The Ise Shrines and the Metabolism of Japanese Architecture

The Ise Shrines are among Japan’s most ancient and holiest sites of kami worship. The architecture of the shrines was admired by modernists for its geometry of form and simple, unadorned use of natural materials. The site is also famous for being continuously rebuilt every twenty years since the late seventh century; its 62nd rebuilding took place in October of 2013, and the 63rd renewal is scheduled for the fall of 2033. Ise’s renewals raises complex issues concerning the nature of architectural process and meaning, eco-architecture, sustainability, and the perpetuation of indigenous building practices into the present.

This lecture examines the origins and design of Ise as a way of engaging these questions. Based upon the form of the Neolithic rice granary, Ise was formalized as a shrine complex in the seventh century amidst significant changes in the political environment of the Japanese archipelago and East Asian region. Most notably, its design was conceived amidst the adoption of more advanced timber-frame building styles being practiced in Korea and China, opening onto complex questions regarding the purpose and social and environmental significance of Ise’s renewal process.

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This lecture is supported by the Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund Committee and the Russell Grimwade Bequest as part of the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellows Program.

About the speaker

YUKIO LIPPIT

Yukio Lippit is Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okamura Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. His book Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in Seventeenth-Century Japan (2012) was awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award by the College Art Association and the John Whitney Hall Book Prize by the Association of Asian Studies. His article “Of Modes and Manners in Medieval Japanese Ink Painting: Sesshū’s Splashed Ink Landscape of 1495” was awarded the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize by CAA in 2013. Other books include Conservation Thinking in Japan (forthcoming 2023, with Peter Miller), Sesson Shukei: A Zen Monk-Painter in Medieval Japan (2022, with Frank Feltens), The Artist in Edo (2018), Irresolution: The Paintings of Yoshiaki Shimizu(2017), Japanese Zen Buddhism and the Impossible Painting (2016), Sōtatsu: Making Waves (2016, with James Ulak), The Thinking Hand: Tools and Traditions of the Japanese Carpenter (2013, with Mark Mulligan), Kenzo Tange: Architecture for the World (2012, with Seng Kuan), Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū (1716-1800) (2012), and Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan (2007, with Gregory Levine).

Enquiries

Please send you enquiries to Dr Mark Erdmann via merdmann@unimelb.edu.au.

If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please contact Keir Semenov via keir.semenov@unimelb.edu.au.