About the Author:

Kengo Kuma is one of Japan’s leading architects and a professor in the Department
of Architecture at the University of Tokyo. He is widely known as a prolific writer
and philosopher and has designed many buildings in Japan and around the world,
notably the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, LVMH Group’s Japan headquarters,
Besançon Art Centre in France and the V&A Dundee in Scotland. Most recently,
he designed the stadium for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
 Other titles of interest published by
Thames & Hudson include:

Kengo Kuma: Complete Works

Kenneth Frampton and Kengo Kuma

The Elements of Modern Architecture

Antony Radford, Amit Srivastava and Selen Morkoç

David Adjaye – Works: Houses, Pavilions, Installations, Buildings,

1995–2007
Peter Allison

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CONTENTS

Introduction
by Kengo Kuma

Yoyogi National Gymnasium

Kenzō Tange, 1964

Shibuya

Daikan-yama

One Omotesandō
Kengo Kuma, 2003

Meiji Jingū Museum

Kengo Kuma, 2019

Nezu Museum
Kengo Kuma, 2009

Sunny Hills
Kengo Kuma, 2014

National Stadium
Kengo Kuma, 2020

Suntory Museum of Art

Kengo Kuma, 2007

Kitte
Kengo Kuma, 2012

Shinjuku

Mejiro

Ikebukuro

Ueno & Yanesen

Jugetsudo Kabuki-za
Kengo Kuma, 2013

Tsukiji & Shinbashi

Takanawa Gateway Station

Kengo Kuma, ongoing
La Kagu
Kengo Kuma, ongoing

Akagi Shrine
Kengo Kuma, 2010

Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building

Kengo Kuma, 2014

Western Tokyo

Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre

Kengo Kuma, 2012

Mukojima

Tetchan
Kengo Kuma, 2014

Directory
Buildings by Kengo Kuma & Associates
Buildings by other architects
Photo credits
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION

I was born in an area between Tokyo and Yokohama that did not belong to
either city. Ever since I was a small child, I would ride the Toyoko line,
which connects these two great metropolises, when I was out and about, as
an integral part of my daily life.
I became a ‘border person’, as defined by the sociologist and
philosopher Max Weber, viewing Tokyo from an outsider’s perspective.
Observing the city while walking around its streets enabled me to discover
a wide variety of locations, cultures and people, and that Tokyo is a
collection of small villages, rather than one big city.
When designing the National Stadium (p. 42) for the 2020 Tokyo
Olympics, rescheduled for 2021, I focused on creating something that
would be in keeping with the surrounding neighbourhoods of Aoyama,
Sendagaya and Gaien, rather than something that was representative of
Japan as a whole. We achieved this by drilling down into the essence of
these different ‘villages’. When I design a building, in any city, I believe
that the world is a collection of villages, instead of a group of nations.
YOYOGI NATIONAL GYMNASIUM

