Dichotomies have provided a convenient way to categorize practices and for affiliated architectural groups to contest positions. Prominent dichotomies range from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian to echoes in Kenzo Tange’s Yayoi and Jomon categories relating historic positions to post-World War II modern Japanese architecture, and from continued tensions between notions of modern and traditional as well as global and local. Related contestations shaping architectural production are evident in the Museum of Modern Art’s “What is Happening to Modern Architecture?” 1948 debate between modernists, Lewis Mumford, and Bay Area regionalists and more recent postmodern debates between the Whites and Grays. Within the context of contemporary Japanese architecture, Dana Buntrock introduces another dichotomy that builds on the legacies of the ones just mentioned. She explicates renowned Japanese architecture historian and emerging radical architect Terunobu Fujimori’s categorization of Red and White Schools within Japanese architecture. Unlike the White architects emerging from the Museum of Modern Art’s Five Architects exhibition (1967) and publication (Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, New York: Wittenborn, 1972), and the reactionary Greys emerging through the Architectural Forum “Five on Five” set of essays (1973), the Japanese Red School is not an affiliated group but a label coined by Fujimori and elaborated in Buntrock’s corralling of architects exhibiting related characteristics and approaches.

Buntrock summarizes these characteristics as “a rolling roster: raw and robust, raffish and ragtag, rambunctious and reckless, rough and rudimentary, refreshing and resplendent, risky and risqué, recalling Rikyu, regionally responsive. The Red School rots and inclines to ruin; it is made of rust, rammed earth, red brick, random rock rubble or recycled rubbish. It is about being rooted and having a roof. It is a rich rhapsody” (239). The Reds stand in marked contrast to the pristine steel, glass, and concrete international modern minimalism of the Japanese Whites exemplified by Fumihiko Maki, SANNA, and Sou Fujimoto. Whites are not elaborated upon in the text and serve primarily as a discursive straw man for examination of Red approaches. Writing as a critic rather than as a historian, Buntrock is an affectionate Red apologist. However, she skilfully avoids reductionism by demonstrating a broad spectrum of shades of Red approaches. Although an organizing structure for the book, the colors red and white quickly fade into a much richer concern with how architecture embodies “a reflective response to tradition, establishing a range of regionalisms, representing different perspectives on the relationship between past and present” (6).

Relationships between past/tradition and present/modern are particularly acute in Japan, which, as noted in Buntrock’s introduction, is internationally recognized for being concurrently steeped in traditions—pastoral animistic religions, craft, culture, etc., while being ultra-modern in attitudes, technologies, devices, etc. Similarly, tensions between modern and tradition have guided the development of architecture in Japan since the Meiji-period (1868–1912) introduction of the university-trained professional architect in contrast to craftsmen. Moreover, the negotiation of modernities and traditions has been one of the most common framing devices for Japanese architecture in English-language accounts from modernists—such as Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Arthur Drexler, and Tange—to postmodernists like Arata Isozaki and more recent accounts by Thomas Daniell and Ken Oshima. Buntrock extends these legacies of the discursive construction of Japanese architecture by focusing on the contemporary incorporation of traditions. Although continuing to highlight the negotiation of traditions, Buntrock significantly contributes to expanding an understanding of Japanese architecture by introducing global audiences to a range of lesser-known projects and personalities that demonstrate diverse alternatives to the iconic, sleek minimalism that circulates more freely in the international architectural media.

Bookended with an introduction and conclusion, the text is divided into three sections. The first section, titled “Black Blood Red to Palest Pink,” introduces the main protagonist, Fujimori, and the Red School he both labelled and exemplifies. Fujimori is subsequently paired with Kengo Kuma as a foil. Buntrock introduces each architect’s approach to traditions and exemplifies their approach through careful consideration of a key building, examining Fujimori’s Soda Pop Spa (2005) and Kuma’s Murai Museum (2004). The first section culminates with a comparison of Fujimori and Kuma in order to sketch out the shades and spectrum of the Red School approaches that the text promulgates. With no further introduction beyond, “other architecture, offering alternative perspectives, are introduced in the pages ahead” (119), the second section, titled “Radical Reds,” introduces five architects, relatively unknown outside of Japan, who have been corralled into the Red School due to sympathetic approaches, which arguably relegated them to the edges of mainstream architectural production in Japan. Team Zoo, Osamu Ishiyama, Kazuhiro Ishii, Itsuko Hasegawa, and Hiroshi Naito provide radical illustrations of Red School tactics. The third section, titled “Reluctant Reds,” examines three architects, not formally associated with the Red School but exhibiting resonating tendencies in their approaches to specific projects. Ryoji Suzuki’s Kotohira Shrine (2004), Fumihiko Maki’s Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo (2006), and Jun Aoki’s Aomori Museum of Art (2006) demonstrate a range of engagements with history and tradition that echo aspects of Red School approaches while reflecting additional possibilities.

