a house with a traditional kitchen. She shows a plan and drawings for a new improved kitchen and explains how the new equipment works, especially the newly designed furnace, worktables, and a sink with a built-in water supply in the form of a big jar as a water tank, and drainage. She instructs the husband to make them according to the drawings and demonstrates how to make a simple cupboard on the wall and a cover for food. The narrative focuses on improved hygiene, efficiency and comfort of the new kitchen by reducing the time and labour involved in travelling to use water and by working from the standing position rather than sitting or squatting. The drawings and plans used by the home economist represent a scientific and rational form of knowledge, juxtaposed as progress and improvement for the better, in opposition to traditional ways of cooking and working in kitchen. This juxtaposition of the modern and tradition is visible in the appearances of the female home economist in her modest simple dress in a Western style (yangjang), in contrast to the wife who is dressed in a Korean dress (hanbok), with an apron around her waist. This binary discourse of the modern versus the traditional, aligning modernization of every aspect of, not only material conditions but also culture and everyday lifestyle, towards progress and a better future of the new nation, was established and perpetuated through popular media, such as newspapers and women’s magazines from the late 1950s. What were the primary changes instigated through the modernization of kitchen? The development of new materials and introduction of new technology, the establishment of infrastructure, increasing efficiency and rationalizing the system were the core of modernization of the kitchen and the experience of modernity for the public. Discussions from this period addressed the following issues of the traditional Korean kitchen: material and technological changes in cooking and heating energy sources and the location of kitchen in relation to other rooms, essentially levelling up the floor of the kitchen to that of other interior rooms. As the traditional kitchen furnace provided a source for both, cooking and heating, the separation of the kitchen furnace from heating and establishing it for the single purpose for cooking, was the essential change in the modernization of the kitchen and reconfiguration of its location in relation to other rooms. With changes 207

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in energy sources and introduction of new innovative devices and machinery during the 1960s and the 1970s, the kitchen furnace was replaced by facilities such as a gas cooker, called a gas range, and used by most homes by the 1980s (Park n.d.). The second primary difference in the modern kitchen was its integration into the indoor home-space by raising the level of kitchen floor to that of other rooms. As the traditional kitchen was accessible through the courtyard, it was considered as an outdoor space (including the courtyard, backyard and well) and the activities of preparation, cooking and washing were executed outdoors. Eating occurred in the main room, costing women time and energy for shifting around food on a portable table for every mealtime. It was in the 1950s that the floor of the kitchen in the newly built housing stocks was raised closer to other indoor floor levels and was directly connected to indoor space. It was still a workspace with a relatively lower floor, where wearing a pair of shoes was often required as a symbolic marker for kitchen being still an outdoor space, which is commonly shown in photographs of women’s magazines. They represent distinctive Korean habits, developed from lived experiences in the past and adapted to the new configuration of space at home. It is not until the early 1980s that most kitchens were integrated into indoor spaces with the same floor level as other rooms (Ham 2002; Joen 2009; Park 2017).

Modern kitchen: Efficiency, productivity and modern lifestyle The improvement of the kitchen and the discourse of the modern kitchen employed the scientific management of the home, developed in the United States and Europe, and widely understood and accepted. In Korea, it was introduced during the 1920s and 1930s through the Japanese, who had colonized Korea between 1910 and 1945. Frederick’s book was translated into Japanese in 1913, and the Japanese were studying home economics in Britain and the United States. The ideas of rationalization and efficiency in housework and home life were, therefore, understood and deployed in housing and lifestyle reform movements after the First World War. They intended to establish a modern standard of living based on a Western style of living, functionalism and standardization, and the modernization of kitchen was devised by Joichi Kogure, a Japanese furniture and interior designer in 1930 (Kashiwagi 2020: 50–77). The Japanese colonial government’s building of modern housing in Korea introduced the Japanese version of modern living theories and ideas to the Koreans, which was adopted and modified by Korean architects and housing reformers in Korean contexts in the 1930s, exemplified in Gilyong Park’s kitchen reform proposals. Park’s recommendation for the reformation and modernization of kitchen includes the location (adjacent to the room where eating occurred and south- or east-facing), appropriate size (3 pyeong), large windows for light and ventilation, and facilities for washing, cooking and servicing. Park’s drawing of kitchen design shows that kitchen was connected to indoor space through corridors and equipped with a tiled cooking station, a ventilation hood over cooking station, a sink with running water and drainage, and cupboard for crockery (Ham 2005: 23–4). Studies on the modern kitchen and modern housing reform during the colonial period examine 208

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the transnational crossing of the concepts and images of the modern kitchen between Europe, the United States and Japan and the specificity of the modern kitchen discourse and design in the frame of coloniality and modernity in Korea (Jung and Kim 2009; Park 2010: 227–317; Do 2017: 81–144; Kang 2019: 45–60). In the (re)construction of the newly independent Korea, the very same concept of modern lifestyle with new and modern housing and kitchen resurfaced with a similar rhetoric of efficiency and rationalization. Articles published in Yeowon established the kitchen as the centre of housework and advised on the planning of a new kitchen to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in housewives’ labour (‘Gasanodongi’ 1962; Lee 1964; ‘Teukjib’ 1966; Seo 1970). They address the size and position of the kitchen in relation to the overall size of the house and arrangement of rooms, different types of kitchens (living, dining, open style), as well as new technology and facilities. In the article ‘Planning and Installation of Kitchen’ (1962  April: 316–9), the importance of worktables is highlighted with the detailed diagram of measurements for worktables and cupboards based on a housewife’s height and movement. Different worktable units for washing, preparation, cooking and plating food were defined and arranged to minimize movements between different worktables. Various layouts of worktable units were drawn up depending on the size, shape and location of the kitchen and its relation to the eating space (Illustration  11.1). The article further advises on the materials suitable for the units, floor, walls and ceiling, with detailed instructions for installation. Another article, ‘Simple Worktable’, suggests making a worktable to work in a standing position, rather than bending or sitting, and provides a how-to guide with a diagram (1962 February: 296–8), which is similar to the one shown in the 1959 Better Kitchen. A worktable is a new object which was instrumental in the transformation to modern kitchen and enabling housewives to work in standing position. This Western lifestyle using furniture and chair to sit down was called ipsik saenghwal and considered to be modern and healthier in comparison to the traditional joasik saenghwal, sitting on the floor. A report series of ‘My Clothes, Food and House’ in Yeowon in 1963 featured the house and the lifestyle of a well-established professional family. Byeongwoo Gong, an ophthalmologist, told that after his visit to the United States, he decided to change and improve his family lifestyle by denouncing traditional Korean ways of living. He made a dining table, chairs and beds; furnished the kitchen with new worktables and cupboards; wore shoes in the house and only Western style of clothing; and even changed his and his family’s diet (1963  March: 345–53). Another professional couple who lived in an apartment also listed the benefits of a modern lifestyle: Because the ondol (Korean traditional floor with underfloor heating) is warm, … you easily take a nap and get lazy. Lying down on the floor, the husband order around the wife to fetch an ashtray or a wash bucket. Since using chairs, it is not at all a chore to move around, and I became more active. So [modern lifestyle of using chairs] helps people to get rid of temptation for a nap, to be more diligent and active and enhance intellectual and spiritual capacity for living. (‘My Clothes’ 1963 May: 392) 209

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Figure 11.1  Diagrams included in the article ‘Planning and Installation of

Kitchen’, published in Yeowon, April 1962. Courtesy Seoul National University Library, Republic of Korea.