Built as the swimming and diving venue for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,
the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, designed by Kenzō Tange (1913–
2005), became a symbol of the event. By hosting the Olympic Games,
Japan was showing the world it had fully recovered from the
destruction it had sustained during the war.
Other projects completed in time for the Games include the
Tōkaidō Shinkansen, the world’s fastest railway at the time, and the
Shuto Expressway, a network of motorways built in the sky above
Tokyo, which featured in the Soviet sci-fi film Solaris (1972). Another
building, the Komazawa Gymnasium, a stunning concrete tower
designed by Yoshinobu Ashihara (1918–2003), was inspired by pagoda
design and hosted the wrestling events.
The year 1964 also marked the peak of Japan’s rapid economic
development, the result of a deliberate process of industrialization
undertaken with unusual speed. This exultant national mood was
translated splendidly into architectural form by Tange, who led the
modernist movement in postwar Japan. Known as ‘the world’s Tange’,
he designed buildings in over thirty countries, and was seen as having
an uncanny ability to accurately predict and interpret the spirit of the
age.
Anticipating that the height of buildings would increase across
Japan, Tange proposed a vertically orientated design for the Yoyogi
National Gymnasium, with two concrete towers and a roof suspended
between them. Japanese cities at the time were made up entirely of
wooden structures, one or two storeys high, and this striking design
stood out dramatically. (Japan’s first skyscraper, the Kasumigaseki
Building, wasn’t completed until four years later, in 1968.)
The gymnasium’s structure was supported by a system used
primarily in civil-engineering projects like suspension bridges. Tange’s
daring design earned widespread praise, and seemed to be showing the
world that Japanese technology had caught up with that of the West.
The beautiful sweeping curve of the roof has been compared to the
gentle curves of the Golden Hall (kondō) of Tōshōdai-ji, the famous
eighth-century temple at Nara, while the supporting pillars appear to be
influenced by the chigi (forked roof finials) of buildings such as the Ise
Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture. Tange’s great talent lay in combining
traditional Japanese aesthetics with cutting-edge architectural
techniques.
 Our design for the National Stadium (p. 42), the centrepiece for
the second Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was also very inspired by
traditional Japanese architecture. But while Tange aspired to
verticality, we looked to horizontality, believing that pre-1964 Tokyo,
with its low wooden silhouettes, was a better model for the city of the
future.
Even after the 1964 Olympics were over, I was unable to get
Tange’s gymnasium out of my mind, and at weekends I would travel
by train from Yokohama to swim in the building. Watching the light
falling from the top of the beautiful arched ceiling made me feel as if I
was in heaven. As I swam silently, I would think to myself how I, too,
wanted to create buildings that would, someday, move people in this
way.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics marked the peak of Japan’s

economic development ... This exultant national mood
was translated splendidly into architectural form by
Kenzō Tange.
SHIBUYA

In his book Empire of Signs (1970), the French philosopher Roland

Barthes wrote that the centre of Tokyo is occupied by a void. Unlike
European cities, where the central area is marked by an architectural
focal point, such as a castle or a church, it is a quiet forest that lies at
Tokyo’s heart – home to the Imperial Palace, residence of the Emperor,
surrounded by over 1 km2 (0.4 sq miles) of parkland and gardens.
Barthes saw this as underlining how the structure of society and
the urban landscape differ greatly between Japan and the West. The
centre of Tokyo is certainly a void, but one that is protected by a
circular train line, the Yamanote (see p. 7), which forms a 40-km (25-
mile) loop around it. It seems to me that this ring of steel emphasizes
the importance of the void, and the depth of its significance.
An empty void in a city’s central space is far more welcoming
than any towering building. The Yamanote line passes through a
number of terminal stations – Shibuya, Shinjuku (p. 56), Ikebukuro (p.
64) – connecting up with the private railway lines that run out to the
suburbs. It is used by over two million passengers each day. Around
the empty centre formed by the palace grounds, these stations serve as
the hubs of Tokyo’s financial and cultural activity.
Shibuya, in particular, is the centre of youth culture, and where I
would go, from my childhood onwards, to hang out. On Hallowe’en,
great numbers of youngsters in costumes gather round the station,
drinking and singing until morning. Hallowe’en in Shibuya, in fact,
could be called Japan’s biggest festival.
I was in charge of designing the new station for Shibuya. Above it
is Shibuya Scramble Square (see p. 15), a tower stretching 230 m (over
750 ft) in the air, its base formed from interlocking curved planes,
which give a scooped-out appearance. Wanting to create a tower that
spilled over with a sense of speed and noise befitting the area, we
printed the glass with ceramic powder to create stripes, as if the energy
of the neighbourhood’s street culture extended into the sky. On the top
floor is an observatory designed by Nikken Sekkei, with views across
the city.
At Shibuya station, get on the Tōyoko line. After about ten
minutes, you will arrive at Den-en-chōfu, a neighbourhood known for
its radial pattern of streets, rare in Japan, and where I attended nursery
and primary school. The industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa, seen by many
as symbolic of the Meiji era (1868–1912) and the father of capitalism
in Japan, was so impressed by the writings of Ebenezer Howard, the
founder of the UK’s garden-city movement in the nineteenth century,
that in the early 1900s he developed Den-en-chōfu as a garden suburb
of Tokyo. I was also much influenced by Howard’s ideas, which I had
learned about at school.
The playground where I used to play with my friends as a child is
on the neighbourhood’s south side, beside the Tama River. This has
now become Seseragi Park; at one of its corners stands a library that I
designed, constructed from wood. It blends seamlessly with the park
around it, so that visitors can enjoy the sensation of reading a book
while being in the middle of a forest.
DAIKAN-YAMA

