Japanese Architecture MOC: Torii, Shrines and Wooden Houses
Japanese architecture is one of those subjects that looks simple in bricks and turns maddening once you start: flat roofs and straight walls are easy, but the upswept curve of an eave and the slender feel of timber framing are not. These are the lessons from my own Japanese architecture MOCs, starting with the torii gate — the piece that gives the most payoff for the least work — then the shrine itself and a traditional Japanese house. Each section comes with concrete part solutions.
1. The torii gate: proportion beats detail
A torii is the best facade a Japanese scene can have, and also the easiest thing to get wrong. A standard gate is two posts and two crossbeams (the kasagi on top and the nuki below). In bricks, the thing to protect is proportion: post height should be roughly 1.2 to 1.5 times the total width of the crossbeam. I stack 2x2 bricks for the posts, use 2x6 plates for the beams, and finish the kasagi with 1x2 curved slopes for a slight upward tilt. The curve does not need to be dramatic — even a small angle reads far better than a straight plate.
On colour, a vermilion torii photographs best, and red 2x2 bricks and 1x2 curved slopes are easy to accumulate. For a stone gate, work in greys instead. Two pitfalls: always widen the base of each post with a 2x2 brick, or the gate will not stand and will topple at the first nudge; and set the two posts 8 studs apart so the whole thing sits neatly on a 4x8 baseplate, which keeps the structure rigid and easy to move.
2. The shrine: the roof curve is the soul of it
The flying eaves of a shrine roof are the hard part of any Japanese architecture build. My approach: build the roof surface from 1x4 curved slopes that step outward from the centre, half a stud per layer, then cap the eave edge with 1x2 curved slopes turned upside down. That produces a clearly upturned profile. Use off-white bricks for the main hall walls with dark brown posts, and suggest wood grain with a few 1x2 patterned bricks.
One brick-saving trick: nobody sees the back of a large roof, so fill it with ordinary bricks and spend all the curved slopes on the front and the eave line. At each end of the ridge, stand a 1x1 round brick with a 1x2 curved slope to form the chigi finial, and add a pair of 1x1 gold round bricks as ornament. The shrine becomes instantly recognisable.
3. The traditional house: sliding doors and shoji windows
The core of a Japanese house MOC is a sense of openness. The shoji window treatment matters most: either weave 1x2 plates horizontally and vertically to build the lattice, or use 1x1 windows with trans-clear glass and back them with a printed sheet of pale paper so light comes through as washi. For sliding doors, use 2x6 tiles as the door panels and fit a 1x1 grooved piece top and bottom as the rail, so the door actually slides sideways. Plenty of plans leave this detail out, but build it and the whole house comes alive.
Do not over-furnish the interior — Japanese aesthetics leave space empty. One 4x4 low table, two or three 1x1 cushion pieces and a plant in the corner is enough. Run a row of 1x2 plates along the outside as the engawa veranda, add a single 1x1 step, and the house reads correctly.
4. Combining the scene and unifying the palette
When the torii, shrine and house sit together, keep the colour system consistent: roofs all dark grey or dark blue-grey, walls all off-white, posts all dark brown. Nothing makes a scene look cheap faster than three buildings that are each well built but clash. Ground in grey 2x2 plates, a few cherry trees (1x1 round bars with pink-white flower clusters), and a complete Japanese architecture diorama is done at roughly 1,500 to 2,000 pieces.
Finding plans and step-by-step guides
Plans for this subject are relatively scarce in the Chinese-language community, and many details have to be worked out by hand. Fortunately brickplan.cn has a batch of player-uploaded Japanese architecture MOCs and step-by-step tutorials, with the eave curves and sliding-door mechanisms for torii, shrines and houses all annotated. Building from a downloaded plan saves a lot of trial and error, and it is worth a browse.