Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan Revisited

Join us for a book talk by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa professor of architecture, Kevin Nute.

Saturday, April 26

2-3pm

Imin International Conference Center at Jefferson Hall

Admission is free; space is limited. Seating is first come, first served.

Please consider making a donation to EWC Arts Program to sustain programs like this.

Visitor parking on the UH Mānoa campus is available for a fee.

Frank Lloyd Wrightʻs Creative Debt to Japan

Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan Revisited: Traditional Japanese Culture as a Means to Modern American Architecture (London: World Scientific, 2025) expands on more than three decades of research by reexamining Wright’s interpretations of traditional Japanese forms in the context of otherness, appropriation, translation and myth. The book has just been shortlisted for a 2025 Architectural Book Award. Its predecessor, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (London: Chapman and Hall, 1993) won an International Architectural Monograph Award from the American Institute of Architects.

In his foreword to the new book, the contemporary Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, writes:

“This book has played an important part in the ongoing cultural exchange between Japan and the West. …. Personally, I learned a great deal about this exchange and its significance from the original edition of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan. It stimulated my own interest in traditional Japanese buildings and gave me renewed confidence in my culture. Until then, traditional Japanese architecture seemed to me to have little relevance to the present or future. My own buildings changed as a result, and I began to participate in that great exchange myself.” – Kengo Kuma, Professor of Architecture, University of Tokyo

An internationally recognized authority on Wright’s relationship with Japan, Kevin Nute spent his early career in Japan and joined the University of Hawaiʻi in 2019. In addition to the East-West Center talk, he will be giving a series of invited lectures on the work this spring, at the Honolulu AIA, the Fallingwater Institute, the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and later this year, at the AIA in Japan, the French School of the Far East, the university of Kyoto and the University of Tokyo.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan Revisited is available on Amazon

Host or Publisher East-West Center Arts Program