Manfredo Tafuri and Japan: An Incomplete Project

Manfredo Tafuri's early book on modern Japanese architecture, L'Architettura Moderna in Giappone (1964), stands out from bis bibliography dominated by Italian subjects. While translated into Spanish in 1968, this work has never been translated into either Japanese or English. As one of his first works, it raises multiple questions of why he wrote this book, what impact it had on his own ideological genealogy, and further about what contribution be made to the study of modern japanese architecture. This essay situates Tafuri's book in broader context of his writing on history and architecture, and his particular interest in Kenzô Tange over Archigram as an architect realizing his utopian schemes in Japan. In addressing connections between Italy and Japan, this study examines both Tafuri's problems in dealing with translated secondary sources and the translation of his writing into Japan. In so doing, it further considers the role of Tafuri's historical project within the context of Japanese architectural history past, present, and future. The project, and not only the building is a complex tool with which one can read the layers of values deposited by society, culture, religion, beliefs and specialized knowledge; only architecture conserves these layers over time… Carlo Omo1