The modern lifestyle of ipsik saenghwal was inspired and encouraged by the encounter with ‘the Western’ lifestyle and embraced for efficiency, productivity and economical saving for better future. A couple of newspaper articles written by Hyewon Kim, a housewife married to a poet, shared similar ideas of modern kitchens and changes in everyday life, which were inspired by her experiences of living in Britain. Instead of following the American kitchen with many ‘automated facilities’, she chose to look to kitchens in Britain and France for her kitchen renovation and sought her sister’s 210

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advice, who had gained much knowledge on the topic in the United States (1962). Her article demonstrates how modern kitchens from Euro-America were considered and appropriated for her needs and conditions in Korean life. Kim’s endeavour to make a modern kitchen is reflective of the development of modern kitchen design by the academics in home economics and science, and planners in housing associations since the late 1950s (Do 2017: 158–65). During the 1960s, models of modern kitchens were exhibited on various occasions to show how ideals of modern kitchen could be actualized in a Korean house and were popularly featured in newspaper articles. The ideal of the modern kitchen as an efficient and a clean working space, and as a space for the whole family as well as the housewife, was unequivocally supported by writers and reporters of the magazines and newspapers. As seen in Kim’s case, however, the actual realization of the ideal was the outcome of a woman’s own making, utilizing what was available, affordable and practical. The detailed guides and instruction for kitchen design, facilities and decorations indicate that kitchen modernization was to be arranged and overseen by a housewife. An article in Yeowon, featuring a newspaper editor’s family house explained that the kitchen and bathroom were costly and that thorough consideration needed to be given in their design and installation (Illustration 11.2). The photograph shows a worktable and cupboard unit marked as ‘preparation station’ and the accompanied caption reveals how it was constructed: [The owners themselves] planned [the unit] after reading many reference documents. It is assembled together from parts and can be dismantled into four parts. The wall covering to hang kitchen utensils is a hardboard imported from the US and a temporary replacement of one made of stainless steel, which was very hard to find. The table is used as dining table in the morning and a bar at night. (‘Following the house’ 1965 October) With careful study and research, the housewife produced her own version of modern kitchen units and used for the purposes that meet her needs. A feature article in Yeowon (1966, April) provides further useful design ideas and devices for the kitchen with accompanying photographs: a hanger board on the wall where kitchen utensils could be conveniently stored and displayed; a cupboard with spinning shelves for condiments and sources; a worktable with a built-in pull-out work surface which could be used for cooking preparation, eating or as an ironing board; a built-in stainless steel waste bin which was connected to outdoor bin and a fitted rice container under the worktable. Although the ideas and designs are relatable to modern kitchens in Europe and the United States, the ideas and designs were deliberately developed to provide good solutions for problems and needs arising in the modern Korean kitchen with contributions made by an eclectic mix of professionals, including professional chefs, a high school teacher, architects, a businessman, lawyer and a reader, as acknowledged in the article. The designs and ideas were incorporated, first, in individual kitchen renovation projects, but, more importantly, into the development of fitted kitchen products, designed and branded for mass consumption. 211

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Figure 11.2  Photographs showing the kitchen space and fitted

worktables and cupboards, included in the article ‘Open House Feature 1: Following the House Owner’s Ideas’, published in Yeowon, October 1964. Courtesy Seoul National University Library, Republic of Korea.

Modern kitchen: A transnational consumer product The key design item and term in the development of the fitted kitchen and subsequent development of the modern kitchen as a consumer product is a stainless-steel sink. A sink with an integrated water supply and sewage system was one of the key features of the 212

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Figure 11.3  A newspaper advertisement of Oripyo stainless sink. Dong-a ilbo, 11 July 1977. Courtesy Dong-a ilbo, Republic of Korea. Courtesy Enex, Republic of Korea.

modern kitchen, and during the 1950s and the 1960s, several design modifications using materials such as tiles, porcelain and cement were made. It was with the installation of the fitted kitchen with the stainless-steel sink in mass housing development of apartments in the 1970s that the fully integrated stainless-steel sink became widely accepted as a synonym of the modern fitted kitchen. Stainless steel was a new material developed in the United States, but its use in the sink in the Korean kitchen occurred through the encounter with the Japanese, who used the material in the production of sinks, pioneered by companies such as Sunwave during the 1950s (Do 2017: 173–7). Yu-jae Park, the founder of Oripyo, a Korean company, established in 1971, produced a stainless-steel sink from 1968. He explained how he developed products and manufacturing factories after his visit to the Sunwave factory in the late 1960s (‘Oripyo’ 2006). During the 1970s, the stainless-steel sink was promoted as the most advanced item and essential component of the modern fitted kitchen. An advertisement of Oripyo sink in 1977 (Illustration 11.3) emphasized the brand of the stainless-steel sink product in its title and demonstrated identifiable features such as the company logo, the sign for KS (Korean Standard Mark) and a design feature of the double groove around the edge which acquired the national design patent and became the sink archetype in Korea. Companies such as Oripyo and Hanssem (founded in 1970 as kitchen furniture company) began to standardize and manufacture fitted kitchens and promoted the modern fitted kitchen designed in various layouts and components which were promised to meet the needs of modern lifestyles for housewives and their families. The ‘Sweet Home: The Kitchen in My Home Where the Work Is a Joy’ series featured in Jubusaenghwal in 1975, was sponsored by Oripyo and represents the modern kitchen of sweet home, a clean, cosy and convenient space making housework joyous (Illustration 11.4). This was achieved by the consumption of the fitted kitchen with its well-designed workspaces and cupboards and well-appointed facilities, which provided proper organization of and adequate spaces for the ever-increasing essential kitchen items of crockery, utensils and appliances. 213

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Figure 11.4  The first page of the first article for ‘Sweet Home: The Kitchen

in My Home Where the Work Is a Joy’ series, Jubusaenghwal, February 1975. Courtesy Korean National Library, Republic of Korea.

Conclusion In the study of modern kitchen design and shopping for the modern kitchen, June Freeman discusses that the history of the fitted modern kitchen included how professional designers managed to sell new design ideas and principles of fitted kitchens to most of the 214

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population and how the public resisted them or selectively adopted them with their own ideas or preferences (2004: 26). The Korean example of the process of manufacturing and standardization of the modern kitchen shows a selective adoption of ideas of the modern kitchen and its development into fitted kitchen products, pioneered by nonprofessional designers. It demonstrates how modernity and modernism were brought into Korean homes through the consumption of these branded products and designs of the fitted kitchen, later developed by architects and designers. The modern kitchen was a product of controlled consumption with a desire to generate a transformation of everyday life in the home. The very nature of the materiality of the kitchen environment – the things and spaces in everyday life – helps us recognize the transnational nature of the concepts and ideals of the modern kitchen, and its understanding, translation and appropriation in the specific time and place. The history of Korean modern kitchen design helps us to further the legitimacy of different forms of knowledge production in modernism discourse in the post-war Korea. Produced by various actors of architects, professionals in various fields and housewives from their lived experiences of modernity, they may not be precise and explicit in its use of conceptual vocabulary and the specific terminology of modernism. Instead, they demonstrate diverse, nuanced and practical understanding and application of modernism in post-war Korean modern life.

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­C HAPTER 12 LOCATING MODERN LIVING: CHARLES CORREA, ASIA AND THE THIRD WORLD

Megha Rajguru

Introduction This chapter examines architect Charles Correa’s interiors for housing projects in Bombay (now Mumbai), produced in the 1970s and the 1980s. It studies ideas of modern living that shaped these interior spaces and their transnational flows beyond India. The core aim of this chapter is to study how Correa imagined modern living and designed interior spaces in postcolonial India, with particular attention to socio-economic contexts and meta-geographies (from urban zones in Bombay, to Asia and the Third World) accentuating the contingencies of these interior spaces upon factors such as class and developmental ideologies. This chapter adds to the growing critical literature on the history of modernism in India. Authors such as Vikramaditya Prakash (2002); Madhavi Desai (2004); Ravi Kalia (2004) and Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava (2015) have begun to excavate layers of history and politics, challenging underexplored narratives, and addressing the failures of utopian modernity embedded within architectural and town planning projects. Here I will scrutinize the transnational networks of design, bringing to the fore geographies, as well as insights into the nexus of power beyond borders, their operational dynamics and instrumentality. By focusing on the nodal city, Bombay/Mumbai, which has a long history of modern housing and radical approaches to challenging colonial modernity and its inequities, this chapter develops a postcolonial analysis of housing interiors, designed along class lines. This chapter resists existing tropes in the writing of Indian postcolonial design histories that utilize modern/traditional or modern/Indian ontologies and classificatory frameworks of knowledge (Brown 2009; Gast 2007). Often, these approaches disregard complex interactions between the designers, commissioners of design and institutions, driven by class positions and neocolonial powers, and resort to style, or visual, semantics. I draw upon other examples beyond Mumbai, also produced within the 1970s and the 1980s; however, the central focus of this chapter will be a comparative analysis of two housing interiors: Kanchanjunga Apartments (1974) and Artists’ Village (1986), both formally modernist in their use of minimalist aesthetics, modularity and concrete. Amid lively, and oft-times, pressing, debates on reforming housing in the urban metropolis, these two projects incorporated design ideals, the Indian rural idyll and international style, that became the zeitgeist.

