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Thomas Flexer

Kenta Tokushige

ARTH 120Z

26 October 2023

A Critical Review of William Coaldrake’s “The Gatehouse of the Shogun’s Senior Councillor:

Building Design and Status Symbolism in Japanese Architecture of the Late Edo Period”

This critical review will focus on Coaldrake’s essay on the design and symbolism of

gatehouse architecture within the period leading up to the Meiji Restoration, specifically that of

the Roju-mon. This essay will start with a summary of the article’s points to help the reader get a

sense of what Coaldrake discussed within it. Following this, research methods employed by the

author and strategies they utilized throughout the piece. To end the essay, an opinion will be

provided by the author of the review stating what was done well in the essay, and what could

have been improved upon.

To help the reader understand the text within the article, Coaldrake divided his work into

several paragraph-long segments, each focusing on a broad topic related to his work. The initial

paragraphs of the article provided background information on Japan during this era. Coaldrake

explained that many important buildings, like Buddhist temples or the palaces of daimyos who

were forced to reside within the capital, had gateways that were known as nagaya-mon. Even

though the gatehouses were not as grand as that of the kara-mon, which served as the entrance

for the emperor, the materials used to build the gatehouses and the way that they were
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constructed conveyed messages regarding the status of the daimyo that owned them. The next

section described the Roju-mon and the other surviving gatehouses in architectural terms. These

descriptions ranged from the width between posts, the traditional mortise and tenon joinery used

to build structures in Japan, and the way that the roof was assembled. All of this served the

purpose of providing the reader with a picture of the gatehouse, which they can envision

throughout the latter parts of his article. The description segment is followed by two sections that

detail the history of this gatehouse and the travels that it has had, which is not as strange as one

would imagine throughout the history of Japan. The Roju-mon initially served as the entrance to

the house of the Emperor’s Senior Councilor, and then it would move to the entrance to a naval

academy, the entrance of a private residence, and finally, a campsite. The fifth section of

Coaldrake’s article described traditional measurements of architecture in Japan, known as kiwari,

and the way that the Roju-mon either matched or deviated from the measurements that were

supposed to be standard in every building. Finally, Coaldrake ended his work with more

information on how everything relates to status and its symbols, as well as his conclusions. The

main findings that he presented were that the way that the Roju-mon was built reflected the

importance of the figure that it was built for. Additionally, Coaldrake felt that the Roju-mon was

quintessential to understand authority in the Japanese world, and how gatehouse architecture

evolved.

This portion of the review will assess the strategies and methodology applied by

Coaldrake in his article, “The Gatehouse of the Shogun’s Senior Councillor: Building Design and

Status Symbolism in Japanese Architecture of the Late Edo Period.” By looking at the footnotes

provided by Coaldrake as well as the references page on JSTOR, it seems that Coaldrake relied

mainly on the architectural works themselves, primary accounts of the Roju-mon, and already
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published literature of Japanese architecture to form his conclusions on the symbolic functions of

the gatehouses of the daimyo. All these sources look to be reputable and nothing that he cited

looks as if it could lead to a false conclusion, so I would argue that his research methods are

ethical and well-conducted. However, one might feel that a more consolidated list of all the

sources could make analyzing how he researched a tad bit easier. Furthermore, Coaldrake

himself is a leading scholar and professor on Japanese architecture, which adds more credibility

to the argument that he puts forth. Along with the credible research methods, Coaldrake employs

a few other strategies in his article to convince the reader that his theory is the correct one.

Firstly, a strategy related to the research that Coaldrake conducted is utilized: footnotes. The use

of footnotes helps the reader to gain background information on a topic if it is not explicitly

mentioned within the text and to see what exact source he might be quoting in the article.

Another strategy that Coaldrake used to help explain his argument was to divide up the text

through headings and pictures. For the lay reader, sometimes text can be overwhelming,

especially this kind of work that relies heavily on measurements and foreign languages. To solve

the issue of engagement, Coaldrake decided to break up the article into more digestible passages

that have pictures to visually represent what he just talked about. This keeps the reader

interested, as they can either stop and come back to the work or take time to look at a picture or

diagram and process what the author just wrote. The most prominent issue with this strategy is

the arrangement of the piece. While one can understand that it is important to provide the reader

with a description of the structure earlier on in the piece, it felt like it would be better suited to be

right before the sections regarding traditional Japanese measurements and status symbolism, as

opposed to the history of the structure. Since he separated these two ideas with a kind of

unrelated one, it can confuse the reader and they might have to reference back a few pages to
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find what the author is talking about. Finally, the evidence that Coaldrake provided in this article

to support the claim that certain aspects and architectural features of the Roju-mon were

fantastic. Most of this evidence came from the Aobyoshi, which was a book that explained how

daimyos with varying levels of importance were to construct their nagaya and bansho. He then

compared these measurements and writings directly to the Roju-mon, which ended up supporting

the argument that gatehouses often correlated with the prestige of a daimyo. However, the

evidence that Coaldrake, from what the reader could understand in the article, seemed to only

support the Roju-mon and Ikeda-mon, and he did not demonstrate evidence that all Japanese

gatehouses followed this as strictly as these two did.

Now, I will discuss my personal and critical review of the article. Overall, I thought

Coaldrake wrote a great and informative article that addressed a topic in art history that had so

far been neglected by scholars. The writing itself was without errors, and the pictures and

blueprints of the gatehouses that the author selected were perfect for the subject being presented

in the article. One thing that I would have liked to have read about would be the Roju-mon’s

contemporaries, the Ikeda-mon and the Aka-mon, so that I could develop a fuller understanding

of Japanese gatehouse architecture and not just this one. I recognize that this would triple the

length of the article and the effort required to research everything, so I understand that it was

much simpler for Coaldrake to just formulate an argument based on this one. I also felt that

Coaldrake might have assumed that the reader had a previous background on Japanese

architecture, or even Japan or architecture separately. It is reasonable to assume that the reader

does since this article is from a scholarly journal, but for students like me with barely any

background in architecture, some terminology could have been better explained. Another

criticism that I had of the article would be that the ending felt a bit rushed. It seems like he only
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got to his point on the last page, instead of developing a bigger picture throughout the whole

essay. This is a minor criticism though, as it is more of a stylistic choice rather than an oversight

on his part. Despite all these criticisms and suggestions, I still feel that Coaldrake contributed

greatly to the history of Japanese architecture through his findings.

Coaldrake suggested within this essay that the architectural designs of gatehouses in

Japan, especially the Roju-mon, lined up with the status of the daimyo that would live in the

house behind the gatehouse. In his essay, Coaldrake narrated the history of Japanese gatehouses,

the design and plan of Roju-mon, the renovations and relocations of the Roju-mon, and finally a

comparison to traditional Japanese measuring requirements for buildings. This essay then

provided a list of notable strategies utilized by Coaldrake throughout his article before going into

a personal critical review of the piece. Overall, I thought that the piece was good, but there were

a few slight things that detracted from the reading experience, and that the argument lined up

according to the evidence that the author provided.