Remembering Raymond Moriyama

The Japanese Cultural Centre opened in 1964 in Toronto. It was culturally a huge deal. Designed by a young Japanese architect Raymond Moriyama. My mom had heard that the detailing of the building was so meticulous that even the slot screw heads were all turned in the same direction. There was so much excitement about the building opening.

So, my mom, who had just gotten her driver's license, and I went on a field trip to see this building. I was 8 years old. 

Until this time, I had never considered a building. We lived in a little side split post-war house in the suburbs. 

I had seen old buildings but I had yet to hear anything speak to me like this building did. We crawled on hands and knees to check the veracity of the rumors about the screws, YES! For me, it was a truly formative field trip. 

I never thought about this visit until about 25 years ago when Mr. Raymond Moriyama and his wife came into Inform. Embarrassingly, I started to cry with emotion and I had to escape to the basement! 
 

Hearing of his death this weekend, again, I became choked up with emotion.

An exceptional man, and an amazing architect, we are so lucky to have a huge number of his works to experience and enjoy.

Moriyama has stated that for him, "architecture is a relentless, investigative process that must be concerned with human, ecological, technical, economic, and aesthetic issues," and his work embodies that principle.

Raymond Moriyama spoke of his family's history and the way that internment impacted his life and career in a speech when he accepted the Sakura Award, for contributions to Japanese culture in Canada and abroad:

Father was sent to a POW camp in Ontario for resisting the government’s contradictory action of going to war to preserve democracy and individual rights while, at home, disregarding the rights of 22,000 citizens. Mother, who was pregnant, in despair and having to face a future with three children and $34.92 in savings after 13 years of struggle in Canada, lost the baby: the only brother I could have had. In the B.C. camp, I was mocked in the public bath by fellow Japanese-Canadians calling my scars [from childhood burns] a contagious disease.

I was disowned by my country and mocked by my own community. My father was a POW in faraway Ontario, and my self-esteem was destroyed. In despair, I decided to bathe in the Slocan River on the other side of a little mountain away from the camp. The water was glacial, but it was better than hot tears. 

To see who might be coming, I built an observation platform. Soon I found myself wanting to build my first architectural project, a tree house, without being found out by the RCMP. I used just an axe as a hammer, an old borrowed saw, six spikes, some nails, a rope, and mostly branches and scraps from the lumberyard. It was hard work building it by myself, and it was a lesson in economy of material and means.

That tree house, when finished, was beautiful. It was my university, my place of solace, a place to think and learn. This is when I first learned to listen to the Earth. The view, and sound, of nature from the tree house was astonishing: the mountains green and silver; the sunrise, the sunset; the whisper of the river and the sound of the wind. I was learning the true meaning of dynamic permanence of temporariness – that the “frightening” storm was a part of a balance to the beautiful sunset and that it was less vengeful than man’s irrational thoughts and deeds.

I was amazed that my despair was subsiding. I began to understand that I could not hate my community and my country, or my hate could crush my own heart and imagination. I replaced the despair with ideas about what I could do as an architect to help my community and Canada. The inspiration for the Canadian War Museum came during this period, at age 12 and 13: the sound of nature and the evening breeze I heard in the tree house coming fully alive 60 years later. The Canadian Embassy in Tokyo is a tree house inspired by the original.