The commercial district of Daikan-yama is an upscale residential area

in Shibuya (p. 12). It was the appearance of Hillside Terrace, a multi-
purpose complex designed by Fumihiko Maki (b. 1928) and built over
a thirty-year period, between 1969 and 1998, which ensured this
formerly quiet enclave became the city’s most desirable
neighbourhood.
Maki, along with Arata Isozaki (b. 1931) and Kishō Kurokawa
(1934–2007), was a student of Kenzō Tange, and clearly inherited the
master’s fascination with urban design. But he was critical of the
ubiquitous Tange-style design of the 1960s, which he termed
‘megastructure’ architecture, and proposed instead a gentler, more
intimate way of designing residential complexes, or ‘group form’, of
which Hillside Terrace is a prime example. (Incidentally, the first
article that I ever wrote was about Hillside Terrace.)
Tange designed cities that revolved around a defined axis, along
which he would position buildings of a symbolic and monumental
nature – appropriate, he believed, for Japan during its period of
accelerated economic growth. The rebuilding of Hiroshima following
the devastation of the atomic bomb is the best example of
megastructure architecture and Tange’s philosophy of urban planning.
Maki searched for a design typology that was more human in
scale, and suited to the calmer, more mature Japan that emerged after
the years of growth came to an end. After Hillside Terrace, located
beside a main road, with buildings not exceeding 10 m (33 ft) in height,
was built, Daikan-yama was transformed into a stylish and popular
neighbourhood. With its traditional small wooden houses converted
into shops and restaurants, it became the hip place for young people to
go.
Heading downhill in a southerly direction, you arrive at the
Meguro River, where, in the past, a number of small factories were
clustered together along its banks. This part of Tokyo comprises two
different zones: Daikan-yama, which still retains the upscale feel of the
residential district, and Nakameguro, on the other side of the river,
which has much more of a working-class feel. In recent decades, in
cities across the world, industrial zones beside rivers and canals have
become the focus of attention, with their unique vivacity associated
with places where things are made. Several other industrial
neighbourhoods remain in Tokyo, including Ōta, beside the Haneda
Aiport; and Oshiage, which spreads out beneath the Tokyo Skytree
(2011), designed by Tadao Andō (b. 1941).
A little further up the river is the Starbucks Reserve Roastery
(2019), which we designed. In the atrium is a huge coffee roaster, 10 m
(33 ft) in height. Because the area is designated as a semi-industrial
zone, we were able to get away with such an enormous machine inside
the building. In Oshiage, we designed the hotel One@Tokyo (2017),
with a rooftop terrace from which visitors can enjoy views of the city’s
factories, and the Tokyo Skytree at night.

Fumihiko Maki proposed a gentler, more intimate way

of designing residential complexes, or ‘group form’, of
which Hillside Terrace is a prime example.
ONE OMOTESANDŌ

