There are two opposing strands running through Japan’s built environment. One is the traditional architecture of wooden beams and sliding doors that is redolent of a world of tea ceremonies and temples. The other is the modern concrete and glass cityscape that inspired the cyberpunk novelist William Gibson to set his Sprawl Trilogy in a futuristic, dystopian Chiba City. Kyoto is world famous for the former, but is also home to one of the country’s most striking examples of postmodernist architecture. Kyoto Station—the country’s second-largest—is a glass and steel icon….
