The Art of Japanese Life

This is an ordinary Japanese home...

..but every day it produces something extraordinary.

I'd like to introduce you to my lunch.

This is a bento box.

Now, it's said that in Japan,

you eat with your eyes. It's really, really important to appreciate

the appearance of what you're about to consume.

And, what's more, this bento box even carries meaning.

Its theme is Japan's favourite season - spring.

So, these little things are cut into the shape of cherry blossoms

and there are a number of vegetables including this rape blossom

that only come out in the springtime.

So this little bento box is almost like a work of art.

It's got technique, it's got form,

it's got meaning, it's got symbolism,

and it's almost too beautiful to eat.

In Japan, much of domestic life is informed by aesthetics.

The home itself can be a work of the imagination...

..and many of the activities that take place inside it

are performed with precision and grace.

The modern world was thought to have destroyed

the ancient Japanese art of life,

but beauty still abounds...

..as artists reinvent these old traditions for a new era.

But the Japanese house has also influenced the West.

It helped create modern architecture as we know it...

..and transformed how many of us live today.

Japan has a population of 127 million people.

It is one of the most densely inhabited places in the world.

And the vast majority of people live in endless cities, in small flats.

But it wasn't always like this.

100 years ago, 85% of Japan's population lived in the countryside,

and they had done for centuries.

Most of their rural homes are long gone.

But a few remain.

Miyama is one of Japan's last surviving traditional villages.

And these are minka -

vernacular houses once lived in by most of Japan's people.

These minka might look rustic,

but they're actually an amazing piece of technology,

designed to combat the extremes of the Japanese climate.

The thatched roofs are steep enough to wash away the heavy summer rains

and the winter snows,

and the buildings have been lifted off the ground

to create as much ventilation as possible during the hotter

and more humid months of the year.

And Japan's geography even dictated the way they were built.

One of the defining features of this village,

and indeed much of Japan's traditional architecture,

is the abundance of wood.

It's absolutely everywhere.

There are at least two reasons for that.

The first reason is that wood is plentiful in Japan,

while stone, which is mostly volcanic here,

is too hard to build with.

The second reason, and this is a little bit morbid I'm afraid,

is that on the whole, wooden houses are safer.

Yes, they're more likely to burn down,

but they're less likely to crush their occupants

in the event of an earthquake

and easier to reassemble in its aftermath.

But though Japan's traditional house builders took up woodworking

for practical reasons, they very quickly turned it into an art form.

In fact, Japanese craftspeople pioneered

a consummate form of carpentry unequalled in the West.

And were able to construct whole houses without screws,

nails or glue.

Just ingenious techniques.

These techniques are still in use today...

..here at Nakamura Yoshiyaki's workshop in Kyoto.

Nakamura is one of Japan's most respected sukiya-daiku,

or master carpenters.

To become a sukiya-daiku,

one must master a complex code, combining ethics and practicalities.

It's even present in the way a carpenter uses his tools.

Respect is a cornerstone of the sukiya-daiku's philosophy,

and it also applies to materials.

In Japan, wood is more than a commodity.

According to Shinto, it comes from a living, even sacred organism,

and has to be treated with reverence.

Nakamura and his carpenters teach this philosophy to

the younger generations.

Each apprentice trains for five years.

Through often menial tasks,

they learn the correct attitude and techniques.

In Japan, people talk a lot about the spirit of the shokunin,

the spirit of the craftsman, or artisan,

and that spirit is abundantly clear here in Mr Nakamura's workshop.

The men are working with such precision and focus.

They are measuring and re-measuring and re-measuring again

to get everything just right.

And perhaps most surprisingly of all,

they are working in almost total silence.

There's no chitchat, there are no jokes,

there is unbelievable concentration on the work at hand.

And I get a real sense here of a deference, of a pride,

in belonging to a grand old tradition of carpentry

and house-building that goes back way into the Japanese past.

One of Japan's finest surviving homes can be found in Yokohama,

on the outskirts of Tokyo.

