When I first came across the Japanese advertisement posted below, the following three points were my knee-jerk reactions:
- “This looks rather like the house that the professor of German in the Kurosawa Akira’s film Madadayo (1993) lived in.”
- “Perhaps it is a modern reincarnation of Kamo no Choumei’s ten-foot square hut?”
- “Well, what would the developers of Beijing’s Palais de Fortune say to that?”

Advertisement of "Hodohodo no Ie" from the March 2009 issue of Serai, a magazine which deals with topics such as the Noh, classical Japanese literature and the traditional fine arts. "Hodohodo no Ie" means a "so-so house". The large white caption on the upper right-hand corner says (perhaps paradoxically), "the luxury that is living with fire". I am a loyal reader of this excellent magazine and buy it every month.
Palais de Fortune (财富公馆), for your information, is a recently-built gated community of 172 chateaus inspired by 18th-century French architecture in general and by the palace of Versailles in particular. You may Google around for more information and have a look at this video on their official website. Many things have been said about this residential project and I have nothing to add to those - instead I would like to concentrate on the Chinese aesthetic concept of wei mei [唯美] and the Chinese conceptualization of time in artistic styles.

Features of Palais de Fortune include catering at the clubhouse, butler and maid service, enhanced security and various amenities.
Being beautiful is a prerequisite to being considered wei mei, but wei mei refers to a very specific kind of beauty. It is not easy to explain in a straight forward way what it is because it has no English equivalent, though a good starting point would be to decide what it is not. “Hodohodo no Ie” for instance, would probably not be considered wei mei. Houses like that are like zen gardens in that the beauty lies in the austerity and restraint, which takes time to sink in and to reflect on. The beauty of zen gardens leaves wriggling room for argument if you just don’t “get” the austerity and restraint. Wei mei has no room for differing opinion - it s always obviously beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »