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Comparing the two housing projects further highlights that design, when studied from a transnational perspective, can reveal global flows of ideas and images that do not purely follow the oft-recognized trajectory, from the West to the East. Although the United States has been the centre of international development and has held its power in shaping development policy and economics (Escobar 1995), other geographies and cultural histories were also at play that shaped the interiors of Artists’ Village and Kanchanjunga apartments. Correa was working as a global architect, formulating his networks and locating his designs for the Indian poorer classes in relation to the ‘Third World’ or Asia (Correa 1985; 1989). He consistently highlighted the need for particular kinds of housing in these meta-geographies in essays and lectures, presenting a cultural imaginary that went beyond the national, bound to an Indian history, or to European modernism. In order to understand this, I borrow Arjun Appadurai’s apt employment of the dimensions of global cultural flows ending in the suffix ‘scapes’ (Appadurai 1990). Finally, this chapter critically engages with the instrumental role of international development in the shaping of design history in postcolonial India, an area of study that is still at its nascence. Archival materials from the Charles Correa papers at the Royal Institute of British Architects, United Nations Habitat, Government of India’s Public Safety Standards, observations from site visits, published interviews with Correa and essays written by the architect himself reveal a complex history of modern living, inflected by class divisions and Third World development agendas. These have shown the ways in which the interiors of homes were materialized at the behest of transnational agents and ideologies.

Correa, Asia and the ‘Third World’ Correa consistently foregrounded his architectural work and its underpinning concepts with the needs of people in various meta-geographies: Asia, Europe, the Third World, their cultural histories and philosophies. He located India within these, offering comparisons and similarities in human habitats. Correa, born in 1930 in Secunderabad, India, and educated in the United States (1949–55), was one of early professional architects commissioned to design public buildings, private and state housing and contributed to urban town planning. He established his architectural practice in Bombay in 1956 and was active in the drive to address urban poverty using architecture as his tool. In several essays, but particularly ‘The New Landscape’ (1985) and ‘The Public, The Private, and the Sacred’ (1989), Correa wrote of urban migration in the Third World, the lack of equitable housing and the living conditions of the urban poor, owing to economic disadvantages and extreme climatic conditions. He subsequently offered solutions to meet the needs of these people through his designs. These solutions crucially engaged with how people lived in Asia and the Third World, and the ways in which vernacular architecture held answers for better housing design. For instance, in India, vernacular homes contained three types of spaces: private spaces for cooking, sleeping and storage; the second space was the doorstep; it was social, enabling conversations 218

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with neighbours, for children to play; and the third was the community space (the city water tap or village well). He argued that all housing (beyond India) consisted of this system, shifting and changing according to use. He added: ‘if you look around the Third World today, you will find countless examples of marvellously innovative habitat, from Casbah in Algiers to the paper houses of Tokyo’ that employed a version of this system within their designs (Correa 1985: 35). He criticized tenement housing: ‘the ugly five storey concrete tenement slums built by governmental housing agencies all over the Third World are really the work of pessimists. What they are saying is: we are not going to have any future’ (Correa 1985: 36). Correa conceptualized the Third World as a space that needed developing economically and in humanitarian terms. He identified similarities in conditions across places in this space that blighted prospects of modernizing. In particular, his essays function as exploratory and polemical, attempting to produce a set of design concepts and modernizing solutions for housing in India. The clues to solutions for improved, modern and equitable living were in the essence of cultures, spirituality that permeated everyday life, and vernacular building traditions. If, for Correa, the Third World was a space for development, Asia represented long-held traditions of spirituality intertwined with design, offering habitual and enduring tenets for a designer. He referred to the Japanese Zen philosophy of wabi sabi, Indian mandalas or tantric diagrams, the interconnectedness of nature and culture in Persia (Correa 2010), and, pertinently, Asian values as distinct from European capitalist modernity (Correa 1989). With colonial expansion and systematic imposition of European industrial modernity in these contexts, the new, imported architecture caused an impoverishment in the lives of people (Correa 1989: 102). Here, Correa’s radical, anti-colonial and historicist perspective towards design is located within the context of India, straddling the Third World and Asia, in need of drastic improvement to tackle urban poverty, while possessing in its wealth, history and spiritual principles. Correa admired European and American modernists, in particular, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, but argued that their designs were suited to their particular geographical locations and cultural contexts (Correa 1989: 106). Correa’s designs for housing and its interiors in Bombay in the 1970s and the 1980s emerged, partly, from the conviction of the importance of the locatedness of architecture. The other contexts, which I will turn to next, were led by policy.

Housing design and standardization Housing in Bombay had been subject to critical scrutiny by reformers and politicians (colonial officials and postcolonial elected members), alike, and a reformist rhetoric consistently underpinned an urgency to improve the living conditions of those in the lowest ranks of society. From the establishing of the Bombay Improvement Trust (1898) to the New Bombay project (1960s); the latter led by the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), with Correa as one of the chief architects, the message of overpopulation and urban society on the brink of collapse 219

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were consistent. Class divisions produced by colonial urbanization, further exacerbated by industrialization and beginnings of a neoliberal economy, mapped onto urban planning and housing design. In his book Mumbai Fables (2011), Gyan Prakash traces the histories of urban planning in Bombay from the nineteenth century and argues that the divisions between the elite and subaltern spaces were delineated according to areas occupied by colonial officers and the mill workers. These divisions between the inner and outer city and demography of its citizens play out in the story of housing in the city in 1907, and in the 1960s. Sanitation and hygiene management underpinned planning in colonial Bombay, with obvious racial and class prejudices at play, while in the postcolonial context, the problem of overpopulation was posited as an imperative for remedial planning, and housing held a central place within this discourse. Following the bubonic plague epidemic of 1896, improvement schemes in urban planning and housing in Bombay emphasized sanitary living conditions (Kidambi 2001). These involved improvements such as constructing chowks (open courtyards) for improved ventilation in houses that were described as insanitary, and chawls (tenement housing). Increased land prices and profit-making from rents, however, meant more liveable rooms were crammed into available spaces, ultimately benefitting the city’s elites, but abjectly failing to reduce overcrowding. As a result, plans for the removal of poorer classes by the Bombay Development Trust out to the suburbs were in full sway. Not only was this meant to protect the ‘healthy localities’ and its ‘respectable’ citizens (Kidambi 2001: 66), land became a scarce resource, and the poor were seen to infringe upon this. In 1913, the Bombay Development Trust marked out sections of the city that would be maintained as residential areas with greenery and permanent housing, removing any socalled slums, the overcrowded and unsanitary spaces occupied by migrant workers, in order to maintain modern housing, and ‘a modern sanitary city’ (Bombay Development Committee 1914: 90). The Trust’s view of this plan for the three classes was that ‘it was essential that they should, as far as possible, be localized; otherwise the interest of one class will suffer by the intrusion, into areas suitable for them, of residents of another’ (Bombay Development Committee 1914: 6). The low-income workers lived in chawls with one room allocated for each household and shared facilities such as toilets, staircases and corridors that led to each room. Modern planning methods created class segregation. But containment and modern planning have not meant improved living conditions. A 1960 census of Bombay revealed that 58.8 per cent of the city’s population lived in chawls constructed before the Second World War (Sundaram 1989: 40–1). These were overcrowded with an average of 6.3 individuals living in each room (Sundaram 1989: 61) Postcolonial urban planning and measures to address an ever-growing need for lowcost housing in Bombay involved a revisiting of urban geographies and the development of New Bombay in the 1960s, marking another phase of zoning and identifying key locations for housing. New Bombay, as a ‘counter-magnet’, was designed to attract new migrant workers and encourage businesses and individuals to move away from central Bombay (Government of India 1976). A new city offered utopian visions for modern living and the city beautiful. A Government of India document, The India Country Report, 220

