The interview subject of this “I Love Kansai” is Gunter Nitschke, an architect and urban designer, originally from Germany and a long time Kyoto resident who first came to Japan in 1961. Gunter Nitschke has 3 addresses around Kyoto, his private office being at the Institute for East Asian Architecture and Urbanism, located in “Kamigyo-Ward, Kawaramachi Road, Marutamachi agaru, Demizu Block”, an address within a quiet old-town neighborhood of traditional wooden houses (not the kind of area a visitor would expect to find an architectural institute). Indeed, the location and address seem to have no relationship whatsoever and the best way to find the Institute (one of those curious tall and thin buildings, just one room wide and several stories high) is to find the neighborhood, roughly, and then ask a local who has a ‘jukyo chizu’ map, one of those curious maps that have the name of every householder neatly printed over each building indicated.

Gunter Nitschke’s visitors can expect to be immediately greeted with cups of ginger tea (every cup different) even before the standard Japanese protocol of exchanging name cards. This alternative ‘ginger tea’ etiquette is one of the more gentle challenges to the norm of a man continually confronting his own perspectives and cultural expectations.

Considering that Kyoto is a repository of quintessentially Japanese forms of etiquette, as passed down from ritualized ancient court life, the city is highly tolerant of non-orthodox ways of living and thinking. For a city with so many temples, Kyoto has never made him feel uncomfortable as someone fiercely opposed to the indoctrination behind much religious teaching. Indeed, he attributes the level of tolerance to Japan’s lack of religious dogma. This makes Kyoto a very fertile place for intellectual pursuits (which is why it is a major conference destination in Japan). “People think of visiting Katmandu to find new forms of consciousness, but why not Kyoto?” he asked. “The artists of the 60s Beat Generation all came to Kyoto at one time or another and, in fact, I bought my first house here through Gary Snyder, one of the great poets of the Beat Generation.” (The ‘Beat Generation’ refers principally to a group of post-war artists who lost faith in Western cultural traditions and rejected conventional norms of dress and behavior).

Gunter Nitschke left Germany in 1957 when still in his teens and he no longer identifies Berlin as his hometown. He explained that his sense of home now exists only within the heart and that the notion of hometown is an example of “cultural hypnosis”. “My Japanese colleagues at KyotoSeikaUniversity sometimes ask me when I am going back to my country. For them it is normal to have a ‘furusato’, home town.” He also observes the cultural bias of the question, “No American would ask such a question,” he adds, and this comparison of culture-bound thinking is a major theme of his philosophy. “You know, the fish really isn’t aware of the water and we all have a cultural hypnosis from being born in one cultural context. I have changed my cultural context three times by living in Europe, America, India, Japan etc…[Breaking from the hypnosis] is the target. If you had asked Buddha where he wanted to be buried he would have just laughed. There are other levels of understanding.”

However, Gunter Nitschke does admit to a special affinity for Japan. “Once in my 40s, I saw myself in Japan. It was like deja-vu. I went into a little village and small noodle house and thought I had come home. This was exactly the smell I was used to.” He also takes great delight when talking about Japanese food (and Kyoto is famous for elaborate ‘kaiseki’ meals of numerous mouthful sized dishes based on seasonal specialties). “It is the dedication to detail and to the season. It is not that the Japanese people are more loving of the seasons but what they make out of the seasons and how they make it, into an art, is a subtlety that only the older cultures acquire.” ‘Subtlety’ is also a quality that he admires in Japanese women. His wife is Japanese and she provides him with the balance his challenging ideas often require. He also appreciates the kindness of Japanese people and their tolerance. “It’s their heart, something you especially feel as you get older and have to go to hospital now and then.”

Gunter Nitschke greatly admires the traditional designs in Japanese architecture while lamenting how his students are guilty of a “great crucification” through their blinded adoration of Western design. One of his favorite buildings in Kyoto is the Katsura Imperial Villa and Gardens. “It is a type of architecture so lofty and so ordered.” He explained how such architecture is built around a module design of ‘tatami’ units or ‘ken’ (the basic 6ft 5 ~ 6ft 8 bay) and that, because the module system was always based on handicraft and playfulness, the end result could be highly relaxed and refined due to an inherent non-perfection. “This imperfection is very peaceful and this aesthetic has never been achieved in the West.” He contrasted this with “the German ‘industrial’ approach to modular systems, made by machine, which only created a perfection of boring space technology.”

