[Patrice Boissonnas]

The other day, a good friend asked me this question: “is there any good Japanese golf architect?”

Considering the number of golf courses in Japan (close to 2000 I believe) and the passion they have for the game, I am sure they have/had some good architects.

So I think the question should be: is there any great architect in Japan (living our dead) ?

Most top courses in the island seem to be Alison’s but what are the other designs worth? Could any of them stand comparison with the best from the Western world and make it into the World Top 100?

Think about it :
   Japanese have great building architects: SANAA, Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban etc. are world superstar and work all over the world. Same for artists, designers etc.
   Japanese have a long tradition for parks and gardens and their culture bears a lot of proximity with nature and its spirituality: exactly what should inspire a great golf course.
   Japanese have patience, care for details and a deep respect for natural forces.
   Japanese have had good playing professionals who might have gone into consulting.

For all the above reasons, there should be great Japanese architects.
Is it that Japanese golf architects only work at home? But still, their best works should be known from the rest of the world. Plus, if Japanese building architects were able to exports themselves, why not golf architects?

I am not planning a golf trip to Japan any soon, but I’ll be curious to learn more about this.

[Tom_Doak]

Patrice:

I think the answer is no.

There were 2-3 good candidates to become a great golf architect during the 1920's and early 1930's.  The Akaboshi brothers attended Princeton, got to know C.B. Macdonald, and went to study courses in Scotland ... but then geopolitics intervened, rather forcefully.  Kinya Fujita, Seichi Inouye, and Komei Ohtani all collaborated with Hugh Alison to complete the courses he designed on his visit to Japan in 1931 ... but the war cut careers short, and when Inouye practiced after the war, he was saddled with the two-green system as a new standard, which made it almost impossible to design great courses.

In the boom of the 1980's, there were quite a few Japanese architects active, but Americans got the bulk of the big projects because their names made it easier to sell memberships on the stock market ... and that's what the boom was really all about.  Again, just about the time some younger architects with good training started to get some work, the bottom fell out [this time due to economics rather than war].

[David Davis]

I was interested in this answer as well. While not an expert on Japan one my friends is a foremost expert so I asked him. He answered me live and then I got distracted just to find out that Tom beat me to the punch line.

My friend said nearly the same things:

There are no living Japanese architects that are great or famous.

Komyo Ohtani, and Chozu Ito, and Shiro Akaboshi learned classic design by Alison. Which leads me to question if they have incorporated Alison's very aggressive lines and angles on and around green complexes.

He went on to say that most of the classic courses they had designed have been ruined by modern architects with the exception of Kawana, Tokyo and Hirono.

Sadly to say I've not played any of them YET!

[Steve Strasheim]

I was fortunate to finish my round at Blue Canyon playing with Yoshikazo Kato. We had a drink afterwards and he was most gracious and welcoming to me. This makes him great in my mind.

Wanted to make sure he was Japanese, so I did a quick web search and found this:

In 1988, Yoshikazu Kato, one of Japan’s most prolific golf course architects started developing the site, originally an abandoned tin mine flanked by rubber plantations. Both courses were created around existing canyons and woodlands, with minimal interruption to the natural landscape and wildlife. The property is a masterpiece of design characterised by spectacular and daunting natural hazards including numerous taunting water features accentuated by towering trees to challenge golfers of all levels.
 
Canyon Course.
 Surrounded by freshwater lakes and in harmony with the earth, the Canyon Course brilliantly features natural hazards, towering trees, multiple tees, rolling fairways, long carries, narrow landing areas and well-guarded slick Bermuda Tiffdwarf greens. As its name „Canyon“ suggests the holes are built along canyon edges with undulating fairways and greens.
 
The course also has an intriguing mix of narrow tree-lined fairways requiring accurate tee shots and a number of doglegs demand precise shot making together with a selection of demanding Par 3s and large, fast, and very true greens. Players have found that each and every one of the 18 holes has its own characteristic which makes it memorable for them.
 
Lakes Course.
 Established in 1999, the Lakes Course has water hazards coming to play on 17 out of 18 holes. The course is a mixture of water-filled canyons created by open cast mining with its natural land flow left relatively unchanged. Its front 9 holes run through a landscape of lakes and original canyons, whilst the back 9 weaves around more scenic lakes and soft whispering woodlands of rubber trees.
 
Architect Yoshikazu Kato has masterfully provided an inspiring alternative to Blue Canyon’s myriad of golfing standards. From the championship tees, this is a 7,129-yard challenge with target-driving areas set at 270 yards to accommodate today’s long hitting professionals. . With a range of five sets of tees to choose from, it is capable of challenging the best players in the world, although even modest players can enjoy this course with wide fairways and generous greens.

[Patrice Boissonnas]

Blue Canyon is, I think, the only course built by a Japanese quoted in the World Atlas of Golf.

Thank you all for your precise answers.

Like many other arts, golf design skills come a lot by transmission from one generation to the other. Obviously Japanese didn't have that chance. Very few countries do by the way...

Tom, may I ask you one more thing?
What is the double green rule you're mentioning ?

Thanks !

[Adam Lawrence]

Patrice - because of the extremes of weather in Japan, after WW2 it became the usual practice for each hole to have two different greens, one with cool season grass for winter play, the other with warm season for summer. Now, with grasses that tolerate either heat or cold better, quite a few of these two-greens courses are renovating and going for one green per hole.

[David Davis]

Adam,

Why would this be different than other places like the midwest or east coast of the US. Or even here in Europe. We have snow and freezing condition in the winter. In the US they have -20 in Chicago area while it's 40 + in the summer?

Why didn't they just use a winter green or close the course down completely and a summer green for the rest of the year?

Assuming that's not what you mean.

[David Bartman]

I have played 2 Jumbo Ozaki courses and they were both pretty interesting.   

The one at Mission Hills , China has elevated tees, very wide fairways but a lot of natural vegetation and lakes. 

The other was in Malaysia, I think, we played it on the Asian Tour , this had some split fairways with huge rock formations to provide the split, lots of mounding, and a decent array of elevation on holes.  Also had some generous fairways. 

[Tom_Doak]

Adam,

Why would this be different than other places like the midwest or east coast of the US. Or even here in Europe. We have snow and freezing condition in the winter. In the US they have -20 in Chicago area while it's 40 + in the summer?

Why didn't they just use a winter green or close the course down completely and a summer green for the rest of the year?

Assuming that's not what you mean.

David:

The weather in Tokyo is pretty much like Atlanta.  Our mutual friend told me that it was an American general from Georgia, after the war, who suggested that clubs have both a korai green and a bentgrass green side by side, as some courses in the South did back in the 1930's, when it was impossible to maintain common bermuda to a great standard but few clubs could keep a bent green in top condition through the heat of the summer.  The top clubs in Tokyo followed the general's advice ... and then in the 1950's, when the game boomed, Japanese architects looked to those two-headed courses and imitated them.

I have even played a course near Sapporo [with a climate like Traverse City] that had two, 5000-square foot bentgrass greens, side by side, on every hole.  It became as the French say, de rigeur, regardless of turf conditions.

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