From Design to Environment:

“Art and Technology” in

Two1966 Exhibitions at the
Matsuya Department Store
Tsuji Yasutaka

Translated by Nina Horisaki-Christens with Reiko Tomii

In November 1966, when visitors standing on the busy thoroughfare of Ginza stepped
into Matsuya Department Store, few of them probably remembered that the store had
been commandeered by the Occupation Forces and served as the Tokyo Main PX (Post
Exchange) for military and occupation personnel from 1946 to 1952. Those who ascended
to Matsuya’s eighth floor encountered two exhibitions side by side when they got off the
escalator. One exhibition, to the left, Good Design, continued one of the store’s signature
cultural programs that dated back to the establishment of the “Good Design Corner”
in 1955 (fig. 18.1). A place to showcase design objects that could be used in everyday
home life, the corner featured a Good Design exhibition, organized almost annually,
to promote and make accessible the idea of modern design. That year, the exhibition
included such functional objects as plastic-made lighting devices and table calendars.
The other exhibition, to the right, From Space to Environment (Kūkan kara kankyō e),
was an art exhibition that promoted a different kind of modernity: the marriage of art
and technology (fig. 18.2).1 Subtitled An Exhibition Synthesizing Painting + Sculpture
+ Photography + Design + Architecture + Music, the exhibit decisively advocated
“intermedia,” gesturing toward the productive collaboration among practitioners of
various disciplines,2 and is considered a landmark in defining the course of 1960s art
in Japan. Indeed, once inside, the visitors saw two- and three-dimensional objects that
transcended the standard definitions of “painting” and “sculpture”—some hanging from
the ceiling, some emitting light, and some others otherwise challenging the visitors’
conventional idea of art. An ambitious goal of the organizers was to have the visitors
experience an aggregate formation defined as an “environment” that encompassed the
interior and exterior of buildings as well as the viewers.
Situated innocuously side by side, Good Design and From Space to Environment
were different from each other—more so than they might first appear to the unsuspecting

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eye—as will be demonstrated in this article.

Key to this disjuncture between the two
exhibits are two basic concepts, Design
(dezain) and Environment (kankyō). While
Design profoundly informed Good Design,
it was deemed outdated in From Space to
Environment, where instead, Environment
engendered a radical experiment. (A note
on terminology: In this essay, I have
particularized the two terms Design and
Environment by capitalizing them. Although
both “design” and “environment” are
commonly used nouns, they carry specific and
local connotations crucial to understanding
the history of art and technology in Japan.)
My aim here is to critically examine these
two concepts in their respective contexts
of the two exhibitions held concurrently
at Matsuya and demonstrate how these
two ideas allowed practitioners of various
18.1
Good Design Corner at Matsuya Department Store, disciplines to collaborate. To this end, I will
1955. Designed by Tange Kenzō and Matsumura Katsuo. also reexamine the larger concept of “art and
Reproduced from Matsuya hyakunen-shi (Hundred-Year technology,” which involved both Design
History of Matsuya Department Store), 1969: 292.
and Environment.

Of the two exhibitions, From Space to Environment has recently received more
scholarly attention.3 However, these studies tend to regard “art and technology” as medium
and period—specific to 1960s art—and the combination of “art” and “technology” is
predicated upon the incompatibility of the two categories. In contrast, I propose to
conceptualize “art and technology” as an inseparable pair. When we look at historical
studies of such diverse disciplines as architecture, craft, product design (industrial design),
printmaking, graphic design, photography, films, and videos, it is evident that art and
technology have always been associated in one way or another. Furthermore, “art and
technology” thus understood is not solely a postwar concern, but extends further back in
history. By expanding our attention beyond art history, I would like to prepare a scholarly
platform for reexamining several postwar interdisciplinary movements against the context
of rapid technological development and urbanization and thereby critically engage with
the historical narrative of the so-called “economic miracle” of 1960s Japan—a perspective
sorely missing from previous studies.4

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18.2
From Space to Environment, an exhibition view at the Matsuya Department Store, 1966. Exhibition design by Isozaki
Arata. Photo Murai Osamu; courtesy of Arata Isozaki & Associates.

My study consists of three sections. First, I begin by reexamining the meaning

of Environment as defined in From Space to Environment by looking at both primary
and secondary materials, which include archival documents, architectural drawings,
and photographs preserved by Isozaki Arata, the architect charged with creating the
exhibition design.5 The second section involves the meaning of Design as conceptualized
by the Japan Design Committee (Nihon Dezain Komittī), which was instrumental in
the establishment of the Good Design Corner at Matsuya in 1955 and its Good Design
exhibition. In the third section, in order to demonstrate the transition from Design to
Environment signaled by From Space to Environment, I will examine a major but hitherto
understudied component of the exhibition—Isozaki’s exhibition design—by drawing on
both primary and secondary materials. It is my intention to situate this study between art
and architecture, two disciplines that both embraced what is commonly termed “art and
technology” and destabilize the dichotomy of art and technology, exposing their more
fluid relationship in post-1945 histories of art and architecture.

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1. Environment (Kankyō) in From Space to Environment

The exhibition From Space to Environment was organized by Environment Society
(Enbairamento no Kai), and held on Matsuya’s eighth floor in 1966, during the week of
November 11-16. Its key concept kankyō (environment), was subsequently associated with
Kankyō geijutsu (Environment Art) and closely tied to a type of intermedia as practiced
at Expo ’70 and opposed by anti-Expo artists and critics. A special supplementary issue
of Bijutsu techō (Art notebook) (November 1966) served as the exhibition catalogue.6
(Hereafter, this issue will simply be referred to as BT, with relevant page numbers offered
in text enclosed in parentheses, if any.) In conjunction with the exhibition, a Happenings
program, under the same title, was held at Sōgetsu Kaikan Hall on November 14. The
roster included such Fluxus members/affiliates as Shiomi Mieko and Takemitsu Tōru,
who advocated a similar intermedia approach.
The complex project began when Matsuya’s event manager Kobayashi Atsumi,
accompanied by graphic designer Fukuda Shigeo and others, approached art critic
Takiguchi Shūzō, following the exhibition Persona, held at Matsuya exactly one year prior
to From Space to Environment.7 Persona was a group exhibition conceived by graphic
designers belonging to the Japan Advertising Art Club (Nihon Senden Bijutsu Kyōkai),
which sought to transcend the stereotyped definition of graphic design. Kobayashi and
Fukuda wanted to continue their innovative programing and they asked Takiguchi to
plan an interdisciplinary exhibition. Environment Society was essentially formed for the
purpose of organizing the exhibition and its 11 core members included Takiguchi and
critics Tōno Yoshiaki and Nakahara Yūsuke. As indicated in Table 1,8 these 11 members
all participated in the exhibition. The three critics participated as “human displays,”
in Isozaki’s annotation, serving as exhibition guards.9 The total number of exhibition
participants totaled 38, including 25 other members, plus 3 who were added close to
the opening of the exhibition. Among the organizing members, Isozaki was responsible
for exhibition design and has left a trove of archival documents that has been vital to
reconstructing the exhibition for this study.
Two other organizing members worth noting are Tōno Yoshiaki and Yamaguchi
Katsuhiro. A prolific exhibition organizer, Tōno has often been misattributed as the
organizer of From Space to Environment. He curated Color and Space/Shikisai to kūkan at
Minami Gallery a month prior to From Space to Environment (September 26-October 13,
1966). Between the two exhibitions, two practitioners overlapped: Isozaki and Yamaguchi.
A former member of the 1950s multimedia collective Jikken Kōbō/Experimental
Workshop, Yamaguchi was at the forefront of incorporating the term “art and technology”
in his practice, leaving numerous first-person accounts and observations about this issue.
He functioned as the originator of “media art” at the University of Tsukuba.
Environment Society was a gathering of cultural practitioners with differing
ideas. Accordingly, the meaning of Environment varied from person to person, as did
the place from which each derived their ideas. In the spectrum of the various meanings

