The ancient Chinese city is the starting point of Japan's urban history which is part of the more general process of sinicization of the country that reached its peak between the 7th and 8th century. Japan imported from China the orthogonal planimetry oriented according to the cardinal points: the jōbōsei, adopted along with the similar system of subdivision of the rural territory called jōri . The first capital cities were built on this basis: Fujiwarakyō (from 694) and later Heijōkyō (Nara) and Heiankyō (Kyoto). During the 8th century the Chinese model of the city was transplanted in the capitals of Japan, but all the subsequent urban history of the country moves in other directions; Kamakura, seat of the first shogunal government and symbol town of the Japanese Middle Ages, anticipates the future developments of Japanese urbanization, presenting a fishbone shape planimetry, with no more references to Chinese models. As Augustin Berque claims, orthogonality did not withstand historical evolution; jōbō and jōri underwent all sorts of deformations that reintroduced the curve: the plan becomes a lived-in space subdued to the contingencies of topography and history, not an abstractly conceived space. Urbanization has developed according to flexible and differentiated criteria depending on the different orographic and socio-functional realities of the settlements. Tokyo itself, polycentric and reticular multicity - defined by Berque “transmodern” - is the apical point of the evolution of the Japanese city, characterized by the spiral structure and the labyrinth-shape road, both of which are far from the geometric and ideal reversibility prevalent in China and in the West: in Japan, urbanism and architecture tend to refuse symmetry, geometric order, cardinal points of view, and overall perspectives, relying instead on a conception of the dynamic space that recalls some fundamental Japanese aesthetic categories as the transition, asymmetry and incompleteness.
La città giapponese e le sue origini. Storia ed estetica delle forme urbane
Ricca L.
2017
Abstract
The ancient Chinese city is the starting point of Japan's urban history which is part of the more general process of sinicization of the country that reached its peak between the 7th and 8th century. Japan imported from China the orthogonal planimetry oriented according to the cardinal points: the jōbōsei, adopted along with the similar system of subdivision of the rural territory called jōri . The first capital cities were built on this basis: Fujiwarakyō (from 694) and later Heijōkyō (Nara) and Heiankyō (Kyoto). During the 8th century the Chinese model of the city was transplanted in the capitals of Japan, but all the subsequent urban history of the country moves in other directions; Kamakura, seat of the first shogunal government and symbol town of the Japanese Middle Ages, anticipates the future developments of Japanese urbanization, presenting a fishbone shape planimetry, with no more references to Chinese models. As Augustin Berque claims, orthogonality did not withstand historical evolution; jōbō and jōri underwent all sorts of deformations that reintroduced the curve: the plan becomes a lived-in space subdued to the contingencies of topography and history, not an abstractly conceived space. Urbanization has developed according to flexible and differentiated criteria depending on the different orographic and socio-functional realities of the settlements. Tokyo itself, polycentric and reticular multicity - defined by Berque “transmodern” - is the apical point of the evolution of the Japanese city, characterized by the spiral structure and the labyrinth-shape road, both of which are far from the geometric and ideal reversibility prevalent in China and in the West: in Japan, urbanism and architecture tend to refuse symmetry, geometric order, cardinal points of view, and overall perspectives, relying instead on a conception of the dynamic space that recalls some fundamental Japanese aesthetic categories as the transition, asymmetry and incompleteness.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