Comparisons across the key architects highlight relationships toward context, their material palates and practices, and their positions on time and architecture. Temporal differences are one of the most interesting aspects identified. Buntrock concludes that Fujimori sees the past and present as seamless. Kuma approaches the past as a fruitful archive from which to draw. Suzuki, as exemplified in the Kotohira Shrine, bridges Fujimori and Kuma, “offering an architecture rooted in an overlapping sense of both pre-modern and modern perceptions of time” (235). Suzuki recreates past forms with an uncomfortable fit into historic contexts while also accommodating the aging of his new structures. Maki represents the prioritization of the present using the past as its platform, and his Shimane Museum reflects layers of history/time built into the promenade sequence. Like Maki, Aoki’s Aomori Museum of Art acknowledges the past with primitive allusions, but Aoki represents an arguably postmodern position that accepts free-floating references open to individual interpretations. The Aomori Museum combines timeless white cube galleries with aging earthwork trenches meant to relate to an adjacent archaeological site. The careful analyses of attitudes toward time as reflected in approaches to traditions and exemplified in discrete architectural projects are key contributions of Buntrock’s book.

However, the fluidity of terms and the flow of argument are two challenging aspects of the text. While emphasizing context, materiality, and relations to tradition, Buntrock employs terms such as history, past, and tradition interchangeably without full acknowledgement of their nuanced distinctions. Similarly, approaches to context, material, and tradition are frequently conflated into an ambiguous notion of regionalism. Buntrock writes that, “Fujimori objects to my use of the term regionalism” (46), and I concur with Fujimori. As Buntrock notes, “Fujimori never troubled himself to outline the particularities of his Red School” (43). Consequently, equating Red with regionalism requires a clearer definition of regionalism. Buntrock attempts to relate Kenneth Frampton’s Critical Regionalism, but neglects more robust, and even more relevant, regionalisms offered by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, or Lewis Mumford. The concluding chapter is haunted by the ghost of Frampton’s anti-industrial capitalist Critical Regionalism, despite the seeming ambitions to achieve Catherine Slessor’s regionalism, which is regrettably only explained in the conclusion as

regionalism addresses the particularities of place and culture. It mines everyday life and perception for intentions about a truly progressive future. It aims to sustain a close and continuous relationship between architecture and the local community it serves. Crucially, it learns from experience. It tinkers, crafts, accepts, rejects, adjusts, reacts. It is immediately rooted in the tangible realities of its situation: the history, geography, human values, economy, traditions, technology and cultural life of a place. (242)

As richly illustrated in the text, the Red School is notably exuberant and eclectic. Their eclecticism is further echoed in the way arguments, and images, are combined throughout the text. Buntrock acknowledges Marc Treib’s distinction that, “while Western discourse tends to lead the reader, taking him or her firmly in hand from valleys to hilltops, Japanese writers tend to leap from summit to summit—leaving the reader to rely on his or her own devices for progressing from point to point” (43). Buntrock is an astute observer intimately familiar with Japan, and Japanese discursive strategies appear to have infiltrated the text. This may present some challenges for readers anticipating an assisted linear tour through the eclectic terrain covered in the volume.

Despite minor encumbrances with the clarity of terms and discursive strategies, Materials and Meaning in Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tradition and Today is a valuable contribution addressing a number of audiences—from architects and architecture aficionados to Japan scholars and enthusiasts. It diversifies an understanding of contemporary Japanese architecture while explicating how architects relate projects to histories, traditions, and contexts. The book demonstrates how critics craft convincing categories to corral work to constructive ends. Concurrently, it highlights the complexities of categorization, recognizing Fujimori as a “true blood” Red influencing radical Reds, reluctant Reds, and all shades in between. Based on in-depth knowledge and perceptive analyses of Japanese architects and buildings, Buntrock’s text addresses important issues broadly applicable to architectural production and architectural criticism around the world.