OKUUDA-NO-SATO (Village of Okuuda)

"Okuuda-no-sato" depicts the village of Okuuda — a small community in the mountainous interior of the Kinki region — through the characteristic forms of its traditional architecture: the farmhouses adapted to steep terrain and heavy snowfall, the narrow paths between buildings, the quality of a settlement whose form was determined entirely by the demands of its geographic situation. Nishijima's village scenes emphasize the coherence of traditional rural building practice — how individual structures combine into communities that are themselves aesthetic wholes.