This is Rinshunkaku.

It was built in 1649 by a samurai lord called Yorinobu Tokugawa.

The owner's main residence was a fortified castle

filled with armaments, but when he wasn't working,

he'd come here to his fantasy home.

This was his refuge,

a place for contemplation and aesthetic reflection.

But looking at it today,

you know what I find most striking about it, is its modesty.

At exactly the same time,

European rulers were building these vast baroque palaces,

and this, by contrast, is so humble.

In fact, the only outward sign of extravagance is the second storey,

which was almost unheard of in Japan at the time.

It's clear where this house got its inspiration.

The low eaves, the wood, the way it's raised up from the ground -

it refers back to the minka of Japan's rural past.

Refined and elaborated.

But the real beauty lies inside.

It is influenced by the simple aesthetic of Zen Buddhism.

And it contains all the ingredients of

the traditional Japanese interior.

The rooms are open-plan and free from clutter.

The exterior walls are shoji screens,

whose paper surfaces infuse the home with soft otherworldly light.

The floors are tatami,

rice straw mats that dictate the size and proportions of every room.

But the most important feature of this house is almost invisible.

It is a unique Japanese concept known as ma.

Ma is of fundamental importance to Japanese aesthetics,

and its way of life.

It refers to the negative spaces between things.

The most obvious example of ma is silence.

If I were to pause...

..midway through this sentence, we might find it unsettling.

But in Japanese thought, that gap, that interval,

is just as full and just as full of meaning as

the words that surround it.

Now, ma appears in many Japanese art forms, it appears in painting

and calligraphy, in drama and in martial arts,

but it's also present in Japanese homes,

and Rinshunkaku is full of it.

Just look around

and you'll find negative space everywhere.

Rinshunkaku's floor plan is endlessly flexible.

Partitions slide behind one another to open up the rooms.

Even the outside walls are movable.

The effect is one continuous space, and it extends even to the outdoors.

Light, functional, versatile,

Rinshunkaku is a lesson in domestic design.

And houses like it have profoundly influenced modern architecture

in the West, in the work of architects

and designers like Frank Lloyd Wright...

..Charles and Ray Eames...

Walter Gropius...

and Le Corbusier.

When modernist architects and designers first encountered

traditional Japanese houses, they were astonished.

As far as they were concerned, this was modernist architecture

that just happened to be hundreds of years old.

And of course, today, open-plan living,

minimalist interiors and clean, simple lines have become

the very principles of 21st-century living,

but those principles were pioneered centuries ago in houses like these.

Amid all this minimalism,

one place in the Japanese home was reserved for extravagance...

..and was dedicated to decoration.

It was known as the tokonoma.

It might look like an empty recess,

but this alcove was once the heart of the Japanese home.

The owner of the property would sit here,

and was therefore framed by his tokonoma.

But his tokonoma would also be the stage set

for some carefully selected objects.

The tokonoma would include a scroll, often with calligraphy...

..and it would be joined by a simple floral arrangement...

..which had to be just so...

..because this was an art form in its own right -

ikebana.

Many Japanese people are obsessed with flower arranging.

Because ikebana is not only a hobby,

but a highly personal form of expression.

A popular art form of domestic life,

there are over 1,000 ikebana schools in Japan today.

But its origins lie in religion.

It started here at Shiunzan Chohoji Temple in Kyoto.

In the 15th century,

it was the home of a Buddhist monk called Senkei Ikenobo.

Ikenobo was responsible for arranging offerings to the Buddha...

..and he was particularly enamoured of flowers.

On 25th of February, 1462,

Senkei Ikenobo made a very special flower arrangement.

It was a complex freestanding construction

of about a dozen different flowers in a golden vase,

and it was replete with symbolism.

Now, apparently it caused something of a stir.

In fact, the people of Kyoto flocked to the temple

simply in order to get a look at it.

We don't know exactly what the flowers looked like,

but Senkei Ikenobo did leave us some clues.