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Table 1
Environment Society: 38 Participants in From Space to Environment
Alphabetically ordered in each category

Organizing Members/Participants
Name Primary area of practice
Akiyama Kuniharu music
Awazu Kiyoshi graphic design
Fukuda Shigeo graphic design
Isozaki Arata architecture
Ichiyanagi Toshi music
Katsui Mitsuo graphic design
Nagai Kazumasa graphic design
Nakahara Yūsuke art criticism
Takiguchi Shūzō art criticism
Tōno Yoshiaki art criticism
Yamaguchi Katsuhiro fine art
Other Participants
Izumi Shin’ya industrial design
Itō Takamichi industrial design
Ihara Michio fine art
Imai Norio fine art
Enomoto Takemi fine art
Hara Hiroshi architecture
Kikunami Jōji fine art
Kobashi Yasuhide fine art
Matsuda Yutaka fine art
Miki Tomio fine art
Miyawaki Aiko fine art
Nakazawa Ushio fine art
Narahara Ikkō photography
Sakamoto Masaharu fine art
Tada Minami fine art
Takamatsu Jirō fine art
Tanaka Ikkō graphic design

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Other Participants (cont.)

Tanaka Shintarō fine art
Tanaka Fuji fine art
Tōmatsu Shōmei photography
Tomura Hiroshi industrial design
Yokoo Tadanori graphic design
Yokosuka Noriaki photography
Yoshimura Masunobu fine art
Participants (assumed to be added later)
Ay-O fine art
Kimura Tsunehisa graphic design
Ōtsuji Kiyoji photography

of “environment,” a kind of consensus was eventually presented in BT, culminating in

the text “From Space to Environment: Our Mission” (p. 118). However, far more telling
is the visual spread that appears in BT (pp. 5-90), which is divided into three themes:

Response (taiō 対応)

Mechanism (shikake 仕掛)
Experience (taiken 体験)

Notably, there is a set of preparatory documents relating to these themes, handwritten

by Isozaki on business letterhead as a record of the discussion among the organizing
members of Environment Society, in Isozaki’s archives. One of the pages lists these three
themes and the names of the artists, both Japanese and non-Japanese, whose works were
deemed to correspond to the theme (fig. 18.3).10 The column “Experience” includes Lucio
Fontana and Nam June Paik; highlighting “feeling” and “speed” (as noted in the margin),
“Experience” also includes John Cage and Fluxus, as well as Isozaki himself and Hara
Hiroshi, the two architect participants in the exhibition. “Mechanism” encompasses
two kinetic artists, Jean Tinguely and Heinz Mack of the German group Zero, as well as
Archigram and the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Alexander Calder is grouped under
“Response,” together with Robert Morris, the composer Iannis Xenakis, and the sculptor
Niki de Saint Phalle. These names prompt us to speculate on the dynamics among the
organizers. A marked interest in works incorporating movement and light is most likely
to have been embraced by Nakahara, who came afresh from his European trip around
this period, while the inclusion of such names as Morris may point to Tōno’s familiarity
with American art. In the end, the exhibition presented only Japanese artists, but the list

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18.3 18.4
Preparatory documents for From Space to Environment, ca. 1966. Courtesy of Arata Isozaki & Associates.

of Western names associated with developments especially in Europe and New York
suggests the approach of the organizing members in the early stages of planning. Another
document repeats these three ideas, pairs them with synonyms, and offers an additional
theme pairing (fig. 18.4).11

Experience (taiken 体験) / Participation (sanka 参加)

Apparatus (sōchi 装置) / Mechanism (shikake 仕掛)
Relationship (kankei 関係) / Response (taiō 対応)
Minus (mainasu マイナス) / Emptiness (kyo 虚)

The organizers subsequently adopted the three themes of “Response,” “Mechanism,” and
“Experience,” which appeared under the title “environment→対応 仕掛 体験,” published
in a section of BT credited to graphic designer Awazu Kiyoshi, music critic Akiyama
Kuniharu, and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro (pp. 5-90). Each section is prefaced by a brief
statement, followed by a compilation of photographs of both exhibition and non-exhibition
works in an associative manner. For example, under “Response,” two images of water
are placed side by side: one is by Awazu (shown in the exhibition), and one by landscape
architect Lawrence Halprin (not shown in the exhibition) (fig. 18.5). One spread under

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“Mechanism” juxtaposes Calder’s mobile

and whirlwind chairs at an amusement
park, while under “Experience,” Frederick
Kiesler’s Endless House (1947–1960)
is accompanied by Ichiyanagi Toshi’s
Graphic Score for the Field (1966), which
is described as “a blueprint for a site where
incomplete sounds meet accidentally”
(p. 75).
It should be noted that the visual
compilation was part of an effort to help
18.5 illustrate the idea of Environment that
Works of Awazu Kiyoshi and Lawrence Halprin reproduced
in the response section, Bijutsu techō (Art notebook), no. cut across the different areas of practice
275 (November 1966): 32–33. (painting, sculpture, design, architecture,
photography, music). The art historian
Midori Yoshimoto notes the varying uses
of the English word “environment” in
the exhibition statement, the Japanese
translation kankyō in the exhibition title
as well as in the exhibition statement, and
the katakana transliteration Enbairamento
(エンバイラメント) in the group’s name.12
Although the interchangeability in
usage is clear, there was one more word
the organizing members considered,
discovered in a handwritten draft for press
release in blueprint that was also found in
Isozaki’s archives (fig. 18.6).13 This text
was subsequently published as the group’s
mission statement in BT. Compared against
Tōno’s own writings on the subject, we can
safely infer that he prepared this text on
behalf of the organizing members. Notably,
the blueprint draft demonstrates the care
the organizers took in naming their group:
the organizing body was initially listed as
“Group Environmental Art” (in katakana),
18.6
which is crossed out in red ink, with the
Handwritten blueprint press release draft for From Space new name “Environment Society” (エン
to Environment. Courtesy of Arata Isozaki & Associates. バイラメントの会) inscribed also in red.