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presented at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver in 1976, described housing in New Bombay as ‘catering to all income groups’ and that ‘the pricing policy is based on a system of cross-subsidies and incentives for economically weaker sections to encourage self-help and “incremental housing”  ’ (Government of India 1976: 27). An ongoing attraction, however, towards the affluent Central and South Bombay districts dating back to colonial years, and parallel expansion by reclaiming the Back Bay, fuelled by market and land prices, meant this dream of producing a counter magnet was not achieved (Prakash 2010: 272). Segregation along the lines of class created by real estate desirability persisted. The mention of incremental housing in the India Country Report, or a self-help approach, and a policy system to support this, underscored the approach to postcolonial modern living for low-income workers, more broadly, championed by international development organizations. This concept of housing was based on developmental approaches to housing design, fuelled by development economics and shaped interiors of the homes at Artists’ Village in Belapur, New Bombay (now Navi Mumbai). Development organizations at international, national and regional levels beyond India became attentive to housing in decolonizing nations in the decades after the Second World War. Arturo Escobar has scrutinized and interpreted the production of the Third World as a space of poverty by international development bodies with economic development as their central focus. Following on from the footsteps of coloniality, the project of development engaged with processes of modernization. Individuals, organizations, committees, processes of surveying rural and urban spaces, national economic situation and devising of schemes were systematically employed to develop the Third World (Escobar 1995). The development was not merely fiscal; it had to manifest in food, shelter, health and productivity, as these were essential for industrial and economic development. The Vancouver Declaration at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in 1976 emphasized an urgent need to address the unacceptable circumstances in which vast numbers of people in developing countries lived. It projected opportunities and solutions to rectify this: Creating more livable, attractive and efficient settlements, which recognize human scale, the heritage and culture of people and the special needs of disadvantaged groups. Creating possibilities for effective participation by all people in the planning, building and management of their human settlements. (Athens Centre for Ekistics 1976: 262) One of the general principles proposed highlighted the role of economic development: ­ conomic development should lead to the satisfaction of human needs and E is a necessary means towards achieving a better quality of life, provided that it contributes to a more equitable distribution of its benefits among people and nations. In this context particular attention should be paid to the accelerated 221

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transition in developing countries from primary development to secondary development activities, and particularly to industrial development. (Athens Centre for Ekistics 1976: 263) The declaration and its principles addressed quality of homes as well as their methods of production, with attention to cultures and heritages of people. Housing was posited as one of the crucial components within economic development, insofar as its benefits were equally distributed. It was, however, conceptualized as a mechanism for industrial development and aligned with the rise of neoliberal economics, and housing policies and regulations are closely aligned with this approach to development. In their essay, ‘The Rise of Housing in International Development’, Richard Harris and Godwin Arku have discussed the ways in which housing entered the development economics discourse. Sparsely present and perceived as an expense and responsibility of the state, development thinkers and the major international development institutions did not address housing as an impediment to development until the 1960s (Harris and Arku 2007: 1–11). A growing recognition of housing as an industry, an asset for investment and, most obviously, its societal benefits filtered through the UN and World Bank’s policies and was ‘accepted wisdom’ by the 1980s (Harris and Arku 2007: 6). These policies advocated the use of ‘intermediate’ or hybrid technologies of building, using local building materials and local labour, rather than an emulation of Western technologies, which had to be imported, as the ‘informal sector’, namely the local building industry, was perceived as contributing to the needs of low-income households in the developing world (Harris and Arku 2007: 7). These developmental approaches and policies align with national, state-led ones and trickled down to regional levels in terms of finance, policy and standardization in design. As such, the processes and approaches to modern housing were mirrored in the India Country Report presented at the Vancouver conference, emphasizing that the drive towards development and its methods were, to a large extent, shared. The report affirmed the path of development from being feudal and static, into becoming industrial and dynamic, and with this change came a need for new ways of thinking about housing. Urban housing was described as a planning mechanism, where, from informal housing (described as slum-like in clusters and made from locally sourced materials), families had to be rehoused with proper infrastructure, such as running water, while future settlements within the city had to be located in a ‘planned manner’ (Government of India 1976: 41). The principles were outlined in the India Country Report: In scrutinising building plans, emphasis is being placed on functional utility and aesthetics rather than on luxury. This approach is expected to result in discipline and economy in the use of land and building materials. In the design of mass housing, appropriate technology suits to the indigenous materials and the range of skills available in the different parts of the country is being adopted. (Government of India 1976: 57) 222

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Ironically, the building methods promoted for the production of improved homes for lowincome households, the use of local materials and skills, were similar to the ones already used by those households in their self-made dwellings, permanent or impermanent, rural or urban. The added essential infrastructure, combined with a pricing framework of hire purchase, changed a temporary dwelling to a permanent one, and transformed it from shelter to a financial asset. Nevertheless, a suitable home for a low-income family meant a vernacular home. The Indian ‘poor’ family and a rural family were typified as traditional, homogenizing them to an extent, and became a subject of discourse for architects, including Correa. The idea of a traditional Indian life and suitable home that matched the lifestyle of the modern working-class Indian family came to the fore in the architecture and town planning discourse. This was formulated at the behest of developmental agendas, international and state-led, and through an ethnographic study of the ‘poor’ or ‘rural’ Indian. Arturo Escobar deconstructs development practice and discourse, and explicates the ways in which Asia, Latin America and Africa were identified as poor and backward by the United States and Western Europe, and development became a way to tackle these problems. Describing this as a mechanism of neocoloniality, Escobar examines the ways in which the borrowers of loans, the national governments in the Third World, became a part of the system of development, repaying large loans, implementing plans and projects, involving a whole array of actors and participating in the development discourse. I argue that Charles Correa employed a development gaze towards the urban poor in the process of designing the low-income home. I will now trace its effects on interior spaces of the homes at Artists’ Village in Belapur, and weigh these against interiors of the modernist Kanchanjunga apartment to observe approaches to modern living in the city.

Shaping interiors The main design feature of Artists’ Village is the cluster formation of houses. Each cluster contained approximately seven houses of different sizes, shapes and layouts, and these dictated the configuration of interior spaces. The interior of each house matched the income-brackets of residents, formulated in relation to their predicted lifestyles, from the most basic one-room house, alluding to a multifunctional space to complex modular formatted houses with functionality built into spaces. The smallest and simplest house A contained one room, a bathroom and a toilet; house B, in addition to this, contained a kitchen; house C, in addition to all these, contained an extra room; house D, two extra rooms and house E; three rooms and an extra bathroom. The basic units A, B and C houses were incremental, while houses D and E were completed examples. While houses A, B, C and D contained private outdoor spaces at the ground-floor level, house E also contained terraces on the first floor (Correa 1985: 38–9). The toilets were located in pairs in the backyard, removed from the main house. Correa stated the reason for this pairing was to save on plumbing and sanitation costs. Each pair of houses also shared an outdoor (garden) wall, yet, each house was designed 223