The above is not to suggest that Gunter Nitschke only admires the traditional forms within Japanese architecture. “Tadao Ando is my favorite architect,” he revealed, “a fantastic man born in downtown Osaka in one of the messiest areas. Yet his spaces are pristinely empty and clear! It is one of those strange contradictions.” Tadao Ando creates minimalist yet monumental buildings using unfinished concrete and glass while respecting a connection with the surrounding environment. “Ando is also the only Japanese architect I am still on speaking terms with!”

On the subject of Osaka, the largest city in Kansai, and a bustling city of vast shopping malls and restaurants, and one that is in stark contrast to Kyoto, Gunter Nitschke spoke frankly about the its urban design. “Since Meiji it has not had a face, it used to be like Venice, with all its canals and bridges,” he chided. “So for the current redevelopment of the northern Umeda area I proposed they should make a huge lake called the ‘Lake of Laughter’ on the empty JR land.” This was a reference to Osaka’s fame as a humor-loving, talent capital that has created Japan’s most well-loved comedians. “Of course, they threw out my idea!”

But why is this hidden map so lacking in order? Gunter Nitschke gave one example from his immediate vicinity. “In Demizu-cho, one part of the ‘cho’ was relocated in the Meiji times. Still today, the mikoshi festival parade makes the detour to the area of town across the bridge to where that part of the community moved.” Such fragmenting of communities had rendered any numbering system obsolete for later Western tourists expecting to find Number 10 next to Number 12. “Now it’s like going to a parking lot and looking at the car number plates. There are only registration numbers and the one on the car next to mine is totally different.”

The conversation returned to the theme of cultural norms. Gunter Nitschke believes the urban organization (or lack of it, depending on your particular brand of hypnosis) can be attributed to the Japanese individual’s stronger sense of place within a group. “It is a different sense of space. You disappear into the ‘cho’ which probably used to have only about 500 people, something that probably existed in Europe in the Middle Ages. This is a medieval sense of group still existing here and accepted as normal. In Europe we have a coordinates system with our own unique plot that places us as individuals. Identifying yourself more with the group or as an individual is a different hypnosis and a very strong one.”

Gunter Nitschke then kindly offered refills of ginger tea. He had only just begun to explain his fascination for Kyoto and the inspiration it provides. He mentioned how he always appreciates the ‘kissaten’ tea houses, so ubiquitous in Japan, especially after a trip overseas. Kissaten have always welcomed customers to sit and relax (providing free magazines to read, even ‘manga’ comics). No doubt Nitschke-sensei has enjoyed such tolerant hospitality, though not to read. His passion is to talk, to debate and to challenge while crossing his Floating Bridge of Dreams.

By Tim Lemon

Gunter Nitschke is author of numerous historical and critical essays in AD, Bauwelt, Bauen & Wohnen, Daidalos, Kenchiku Bunka, SD-Space Design, Kyoto Journal and others. The most well-known among those are EKI – The Metabolists of Japan, in AD10,1964, MA, The Japanese Sense of Place, in AD3, 1966, The False Prophets in SD 2,3,4, 1968, and SHIME – Binding / Unbinding in AD 12, 1974.

He also authored the following books, the Architecture of the Japanese garden – Right Angle and Natural Form (Taschen, Koeln, 1991), From Shinto to Ando – Studies in Architectural Anthropology in Japan. (Academy Editions, London, 1993), and ‘The Silent Orgasm – From Transpersonal to Transparent Consciousness (Taschen, Koeln, 1995). At present Gunter Nitschke is preparing a monograph on the culture of the Kyo-Machiya, the traditional Kyoto Townhouse, in the framework of an urban history of Kyoto, as well as a new book on the Japanese garden entitled ‘Kyoto – at any moment now’, together with the poet Cid Corman.