Azby Brown is a widely published author and authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environment, whose groundbreaking writings on traditional Japanese carpentry, compact housing, and traditional sustainable practices are recognized as having brought these fields to the awareness of Western designers and the general public. His creative work spans many media and has been widely exhibited internationally. In 2003 he founded the KIT Future Design Institute in Tokyo, focussing on cognitive and cultural issues surrounding the human hand and its use in the creative process, conducting collaborative research with neuroscientists and perceptual psychologists. A native of New Orleans, he has lived in Japan since 1985 and is currently on the sculpture faculty of Musashino Art University in Tokyo.
I wrote...
The Genius of Japanese Carpentry: Secrets of an Ancient Woodworking Craft
By
Azby Brown
What is my book about?
On my first trip to Japan in 1983, I had the extremely good fortune to meet the late Tsunekazu Nishioka, last in a hereditary line of master temple carpenters, or miyadaiku, who had maintained Horyuji temple in Nara for centuries. He was then embarked on a decades-long restoration of Yakushiji Temple. I set out to write the most detailed and complete account possible, and my book is still the only one of its kind. It presents the documentation of the temple’s three-year-long construction process in the form of text, photos, and my own detailed drawings. Like many Westerners, I was initially drawn to the form of the many wood joints and their complexity, but Master Nishioka showed me that understanding trees as living beings is what is most essential.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Complete Japanese Joinery
By
Yasuo Nakahara,
Hideo Sato,
Koichi Paul Nii
Why this book?
This book, first published in 1995, is a detailed how-to guide that answers a lot of questions about how carpentry is practiced in contemporary Japan. The drawings and plans are fabulously informative. It does not focus on tool use per se, but beautifully conveys the structural logic and reasoning that lie behind the joints and connections themselves. I keep it handy as a reference.
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Measure and Construction of the Japanese House
By
Heino Engel
Why this book?
This book is a classic and is a beautifully informative excerpt from the author’s longer and more extensive The Japanese House: A Tradition for Contemporary Architecture which is long out of print. The drawings and plans are wonderful, and illuminate the Japanese House layout, modularity, proportions, and many structural and ornamental details. I particularly love the white-on-black visual treatment used for many of the plans.
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Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit and Use
By
Toshio Odate
Why this book?
This book, initially published in 1984, was the first detailed treatment of Japanese carpentry tools and techniques available in English. Because of how effectively it conveyed such aspects as the advantages of the Japanese-style saw — cutting on the pull stroke rather than pushing allows the blade to be thinner, lending greater accuracy and a narrower kerf — I think it really opened the eyes of many Western cabinetmakers who began to adopt Japanese tools from that point on. Odate points out that it’s impossible to really learn techniques from a book, but his explanations whet our appetites.
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The Art of Japanese Joinery
By
Kiyosi Seike
Why this book?
This is the book that got me hooked on Japanese carpentry when I was in college in the late 1970s. There’s not much explanation, really, but the black-and-white photos convey the sheer beauty of Japanese joinery in an evocative and compelling way. The drawings resolve some of the mystery.
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Building the Japanese House Today
By
Len Brackett,
Peggy Landers Rao,
Aya Brackett
Why this book?
Len Brackett trained with superb carpenters in Japan and returned to the US West Coast to create exquisite Japanese-stye houses and other buildings. His work is in extremely high demand. This book shows how high-quality Japanese-style design and construction can be adapted to our current lifestyles without sacrificing either aesthetically or functionally. Brackett’s descriptions of his design and construction process, as well as of the wood material he uses, are enticing and provide a lot of technical and philosophical insight.
