Customer Reviews

The Japanese Home Stylebook: Architectural Details and Motifs

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a wonderful book for anyone wanting to decorate their home or yard in the Japanese style. It is packed with 1,800 black & white illustrations of Japanese architectural elements.

The book starts out by describing the design elements of a traditional Japanese home. It is then divided into sections including screens, fusuma sliding panels, windows, doors, transoms, ceilings, tokonoma, & shelves.

Outdoor elements such as fences, railings, verandas, & stone-paths are also covered. Decorative patterns including family crests, woven & lattice designs are shown along with fusuma paper designs.

Being able to see so many design ideas a once has really been a big help in planning my new home. Everything is so beautiful. I especially like the transoms with images of nature such as cranes, fish & flowers.

Collection of clear drawings illustrating design elements, spatial composition (empty space as important as solid material) instructive for artisans searching to solve design problems, or merely for inspiration in initiating a project.

Not a DIY text, rather a compact orderly selection of drawn images to stimulate creativity within the realm of your own talents and expertise. How you apply the ideas rests solely on what develops in your own mind as a result of viewing graphic beauty before you.

To view materials and design in context with discussion of visual choices and application, see the Special Feature discs of the movies: The Last Samurai (Two-Disc Special Edition), Memoirs of a Geisha (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition), and James Clavell's Shogun.

Descriptions of the impact of ritual, environment, art to meaning of life and culture: DVD Departures, book A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance.

I have turned to this book for inspiration when designing interiors, cabinetry, furniture, fabric and landscape design, even graphic design. It is so flexible and easy to use. A good tool.

Saburo Yamagata (1911-1986) was a graduate of Kobe University, Japan, and a practicing architect. He drew from more than 1,800 designed from traditional Japanese homes to create The Japanese Home Style Book, a seminal reference for architects, designers, builders and home remodelers. Covering every element of traditional Japanese architectural design, the entries are systematically arranged for quick reference and easy of use. Included are paper-and-wood shoji screens; fusma sliding panels; door and window designs; tatami mat arrangements; decorated ceilings; latticed and carved transoms; tokonoma scroll alcoves; "staggered shelf" layouts; outdoor verandas and railings; garden fences and screens; as well as stepping-stone paths; decorative patterns and motifs for every purpose. The Japanese Home Style Book is a seminal contribution to professional and academic Architectural Studies and reference resource collections.

Good quality printing of good quality designs. I used it for reference when designing custom book shelves.

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (4/07)


If your tastes run to something simple, but not austere, or if you simply love great design, do yourself a favor and get a copy of Saburo Yamagata's "The Japanese Home Stylebook." This is a visually stunning book, which will certainly be able to provide numerous ideas to anybody who is involved in design, home remodeling or interior decoration. Even architects and builders should be able to pick up many ideas from it.

The book consists mainly of pictorial material although Editor Peter Goodman provided some text explaining the basics behind the Japanese residential style and its elements. Starting with a basic Introduction, the book is further divided into chapters, each dealing with one of the elements. Each chapter starts with explanation of that element, followed by numerous drawings. The elements included are: Tokonoma and Shelves, Tatami Mats and Ceilings, Transoms, Fusuma, Shoji Screens, Windows, Doors, Railings and Verandas, Garden Fences and Paths and Decorative Patterns. If the 1800+ drawings found in this book are not enough to inspire you, the last chapter lists "Other Design Sources."

I found this book to be elegant and truly inspiring. My only regret is that there are no pictures of complete, finished rooms or houses, depicting the finished product. Maybe this opens the doors even wider for reader's own creativity and imagination...

I would recommend "The Japanese Home Stylebook" for anybody who deals with design, home building, or renovations.

Book received free of charge

This book will be used by my builder for my new home. The photos are magnificent.

The display is exactly what I wanted him to learn.

As a resource manual, a coffee table book, a nice read or a pleasant browse, this is a monumental mistake. If you're looking for the old "trace pattern" books used for the most ancient of architectural renderings, this might be a useful addition to your library for an isolated use. If you're hoping for a reference to illustrate Japanese detailing, keep looking. The only thing I'll ever use this book for is to prop up the gimp leg on my unused work bench to keep my latte from spilling. In case you want mine, I'll dig it out from under my workbench, put it up for sale and replace it with my copy of "The 3 Pillars of Zen".