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The spectrum of meanings for Environment points to the multiple origins of

the term and various conduits that brought it to the attention of Environment Society
members. Yoshimoto has suggested a few of these conduits: Kaprow was one shared
connection; and Ay-O, a participant of From Space to Environment, was another such
link who carried Kaprow’s use of Environment from New York to Japan, along with his
own practice. As important is Akiyama, who bridged Jikken Kōbō and Fluxus. To this
historical connection, we may add another factor: Tōno, who was familiar with New
York’s art scene. His frequent trips there certainly would have put him in contact with
Kaprow, likely his Assemblage, Environments & Happenings, published in 1966. It is
likely that Tōno adopted Kaprow’s use of “Environment Art” in his 1966 book because
he discusses kankyō geijutsu in relation to From Space to Environment in the annual of
Bijutsu techō in December 1967.14 Yet, Tōno’s actual application of Environment Art
somewhat departs from Kaprow’s in that he mostly discusses intermedia and relational
applications found in both From Space to Environment and the Montreal Expo of 1967.
The cases of both Ay-O and Tōno embody examples of “international contemporaneity,”
whereby artists in many different locales shared similar interests and practices around the
same time.15 Tōno even wanted to turn the tables around and reported back to New York
about a simultaneous Japanese development by contributing a text on From Space to
Environment to the April 1967 issue of Artforum.16 The allusion to Marshall McLuhan’s
media theory in this exhibition also points to the group’s awareness of contemporary
thought in the United States and other parts of the world.17
What, then, are the origins of Environment/kankyō? The art critic Sawaragi Noi
links kankyō to wartime and postwar architecture involving architect Tange Kenzō and
urban planner Asada Takashi, which Yoshimoto and Iguchi forcefully question in their
respective studies.18 Indeed, the notion of kankyō is far more ingrained in the history
of architecture, outside the specific uses by Tange and Asada. It is a general rubric that
refers to the “surroundings” of humans—perhaps too general to pinpoint its origins. At
the time however, its meaning was beginning to change and came to take on a more active
and interventional connotation. For example, the architecture critic Hamaguchi Ryūichi
had used the word kankyō to mean “intermedia” prior to the exhibition. In 1960, in his
study of an aerial photograph of a city taken by Futagawa Yukio titled “Unity in Design,”
Hamaguchi argued that any single architectural form could not exist autonomously in the
city. With this logic, he proposed the exploration of shared visions among architecture
and such disciplines as painting, sculpture, and industrial and graphic design.19
More specifically, Environment entered the consciousness of artists and architects
by way of a new area called “environmental design” (kankyō dezain), as clearly proclaimed
in the organizers’ mission statement in BT. The inclusion of such images as Halprin’s park
in BT’s visual compilation, attests to their interest in this area. The caption accompanying
this image bespeaks their understanding of the dynamic relationship Environment
presents. Another likely inspiration is the architecture critic Reyner Banham, who had

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just published The New Brutalism in 1966. His argument on technology, environmental
engineering, and popular culture would lead to The Architecture of the Well-Tempered
Environment, published in 1969. Both Isozaki and Hara were aware of the work of this
like-minded theorist. If not the words per se, Banham’s thinking served as a major impact
on their approach, as I will address later in this study.
It should be noted that Environment was infused with a politically complex meaning
at the time. The term “environmental design” itself became widely known in Japan when
it was employed in naming a department at the University of California at Berkeley
in 1959.20 Following their collaboration for From Space to Environment, Isozaki and
Yamaguchi adopted kankyō for their joint company name, Environmental Planning Co.,
Ltd. (Kankyō Keikaku), founded together with Usugane Kōtarō to undertake their Expo
’70 projects in January 1968.21 They were aware of the one-sided manner of exercising
power in expo-related “design” and “planning,” just as culture practitioners questioned
these terms, the most notable example being the short-lived journal Dezain hihyō/The
Design Review (1966-1970). Subsequently, Environment came to signify the interactive
relationship between the entity of planning and design and the residents and audiences
who were its recipients.
It is too simplistic to merely see the “influences” of environmental design; as in
the case of Environment Society, which was inspired by Kaprow’s Environment but
nonetheless further theorized the word and adapted it on its own terms. In particular,
Environment in the architectural sense was given singular form by Isozaki as the
exhibition designer of From Space to Environment, as will be examined in the third
section of this article.

2. Design in the Good Design Corner

To further tease out the implications of the term Environment, let us turn our eye to the
Matsuya Department Store, the venue of From Space to Environment. Since the Meiji
period (1868-1912), department stores have played an indispensable role as venues for
exhibitions in the formation of modernity, when the institutional infrastructure was still
nascent,22 a situation that continued into the postwar years. In addition to Matsuya, the
department stores Shirokiya, Takashimaya, Mitsukoshi, and Seibu also served as major
exhibition spaces. While these stores organized their own cultural programs (such as
Matsuya’s Good Design Corner), they also offered spaces to exhibitions organized
by artists and art associations, as well as architects and other groups (From Space to
Environment is one such example). Even though the institutional infrastructure for fine
art had largely been put in place with the construction of modern and contemporary art
museums, the department stores continued their cultural roles.
Among department stores in Japan, Matsuya was notable for its active engagement
with modern design. It inaugurated the Good Design Corner on November 12, 1955,

