Dissecting the Danchi of Today

Abstract

This chapter proposes a practical methodology on how to collect and interpret ethnographic materials from the postwar mass-housing apartment visits in relation to factual architectural knowledge. The described fieldwork process uncovered the abnormal inability of danchi residents to verbally admit their unsatisfactory living conditions that arises from the Japanese cultural characteristic of gaman, roughly translated as “perseverance.” Despite dire living conditions, inhabitants keep repeating that they cannot imagine living a better life. Innovative interior analysis method named “Devicology” (in homage to Wajiro Kon’s “Modernology”) can help us look beyond these modest replies by detecting “devices”—intricate systems of unconventionally used furniture and smaller, less permanent objects, that are unconsciously assembled by the residents. These visually chaotic yet surprisingly functional structures are the only tool of the current dwellers to negotiate with the restricting standard apartment plans that were originally designed for a very different sector of the Japanese population. Beginning as an examination of behavior patterns in a single apartment, Devicology has the potential to become a study of the collective unconsciousness of different people stuck in the same conditions with the same set of rules.