LEARNING FROM THE JAPANESE CITY: West meets East in Urban Design.

By Barrie Shelton. London: E&FN Spon. 1999. [pounds]42.50

There is a traditional pattern of written `exposition' in Japan in which the purpose is not necessarily to explain or to express an idea with clarity, but to provide various observations that might stimulate the reader into contemplating an issue and drawing conclusions. From a Western perspective, essays rarely get to the point. Writings by Japanese architects are no exception. And so, the premise of Shaking the Foundations -- to get prominent architects to speak, in a series of interviews, rather than to write -- held promise. But, the interviewers -- Knabe and Noennig -- are not interrogators, and the book does not quite lift the veil of inscrutability through which most Westerners -- and many Japanese -- view the works and pronouncements of these architects (many of them, like many of their Western colleagues, having realized that mystique has retail value).

Readers, however, although they may not understand the architects any better, will surely know them better. A certain amount of self-regard oozes from some pages, but not from those who might justifiably be entitled to it. Maki, Isozaki and Ando, especially, are clear, helpful, and modest, offering brilliant insights, and both Isozaki and Ando open their hearts to a surprising degree to the interviewers -- Ando showing the real sensitivity and vulnerability of his personality, and Isozaki offering information about his personal attitudes and family life that I suspect has not appeared in print before.

At its best, this book is a series of casual, very enjoyable, conversations about architecture, politics, architectural politics, and life, which may have been better suited to a magazine format. But the book is worth reading for the foreword alone -- a masterly essay by architectural historian David Stewart that sets the stage for the interviews that follow, and, in its short space of under two pages, manages to tell you virtually all you need to know about modern Japan, and its society, politics and architecture.

The book is beautifully laid out, delightful to hold and to look at, and the excellent designer is credited (as is the copy-editor). The one forgotten hero is the translator. The vaguenesses and imprecisions of Japanese are such that when it is used skilfully, deep meaning can be implied even when almost nothing is said. The translator is left to re-constitute this vapour and render it meaningful. It can be heroic work.

In contrast, Learning from the Japanese City, by Barrie Shelton, is an exceptional book betrayed by its design -- or lack thereof. It has the appearance of a scholarly, academic tome -- which is what it is, but as Venturi showed with Learning from Las Vegas (to which the title of this book refers), an academic study on cities like these can enthral, visually and verbally.

Shelton's central theme is the continuity of Japan's way of urbanity -- 'some of the wonders of today's Japanese urban world are not merely a consequence of modern technology and contemporary commerce, as many writers would have us believe, but rather of a marriage of technology and tradition'. The 'virtual-city' is much the same as historic Edo (Tokyo), but with neon instead of banners. The clarity of Shelton's argument, and of his evidence, should dismay the 'Gee Whizz!' faction of architectural/lifestyle writers. The city is, in fact, far more prosaic than it is usually represented, and more interesting for that reason.

Shelton argues that the Japanese city is not a chaotic, untidy, incompetent version of Western urbanism, but that it is a coherent, very different type of urbanism. While Western cities are based on respect for 'context', the Japanese city is concerned only with 'content'. He compares Bellini's painting 'Procession of the True Cross' -- in which the wide urban context is included as part of the narrative -- with woodblock prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige, showing street-scenes with crowds of people, parasols and banners, but in which the buildings are inconspicuous.

Shelton is excellent when describing the evolution of present urban conditions, but slightly disturbing when he generalizes about Japenese psychology. The grotesque, massive highways that blunder through Tokyo are apparently 'part of a way of thinking ... that is prepared to build a city by way of superimposition rather than visual integration'. But it's not 'part of a way of thinking' for the Japanese of my acquaintance -- many think Tokyo's a shambles, and yearn for Vienna, Paris, sometimes even London. The book's only real weakness is its unnecessary urge to justify its existence by explaining what it is that we (Westerners) should learn from the Japanese city. Chaos, complexity and catastrophe theories, fractal geometry, et al, are dimensions of a new world view, albeit Western-generated, against which 'the urban design and architectural traditions of the West seem to serve much as a handicap and hindrance ... In this new climate, Japan's cities take on a fresh significance'. Yet he undermines his thesis by illustrating this 'new world view' with the La Villette designs of Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas (1982) -- 17-year-old designs by North Europeans.

Anyone interested in Japan, or in going to Japan, and anyone who has returned from Japan bewildered, must read this. Let's just hope it's redesigned for the reprint.