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in close association with the Japan Design Committee to promote the Good Design
movement through sales of selected objects, and thereafter, a Good Design–related
exhibition was held almost every year, with the committee’s involvement.23 The inaugural
exhibition, designed by Tange Kenzō and Matsumura Katsuo, presented items for daily
use such as electrical appliances, kitchen utensils, and furniture that were “devoid of
unnecessary flare and excess” and thus “mass producible” and “inexpensive.”24
The Japan Design Committee was founded in October 1953.25 The 12 founding
members included practitioners not only in architecture and industrial design but also
photography and criticism; three served as advisors, including one non-Japanese,
Charlotte Perriand (see Table 2). The committee’s name was changed to the “Good Design
Committee” in 1959, prior to the 1960 Word Design Conference, the organization of which
it contributed to significantly. In 1963, the committee adopted the current name Japan
Design Committee (hereafter JDC). In its history to date, JDC has promoted Good Design

Table 2
Japan Design Committee: Founding Members and Advisers
Alphabetically ordered in each category

Founding Members

Name Primary area of practice

Hamaguchi Ryūichi architectural criticism
Ishimoto Yasuhiro photography
Kamekura Yūsaku graphic design
Katsumi Masaru design criticism
Kenmochi Isamu industrial design
Okamoto Tarō fine art
Seike Kiyoshi architecture
Takiguchi Shūzō art criticism
Tange Kenzō architecture
Yanagi Sōri industrial design
Yoshizaka Takamasa architecture
Watanabe Riki industrial design
Advisers

Charlotte Perriand industrial design

Maekawa Kunio architecture
Sakakura Junzō architecture

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and offered opportunities for artists and architects alike, regardless of their professional
specializations, to engage in international debates.26 Its inaugural manifesto proclaimed:

Fine art, design, and architecture are mutually inseparable components within the
human endeavor to seek “good forms” of the era. These media are often seen as
isolated, opposing activities, but their areas of specialization and differentiation
can only be discerned when viewed within the total progress of human civilization.
We reject misunderstanding, prejudice, dogmatism toward others that specialists
are prone to.
We—architects, designers, and artists—hereby reaffirm the necessity of
collaboration for the sake of human civilization on a global scale.27

Interdisciplinarity was not rare in postwar Japan. Prior to the foundation of JDC, some
members were active in collectives that defied the boundaries of fine art, architecture,
and literature to achieve a “synthesis of the arts” (geijutsu no sōgō). Such groups
included Yoru no Kai (Night Society), a short-lived group founded in 1948 around the
literary critic Hanada Seiki and artist Okamoto Tarō, and Shin Seisaku Kyōkai (New
Production Association), an association of painters founded in 1936 that added divisions
of architecture in 1949. (The original members of the architecture division were Okada
Tetsurō, Taniguchi Yoshirō, Maekawa Kunio, Yoshimura Junzō, Tange Kenzō, and Ikebe
Kiyoshi, who were chosen by Yamaguchi Bunzō, an architect who established the division
together with painter Inokuma Gen’ichirō).28
The Good Design Corner at Matsuya
was an emulation of the Good Design
exhibitions at the Museum of Modern
Art, New York (MoMA), organized by
the museum’s curators Edgar Kaufmann,
Jr., Arthur Drexler, and Greta Daniel from
1950 onward.29 It should be noted that the
MoMA exhibitions displayed not only
Western design objects such as furniture,
household utensils, tableware, and textile
goods, but also Japanese zaisu (legless
chairs for seating on the floor), ceramics,
and paper lanterns (fig. 18.7). MoMA
18.7 demonstrated great interest in Japanese
Good Design, an exhibition view at The Museum of culture at the time: in addition to Good
Modern Art, New York, November 27, 1951–January Design, the museum organized Japanese
27, 1952. Exhibition curated by Edgar Kaufman, Jr.;
exhibition design by Finn Juhl. MoMA Exhs., 494.5 MoMA
Exhibition House (Japanese House in
Archives, NY. the Garden), Twentieth Century Design,

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and Visionary Architecture.30 JDC imported back to Japan, as it were, MoMA’s Good
Design exhibitions in the form of the Good Design Corner at Matsuya. I will argue
that this represents an effort on the part of the committee to Japanize the term “Good
Design” as a katakana transliteration. Moreover, the Good Design Corner served as a
de facto headquarters for the aspiring movement that encompassed practitioners from
various fields. Furthermore, I contend that the standard of “good”—arguably an implied
synonym of “modern,” just like the modern coinage of bijutsu, or “fine art”— was an
equally urgent issue across the fields of artistic expression, including art and architecture.
In other words, a decade prior to Environment Society, the JDC sought to demonstrate
the industrialization and modernization of the city in postwar Japan at the very site of
Matsuya, in the form of Good Design from the viewpoint of Euro-America (in this
instance, especially America)—in an act of international contemporaneity.
Art critic Takiguchi Shūzō is situated in the intersection of the JDC and Environment
Society. Reflecting his broad intellectual engagement, Takiguchi authored a considerable
amount of criticism on industrial design and graphic design especially in the 1950s.31 He
was an important presence in JDC who bridged the arts, along with Hamaguchi Ryūichi
and Katsumi Masaru (fig. 18.8). More notably, Takiguchi’s presence signals a possible
parallel between the JDC and Environment Society. In past studies, it is generally accepted
that a chronological arc spans from Jikken Kōbō, an interdisciplinary collective that
Takiguchi mentored, via the From Space to Environment exhibition in which Takiguchi
was involved, to Expo ’70, under the rubric of “art and technology.” It is my contention
that these ideas are also an integral part of JDC’s philosophy. In advocating Good
Design, the JDC in effect sought to affirm the material fact of technology in daily life:
primarily, industrialization through the standardized mass production of everyday items
made of iron, glass, aluminum, plastics, and synthetic resins. The name that the Good
Design Corner at Matsuya gave this endeavor was Design. In other words, under the
name of Design, it aimed to deploy technology as a means to synthesizing the arts and
called for interdisciplinary collaboration among artists and architects. In this sense, the
problematic of “art and technology” is contained in that of “expression and technology,”
which was a latent but crucial message of Good Design.

