Tokyo short stories

The Times' redesigned online Style section has all these great slideshow; the one entitled 'Bento Boxes' from this weekend caught my eye.

Here's the general description for the four photos: Modern or traditional, Japanese kitchens are models of efficiency. Naomi Pollock thinks small.

It's so interesting to look at these photos; it evokes a kind of coziness, yet at the same time like a map there's a whole bunch of stuff tucked in amongst the folds and crannies.

There's something about the Japanese soul I think that, out of necessity, has made a virtue out of crampness. I don't think it's there in similarly-squeezed in countries like Bangladesh, the Netherlands, or even the Swiss who always seemed to me to be living in a giant child's fort.

The Japanese seem to uniquely relish the challenge of expressing themselves materially and psychologically within the constraints of being restrained, like how people find ways to convey affection while in a hug, using your hands, or your lips, or the side of your head, or your legs, or your voice.

Maybe because they create these small, private outlets, the Japanese can then suffer so much without overtly complaining. But perhaps also why they can be such a weird country, with pornography in vending machines and kids shutting themselves in their room for years.

There are all sorts of murky things working on the Japanese psyche, and with China ascending I think it's only going to get worse for them.

But until then, they'll always have their national genius for design, and unexpected beauty within functionality. I would usually link, but there's no URL for the slideshows, just the Style page as a whole.

And since the photos seem to drop off into the ether after a few weeks, I saved them, below, along with their captions.

All photos are by the aptly-named Reinhard Hunger.

Cell structure
In Tokyo, where land can be prohibitively expensive and plots unbelievably small, flexible space and multipurpose rooms are not just design preferences but also survival techniques. In designing Cell Brick, a house for a woman in her 50's, the architect Yasuhiro Yamashita pushed this idea to a new extreme by merging the client's bedroom and kitchen. Divided by a long, wedge-shaped counter with metal dining chairs on one side and a no-frills cooktop, double sink and refrigerator on the other, the main room is used for both eating and sleeping; the bed is set apart only by a subtle floor-level change. Cell Brick's other significant space-saving device is its striking checkerboard wall system, composed of bolted steel boxes interspersed with glass inserts, some of which are movable. Combining the building's skin, structure and storage all in one, the cubbies hold stacks of dishes, small appliances and bottled condiments as well as books, clocks and plastic drawers for smaller items, completely eliminating any need for free-standing cabinets and filling the house with a patchwork of quotidian objects.

Niche editing
"I want to bring people back to the kitchen," says Misato Hamada, a 29-year-old cookbook author. Intended to lure her peers away from fast-food burgers and convenience-store bento boxes, this self-taught cook's publications feature fruit tarts and whole stuffed pumpkins (easily whipped up in a rice cooker). Like her books, Hamada's Tokyo kitchen blends traditional elements with contemporary reality. It sits on the ground floor of a three-room timber-frame home erected 50 years ago, when kitchens were bare-boned and built for efficiency. Hamada turned the compact cooking area into a cozy, storage-lined nook with a custom-built table in the middle. Tiny jars of pickled plums and other homemade delicacies are shelved on one wall; strings of dried persimmons and peppers hang from another. Teacups and rice bowls are stowed behind sliding wood screens to keep them from flying when Tokyo's all-too-frequent earthquakes occur. Sandwiched between sink and stove, the primary work space is a small counter well within reach of an artful grid of shelves where Le Creuset saucepans and clay nabe stew pots — Hamada's favorite cooking vessels — coexist amiably.

Low-tech
Just minutes from the luxury boutiques on the Omotesando boulevard in Tokyo, Toshio Tanahashi begins each day by purifying himself with buckets of cold water and then grinding sesame seeds with a mortar and pestle for two hours. "It's like meditation," explains the 45-year-old Tanahashi, who serves up an 8- and 10-course shojin ryori (Buddhist vegetarian feast) nightly at Gesshinkyo, his combined home and restaurant. Occupying a single tatami-floored room within a 30-year-old house, Gesshinkyo can be reconfigured in multiple ways thanks to sliding paper screens and folding furniture. The only fixed element is the kitchen. Although its entrance is sequestered behind a curtained doorway, the kitchen opens to the rest of the room with a long wooden counter. Divided by a raised ledge, the counter is made of pine on one side, where guests can dine, and Tanahashi's ginkgo-wood work surface on the other. Prepared entirely by hand, shojin ryori requires no electric appliances. Tanahashi's kitchen, therefore, is a treasure trove of specialized, traditional tools, like stovetop rice cookers made of iron, stacks of bamboo steamers and strainers made of horsehair for puréeing pumpkins and potatoes.

Hide and chic
To build her house in Okayama Prefecture, a professional chef and restaurateur went looking for architects with a taste for good food as well as for good design. Tezuka Architects' buildings had whetted her appetite, but it was the sublime flavor of Takaharu Tezuka's roast pork with rosemary that clinched the deal. The firm — a husband-and-wife team in Tokyo — assembled the house, known as the Floating Roof House, and swaddled it with movable window walls on all sides. It can be completely unwrapped, fully exposing the interior to the elements. Clad with oak outside and stainless steel inside, the kitchen is partly enclosed by a low wall that is wide enough to hold plates but low enough that you can reach over it and deposit dirty dishes directly into the jumbo three-faucet sink. The unusual array of cooking choices includes industrial-strength 12,000-kilocalorie burners for Chinese-style stir-fries, a built-in sumiyaki charcoal grill for fish and the Tezukas' signature wood-burning stove for baking pizzas and potatoes in the living room.