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for privacy, for they were detached houses and the windows did not face the living spaces of neighbouring houses. Correa has reminded that there was a feeling of community and the houses were designed on a human scale (Correa 1985: 39). This approach to design, it is worthy of note, was aligned with the human settlement agenda presented at Vancouver. According to Correa, the adjoining outdoor space of each house was as an extension of the indoor environment, used for everyday activities such as sleeping, cooking and socializing, drawing upon the notion of a traditional lifestyle, owing to particular cultural habitats, and climate. Artists’ Village, alike several other public housing projects in postcolonial nations in the 1980s, were based on similar principles of low-rise living, in clusters or close community formation, with potential for incremental development. This was identified as good housing and was written into the commissioner’s brief in several cases. Therefore, notions of traditional ways of living mapped onto the design of the interior and outdoor spaces, as affordability (the prices increased as you progressed from type A to type E), design regulation (the materials, cluster formation) and design choice (the residents could choose from the offering and develop their own spaces) became key coefficients in the process. This had also been the case with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda (Previ) in Lima, Peru, in 1968, where Charles Correa, along with Peruvian and other international architects, was commissioned to design houses for a community of 1,500 families. The Peruvian Government and the UNDP devised the brief – each house had to suit growing families, they needed to have access to outdoor spaces and the living areas needed to be multifunctional. Christopher Alexander and Sandy Hirshen from the Centre for Environmental Structure (United States) developed a plan that involved cells of approximately thirty to seventy houses (Previ/Lima. Low Cost Housing Project 1970: 193). Alexander adopted a similar settlement structure in a later project at Mexicali (Alexander et  al. 1985), and Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy also promoted cluster housing as an ideal form of community housing in the 1970s (Pyla 2009). The Indian Building Code included cluster housing as a recommended style of low-cost housing in 1983, which was adopted in the Artists’ Village design. Later, in 1987, United Nations Habitat, the UN agency for human settlements, emphasized the cell structure of houses or housing clusters as a recommended formation of housing in India, which was applied in a UN housing project in Madipur widow colony in Delhi (Datta 2008: 237). The concept, therefore, of a pastoral setting in clusters formed part of a design strategy, employed within public low-cost housing in the Global South. Transnational global networks, comprising development organizations, national governments, local urban development agencies, designers and planners, promoted and applied this idea. This period of housing development and the employment of radical design approaches to solving the problem of insufficient and inadequate housing is referred to as pioneering and a work of avant-garde architects (Wright 2002; McGuirk 2011). This, indeed, was radical and pioneering, but it also highlights the ways in which housing design for the poor, produced as a homogenous entity, 224

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was imagined and implemented using policy and standardization procedures across regions beyond Bombay. Artists’ Village was produced as a low-rise housing complex away from the city’s economic centre, where Kanchanjunga is located. The latter was constructed as a highrise apartment block with thirty-two split-level luxurious apartments (Illustration 12.1). The structure of each apartment, according to Correa, was similar to that of an Indian bungalow, or stacked villas, creating an apartment block (Correa 1996). I visited three

Figure 12.1  Kanchanjunga Apartments, Mumbai, designed by Charles Correa in the 1970s. Courtesy Megha Rajguru.

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apartments in the building in 2016. The lower level of each apartment contained reception areas, the kitchen and dining room, the servant quarters, an en suite bedroom and a terrace garden next to the living room. The terraces and arrangement of windows allowed for cross ventilation, but they also became key features of the building and indicated the structure of the interior space. The upper floors of each apartment, accessed by a short flight of steps, contained further en suite bedrooms, with balconies overlooking the terrace garden. This design feature can be traced to the interior of Le Corbusier’s Pavilion de l’Esprit Nouveau at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, which contained a split-level formation of living spaces, and was later adopted at the Unité d’Habitation projects in Marseille and Berlin in 1952 and 1958, respectively (Sherwood 1978: 22). Spaces in niches for safes and storage formed part of the design of each Kanchanjunga apartment. The architect’s blueprints mark modularity naming the function and use of each space: the living room, bedroom, dressing room, kitchen, servant’s room. The configuration of the room in relation to others also produced a modern living ideal, creating a mechanism to achieve this, such as steps leading from the bedroom to the dressing room and the position of the light fittings. For instance, the space where the bed would be placed was marked out by two light fittings on either side. A set of switches to control the lights from the bedside were positioned next to the bed. While the houses in Artists’ Village were designed for shelter, with potential for growth, denoting a process of economic development and lifestyle changes, the modernist apartment contained spaces for modern conveniences, privacy and the function of each of the rooms was written into the design.

­Materials, light, texture, colour The colours and textures of materials were important design features in Artists’ Village and Kanchanjunga Apartments. Correa admired the use of colour in Mughal interiors and vernacular interior spaces and saw in these an authentic Indian quality. This observation appears in his writings, and other means of dissemination such as in an exhibition he organized Vistara, Architecture of India (1986). Albeit a product of collective effort, the exhibition showed a clear interest in the lives of Indian communities, rural and urban, and, in particular, the material culture of the home and the street environment. References to colour and its inflection, colourful, were abound in the exhibition catalogue, and visually, in the exhibition. Earth colour for the floors of huts in cluster formulation in the Kutch region of Gujarat or the colourful shrines on street corners were some of the descriptions where colour became a central focus and inspiration for the designer (Kagal 1986: 31). Colour was an important feature in both the housing projects. The floor of each type of house in Artists’ Village was finished with Indian Patent Stone in red oxide or IPS red oxide, a powdered red pigment mixed with cement and laid down evenly, then polished off to create a smooth surface (Correa 1930–2015). The powdered pigment is produced 226

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in South India and is a low-cost material, but relies heavily on local skilled workmen for its application (Jain 2019). The doors and window frames were painted in primary colours, employing a modernist colour palette, minimal and bold (Correa 1930–2015). The kitchen contained a raised worktop, with a shelf and a sink, made from another local inexpensive material, the Kota stone. Glazed white tiles were used in the bathroom, and apart from glass in windows, there was minimal use of industrial materials within the interiors (Correa 1930–2015). The means of producing the houses matched the ethos of creating minimal inexpensive dwellings for incremental growth. If Artists’ Village offered basic interior spaces, celebrating Indian rural living, the interiors of Kanchanjunga were designed for a cosmopolitan lifestyle. The flooring was of white marble in almost every area of the apartments, except in the terrace garden and the servants’ room, where Kota stone was used on the floors. White walls and white floors offset the colour on the exterior of the building and, in particular, the abstract design on the walls and ceiling of the terrace garden. The Charles Correa archive contains detailed drawings of the Kanchanjunga terrace design complete with colour and material specification. Sandtex Matt, a type of paint developed in the UK and manufactured in India since the 1970s, is used for the yellow ceiling and white sections on the walls. Orange, red and brown glazed tiles are used to clad sections of the walls to create this modernist abstract design in three-dimension (Correa 1930–2015). The terrace is the showcase for each apartment in the building, viewed from different interior locations. Each material produces a different texture: from a matt, to a smooth and glossy finish. Modern industrial materials such as aluminium frames for windows, plywood in the built-in modular storage furniture and modern light fittings were used in all the apartments. Many of these original features still exist. The interiors of Artists’ Village and Kanchanjunga Apartments both respond to ideas of modern living and materialize them through the choice of colours, materials and spatial arrangements. While class divide is obviously present within these, displayed through the materials, their affordability and accessibility, ideas of modernization and modernity can be traced to the paradigms of development and the cosmopolitan modern. Outdoor spaces in both projects were as important as the interiors as these were implicit within the economics and experiences of modern living.

Indoor/outdoor The ‘open-to-sky’ space was a key feature of Correa’s designs (Correa 2000: 17–28). He considered outdoor spaces as extensions of the indoors, in function as well as form, releasing the individual living in a low-cost home from the claustrophobic indoors. If the indoor space was vital for shelter from the rain and storms, the outdoor space would help shelter from the warm indoors. The open-to-sky space could be used for economic purposes such as keeping goats, chickens and buffalos. Artists’ Village was modelled on this concept. Each house had its own private and shared public open spaces. The private open spaces could be built upon by the residents 227

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themselves, using local skilled workmen. This feature of incrementality was described by Correa as introducing the residents to the idea of equity. Each house was built on the same surface area plot, but ranged in price and depending on the earnings of the family, and could be purchased by paying the amount in small instalments. Correa argued that the principle of equity in the Third World had political significance, implying that predetermined equal plot sizes, what he describes as Equity Plots, would produce a ‘truly egalitarian urban society’ (Correa 1985: 36). Poverty alleviation could happen within the market framework if initiated by the state. This neo-Keynesian model was rooted in development economics, underscoring the notion that accumulation of capital at a microeconomic level would help with economic growth in the long run at a macro-level, and in this context, the outdoor space became an asset. In Kanchanjunga, the double-height terraces function as urban windows. The framing of the city for a scopic experience revealed the outside space here is a space for visual pleasure and leisure. Wide windows look out on to the city. Each room is configured to look out, creating uninterrupted vistas. This experience of spatially leading the eyes to an outdoor view is built into the design of the interior space through the splitlevel apartment layout and in each room, where further levels are created. For instance, one part of the room had a sunken floor, used as a living space or for sleeping in. This