Prior to 1964, Omotesandō was a quiet sandō, or sacred path leading up to a shrine,
lined with Japanese elm trees and devoid of shops and restaurants. Dating from
1919, it leads to Tokyo’s biggest shrine, Meiji Jingū (p. 24). On the far side of the
shrine is Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium (p. 8), where Omotesandō begins to
shift from sacred path to the city’s foremost fashion street. At the very top of the
street is One Omotesandō, our headquarters for the LVMH group, a world leader in
the fashion industry, which was completed in 2003.
Omotesandō itself is lined with the flagship stores of fashion brands from
around the world. Christian Dior (2004), designed by SANAA, has an otherworldly
transparency created through a combination of glass and acrylic panels, while
Prada, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is cloaked by a curtain wall of diamond-
shaped panes of curved glass (Jacques Herzog noted that his aim was to create a
sensual form that would appeal to women). Miu Miu, also designed by Herzog &
de Meuron, features a façade with an emphasis on slanting lines, recalling the roofs
of Japan’s shrines and temples. One street back is the Neil Barrett boutique,
designed by Zaha Hadid, where organically shaped walls made from Corian assert
their presence beyond the glass.
With its row of Japanese elms, Omotesandō has a mystical feeling about it.
Even today, it serves as the main approach to the shrine, so I wanted to create
something with a wooden façade, like a hokora, or miniature shrine, in the middle
of the woods. Unlike the religious buildings of the Christian or Islamic faiths,
Japanese shrines are not built to honour a single deity, but many. The main shrine
honours the principal god associated with it, while the hokora is usually dedicated
to minor spirits. The architecture is secondary to the woods, and the buildings must
be discreet and human in scale, so as not to intrude upon the atmosphere of the
forest. I have learned much from Japanese shrine architecture.

Our design for One Omotesandō is covered in wooden louvres made from
larch, with each piece of wood forming a wedge-like shape, keeping the tips as thin
as possible. These thin lines echo the delicacy of the bark of the Japanese elm trees
in front of the building. The upper part of the structure cantilevers out, so that the
glass-fronted meeting room appears to float in mid-air. We created this glass box as
another hokora – connected to, but separate from, the main building.

Wooden louvres on the façade of the building echo the bark of the Japanese elm trees
outside.
MEIJI JINGŪ MUSEUM

Meiji Jingū, built in 1920 and dedicated to the deified spirits of the Emperor Meiji
(1852–1912) and Empress Shōken (1849–1914), is the most important shrine in
Tokyo. Each January, over three million visitors come to pray for good fortune for
the coming year, a custom known as hatsu-mōde (‘first shrine visit’). They throw a
coin into a box in front of the shrine, clap their hands in prayer and buy a hamaya
(an arrow to exorcise evil spirits), before returning home.
When I was a child, there were two rituals associated with New Year’s:
hatsu-mōde and dezomeshiki, which has a long history that dates back to the Edo
period, when Tokyo was built almost entirely from wood. Fires would frequently
break out, and fire-fighters, wearing happi coats, enjoyed a kind of celebrity status.
During the dezomeshiki, modern fire-fighters give acrobatic performances at the top
of ladders. I always preferred going to see the dezomeshiki.
The grounds of the shrine may look like a primitive forest, but it was
previously just a grassy plain, with hardly any trees at all. The landscape architect
Seiroku Honda (1866–1952), who had studied forestry in Germany, was tasked
with creating a forest that would be appropriate to the building. At the time, it was
common to plant cedar trees around shrines, but Honda chose to plant a number of
different species, mostly broad-leaved ones, and planted a landscape that, in less
than a hundred years, evolved into a mature forest in the middle of the city. Trees
were contributed from across Japan, and planted by volunteers who also came from
around the country.
Today the woodland, as well as being a sacred place and home to an
assortment of wildlife, is known as the forest that never dies. During the Second
World War, Shintō shrines were targeted during air raids, and over a thousand
firebombs were dropped on Meiji Jingū. The architect Antonin Raymond, who
lived and worked in Japan during the 1920s and ’30s, returned to America during
the war, where his architectural practice produced a number of prefabricated homes
for the US Army. He was asked to build a series of typical Japanese houses in the
Utah desert, on which a new type of incendiary weapon could be tested. Yet even
these specially designed firebombs couldn’t destroy the woodlands surrounding the
Meiji shrine.
In the centre of the forest is the sandō, leading up to the shrine. It follows an
L-shaped curve, and is very different to the straight processional pathways found in
religious buildings in the West or in China. Curves ensure that the view changes
constantly, helping visitors make the transition to a deeper, more spiritual place. In
the middle of the sandō is the shinkyō (‘sacred bridge’), and tucked discreetly
beside it is the building that we designed: the Meiji Jingū Museum. We felt that,
here, the sacred forest had to play the main role, and that the building needed to
recede into it.
The roofs of Japanese buildings can be divided into three types: kirizuma
(gable); yosemune (hipped); and irimoya (hip-and-gable). The first two are often
seen in Europe and China, but the irimoya roof is unique to Japan. Like the hipped
roof, the eaves are low, allowing the building to blend into its surroundings, while
creating height at the centre. (The tea houses at the Katsura Imperial Villa have
roofs of this kind.) The museum’s outer walls are made from specially treated dark
grey metal, constructed to create a slightly textural feel (yamato-hari). ‘Yamato’
derives from the former name for Nara, Japan’s ancient capital; it is a technique
that is frequently found in old shrines and streets. Inside, the slender columns
supporting the museum generate a sense of rhythm. They are made from a
combination of steel and wood, like Tange’s gymnasium (see p. 8) nearby. Inside,
the desk, pencils and other items used by the Meiji Emperor are on display.

