Kunio Maekawa is an architect who designed and built his own house, the Maekawa House, in 1941 (Reynolds, 2001). Since the war raged, he was only able to build his house with limited materials (Reynolds, 2001). Nevertheless, he was still able to incorporate traditional Japanese architecture with Western style influences. The Maekawa House is considered modern due to the introduction of a different type of design to Japan (Reynolds, 2001). Maekawa got the traditional wooden construction and spacious garden; he added the living/dining room in the center of the house. The bedroom was located in the back corner of the house for privacy, and the other rooms were designed on both sides of the living room (Reynolds, 2001), which represented a Western influence. Maekawa also kept the sliding doors with rice paper to let light into the house and had large openings to let in air. The sliding doors opened onto the garden in order to have a connection between the interior and exterior parts of the house (Reynolds, 2001). Maekawa successfully merged Japanese and Western architectural styles and made modern Japanese architecture the rising trend of his time. At first he was slightly hesitant about losing the identity of Japanese culture, but Maekawa managed to embrace this innovation. Kunio Maekawa was born in 1905 in the city of Niigata, Japan (Maekawa, 1984). Maekawa's parents were descendants of samurai descent, his mother's side's relatives were servants of the Tsugaru clan of Hirosaki (Maekawa, 1984). His father's side of the family was a retainer of the powerful Ii clan of Omi (Maekawa, 1984). At the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, samurai families were stripped of their income and...... middle of paper...... tatami mats, and Maekawa also had Western furniture (Reynolds, 2001). Then the Maekawa House was moved to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei City, Tokyo to commemorate Kunio Maekawa in 1945. Maekawa's trip with LeCorbusier helped him establish his career as an architect (Maekawa, 1984). Whether or not he agreed with LeCorbusier's ideas, he created his own modernism based on the needs of the country and what he thought was important to his later students and colleagues. He was one of many Japanese architects who worked abroad immediately after graduating from college. He acquired a lot of knowledge and conformed to European architectural trends and brought them back to Japan with him. In recent years, he entered many competitions and was rejected (Maekawa, 1984). His work seemed modern, with no Japanese tradition or history behind its design..