Figure 12.2  Kanchanjunga Apartment interior. Courtesy Megha Rajguru. 228

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disaggregated modular spaces even further. The upper section is marked as a dressing room in one apartment, and as a study in another. Stepping down into the sunken space led the person out into the terrace, or stepping up led them to a wide window (Illustration 12.2). The play of materials and light (particularly reflective, induced by white marble) created a visual effect of abstracted spaces. The interiors of Kanchanjunga were designed for movement within the space and to the outdoors. Correa discusses split-level accommodation within Mughal palaces, admiring the ways in which the sunken level was kept cool, retaining the cool air at night during the summer months to be enjoyed in the afternoon. He describes the Mughal interior design as ‘great spatial richness through minimalist means’ (Correa 2000: 19). This feature appears in the Kanchanjunga interiors, complete with its marble floors, used in the Mughal palace, as in modernist homes. Modernist architectural language – of minimalism and abstraction – suited this adaptation of a Mughal style. While Kanchanjunga apartments led the eyes to the outdoors, Artists’ Village presents an interiority and an enclosed space akin to an indoor space. The shared courtyards are surrounded by other houses in the cluster, and the experience of living in a shared community space is profound (Illustration 12.3).

Figure 12.3  Artists’ Village, Navi Mumbai, designed by Charles Correa in the 1980s. Courtesy Megha Rajguru.

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Reflections on transnational design and modernity I have traced colonial approaches to planning and housing in Bombay, segregating the city along class lines in order to maintain the orderly city, and pushing the poor into the urban margins. While this segregation did not inform the planning of New Bombay, where Artists’ Village is located, real estate and urban planning, both inextricably linked, produced such results. Concepts of modern living and modernizing living, as well as designs of interiors to suit the lifestyles of the different classes, were most certainly constructed along the lines of difference in the nodal city of Bombay. Yet, the affinities and solidarities between these two communities inhabiting the lowrise rural idyll and the urban high-rise co-existing within this city in the 1970s and the 1980s lie in the local as well as global spheres. In order to understand these affinities and, therefore, locate transnational flows of design, I turn to Arjun Appadurai’s employment of the suffix scape, pointing to the ‘imagined worlds’ inhabited by communities, the global cultural economy and its disjunctures. In these scapes, argues Appadurai, ‘the individual actor is the last locus of this perspectival set of landscapes, for these landscapes are eventually navigated by agents who both experience and navigate larger formations, in part by their own sense of what these landscapes offer’ (Appadurai 1990: 296). The development bodies, the architects and residents of Bombay/Mumbai could be viewed here as agents of design production, experienced by the subjects, the individual actors in distinct geographies. Crucially, these scapes are fluid and perspectival (not objective and homogenous) as they are shaped in relation to larger formations of ‘nation-states, multinationals, diasporic communities, as well as sub-national groupings and movements (whether religious, political or economic), and even intimate face-to-face groups, such as villages, neighbourhoods and families’ (Appadurai 1990: 296). The experiences of the citizens of Bombay, inhabiting the two housing projects, are, therefore, varied, notwithstanding their shared location or their urban environment, as they experience different landscapes, owing to differences in their economic and cultural statuses. Here, I will focus on three: technoscape, financescape and ideoscape as these are interconnected in this case study. The technoscape, within which the two housing projects are located, refers to the technological advancements that enabled their production, including ‘the distribution of technologies, both high and low’ (Appadurai 1990: 296), their availability and value for architectural design, the construction industry and labour. The funding of the infrastructure in and around New Bombay (where Artists’ Village is based), partly by global development group the World Bank (Shaw 2004: 158), locates the site as one of the several in the Third World that was manufactured with an international developmental vision. Kanchanjunga apartments, however, remind us of ‘complex fiscal and investment flows’ in a new liberal economy that linked India with other ‘economies through a global grid of currency speculation and capital transfer’ (Appadurai 1990: 298), affecting the price of real estate and enabling purchase power of the highly luxurious apartments. The making of these homes is all part of a wider complex transnational technoscape

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and financescape that also generate, via development specialists, recommendations of employing local materials and labour. Further to these, the ideological perspectives of the funders, designer and the consumers, to varying degrees, inflected these housing designs. Developmental ideologies circulating globally aligned with a deeply held belief by the modernist architect Correa that architecture could create an equal society within the neoliberal economic structure of home ownership, economic growth, a trajectory towards becoming modern. The disjunctures here are obvious. Industrial development rendered an increase in migration from villages to Bombay. Correa criticized the class divide evident in housing in Bombay, but his training as a professional modernist architect (problem solving, being innovative, creating housing that would improve lives) meant the production of distinct kinds of housing in distinct geographies, part of a longer colonial and postcolonial history, did not cause a conflict. While Correa’s conceptual approach for Artists’ Village was from an egalitarian, social design perspective, he inadvertently participated in the newly emerging neoliberal economy that was contributing towards the very conditions he meant to fighting against. The rhetoric of an urgent need to address an increase in population in cities in the Global South emerged from transnational organizations such as the UN and the World Bank. As a result of local processes of deterritorialization (borrowing from Appadurai), the migrant workers in Bombay were subject to similar attention and management, as those in Peru for whom Correa had also designed housing. In other words, even if culturally different, these communities were subjected to developmental solutions based on pregiven understandings of their ways of living. This case study has highlighted that positioning Correa’s work as canonical of Indian modernist architecture, suffused with Indian vernacular style, or positioning his global influence as cosmopolitan agency, is insufficient. Viewing his architectural practice as a praxis, as part of a wider system of production, to advance a much more critical and deeper understanding of the co-existence of different types of modern designs, modernities and modern lifestyles within the city, has been vital. By locating India within Asia as well as the Third World, Correa packaged his designs with ideas drawn from spiritual pasts, as well as development. The coexistence of varying approaches to modern interiors, I argue, is not simply a process of Indianizing modernism or adapting principles of modern living (flushable toilets or standardized buildings) to the local context, thereby developing its citizens. It is a sign of disjunctures in the global cultural economy, where several powerful agents – organizations and individuals – coincide and collide, to ultimately produce living spaces experienced by people who inhabit these every day.

References Alexander, C., Davis, H., Martinez, J. and Corner, D. (1985), The Production of Houses, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Design and Modernity in Asia Appadurai, A. (1990), ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory, Culture & Society, 7: 295–310. Athens Center of Ekistics. (1976), ‘Perspectives on Habitat: The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements’, Ekistics, 42 (252): 262–6. Bombay Development Committee (1914), Report of the Bombay Development Committee, Government Central Press: Bombay. https://archive.org/details/ ReportOfTheBombayDevelopmentCommittee/mode/2up (accessed 9 August 2020). Brown, R. M. (2009), Art for a Modern India, Durham: Duke University Press. Correa, C. (1930–2015), Collection of Drawings, Models and Digital Image Database, London: Royal Institute of British Architects, Correa. Correa, C. (1985), ‘The New Landscape’, Mimar: Architecture in Development, 17: 34–9. Correa, C. (1989), ‘The Public, the Private, and the Sacred’, Daedalus, 118 (4), Another India: 92–113. Correa, C. (1996), Charles Correa, with an Essay by Kenneth Frampton, London: Thames and Hudson. Correa, C. (2000), ‘The Blessings of the Sky’, in Charles Correa, 17–28, London: Thames and Hudson. Correa, C. (2010), A Place in the Shade: The New Landscape and Other Essays, New Delhi: Penguin Books. Datta, A. (2008), ‘Architecture of Low-income Widow Housing: “spatial opportunities” in Madipur, West Delhi’, Cultural Geographies, 15 (2): 231–53. Escobar, A. (1995), Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gast, K.-P. (2007), Modern Traditions: Contemporary Architecture in India, Basel: Birkhäuser. Government of India, Department of Science and Technology (1976), India Country Report: Habitat-76, Habitat Conferences Digital Archive. https://habitat.scarp.ubc.ca/habitat-idocument-archive/ (accessed 5 August 2020). Harris, R. and Arku, G. (2007), ‘The Rise of Housing in International Development: The Effects of Economic Discourse’, Habitat International, 31: 1–11. Jain, S. (2019), ‘All about Red Oxide Flooring’, Livspace. https://www.livspace.com/in/magazine/ materials-101-red-oxide-flooring (accessed 11 August 2020). Kagal, C. (1986), Vistara: The Architecture of India, Bombay: Tata Press Limited. ­Kalia, R. (2004), Gandhinagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Kidambi, P. (2001), ‘Housing the Poor in a Colonial City: The Bombay Improvement Trust, 1898–1918’, Studies in History, 17 (1): 57–79. McGuirk, J. (2011), ‘Previ: The Metabolist Utopia’, Domus. https://www.domusweb.it/en/ architecture/2011/04/21/previ-the-metabolist-utopia.html (accessed 9 August 2020). Prakash, G. (2010), Mumbai Fables, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ‘Previ/Lima. Low Cost Housing Project’ (1970), Architectural Design, 4: 187–205. Pyla, P. (2009), ‘The Many Lives of New Gourna: Alternative Histories of a Model Community and Their Current Significance’, The Journal of Architecture, 14 (6): 715–30. Shaw, A. (2004), The Making of Navi Mumbai, The New Delhi: Orient Longman Private Limited. Sherwood, R. (1978), Modern Housing Prototypes, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sundaram, P. S. A. (1989), Bombay: Can It House Its Millions? New Delhi: Clarion Books. Wright, G. (2002), ‘Building Global Modernisms’, Grey Room, 7: 124–34.