3. From Design to Environment

This historical overview of the Japan Design Committee (JDC) and its Good Design
exhibition series brings us back to From Space to Environment, which pursued the idea
of a “synthesis of the arts.” A key figure to examine in this regard is Isozaki Arata, who
was an organizing member of Environment Society and was charged with the exhibition
design. Apart from the aforementioned study by Yoshimoto, which touches upon Isozaki’s
role,32 this has been a largely understudied element of the exhibition, in part because
the complexity of each of the 38 works on display alone overwhelms serious research
efforts. In this respect, Yoshimoto’s study is exemplary in that she adopts “interactivity”

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18.8
Japan Design Committee members (from left: Hamaguchi Ryūichi, Katsumi Masaru, and Okamoto Tarō), selecting Good
Design items at the Gendai Geijutsu Kenkyūjo/Institute of Esthetic Research (at Okamoto Tarō’s house and studio) on
August 27, 1957. Photo courtesy of Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki.

as a guiding principle of her examination. Yet, the works alone did not make for “a
more dynamic and chaotic Environment that completely encompasses the viewers and
the work,” as the Environment Society proclaimed in their mission statement in BT.
In a sense, the exhibition itself can be seen as an Environment orchestrated through
exhibition design.
Nowhere else is this more evident than in the corridor-like space that Isozaki
created, where he strategically sited several works. Needless to say, this corridor,
nicknamed “Dark Room” (anshitsu), is not listed in the exhibition checklist found
in his archives, which he used to keep track of the 38 participants, their diverse works,
and installation requirements (which included approximately 18 spotlights, an infrared
lamp, and black light; three sets of audio equipment, some electronic; a motor, three
projectors, and one cooling fan).33 Nor is it noted in the floor plan published in BT,
which is accompanied by a list of participants. Numbers assigned to the participants,
from 1 to 38, identify the location of their works in the floor plan, and these numbers

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were also used in the exhibition.34 In BT

as well, no number is assigned to the
corridor, but it is shaded to indicate its
darkened state.35
The darkened corridor is noted in a
floor-plan drawing Isozaki published in the
April 1967 issue of the magazine Kenchiku/
Architecture, A Monthly Journal, when
the journal ran Isozaki’s exhibition design
as part of its long-standing presentation
of exhibition designs by architects.36 As
a record of the exhibition display, this
document serves as the definitive version
in which some mistakes in the BT floor plan
are corrected. Unlike the neat architectural
plans drafted by mechanically assisted
hand drawing for the exhibition found in
his archives, the Kenchiku floor plan is
freely and crudely sketched by hand, and
each work is annotated in free-form verse,
18.9 following the creator’s name (fig. 18.9).
Isozaki Arata, annotated drawing of From Space For example, the first entry from the right
to Environment, 1967. Reproduced from Kenchiku/
Architecture, A Monthly Journal (April 1967): 97.
reads: “Movable, overlapping panels by
NAGAI, YOKOSUGA [sic], TANAKA
IKKO, YOKOO. Illuminated by a cluster
of discharge tubes, Koshimaki Osen begins to back bend.” Here, Isozaki describes the
display of posters by these graphic designers, whose inclusion (Nagai Kazumasa, Tanaka
Ikkō, and Yokoo Tadanori) connects the exhibition to the Persona exhibition one year
before. The posters themselves are two-dimensional objects like paintings or photos, but
the presentation method in this instance was anything but conventional, for the visitors
were required to slide the panels to examine each work. (Koshimaki Osen, or Osen with
an underskirt, refers to Yokoo’s iconic poster for the underground play by Kara Jūrō.)
Three annotations, which do not give the artist’s name along the corridor situated
to the back of the exhibition hall, read:

The chromatic entrance to a labyrinth. The floor and ceiling will move closer to
you, compressing you.

A small path in a cheerful ghost house. Please make your way through it.

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Tsuji Yasutaka

When you peek out from the round window, you will see an amusement park. At
the end of your sight line is a dining table in warped perspective.

18.10
Sections of “Dark Room” drawings showing the shifting floor level. Left: October 25, 1966; right, undated. Courtesy of
Arata Isozaki & Associates.

These annotations—along with the Kenchiku drawing, architectural drawings found in

Isozaki’s archives (fig. 18.10) and additional photographs found in the photographer
Murai Osamu’s archives—help us understand the nature of the “Dark Room.” The ceiling
gradually descends in its entrance area, while the floor eventually ascends like a slope
to the height of 600 millimeters, or roughly 2 feet, inciting in the viewer a sensation
of being compressed. The raised floor, although totally unnecessary for a conventional
exhibition of paintings and sculptures, is an ingenious device for hiding the electric cords
essential to power the intermedia works. Progressing on the sloping corridor, visitors
experienced a series of shifts in the level of the floor. Pressing forward, along the way
they encountered small chambers and open areas where the organizing members of
Environment Society placed various works. After a relatively large room on the right that
contained works by two graphic designers, Fukuda Shigeo and Kimura Tsunehisa, on the
left a small enclosure was devoted to photographer Tōmatsu Shōmei’s installation, No.
24,37 in which the spectator was asked to stand on “footprints drawn on a slightly reclining
floor” to gaze at “a white space that shuts you in” (fig. 18.11). Walking further, visitors
found a round window at the end of the corridor, before it turned right. An “amusement
park” seen beyond the window, consisted of the sculptor Tanaka Shintarō’s “heart-shaped
color sculpture; a fluorescent-colored yajirobei (balancing toy) that envelops the viewer,”
Awazu Kiyoshi’s “crawling graphics,” and Itō Takamichi’s “three exquisitely produced
rotating towers; a measuring instrument of your rotating capacities,” among other works.
Farther away, against the end wall, was Takamatsu Jirō’s work, a “dining table in warped
perspective,” titled Dining Table That Contains Distance in Itself (later renamed Chairs
and Table in Perspective) (fig. 18.12). Continuing to the right, was Tanaka Fuji’s room
in which “vibrations a spectator made were turned into an optical world” at the end
of the corridor. Then, coming out of Tanaka’s room, one found suspended on the left
Isozaki’s Architectural Space, an “architecture model in color” of Fukuoka Sōgō Bank’s
Oita Branch.38 The finale of “Dark Room” was Yamaguchi Katsuhiro’s Port, a sculpture
described as “light-emitting and transparent components that create rotating light signals;
only the presence of light can be perceived in the darkness.”

