Rafael A. Balboa

Japanese economy is considered to be facing a recession. Contrarily, cities as Tokyo are still enjoying one of the most affluent economies in the globe with all the pleasures-and displeasures-that such a frenetic consumption oriented society may experience. A vast collage of goods coming from all around the world are available for the Japanese consumer today, but this is only the outcome of " current historical circumstances " according to Tatsuya Maemura, organizer of the ongoing exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo Zakka-Goods and Things-.

Resumen

La figura del monstruo puede servir para formar una metáfora sobre la configuración de algunas ciudades contemporáneas y de cómo nos van construyendo. El texto propone reconsiderar la ciudad de
Tokio como un paradigma de diversos miedos y monstruosidades urbanas en diferentes momentos
de su historia. Primero se reconoce una monstruosidad cosmogónica y mitológica, la cual fue, posteriormente, corporeizada en diversos desastres que cambiarían radicalmente la morfología de la urbe. Con una ciudad casi devastada en su totalidad durante la segunda Guerra Mundial, una nueva monstruosidad simulada aparecería, más como ficción, de la mano de los avances tecnológicos y mediáticos, donde el monstruo pasa de ser una figura consumidora a una consumible. Una última monstruosidad urbana se reconoce en la arquitectura más contemporánea, con bases en la arquitectura del grupo de los metabolistas en los años sesenta, la cual durante la postmodernidad devendría en la colección disímbola y mutante de sus partes. El texto busca explicar esta monstruosidad más reciente mediante una analogía con el cuerpo extendido a través de la prótesis y de la posibilidad de mutación continua que le confiere. Al final, se encuentra en la metáfora del monstruo una figura dinámica, capaz de regenerar las diferentes fuerzas que van formando y deformando nuestras ciudades.

Palabras clave: monstruo, monstruosidad, miedo, mito, desastre, distopía, prótesis, híbrido, mutación

Abstract

The monster figure can work to construct a metaphor of the configuration of some contemporaneous
cities and how they are being constructed to us. This paper proposes to reconsider Tokyo as a paradigm of diverse urban fears and monstrosities in different times of history. First, this text recognizes a cosmogonical and mythological monstrosity, which was, subsequently, embodied in different disasters that would utterly change the morphology of the city. With a city devastated almost in its entirety during World War II, a new simulated monstrosity would appear, more like fiction, hand by hand with the technological and media advances where the monster would go from a consumer figure to one consumable. One last urban monstrosity is recognized in the more contemporaneous architecture, based on the Metabolism movement in the sixties, and that during postmodernity would become the discordant and mutant collection of its parts. This text seeks to explain this recent monstrosity, creating an analogy of
the extended body through the prosthesis and the possibility of continuous mutation that it offers. Finally, we find a dynamic figure in the monster metaphor, one capable of regenerating the different forces that form and deform our cities.

Keywords: monster, monstrosity, fear, myth, disaster, dystopia, prothesis, hybrid, mutation

Genealogies often sprout to the extent of becoming mythologies. For Japanese architecture, the narratives of its rediscovery through the Western eye in diverse periods of its history have legitimized as much as mythicized its current international recognition.

