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Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Tokyo Architecture: From Meiji to the Great Kanto Earthquake to Today

by John McGee

Daiwa pre-fab houses became popular in the 1960s (Images courtesy Edo-Tokyo Museum)

What makes Tokyo a continually compelling yet utterly baffling urban experience? Shows on either side of town highlight the practical, aesthetic, and theoretical conditions of this disaster-prone city.

“Architecture of Tokyo” at the Edo-Tokyo Museum is a photo album of the city’s 20th century—its dreams and triumphs framing its double devastations. The exhibition starts with the new urban models and styles pursued after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Optimistic modernization seemed the spirit as new streets were laid out, bridges over the Sumida-gawa River were built, and concrete schools replaced wooden structures. The promise of public housing began in 1924 with the livable standard of the Daikanyama Dojunkai Apartments (razed for the high-brow Daikanyama Address in 1996). A city-wide explosion of European revival architecture led to neo-classicism around Marunouchi, modernist houses in Ota-ku, and Waseda University’s neo-Gothic and English half-timber buildings. A slightly romantic CG video produced by Shiseido reconstructs Ginza’s vintage modern buildings in a time when Sukiyabashi was really a bridge, as its name implies, not the broad asphalt boulevard of today. 

Daikanyama Dojunkai 
(public housing) in Tokyo

Air raids and the resultant fires during World War II destroyed nearly half the buildings in the city. The squalor of tin shacks and empty metal pipes was the immediate replacement for incinerated wood houses. Sketches of how to divide a train car into 4.5 tatami-mat rooms contrast with the Betty Crocker interiors of the large, clean, American-style homes of the Occupation forces (if you live anywhere near Hiroo, this’ll sound familiar). 

In 1950, the government passed a housing finance corporation law, encouraging people to become home owners. Industry was close behind, with Daiwa and Sekisui House popping up metal pre-fabs for every budget. Soon the economic miracle was on and the city was modernizing rapidly with the symbolic Tokyo Tower (1958) and the infrastructure associated with the 1964 Olympics (e.g. highways around the city). 

Some of Japan’s greatest architects came of age in the ’70s, producing fantastic visions of a future Tokyo—Kurokawa’s “Helix City Plan” twisting hundreds of feet into the sky, Isozaki’s “Clusters in the Air” with houses on branch-like extensions. Largely unrealized, these radical reconsiderations of the city slumbered through the ’80s bubble economy before being rediscovered as inspiration for the futuristic city plans of today’s hot young architects on display in the final room. 

A fitting end to the exhibition is the Daiwa House commercial display hidden in a back room. Daiwa’s earthquake-resistant “isolated structure system” is put to the test in a fascinating video. The house doesn’t rest directly on its cement foundation but on a space-frame atop ball bearings. When a big one hits (simulated in Daiwa’s factory), the ground shimmies under the house, but the house just drifts about on its own center of gravity, not unlike the city itself. 

Vintage photos, architectural plans and computer reconstructions are supplemented by two full-scale walk-through models—a replica Daikanyama Dojunkai apartment and a real 1963 Daiwa pre-fab 2BR house. On weekends, live actors portray the contemporary lifestyle in these homes. Additionally, the first portion of this exhibition, from Meiji to the Great Kanto Earthquake, is on view at the excellent Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en (outdoor architecture museum) in Musashi-Koganei.

These exhibitions were held Dec 2001-Jan 2002 at Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku and Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en in Musashi-Koganei in Tokyo, Japan.

©2007 John McGee

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