Low eaves help the building dissolve into the forest (above). The gaps between the flanges
in the ceiling are filled with cypress to soften the space (below).
NEZU MUSEUM

This museum of ancient Japanese and Asian art and traditional handicrafts is
located near the eastern end of Omotesandō, Tokyo’s best-known shopping street.
It was established in 1941 as the Nezu Institute of Fine Arts by businessman,
politician and philanthropist Kaichirō Nezu, who founded the Tōbu Railway, in the
grounds of the family home. The current director, Kōichi Nezu, is his grandson.
In 2006 the museum was closed for renovation, and we were asked to
design a completely new building. To begin with, we focused on the path leading
up to the museum. In the design of Japanese tea houses, the building is seen as less
important than the path (roji) leading up to it, and tea masters of the past believed
that the journey along the roji allowed participants to better immerse themselves in
the slow time of the tea ceremony. We designed a long walkway, with visitors
covering a distance of 50 m (164 ft), before entering the building beneath the deep
eaves, which protrude 4 m (13 ft) from the façade. We wanted them to savour the
shadows cast by the eaves, and to enjoy the bamboo wall to the left and grove to
the right, leaving the noise from the crowded high street behind and quieting their
minds before stepping inside.
In renovating the large tiled roof, we abstracted the detail at the top and
along the edges to give a contemporary feel, while staying within the bounds of
tradition. I felt that the extended eaves, which created deep shadows, were the most
important feature of the building. One of the most important literary figures in
Japan of the twentieth century, Juni’chirō Tanizaki, wrote an essay, In Praise of
Shadows (1933), in which he maintained that the beauty of traditional architecture
derives from its use of shadow. It proved to be hugely influential in the
architectural world, as well as the literary one. Le Corbusier, the greatest architect
of the last century, noted that ‘architecture is the learned game, correct and
magnificent, of forms assembled in the light’, demonstrating to what extent light
had been prioritized in the Western tradition. Tanizaki, on the other hand, spoke of
the importance of shadows, of extended eaves. Rather than the light that shines
directly into a room, he praised the soft light that penetrates a space after being
reflected off the floor, and again from the ceiling.

In the museum’s garden are four tea houses and the Nezu Café pavilion.
Tea ceremonies are held frequently, and, unusually, one of the tea houses has been
built as a boat floating on the lake. The lake is seen as a very important part of
Japanese gardens; at the tearoom at Katsura Imperial Villa, for example, the
nobility would sail boats on the river as they sipped their tea. The café was erected
in the place where the Nezu family house stood, and the stove they used is still
there, unchanged, giving visitors an insight into the lives of the former residents.

