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Horiguchi, Sutemi
(b Gifu Prefect., 6 Jan 1895). Japanese architect and writer. He studied ancient Japanese architecture under Chuta Ito at Tokyo Imperial University; he graduated in 1920 and in that year he founded the Japan Secession Group together with other students from the university including Mamoru Yamada. This was the first movement in support of modern architecture in Japan and its members were greatly influenced by Expressionism. In 1922 he obtained a master’s degree with a study of modern Western architecture and from 1923 to 1924 he travelled in Europe. Many of the works he produced after his return, for instance the Kikkawa House (1930) and the Wakasa House (1940), both in Tokyo, are statements of Rationalist architecture: white cubic designs accentuated by the horizontal lines of the eaves, they reflected his position at the leading edge of architectural theory in Japan. During this period he also taught at the Imperial Art Institute in Tokyo (1932–8) and continued his research on the traditional architecture of Japan: he received his PhD (1944) from Tokyo Imperial University with a dissertation on shoin (study; see JAPAN, §III, 4(ii)) and sukiya (tea house; see JAPAN, §XIV, 2) styles of Japanese residential architecture, and he ultimately became one of Japan’s most respected authorities on the tea house. After World War II he developed a sophisticated style of modern sukiya architecture, producing masterpieces that brought together the refinement of the shoin and the lucidity of the sukiya styles. Examples include the Emperor’s Room (1950) at Hasshyokan Hotel, Nagoya, and the Nakamise (1953; rebuilt in 1967 after a fire) at the same hotel; the ryotei or traditional restaurant (1955) at Uemura, Tokyo, and the Japanese Pavilion at the Biennale in São Paulo (1955). In 1949 Horiguchi was invited by Meiji University, Toyko, to become a founder member of its Architecture Department and he subsequently designed a long series of buildings for the university including campus buildings at Surugadai (1955–9), Izumi (1956–60) and Ikuta (1964–5). All these are finished in white and are characterized by the crispness typical of the best works of Rationalist architecture.
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