There is a common idea that each culture creates its own specific practices and products. Reversing the equation allows us to reexamine until which extent the products we consume everyday can end up creating a specific design culture. Design Anatomy, the most recent exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo, opens a dialogue around this question by introducing " a method for seeing the world through familiar objects ". As much as architecture employs the section as a representing tool to understand spatial qualities, human anatomy employs dissection on the body as a research methodology. Taku Satoh, director of the show has already been working with the concept of " design anatomy " since 2001, applying it to diverse industrial products in contemporary culture to decode their specific design qualities. His method can be described as an exhaustive examination from outside to inside of all the details involved in the design of everyday products, allowing him to decompose and recompose its parts and relationships. " Dissecting " as Satoh refers, unveils hidden aspects of design, production and distribution of specific mass produced goods, elevating the ordinary into the status of extraordinary. More specifically, the exhibition revolves around dissecting five products of Meiji Holdings Co., a Japanese company whose core business is related to food. The director chose to examine products that enable the visitor to easily relate with goods that are already inserted in popular culture and social memory. Hence, goods such as biscuits covered with chocolate, yogurt, ice-cream, a chocolate bar and milk are researched in high detail. The access hall introduces the design anatomy project and its methodological approach along with some of the first dissections to products that Satoh has previously undertaken. Items such as a disposable camera, the skull of a popular doll or the fabric of one of Issey Miyake's A-POC cloths are displayed and analyzed either in micro or macro scales. Sato breaks his method into four stages: fundamentals, diagrams, deciphering and researching, each of them necessary to follow the next part of the exhibition where he examines specific products. From here the show devotes the rest of it to break down not only design components of the five forementioned products, but to render a complete story about each one of them; from aspects concerning the organic nature and production of the five milk-derived products, to others related to packaging design and historical positioning in popular culture. The first room presents in high detail only one product, a biscuit covered in chocolate in the shape of a mushroom popularly known as " Kinoko-no-yama ". The second and largest room continues with the other four, following strictly the dissectional method proposed by the director. Along with different facts, historical data and over-sized reproductions of each selected good, Satoh invited other creators to collaborate in order to bring not only informative material but a more ludic experience for the audience. Graphic designer Takeo Nakao for instance, presents through infographics a deep analysis of the website of the company. Motion director Takuya Hosogane, created a dot printing machine based on the production code used on the back label of a chocolate bar. Others as Syunichi Suge depicts through miniature models the complex network of people involved around the production of the five goods, from people growing the materials to people working in factories and delivering them. The exhibition finalizes introducing other dissections of products by students from Musashino Art University, where Satoh taught design anatomy as part of their educational program. Satoh aims to capture design as a way of seeing things, acknowledging a strong visual sense embedded in the world " design ". Moreover, he also acknowledges the " engineering of design " beyond shapes and colors. Hence he also paid keen attention in his product examinations to other variables such as flavors and textures, claiming that this is also part of their engineered design. While the show essentially shares similar features with previous exhibitions in the venue related to design, it is substantially different in the sense that it can lead the visitor through an obsessive and meticulous process of analysis of each of the shown products. Nevertheless, the exhibition ends up widening the discourse about design in everyday products to all public, or as better expressed by Satoh, " familiar objects are the gateway to the universe ". Still the question remains open; if culture creates products, what kind of culture is being created by contemporary products?

In his book Designing Design (Lars Muller Publishers, 2007) Japanese designer Kenya Hara introduces some of the ideas of Konosuke Matsushita, a successful industrialist and entrepreneur who after WWII surpassed his competitors anticipating that " the next era will belong to design ". From this point of history, standardization and mass production in Japan evolved rapidly, fueled by a blind faith for technology and innovation. The private sector would see the emergence of a new ruling class of empowered private companies that until today continue reshaping the way people live.

Today there is a paradox between the notion of clothing and fashion, and one wonders what is the relevance of a simple piece of cloth once worn over the body. For critics as Bernard Rudofsky dress culture's primary function is not about protection, modesty or ornament but about visual stimulation and desire. While many of the figures engaged in the fashion industry are obsessed with nurturing vogues, others as Japanese cloth designer Issey Miyake remain firmly with the sight on the future and on the side of the guerrilla that believes " a piece of cloth " is not mere " fashion ".

We experience motion every single moment as any other object existing in time and space, unavoidably being subject to the laws of nature. Motion is the very proof of liveness when referring to the organic, but for the mechanic, genius and science are also necessary. Seiichi Hishikawa, a versatile figure in the Japanese creative scene, has mastered the science of motion in many of his works and has been invited to direct the current exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight under the title " Motion Science ".

Japanese economy is considered to be facing a recession. Contrarily, cities as Tokyo are still enjoying one of the most affluent economies in the globe with all the pleasures-and displeasures-that such a frenetic consumption oriented society may experience. A vast collage of goods coming from all around the world are available for the Japanese consumer today, but this is only the outcome of " current historical circumstances " according to Tatsuya Maemura, organizer of the ongoing exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo Zakka-Goods and Things-.

Contemporary cities embody a fundamental paradox; they stand as one of the greatest triumphs of human civilization but also as one of our greatest concerns. As they expand and collapse almost in an organic fashion, we are simultaneously proud but uncertain of what might derive from them. Despite the manifold theories aiming to explain the complex forces happening within cities, urbanism is compelled to remain skeptical and continue bringing alternative ways to redefine 'the urban', not only as a holistic discipline but as a juxtaposition of specific inputs and outputs deforming and reforming each of our cities in very particular manners. In this sense, Tokyo's imagery has fed well in contemporary culture the myths of the chaotic, the entropic and the incoherent as much as the futurist, the dense and the intense.