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 Tsuji Yasutaka

Isozaki’s engagement with the

exhibition design for From Space to
Environment would evolve into his Electric
Labyrinth, an installation he created for the
1968 Milan Triennale, and inform his role
at the Festival Plaza of Expo ’70. But it
should be noted here that Isozaki implicitly
envisioned the exhibition itself as multiple
Environments (i.e., works contributed by
the participants). Although not listed on
the checklist, “Dark Room” was more an
explicit manifestation of his concept of
Environment, creating a peep hole, tunnels,
and nested chambers and thus soliciting a
variety of activities from the spectator. In
other words, with “Dark Room” he opened
up “(en)closed space.”
As Isozaki himself characterized it,
“Dark Room” was like an amusement-park
funhouse. And many of its works, as can
be understood from his annotations in his
18.11
Tōmatsu Shōmei, No. 24, 1966. Reproduced from Kamera
Kenchiku drawing, possessed a funhouse
jidai/Camera Age (January 1967): 74. quality. This was a chance for Isozaki
and the other exhibition organizers to
turn Matsuya shopping customers into an
audience who would see in their exhibit
a similar quality that could be found in
the everyday objects presented at the
neighboring exhibition Good Design.
They capitalized on this potential by
taking advantage of the venue not being
an art museum but a department store, and
used it as an alternative site to reexamine
and transcend the rigid taxonomy of
painting, sculpture, photography, design,
architecture, and music. As they asserted
18.12
in their mission statement, Environment
Takiguchi Shūzō standing beside Takamatsu Jirō’s work,
titled Dining Table That Contains Distance in Itself (later Society staunchly opposed the long-
renamed Chairs and Table in Perspective). Photo Hanaga held modern ideal of a “synthesis of the
Mitsutoshi; courtesy of Hanaga Tarō. arts,” as exemplified by the JDC and its

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Tsuji Yasutaka

Good Design exhibition. Thus, when Environment Society billed their exhibition in its
subtitle as An Exhibition Synthesizing Painting + Sculpture + Photography + Design
+ Architecture + Music, “synthesis” had to be differentiated from what the JDC had
done. Their mission statement reads:

Yet, we place little faith in the entrenched notion of “synthesis” that has been
asserted time and again like a mantra. “Synthesis” has too often been implemented
in a simplistic manner—akin to child’s play—in which different disciplines are
merely placed side by side, without calling into question the conventional divisions
among them. It is imperative to direct our attention to the chaotic site in which
various disciplines, each undergoing an intense self-collapse, necessarily collide
and blend together.

If the JDC’s concept of Design was rooted in modernism, which dates back to the
Bauhaus, Environment Society upheld Environment as a way to capture and respond to
the urban sensibility, which had become empty and embodied the presence of absence in
the postwar Shōwa period. In From Space to Environment, what had to be transcended
was thus neither Space nor Design. For Environment Society, Space represented stasis
and an inorganic connection of disciplinary divisionism, and Design the effort to create a
new discipline by simple-mindedly synthesizing the arts in the mode of unfulfilled modern
experiments, or worse, an obsessive attempt to continue limping after the West. Hence, in
their proposed Environment, not just practitioners but the audience also experienced an
“intense self-collapse,” as demanded by their mission statement. To achieve this goal, the
exhibition provided visitors with an experimental occasion in which they were awakened
from their passive state and invited to visualize an active and interactive relationship
with the work of art, environments, and society. Taken together, their Environment was
the answer to these goals put forth by the exhibition and served as an all-encompassing
concept for an alternative society and another kind of human interaction.

***

By way of conclusion, I would like to touch on the place of “technology” in the Good
Design Corner and From Space to Environment. While the JDC positively accepted
industrialization and the development of technology in connection with mass production
that would benefit everyday life, Environment Society engaged technology on more
than one level. Some exhibition reviewers of From Space to Environment, who saw
so-called technological determinism (i.e., technology determining the course of society
and history) in the profuse deployment of electric cords, gave a negative assessment of
the participants’ application of technology in the field of art. Still, in utilizing electrics
and electronics in their work, Environment Society creatively extracted “Response,”

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 Tsuji Yasutaka

“Mechanism,” and “Experience” as three phases of Environment, thereby rehumanizing

the spectator as an interactive agent in the industrialized society.
To make my point clearer, I would like to return to Sawaragi Noi’s thesis on the
origins of Environment, in which he primarily views From Space to Environment within
an overarching flow, from Japan’s wartime imperialism to Expo ’70. This, I argue, is too
one-dimensional because he connects the exhibition to Expo ’70, as well as to such ideas
as imperialism and technocentrism, which are closely related to Expo ’70. As I have
outlined above, the idea of technology as understood by JDC greatly differed from that by
Environment Society. Inserting JDC into the discussion of Environment and Design, and
by extension “art and technology,” allows for a closer and more accurate reading of history.
Ultimately, what was at stake was the nature of design. For example, the drama
critic Yamazaki Masakazu held the misguided belief that artists should return to the realm
of painting through craftsmanship, which he hoped to see realized in Environment Society.
This dream of his arose out of his misunderstanding of design, as can be discerned in his
claim, “A decorator (including the fine artist) often makes things out of malice, while a
designer faces the world with only good will. He is an honest missionary, educator, and
clean politician.”39 The art critic Haryū Ichirō countered in Dezain hihyō/The Design
Review: “What [Yamazaki has] said about design is an utter distortion, revealing his
ignorance. What a put down of design.”40 In contrast to Environment Society, JDC had
a clear mission that went beyond “good will.” Their mandate was to promote “good
design” sustained by mass production and functionality and bring modernization to the
everyday lives of the ordinary Japanese populace that was on par with the West.
As for Environment Society, they held a more nuanced view of technology than
the JDC, as examined in this article. In the broader context, their view of technology
can be seen to resonate with that of the architectural critic Reyner Banham, who, at the
time of the exhibition, was being read by two architects Isozaki and Hara in particular.41
Banham, who held a multivalent view of technology, had examined the role of technology
in the evolution of architecture from the viewpoint of environmental engineering in his
1969 book The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. He also regarded the
world of popular culture, and even Pop Art, as a realm in which people could interact
with technologically build environments. In their multivalent and fluid interface with
technology, Environment Society, similar to Banham, incorporated a popular dimension
that was imbued with a latent ethical sense. In essence, they proposed technology not as a
tool for the nation state to exploit (as was partly the case at Expo ’70) but as a generator
of an expansive human act that they called Environment. Accordingly, the ultimate
lesson that can be gleaned from the two exhibitions held side-by-side at the Matsuya
Department Store in 1966 is that our historical argument should not be framed rigidly
as a set of dichotomies—pro-expo or anti-expo, art or technology—but rather we must
embrace a multivalent vision for postwar visual and material culture without relying on
the framework of nation-states and the disciplinary divisionism of fine art and architecture.