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INDEX

Acar, Kuzgun 43–4 Akita Mokko 17 architects. See also specific architects American 123, 127, 129, 186 British 218–19, 223 design process 6, 11 European 127, 185 foreign 62, 198 international 224 Japanese 181, 184, 188, 196–7, 199 Korean 141, 204–5, 208, 211, 215 pedagogical role 37 Turkish 38–9, 41–2, 45 Arkan, Seyfi 38, 41–2 Arseven, Celal Esat 42 Ashihara, Yoshinobu 196 Asian modernism. See also specific countries architecture 3–4 class and gender 5–7 design approaches 8–10 hegemonic design language 5 modernization and modernism 3–7 nationalist sentiment 4–5 autonomy 53, 56–7, 59–61, 64–5, 128–9 Aysu, Fazıl 41 Balmumcu, Şevki 38 Bangladesh Liberation War 58, 61, 64 Belling, Rudolf 39, 43 Bey, Vedat 39 Bhabha, Homi 18 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 58 Bogra, Muhammad. Ali. 56 Bozkurt, Gevher 44–5 Butik A 36 Çakmakçıoğlu, Orhan 45 Çalık, Şadi 43–5 Cold War 1, 2–5, 9, 12, 55, 105, 181–5, 187, 197–9 Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) 54 Correa, Charles 217–18 architectural work 218 Indian design solutions 218–19 Kanchanjunga terrace design 227–9 on low income housing 223 neoliberal housing structure 231

Third World concept 218–19, 228 Cultural Foundations of Nations: ­Hierarchy Covenant, and Republic (Smith) 54–5 De Certeau, Michel 7 The Practice of Everyday Life 8 Drexler, Arthur 184–5, 196, 199 Eames, Charles 24 East Pakistan 1958–71 authoritarianism and autonomy 55–64 campus design 64–5 Cyclone Bhola 58 foreign aid organizations 60 identity via architecture 53–4 Islam’s, Muzharul design 59–60 Liberation War/movement 58, 61 Martial Law 57, 59 massacres at the University of Dacca 58 modern design history 65–6 modern urban planning strategies 58–9 regional identity and unity 60 shared agendas 54–5 social and political condition 57 war with India 57 Egli, Ernst 39 Eldem, Sedad Hakkı 37–8, 45 Foucault, Michel 182 France 8, 20, 22, 44–5, 194, 210 Louvre museum 89 French Revolution 88–9 Girard, Alexander 24 Gordon, Elizabeth 181–3, 185–7, 189–99. See also House Beautiful Sukiya space 194–6 visit to Japan and shibui issues 187–9 Yanagi, Muneyoshi and Amano, Taro’s contribution 191–4 Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (network of Asian nations) 20–2 green living/green modernity 7, 11, 105, 147, 220. See also Hong Kong Hanako magazine 159–74 on Bubble economy 160 dominant topics 162

Index fashion and housekeeping 161 features on food 163, 165–9, 171–4 lifestyle and leisure, Japanese women 159, 164, 170 Holzmeister, Clemens 39 Hong Kong clean campaign (1970s-90s) 109–14 colonial legacy 105 1894 plague 107–9 environmental protection, green modernity 114–16 green living 106 hygienic modernity 106–7 House Beautiful American architectural styles 186 concept of shibui 181, 188–91 Japanese architecture and lifestyle 185, 194 İhsan (Ünal), Bekir 42 India ancient Hindu and medieval Mughal architecture 126 ­anonymous and pseudonymous articles 133–5 architects 128 Artists’ Village (Bombay) 217–18, 221, 223–7, 229–31 British colonialism 123 Chandigarh in India, Le Corbusier’s planning 59 City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) 219 decolonization and design histories 124 housing in Bombay 219–23 kitchen, Western vs. 126–7 Marg-A Magazine of Architecture and Art 123–37 middle-class Indian home design 129–33 model house construction (use of cement and concrete) 133–5, 218 modernism 217 modern living 217–21, 223, 226–7, 230–1 (see also Correa, Charles) New India and Building (Neutra’s essay) 128 nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 129 political economy of modernism 135–7 Public Safety Standards 218 Islamabad Doxiadis, Constantinos 59 masterplan of 59 Islam, Muzharul 59–61, 64–6 Japan. See also Japanese modernization; Japanese women, lifestyle and leisure American way of life 23, 29–30 bamboo furniture 24

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CoID, establishment 23 electrical products 29–30 exporting industry 18 foreign design policies and practices 23 GHQ 23 Interior Architects/Designer’s Association 17 interior design magazines 17 Japanese Modern 18, 20–1, 24–6, 28–32 kogei 19–21, 23–5 new design 20, 26 post-war trials and errors 22–6 San Francisco Peace Treaty 18, 24 Sino-Japanese War 18, 20 symbolic home products 29–30 Western notion of 30 Japanese modernization cultural politics 183–5 historical aesthetics 185, 198–9 housing reconstruction 198 international trends 196–7 shibui, concept 181–3, 185–99 Sukiya space 182, 184, 189, 194, 196, 199 Japanese women, lifestyle and leisure bubble economy, origin 160–1 consumer cultures 160 food preferences 159–60, 162–5 Hanako magazine 159–74 international food 170–3 national trends for food 173–4 office life 165–9 ­public space, use of 169–70 women’s changing roles 159–60, 162 Japan Interior Architects/Designer’s Association, Kenmochi 17 Johnson, Philip 185 Katsumi, Masaru 18, 25, 30, 32 Kaufmann, Edgar 185 Kenmochi, Isamu 24–5, 27, 31 on Gordon, Elizabeth 197 personal stories 18, 21 popular works 17–18 role in IARI 19, 21, 24 Khan, Ayub 57 Khan, Yahya 57 Khrushchev, Nikita 206 Knoll, Florence 46 Kogei Shidosho (Industrial Art Research Institute, IARI) 17 Koman, İlhan 43–5 Korean kitchen design guide and instruction 211–12 historical development 203–5 modernity/modernization in 206–8 national and transnational contexts 205–6, 212–14

