Japanese Architecture
Beside the back porch hanging from the overhanging roof there are a few chains, which conduct rain water down into the pond. Inside usually one removes one's shoes before steeping up into the house. In an entrance to a Japanese room there are arched doorways which derives from the teahouse style. Free standing poles might support the roof to make possible deep eaves. At the paved entrance hall there might be a lattice that both screens outside view but has a design accent.
In the living area there might be a table and some chairs, with a book shelf, and a window. The roof is usually tiled. In one particular house I saw illustrated, an east wall was made up of vertical lattice and permanently set glass. Another was risen high off the ground by concrete pillars, and had a staircase coming up through the ground.
JAPANESE TEMPLES
In the entrance to a Shinto shrine there is a sort of gateway called a Torrii. This is an arch shaped gate that is made of wood beams, two rounded posts at the bottom, and a curved one at the top, rainwater slides down the curve. Buddhism came to Japan in the Asuka period, when the statue of Buddha was brought to an emperor. The new religion was not widely accepted until Buddhist monks came to Japan. By the end of the seventh century there were well over five hundred Buddhist temples in Japan. Early Buddhist temples followed the strict symmetrical rules of the Chinese Buddhist complex. A rectangular colonnade with an imposing portal in the center of the south side formed a complete enclosure. In later Buddhist the kondo was the central part of the enclosure. During the Nara period Buddhism became the official state religion. It's adoption was market by the building of the TODAI-JI. The enclosure was about 3.2 kilometres square. The hall of the great Buddha was nearly 61 metres long and was reconstructed in 1949 after a fire. The hall was dedicated about the middle of the eighth century by the emperor Shomu to the Nairacana Buddha, whose 15 metre high statue occupies the place of honour in the shrine. The Todai-ji monastery suffered from natural disasters most of the buildings collapsed, that caused damage to the gates. The original system of beams, and brackets used fore the construction was the Chinese beam-frame and bracket system.
The building, resembling a log cabin, is held off the ground by forty wooden pillars. It has three sections, no windows, and a door in the middle of each section. The benoki logs were laid dry, one upon another, and crossed at the corners. Shrinkage of the logs in dry weather and swelling in wet give a measure of air conditioning within the building, creating an atmosphere suitable for grain stores which were similarly built. At the end of the Nara period the capital was changed to Kyoto.
the new capital, like the nara before it, was laid out in the chinese manner in a symmetrical pattern of streets and enclosures at right angles to one another, measuring almost a square-about 4.6 kilometres by 5.6. the royal enclosure dominated heiankyo, as it was called then, at the north end of the center.