Fujiko Suda: Worklife

I used to be an archi­tect. I first returned to Japan in 1991 to try to find work as an archi­tect, but lit­tle did I know that the bub­ble was just about to burst then. Japan was one mecca for archi­tects to migrate to because of its free-for-all style of design­ing, where archi­tects could design and build things which few other places would allow. But I was too late.

I remem­ber hav­ing a job inter­view with the pres­i­dent of Obayashi Kensetsu, through an intro­duc­tion by the famous archi­tect Edward Suzuki, who is an OB from my high school. I sat ner­vously watch­ing the pres­i­dent as he perused my port­fo­lio, one project of which had been an attempt to design a Japan­ese tea house. He looked up and sneered (actu­ally sneered!), say­ing, “You for­eign­ers will never under­stand Japan­ese aes­thet­ics. You should never even attempt to try to under­stand. It is stu­pid.” Well, you can imag­ine how taken aback I was. I should have stood up and just left the office with­out a word. But me, being just a lit­tle for­eigner and he, the pres­i­dent of the sec­ond biggest con­struc­tion com­pany in japan, and me also being the polite, Japan-bred foereigner that I was, just sat there grin­ning, tak­ing it all with “gaman”. After­wards, as I stalked the Shin­juku street back to the sta­tion, I fumed, only then think­ing of a reply: “Well, Mr. Pres­i­dent, then I think you ought to stop try­ing to under­stand and design Western-style build­ings, because you obvi­ously don’t under­stand West­ern aes­thet­ics. Almost every­thing you have built is based on West­ern design con­cepts, but you, being Japan­ese, and not apply­ing Japan­ese con­cepts of aes­thet­ics to your designs, are nei­ther here nor there.” It is always futile to think of these retorts afterwards.

But I think you are right, and it is some­thing that I have spo­ken about with my Japan­ese friends and col­leagues for years… the Japan­ese need to stop always emu­lat­ing every­one else and come up with their own mea­sures. There is so much prece­dence to choose from here, and so much beauty and bal­ance. And this doesn’t mean going back to the cliches of clas­si­cal Japan­ese design (the immutable, so-called “wa-fu”) , but learn­ing to build on them and come up with some­thing new. Some places and prac­tices are begin­ning to do just that: the new sento (pub­lic baths), the Yamada Broth­ers shamisen play­ers, even the slow, but inevitable, adap­ta­tions that rural towns are tak­ing to revive their cul­tures and economies. I think the long reces­sion is a good thing for Japan. It is forc­ing peo­ple to stop being stag­nant and to rethink out­dated and inef­fi­cient prac­tices and thinking.

We gained such val­u­ble expe­ri­ence, liv­ing and work­ing in Japan after the bub­ble era, didn’t we? I used to lament the fact that I came to Japan sev­eral years too late, not happy with the fact that my salary stayed the same, regard­less of improve­ment in my work out­put (so I thought, any­way). But because we wit­nessed the fun­de­men­tal ques­tion­ing of what Japan­ese are all about, what Japan is, seen from global per­spec­tive, we seem to be in ideal posi­tions to take part in this excit­ing growth of new and real Japan.

I find it amus­ing that even though I grew up in US, my gaman part did not change while I lived in US, and I only changed after com­ing back to Japan. Well, maybe instead of really chang­ing, it’s more like learn­ing to take advan­tage of Japan­ese people’s per­cep­tion of me as an American.

Miguel, do you miss work­ing as an archi­tect? How sat­is­fy­ing does your work feels as you do your rou­tine task, as you review your work, as peo­ple use and appre­ci­ate your work, com­par­ing your cur­rent pro­fes­sion against being an architect?

It took me many years to finally over­come the guilt and doubt I felt over giv­ing up archi­tec­ture. I spent many years train­ing for the pro­fes­sion, had devel­oped a lot of ideas for what I wanted to do (mainly sus­tain­able archi­tec­ture and help­ing devel­op­ing coun­tries to build), even spent a lot of money on get­ting to where I wanted to get (I only fin­si­hed pay­ing off the bank loans this year, 17 years later), so I had a lot invested in being an archi­tect. But it was also the spe­cial nature of archi­tec­ture… a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary field that required that you learn about just about every­t­ing: soci­ety, design, physics and engi­neer­ing, plan­ning, city growth, account­ing, ecol­ogy, human psy­chol­ogy, ergonom­ics, his­tory, art, phi­los­o­phy, typog­ra­phy, sur­vey­ing, and all the spe­cific knowl­edge that you need to design build­ings accord­ing to their func­tions, like hos­pi­tals ver­sus busi­ness build­ings ver­sus air­ports. It was very excit­ing and I could think of few other pro­fes­sions quite so ver­sa­tile and actively creative.

But, apart from being a dif­fi­cult pro­fes­sion to sur­vive in just for job avail­abil­ity, there was also the cut-throat world of com­pet­ing male mem­bers with huge egos. And, for me, a pro­fes­sion that dealt in direct destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment, which is some­thing that per­son­ally I can never jus­tify; the nat­ural world is too impor­tant for me. So, I just wasn’t cut out for the profession.

I do two things right now, teach Eng­lish and write and illus­trate books. And recently a third job, design home­pages. I chose this lifestyle, mainly because the night teach­ing allows me to have the day­time off for time to work on my writ­ing and the week­ends for time to travel, get to the moun­tains that I love, and get expe­ri­ences and mate­r­ial for my writ­ing. With­out it I would have no time or incen­tive to write.

But, the Eng­lish teach­ing is get­ting very old. I’m tired of repeat­ing the same thing night after night. I love teach­ing and I love the stu­dents… I believe no one should teach unless they love to… but I also need more cre­ative and respon­si­ble input. Even­tu­ally I want to move on to my own teach­ing, on nature and eco­log­i­cal stud­ies. Teach­ing a sub­ject I love would make a huge difference.