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Notes

This article was first published in Environment, in addition to Yoshi- Arata, conducted by Tsuji Yasutaka
Japanese as “Kūkan kara kankyō e ten moto’s work (see Note 1), include and Nakamori Yasufumi, April 1,
ni tsuite” [A Study on From Space to Matsumoto Tōru, Sengo no Nihon 2012; interview with Hara Hiroshi,
Environment], Journal of Architecture ni okeru geijutsu to tekunorojī [Art conducted by Tsuji Yasutaka and Ken
and Planning 79 (October 2014): and technology in postwar Japan], a Tadashi Oshima, August 9, 2012,
2291–98. It was translated into Eng- report for Kaken (Grants-in-Aid for Oral History Archives of Japanese
lish by Nina Horisaki-Christens and Scientific Research), March 2007, Art (URL: www.oralarthistory.org).
presented at the PoNJA-GenKon 10th a study that focuses on Yamaguchi 6.
Anniversary Symposium (2014). The Katsuhiro; and Toshino Iguchi, “The Bijutsu techō [Art notebook], no. 275
paper has been extensively revised Pioneers of Media Art in Postwar (November 1966), special issue on
and expanded for this publication. I Japan: The Avant-Garde Group Jikken “Kūkan kara kankyō e” [From Space
thank Reiko Tomii for her devoted Kobo (Experimental Workshop),” to Environment]. Hereafter shortened
editorship. Research for this publica- in Art of Japan, Japanisms and as BT.
tion was generously supported by a Polish-Japanese Art Relations, eds. 7.
JSPS Kakenhi Grant, no. 14J10989, Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik and Kobayashi Atsumi, “Kūkan kara
16K21010 and a DNP Foundation for Jerzy Malinowski (Toruń: Polish kankyō e ten” [From Space to Envi-
Cultural Promotion Research Grant. Institute of World Art Studies and ronment], in Tenrankai no kabe no
Tako Publishing, 2012), 297–303, ana [The hole in exhibition walls]
1. an overarching narrative of postwar (Tokyo: Nihon Editā Sukūru Shup-
For the description of various works in Japanese art from Jikken Kōbō/ panbu, 2006), 110–20. Persona was
the exhibition, see Midori Yoshimoto, Experimental Workshop to the 1970 held November 12-17, 1965, while
“From Space to Environment: The Osaka Expo, routed through the From Space to Environment was held
Origins of Kankyō and the Emergence exhibit From Space to Environment. November 11-16, 1966.
of Intermedia Art in Japan,” Art Additionally, the curators of the 8.
Journal 67, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 22–45. exhibition Metabolism and the Future I have used three documents to cre-
2. City (Mori Art Museum, 2012) and ate this table: an untitled “checklist”
In this article, I have adopted the Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant- written by Isozaki during his installa-
Fluxus artist Dick Higgins’s definition Garde (The Museum of Modern tion planning that is preserved in his
of “intermedia” (“when two or more Art, New York, 2013) also introduce archives; a floor plan accompanied
discrete media are conceptually fused, previous research on the exhibit. by a list of participants in BT; and an
they become intermedia”), which 4. annotated drawing Isozaki published
differs from that of another Fluxus This viewpoint necessitates a political as “Kūkan kara kankyō e ten” [From
artist Shiomi Mieko, who has defined consideration of the cultural practices Space to Environment], Kenchiku/
it in a narrower, period-specific in 1960s Japan, a topic that has Architecture, A Monthly Journal
manner. See Higgins, “Glossary,” in been examined by KuroDalaiJee (April 1967): 97. The publication of
Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of (Kuroda Raiji) in “Seijisei no haijyo” BT was intended to coincide with the
Intermedia (Carbondale: Southern [Exclusion of politics], a section exhibition and its floor plan contains
Illinois University Press, 1984), of his book Nikutai no anākizumu: a few mistakes and changes, some but
137–39; Shiomi, “Intāmedia no 1960 nendai Nihon bijutsu ni okeru not all of which Isozaki corrected in
gainen” [The concept of intermedia], pafōmansu no chika suimyaku his Kenchiku/Architecture drawing. I
in Furukusasu to wa nanika [What [Anarchy of the body: Undercurrents have confirmed, for example, that the
is Fluxus?] (Tokyo: Film Art-sha, of performance art in 1960s Japan] works of Hara Hiroshi and Ichiyanagi
2005), 127–30. By drawing on (Tokyo: Grambooks, 2010). Toshi are misplaced in the floor plan
Higgins’s definition, I hope to address 5. published in BT, by comparing it
“intermedia,” along with its sister These materials are housed at Arata against the installation photographs.
concept “art and technology,” in a Isozaki & Associates. Interviews I 9.
truly multidisciplinary manner that conducted with Isozaki Arata and Isozaki, annotation in the Kenchiku/
encompasses the concept of design. Hara Hiroshi also serve as important Architecture drawing.
3. background information. See Oral 10.
Other studies of From Space to History Interview with Isozaki An untitled handwritten document