The unique roof design (above), assisted by large glass openings (below), help to merge the
outside with the building itself and the artwork inside.
SUNNY HILLS

This shop selling Taiwanese pineapple cake is located in the backstreets of

Aoyama, a wealthy neighbourhood in the Minato district of Tokyo. Throughout the
city, you just have to step away from the main road to find yourself in a maze of
narrow alleyways and small houses, which date from the Edo period. The buildings
that line these little streets are still mostly made from wood, and the contrast
between the main roads and these alleys is one of things that makes the city so
distinctive.
Sunny Hills faces onto one of these narrow alleyways, so we decided to be
brave, design something on a small scale, and build it entirely from natural
materials. Having heard that the shop used only the best-quality pineapple, the
finest Échiré butter and sel de Guérande for their cakes, I came up with the idea of
using the finest natural materials for the building as well. I wanted to weave fine
strips of Japanese cypress together to create a forest-like space in the middle of the
city, allowing patrons to feel as if the sun was filtering through the trees. We used
delicate strips of wood, with a cross-section of 6 × 6 cm (2¼ × 2¼ in.), joining
them using a traditional technique known as jigoku-gumi (or ‘hell’s interlock’),
thus creating a three-storey building without the need for large columns.
Once assembled, the wood cannot be dismantled. The technique is so
difficult to master that it is usually only used in furniture and fittings – I believe
this might be the first time it has been used for an entire building. We used a
similar construction technique in 2011 for the Starbucks in front of the Dazaifu
Tenman-gū shrine in Fukuoka. Eight years later, I would design the Starbucks
Reserve Roastery in Nakameguro (see p. 18) on the banks of the Meguro River.
The first Roastery was in Seattle, with ours the fifth to date (following Shanghai,
New York and Milan). Here, visitors can drink Japanese tea, have light meals and
drink alcohol until late at night. The shop also sells beautiful products made from
natural materials, created by superb Japanese artisans specially chosen by us.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the areas around rivers and canals,
once the main channels of distribution, became industrial zones. Being noisy and
smoky, these places were not seen as suitable for habitation or commerce, and were
often overlooked. Even now, there is the distinct feel of the urban factory about
them. But today, these waterside districts are enjoying a comeback, and are in the
process of being transformed into fashionable, stylish places in which to work and
live.
In Tokyo, this is happening in the neighbourhood around the Kanda River,
from Edogawabashi to Kandabashi, and along the Meguro River. Cherry trees line
the banks of the Meguro, and during cherry-blossom season, their petals are
scattered across the water’s surface, creating a dream-like sight. On top of the hill,
to the north of the river, is the exclusive hilltop neighbourhood of Daikan-yama (p.
16), full of classy boutiques and condominiums, with Hillside Terrace, designed by
Fumihiko Maki, at its heart. Indeed, Daikan-yama and Nakameguro, on the other
side of the river, provide perfect examples of Tokyo’s most exclusive and least
upmarket neighbourhoods, respectively.
This system of wood construction (above) is more often used for furniture. Using it for the
whole building allowed us to create a warm, friendly space (below).
NATIONAL STADIUM