Index Park, Yu-jae (Oripyo sink) 213 stainless-steel sink 212–13 Korean literature, apartments, social implications large scale construction 145–7 materialistic origin 143–5 middle class homes, apartments as 142–3 modern values 156 redeveloped sites 145–6 residential apartments, negative portrayal 142 social classification, examples 147–56 Kubota, Ryuko 18 Kunii, Kitaro 19–21 Lahore conference of the Awami League (AL) 57 Le Corbusier 54, 59, 125, 127–9 Lefebvre, Henri 183 Marg-A Magazine of Architecture and Art 123–37 advertisement, inaugural issue 127 Euro-American modernism 127 ideas of modern living 133–7 on Indian politics 124–7 international design network 129 on modern architecture and planning 124 second issue 130 Wright’s eightieth birthday 128 Matsumoto, Tetuo 25 Matsushita, Konosuke 25 McCobb, Paul 24 Miyashita, Takao 21 Moc, Elizabeth Bauer 185 Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) 54 Modernism/modernism 11–12, 36, 39–42, 47. See also East Pakistan; India; Japan; South Korea; Turkey American 127 in Asia 3–7, 53 ­definition 3 in design 25, 33 in East Pakistan 53–5, 62, 65–6, 71 European 186, 196, 198–9, 203, 218 gender, interaction with 6 German 194 Indian middle class life 123–4, 127, 129, 135, 137 Indian political economy 135–7, 217 in Korean kitchen 205, 215 MoMA exhibition 185 national identity 35 political economy 135–7 postcolonial realities 5 in Turkey 35–6, 40, 53–5, 59 universal 31

modernity Asian context 7, 9, 48 Bangladeshi designs 65 Berman’s definition 206 capitalism and 5–8 colonial 217 cosmopolitan 227 design studies 2 European capitalism 219 green 114–16 historical and geographical dynamics 4 in Hong Kong 105–10 human living experience 63 hygienic 3, 7–8, 11, 105–10, 112, 114, 116, 127, 130, 133, 206–7 industrial 127 Islam, Muzharul’s notion 65 kitchen in Korea 206–8, 214 in Korean literature 141, 143, 156 and Korean transnationalism 204–9, 215 local approaches 54 Pakistani campus design 64 postcolonial context 3 public spaces and 11 in Singapore 72, 74 in South Korea 88–9, 93–5, 97, 99 tradition vs. 20, 54 in Turkey 37–8, 40, 47 University of Dacca 61 University of Rajshahi campus 63 Western nations 19 modernization in Asia 3–7 design policies 8–9 destructive 12 everyday negotiations and experiences 7 in Hong Kong 109, 112 ideologies 12 in India 124, 221, 227 of kitchen in Korea 206–12 in Korean museums 88, 91–2, 98 ­local and national 9 Meiji-era (Japan) 170 in post-war Japan 32, 181–3, 185 in Singapore 72, 74, 77–8, 82–3 state’s role 11 in Turkey 10, 35, 38–9, 41–2, 47 in United States 123, 199 modern kitchen 3, 9, 12. See also Korean kitchen, South Korea Bringing Modernity Home (Attfield, Judy) 206 in Korea 206–8 in United States 206 modern living. See also Hong Kong design themes 8–10

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Index everyday life 7–8 in India 217–21, 223, 226–7, 230–1 (see also Correa, Charles) ipsik saenghwal 210 in Japan 26 new technologies and 144 print cultures 11–12 in South Asia 66 in Turkey 47 Western-style 31 Modern Living in Asia 1945–1990 (conference) 8 Mongeri 39 Mortaş, Abidin 42 Muharinsky, Oscar 45 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 17, 184–5, 194 Nakashima, George 24 national frameworks of design 10 nation state 38, 89 concept 88–9 Nixon, Richard 206 Noguchi, Isamu 24 Oerley, Robert 39 Ogawa, Masataka 28 Operation Searchlight 58 Oygar, İsmail Hakkı 40 Öziş, Neptün 44–5, 47 Öziş, Sadi 43–5 Öziş, Tevfik 43 Penick, Monica 182 postcolonial 2–5, 7, 9, 11, 83, 87, 123–4, 127, 137, 141–2, 217–21, 224, 231 East Pakistan 2 modern design 9 nations 3–5 in South Korea and India 7, 11 postcoloniality 5 Prill-Schloemann, Tilly 21 print cultures 11–12 Hanako magazine 159–74 House Beautiful 181, 185–6, 188–91, 194, 198 Korean literature, apartments, social implications 143–56 Marg-A Magazine of Architecture and Art 123–37 public space 10–11, 89, 92, 109, 170. See also Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Singapore Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur 57 ­Rojek, Chris 72 Rudolph, Paul 60

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Said, Edward 1 San Francisco Treaty 24 Sayar, Zeki 37, 42 Second World War 4, 18–20, 71–2, 82, 114, 181–3, 185–6, 191 Singapore athletic and rugged figures 82–3 British culture of leisure 72 centralized sports planning 79 Chinese Swimming Club 71, 73 Housing and Development Board (HDB) 75–8 immigrant population 77 integration of public pools 77–8 investment schemes 78 Japanese administration 71–2 Jurong Town Corporation, 78 Katong Park pool 73 Katong Swimming Complex 81–2 Mass Swim events 81 Mount Emily public bath 71 municipal pools restoration 1949 73 national identity 78–9 1964 riot 77 post-war urban conditions 72–5 Princess Margaret Estate 75 public pools 71, 75, 78, 80–2 Queenstown Sports Complex 75–7 rural swimming 75 Singapore Improvement Trust. 75 Singapore Swimming Club 71, 73 socialization through swimming 80–2 Sports Council 80 swimming instrumentalization 71 Syonan Sports Association 71 UK planning techniques 75–6 Yan Kit Swimming Complex 73–5 South Korea. See also Korean kitchen; Korean literature, apartments, social implications bureaucratic agencies 92–3 Chung-hee’s military regime 90 Chun’s administration 91 cultural infrastructure 92 Deoksu Palace Museum 88, 90 early museums 89 first national museum of art 90 Gojong, Emperor 89 Gyeongbok Palace 90 Gyeong, Choe Yoo 92 Jae-gyu’s assassinating Chung-hee 91 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty 90 Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty (the Eulsa treaty) 89 Japan’s occupation 90 Ministry of Culture and Information 90–1

Index museum culture 87–8 museum in Gwacheon 88 ­Museum in Gyeongbok Palace 90 National Museum of Contemporary Art (MMCA) 88–100 new MMCA 97–8 1986 Asian Games 95–7 Royal Palace 91 Seoul Museum 88 Seoul Olympic Games 91–7 Sunjong, Prince 89 urban modernization and innovation 91–2 Yi Royal Family Museum 90 Süleymangil, Mazhar 43–4 Tange, Kenzo 196 Taut, Bruno 9, 17, 20–1, 185 Taylor, Alistair McDonald 141 Tendo, Mokko 17 Teshigahara, Sofu 26 Toyoguchi, Kappei 19 transnational exchanges. See also Cold War; India; Japan; Korean kitchen ideas across borders 12 transnational/transnationalism 2, 7, 9–10, 12, 36, 88, 129, 182, 194, 198, 205–6, 209, 215, 217–18, 224, 230–1 designers 25 Turkish history 36 Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone (Fry and Drew) 54 Turkey aesthetic concerns 41 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 38, 41 Bauhaus influence of total architecture or the Gesamtkunstwerk approach 41–2 Beylerbeyi Palaces 40 Çelik Palas building 39 city planning and building types 39–40 ‘cubic’ design 38–9 Dolmabahçe, İstanbul 40 domestic architecture 42

Early Republican ideals of 1923 37 European approach 37–8, 42 First Nationalist Movement 39 Florya Atatürk Mansion 40–1 Galeri-T 43 hotel design 45 interiors and furniture 35–6, 39–42 Interno 36 Kare Metal furniture 35–7, 42–7 Kilyos Facilities Project 45 middle class life-style 36 modernity, impact on 38–9, 41 Moderno 36 national identity, East and West context 35, 38–9 social and design-related context in 1950 37 socio-economic status of families 39 Westernization 37–42 Uchida, S. 17, 23, 25 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 224 United States. See also Gordon, Elizabeth House Beautiful 181, 185–6, 188–91, 194, 198 kitchen 210 ­shibui exhibitions and visitors’ responses 189–91 University of Dacca 53, 56, 58, 60–2, 65 Wares, Shamsul 60 Watanabe, Riki 17 Watson, W. I. 73 Wright, Frank Lloyd 24, 127, 185–7, 192 designs for offices and stores 128 Kaufmann House 128 Yanagi, Muneyoshi 185 Yanagi, Sori 17 Yapaner, Ahsen 38 Yoshida, Isoya 26–7 Ziya, Abdullah 37, 42

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