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 Tsuji Yasutaka

annotated “14th, 1 o’clock” at top Shuppansha, 2005), 261–68. dezain wa dōshite erabareru ka”
right, Arata Isozaki & Associates 19. [How are Good Design objects
papers. H a m a g u c h i Ry ū i c h i , “ D e z a i n selected?], Geijutsu Shinchō [Arts
11. shobunya no rentaisei”/“Unity in Shinchō] (December 1957): 114–27.
An untitled handwritten sheet with Design” in Kenchiku nenkan/Annual Other members (Kōno Takashi,
the heading “Toshiteki kankyō” of Architecture in Japan ’60 (Tokyo: Tange Kenzō, Maekawa Kunio,
(Urban environment), Arata Isozaki Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1960), 24–32. Yanagi Sōri, Yoshizaka Takamasa,
& Associates papers. 20. and Yoshimura Jūnzō) were absent
12. Further research is necessary on from this roundtable.
Yoshimoto, “From Space to Environ- how UC Berkeley’s Department 24.
ment: The Origins of Kankyō and of Environmental Design became “Muda ga nakute benri: Guddo
the Emergence of Intermedia Art in well known in Japan, but Isozaki dezain tenjikai kara” [No waste and
Japan,” 26. spoke of this in one of the informal convenient: From the Good Design
13. conversations I had with him. exhibition], Yomiuri shinbun, morning
“Kūkan kara kankyō e” [From Space 21. edition (November 21, 1955), 5.
to Environment], a blueprint press Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, “Chronology,” 25.
release draft, Arata Isozaki & Associ- Yamaguchi Katsuhiro 360° (Tokyo: Watanabe Riki, “Nihon Dezain
ates papers. Rikuyōsha, 1981), 38. Komittī shōshi” [A brief history of the
14. 22. Japan Design Committee], in Nihon
Tōno Yoshiaki, in Akiyama Kuniharu, Of particular note is Younjung no kindai dezain undō shi [The history
Isozaki Arata, Tōno Yoshiaki, Oh’s study of art exhibitions held of the modern design movement
Tomatsu Shōmei, Fukuda Shigeo, at department stores from Meiji in Japan], ed. Japan Industrial Arts
and Yoshimura Masunobu, “Kankyō into the prewar Shōwa period. See Foundation (Tokyo: Perikansha,
kara X e” [From Environment to X], Younjung Oh, “Shopping for Art: The 1990), 37–40.
Bijutsu techō, no. 292 (December New Middle Class’ Art Consumption 26.
1967): 56–58. in Modern Japanese Department Kenmochi Isamu, “Kokusai dezain
15. Stores,” Journal of Design History kaigi shusseki no Kenmochi ishō
For international contemporaneity, 27 (4): 351-69. Although not studies bucho kara”/“Kenmochi’s Letter
see Reiko Tomii, “Introduction to of Japanese department stores in from Aspen,” Kōgei āto nyūsu/In-
‘International Contemporaneity’ and particular, also important are two dustrial Art News (August 1953): 39;
‘Contemporary Art,’” in Radicalism studies on the collaboration of the Kenmochi Isamu, “Kokusai dezain
in the Wilderness: International Museum of Modern Art in New kaigi ni shusseki shite” [Attending
Contemporaneity and 1960s Art York with the Merchandise Mart the international design conference],
in Japan (Cambridge: MIT Press, in Chicago to mount the landmark Bijutsu hihyō [Art criticism] (Septem-
2016), 11–44. Good Design exhibition. See Mary ber 1953): 13.
16. Anne Staniszewski, “Installations 27.
Yoshiaki Tōno, “Japan,” Artforum for Good Design and Good Taste,” Katsumi Masaru, “Guddo dezain
(April 1967): 71–73. in The Power of Display: A History of undo to komittī”/“Good Design
17. Exhibition Installations at the Museum Movement and Japan Design
Tōno Yoshiaki, “Kūkan kara kankyō of Modern Art (Cambridge: MIT Committee,” in Dezain no kiseki
e” [From Space to Environment]; Press, 1998); and Felicity D. Scott, [Trajectory of Japanese design], ed.
Oomae Masaomi, Gotō Kazuhiko, “From Industrial Art to Design: The Japan Design Committee (Tokyo:
Sato Takeshi, eds., Makurūhan: sono Purchase of Domesticity at MoMA, Shōten Kenchiku-sha, 1977), 9/16.
hito to riron [Marshall McLuhan: A 1929-59,” Lotus International, no. 97 The quote is translated from Japanese
man and his idea] (Tokyo: Daikōsha, (1998): 134–53. by Reiko Tomii for this essay.
1967), 275–76. 23. 28.
18. Ishimoto Yasuhiro, Itō Kenji, Okamoto “Shin-Seisaku 50-nen gaishi III” [A
For Sawaragi’s argument, see Tarō, Katsumi Masaru, Kamekura chronological outline of Shin-Seisaku
Sawaragi Noi, “Kankyō no kigen” Yūsaku, Kenmochi Isamu, Sakakura 3], in Shin-Seisaku 50-nen [Fifty
[The origin of kankyō], section in Junzō, Seike Kiyoshi, Takiguchi years of the Shin-Seisaku] (Tokyo:
Sensō to banpaku [World Wars Shūzō, Hamaguchi Ryūichi, Hara Bijutsu Shuppan Design Center,
and World Fairs] (Tokyo: Bijutsu Hiromu, and Watanabe Riki, “Guddo 1986), 151–56.

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29. archives, the work of each participant Gakkai Association of the Study of
It should be noted, however, that (from Row 1 through Row 38) is Modern Art History, The University
MoMA explored the idea of “good annotated by, in this order: placement of Tokyo (September 10, 2016).
design” through its exhibition on wall/floor/hanging/room, etc., 37.
programs from the 1940s. See Tsuji measurements, light sources, color For this work, see Tōmatsu Shōmei,
Yasutaka, “Junkai suru dezain: 20-seiki and material, sound, and other notes. “No. 24,” 71–77.
no dezain ten to 20th Century Design 34. 38.
ten ni kansuru kōsatsu” [Circulating For example, one installation photo- Isozaki Arata, “Konpō sareta kankyō”
design: Twentieth Century Design graph shows Hara Hiroshi’s Square [The wrapped environment], Kenchiku
exhibitions in Tokyo and New York, (later renamed The World of Porous bunka [Architecture culture] (March
Summaries of Technical Papers of Objects), with “30” prominently 1968): 54.
the Annual Meeting for Architectural placed to its left. See Hara Hiroshi, 39.
Institute of Japan (Sapporo: Hokkaido “Paneru Yūkotai no sekai” [Panel of Yamazaki Masakazu, “Zōkei geijutsu:
University, 2013), 973–74. World of Porous Objects], Kokusai gendaijin ni wa nani ga mieru ka”
30. kenchiku/The International Architec- [Fine art: What can we living in
Yasutaka Tsuji, “Too Far East is West: ture (January 1967): 102. contemporary times see?], Chūō
The Visionary Architecture Exhibition 35. koron (January 1967): 356–63.
as a Background to Metabolism,” With these numbers, we would expect 40.
East Asian Architectural History there to have been a checklist distrib- Haryū Ichirō, “Jiko hōkai no shinwa:
Conference 2015 Proceedings (Seoul: uted at the exhibition venue. Tōmatsu Kūkan kara kankyō e ten hihyō”
EAAC 2015 Organizing Committee, recalls some sort of handout in [The myth of self-collapse: An
2015), 827–32. Tōmatsu Shōmei, “No. 24,” Kamera exhibition review of From Space
31. jidai/Camera Age (January 1967): 71. to Environment], Dezain hihyo/The
For example, Takiguchi Shūzō, 36. Design Review, no. 2 (March 1967):
“Dezain to āto no jūjiro de”/“The The study of exhibition design is an 12–14.
crossroads of design and art,” Living important subject for further research, 41.
Design, no. 1 (October 1957): 120–21. as I have demonstrated in my paper, In 1976, when the Japanese translation
32. Tsuji Yasutaka, “Tenji kūkan no naka of Banham’s Theory and Design in
Yoshimoto, “From Space to Environ- no gendai no me: Kokuritu Kindai the First Machine Age (1960) was
ment: The Origins of Kankyō and Bijutsukan no kaijō sekkei ni tsuite” published as Dai-ichi kikai jidai no
the Emergence of Intermedia Art in [Today’s focus on display: Exhibition riron to dezain, trans. Ishihara Tatsuji
Japan,” 38. design at the National Museum of and Masunari Takashi (Tokyo: Kajima
33. Modern Art in Tokyo], conference Shuppankai, 1976), Hara served as
In an untitled checklist in Isozaki’s paper delivered at Meiji Bijutsu an editor.

296 REVIEW OF JAPANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY 2016