El crítico japonés Kojin Karatani afirma que la fundación del pensamiento Occidental se basa en el deseo de la " arquitectura‐lización " , entendido desde el sentido metafórico de " construir ". Para Karatani ésta idea es inexistente en Japón, ya que doctrinas como el Budismo y el Shintoismo se basan en la fugacidad como parte esencial de la existencia. En alguna ocasión el arquitecto japonés Kazuo Shinohara comentaba que en Occidente el significado se le agrega a las cosas, como aquél relato de Ibsen en El Maestro Constructor, que describe a un arquitecto obsesionado con llenar su vacío. En Japón el proceso es contrario, abstrayendo el significado. La cultura japonesa se estructura a partir del vacío absoluto (zettai mu) más que en el ser (yu), con un deseo hacia lo informe y no a la formalidad de las cosas como observa el filósofo Nishida Kitaro. El escritor norteamericano Donald Richie escribía al final de un texto donde introducía la cultura japonesa: " Éste mundo es uno, una perfecta totalidad, para aquéllos que pueden verla, para aquéllos que pueden aprender a observarla, a mirarla con detenimiento, a comprenderla ". Es cierto que dentro de las culturas asiáticas el pensamiento japonés se ha distinguido por su simplicidad y alta sensibilidad hacia la naturaleza. Detrás de aquél ojo que observa y ha aprendido de ella, está también una sociedad que ha sido controlada a través de su historia, y que hasta hoy ha devenido en un marcado orden social de jerarquías. Dicen que nuestras creencias, valores y entorno son los que determinan nuestras ideologías. Si consideramos cada uno de estos aspectos, vemos que los mecanismos que han ido formando y deformando los modos de producción arquitectónicos en la cultura japonesa no son completamente opuestos al confrontarlos con otras ideas de Occidente pero sin duda diferentes, y resultan también muy particulares al hacerlo con otras culturas dentro de Asia. Antes de elaborar nuestro argumento es importante establecer en principio algunos criterios sobre el tema de la ideología. Si aceptamos que las producimos al igual que las consumimos, dejamos al descubierto nuestra naturaleza como ideólogos no sólo en la teoría sino en la práctica. Si bien no toda ideología es necesariamente identificable a través de un sufijo o " ‐ismo " , tampoco podríamos decir que aquélla que lo tiene lo sea, pero da síntomas de querer adoptar alguna postura ideológica. En el idioma japonés se utiliza el sufijo " ‐gi " (―義) que denota un carácter relativo a " lo moralmente correcto " , y da paso a una pregunta retórica sobre aquél que lo legitima. Al pretender argumentar sobre ideologías caemos en la llamada " Paradoja de Mannheim " , que exhibe la imposibilidad de disociarnos en su totalidad de ellas. Sin embargo al referirnos en éste caso a una cultura que nos es ajena, puede resultar una ventaja asumir nuestra alienación y hacer un acercamiento que nos lleve a referenciar algunos de nuestros propios procesos ideológicos. Quizás la primer gran ideología, casi a modo de un lente que ha separado nuestra visión de Asia con el resto del mundo, es precisamente aquélla división que existe entre Oriente y Occidente a la que el crítico Edward Said se refiere como " Orientalismo ". En ella reconoce que el término es más una noción autoritaria para representar el Oriente desde una perspectiva Occidental. Said escribía también que saber algo es tener poder sobre ello, e inversamente, tener poder es conocer el mundo en términos propios. La geografía viene siempre acompañada de alguna ideología ligada también a un momento histórico, así un individuo puede más o menos ser consciente de su pertenencia a una determinada cultura en base a un territorio pero no necesariamente lo es de sus ideologías o busca representar alguna en particular. En el caso de Japón, dada su naturaleza insular, ha existido un deseo más marcado por proyectar cierta identidad de lo japonés hacia el " exterior " , aunado a una idea de singularidad en comparación con otras culturas asiáticas. Esto se refleja en una especie de " ideología de exportación " permeando toda la cultura material contemporánea que emana de la isla, incluyendo la arquitectura y las nuevas generaciones de arquitectos como es el caso de Sou Fujimoto, quien ha diseñado el más reciente Sepentine Pavillion en Londres, o SANAA con la nueva sede del Museo de Louvre en Lens, por mencionar algunos. Resulta interesante ahondar más en ésta postura, o al menos tratar de encontrar algunos motivos por los que Japón ha logrado subsistir viviendo de su propia sustancia y con una idea muy clara de su propia " japonesidad " .