Minka, the Essential Japanese House: Yukio Futagawa and the Origins of His Architectural Photography, 1955

MINKA Japanese Traditional Houses: Yukio Futagawa and the Origins of His Architectural Photography, 1955 presents 70 photographs from　Traditional Japanese Houses—a ten-volume series featuring 280 photographs of rustic traditional houses across Japan by Futagawa that was awarded the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award in 1959—that have been reprinted using the latest digital technology. The books continue to receive acclaim with every new edition, the latest "director's cut" of which has been edited by Futagawa himself and will be released to coincide with the exhibition.

For sixty years, Futagawa has worked through his own editing and publishing firm to present, in the form of architectural photography, his insightful critical perspectives on architecture. His photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright's oeuvre and other renowned works of modern and contemporary architecture have been highly praised around the world. Even now, at the age of 80, he continues to spend half the year scouting buildings overseas. Futagawa sees architectural photography as a way to define and record architecture; his unwavering dedication to capturing only the finest works of architecture can even be said to have shaped the future of architectural history.

Futagawa's architectural travels began when he was a student trekking across Japan in a quest to better understand Japanese classicism. Prompted by the recommendations of his architectural history professor, Yasushi Tanabe, Futagawa visited Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, where the minka had such a strong impact on him that he began to record his journey through photography. Eventually, his works found their way to the president of an art book publisher, who offered to publish them as a series of books. Futagawa commissioned the at-the-time unknown architectural historian Teiji Ito to produce text to accompany them, and the result was the ten-volume Traditional Japanese Houses. The way the books captured these rustic traditional houses in all their splendor captivated the most famous architects of the time, and the series was immediately awarded the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award.

Futagawa has constantly stated that he is not a photographer, and has avoided presenting his works through exhibitions. He graciously accepted the Museum's invitation on one condition: That the exhibition and its name focus on only one year, 1955—a time when the minka still graced Japan with their beauty and were as connected to people's lives as they were to the land they stood on. The Museum is now proud to present the first-ever domestic exhibition of Futagawa's works. Visitors will be struck by the splendor and elegance of the perfect design and details of these homes; Futagawa's original perspectives for the way they emphasize the ingrained beauty of the minka and the majesty with which they plant their foundations into the soil; and the dynamism and immediacy of the photographs taken by him as he followed his instincts from location to location. At a time when extensive communication and traffic networks did not exist, Futagawa had no choice but to blindly grope his way towards beautiful minka that no one had seen or heard of, charting his course based only on information he acquired from those he met along the way. The journey is said to have lasted seven years, with Futagawa often forced to sleep outdoors. Today, many of these minka have been designated as national and local cultural heritages. The exhibition offers visitors the chance to view these buildings as they were intended—beautifully blended in with the natural landscapes that are gradually disappearing from Japan.