TAAs long as I can stand on Earth, knowing consciously that I am alive, I don’t need any shelter. In one of his last poems Matsuo Basho (1644 1694) wrote: “Being ill while still on a journey/in my dream I’m still wandering around in the wilderness!” Basho was on a lifelong trip seeking for answers to life. That was his passion. If you are filled with passion like Basho you can live without objects, possessions and without a shelter.
RHSo how do you address fear?
TAI once was a boxer. Boxing can kill. I could not eat. I could not sleep. I vomited. I lived in constant fear. So I meditated. Today as an architect, I still feel fear. I can come up with great ideas, draw up wonderful plans and use them to create impressive buildings. But all that is done alone in solitude. What if the building fails? Do I get another chance? If not, what happens to my employees? As a boxer I learned that I have to decide and act on my own and take on that responsibility. In that sense, the life of a boxer and the life of an architect are similar.
RHAnd fear on a global level with conventional wars, economic wars, terrorism how would you deal with that?
TAAgain, with meditation. Federico Mayor (the former head of UNESCO) believed, too, that people of different religions could live peacefully next to each other through meditation. And that’s why I built a meditation space for UNESCO in 1995. Of course, it is impossible to create such an ideal, peaceful world right away, but meditation could be the first step. We should be aware of that, always. Meditation is everyday work, as it is for Buddhist monks or Muslims. Architects build houses, design landscapes and think about what lies beyond their designs that is a form of meditation, too.
We Japanese have this concept of jodo (in Buddhist terms, “the pure land”). Jodo is situated in the direction of the west. I designed several Buddhist temples and they all face west, as do Buddha statues, and when the sun sets it shines on them. This may be the best time for meditating.
RHYou consider American consumerism the cause of worldwide problems. Is it also the cause of Terror?
TAResistance to Americanization is one part of it. In the last fifty years, Japan, too, has changed into an Americanized society. We are mass-producing and society functions because of mass consumption. Hamburger shops, Mister Donut, drive-in stores; we have all the prerequisites of an American society. And that creates problems, because Americanization does not consider the diversity of local communities; it only considers the mutual denomination of money.
