THOMAS DANIELL
"An Anatomy of Influence fills a significant lacuna in Japanese architectural history. Through essays and extensive interviews that presage and complement each other, the book weaves personal history with professional discourse. Its essays provide a cogent narrative arc, while the interviews bring critical events to life. Filled with powerful insights and fascinating stories, Daniell's book leaves one hungry for more." -- Lisa Hsieh, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
"Daniell sets for himself the ambitious task of understanding the cultural landscape of Japanese architectural production immediately after the Metabolist period. He does so operating as a careful detective, and in fact the gestation of the research is decades long, reconstructing the connections, dialogues, oppositions that characterized the period. The writing is elegant, fluid, and funny at times, peppered by an astounding visual apparatus that corroborates Daniell's (and not only his) hypothesis that that specific period in Japanese architectural production was one of the richest internationally. In that sense, this book constitutes the fundamental guide to navigating such territory." -- Fabrizio Gallanti, FIG Projects
"This collection of interviews, artwork, and newly-translated essays by and about 12 diverse postwar Japanese architects provides a fascinating 'oral history' of Japanese society during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when the nation's attention shifted from rebuilding from the ashes of war to finding its place in the international community. While in his previous book, After the Crash (2008), Thomas Daniell skillfully references lineages, economic conditions, legal restrictions, and architectural plans to show the productive side of the bursting the Japanese asset bubble in the late 1980s, in this book he freely explores the human side of the period in question." -- Susan Pavloska, Kyoto Journal
"Thomas Daniell's An Anatomy of Influence is really a masterpiece: original, informed, endlessly quotable and very, very well written." -- Daniel Tudor Munteanu, OfHouses
"A unique and seminal body of architectural scholarship and insights on contemporary Japanese architecture, An Anatomy of Influence is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, corporate, and college/university library Architectural History collections and supplemental curriculum architectural studies lists." -- Midwest Book Review
About the Author
Thomas Daniell is Professor of Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism at Kyoto University, Japan.