This new stadium, which will serve as the main venue for the Tokyo Olympics in
2021, sits in the middle of the forest surrounding Meiji Jingū (see p. 24). The inner
part of the woodland, the naien, is where the main building of the shrine stands.
The stadium sits on the east side of the naien, where there are a number of other
sports facilities, including the Yoyogi National Gymnasium (p. 8), designed by
Kenzō Tange and built for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
When designing the new stadium, along with Taisei Corporation and Asuka
Sekkei, our priority was to ensure that it blended in with the landscape. First, we
decided to keep the height as low as possible. The lighting towers for the previous
stadium were 60 m (nearly 200 ft) in height, and Zaha Hadid’s initial design, which
was aborted after construction costs exceeded the budget, were 75 m (over 245 ft).
By placing seating as close to the ground as possible, and keeping the height of the
supporting truss to a minimum, we were able to keep the total height under 50 m
(164 ft). During the twentieth century, much importance was attached to things that
were big and tall, but, as we moved into the twenty-first century, I felt that being
big and tall had become embarrassing.
We thought about what kind of year 2020 would be, and what building
material would be suitable. Tange, Japan’s twentieth-century ‘starchitect’, had
designed his gymnasium during the peak of the country’s economic growth; the
Tōkaidō Shinkansen and the network of concrete motorways flying through the
Tokyo skyline were also built then. It was a festival that celebrated
industrialization, and would show the world that Japan had fully recovered from the
war. But these Olympics will take place at a time when the country has an aging
society, a dwindling birthrate and a shrinking economy. The event needs to be
softer and gentler, symbolizing slow growth and environmental sustainability. The
only material that seemed appropriate to use was wood.
Through a cycle of planting trees, harvesting them for building materials,
and planting again, Japan was able to maintain its wood resources. In the twentieth
century, however, concrete and steel played a major role in construction, and even
when using timber, people turned to cheap sources from overseas. Japan’s forests
consequently fell into ruin. Trees extract carbon dioxide from the air, but this
capacity is impaired in forests that have been abandoned. Woodlands that have
been allowed to run wild lose their water-retention capabilities, one of the factors in
the frequent recurrence of flooding, and are also linked to pollen allergies,
particularly cedar.
To return the country’s woodlands to a healthy condition, we need to use
their wood in construction by building smaller, human-scale structures, and to
manage that use carefully. The stadium’s external wall uses cedar from all forty-
seven of Japan’s prefectures, and the roof is supported by a hybrid structure of
wood and steel. Encircling the building are five-storey wooden eaves, with the
wood beneath the eaves protected from sun and rain, so that it lasts longer (the
seventh-century Hōryū-ji Temple, the world’s oldest known wooden building, is
protected by similar eaves). The eaves have cedar boards 10.5 cm (4 in.) wide, the
same width used for columns and rafters in traditional wooden homes, and which
the Japanese people have the greatest familiarity with.
In old buildings, small cracks were left between these pieces of wood to
allow air into the room, with the width of the cracks varying according to the
position of the wood. These tiny ventilation shafts help people endure the summer
heat even without air-conditioning. An 850 m (2,790 ft)-long pedestrian concourse,
the Sky Forest, hovers 30 m (nearly 100 ft) above the ground. Even on days when
the stadium is not being used for sports events, locals can look out onto the
beautiful forest of the Meiji Jingū below. The National Stadium has been built not
only for sporting events, but also for the everyday lives of local residents.
SUNTORY MUSEUM OF ART

When I was young, the Roppongi neighbourhood was home to the Stars and
Stripes newspaper building, and had a building with a heliport for the US troops. In
the evening, the area would be filled with young foreigners, walking around and
drinking in the izakayas until morning, and as a student, I would go bar-hopping
there, soaking up the atmosphere. There is still a slightly seedy feeling to the
neighbourhoods around the numerous American military bases in Japan, which is
different to the nightlife districts frequented by locals. Tokyo Midtown – a mixed-
use development that includes the Suntory Museum of Art – was once the site of
the Ministry of Defense, and some of that military-base feel still lingers.
I spent six years of my youth attending Eiko Gakuen, a Jesuit school in
Kamakura. Yokosuka, another US military base, is nearby. You can still experience
that same atmosphere in places like Okinawa, Iwakuni in Yamaguchi, and Sasebo
in Kyushu. It seems to me that there is a link between the free spirit that surrounds
the military bases, and the fact that Tokyo Midtown and Roppongi Hills, another
large mixed-use development, attract lots of foreign tourists. In the Edo period,
these sites were home to daimyō mansions. Most of these residences were built on
high ground, where the view was good and there was little chance of flooding, so
the land is well suited to this kind of redevelopment project.
The Suntory Museum of Art is one of the most popular museums with
overseas visitors to Japan. Its collections are focused on the beauty that is found in
everyday life, with its holdings of ancient Japanese art and traditional handicrafts
among the best in the country. To give the building a sense of the delicacy
associated with such crafts, as well as a feeling of warmth, I designed louvres from
white porcelain panels, and used them to cover the outer walls. The louvres are
tapered, to make their tips as fine as possible. (In fact, making tips as thin as
possible is one of my key design principles: the thin lip of a teacup allows a better
experience of the subtleties of tea – this is always at the forefront of my mind when
I pay such close attention to edges.)

For the interior, I used paulownia wood, a wonderful soft material that
absorbs moisture, which is why it was used for storing kimonos. Paulownia
wardrobes were commonly taken by a bride to her new husband’s family home
when she got married. Another important choice of material was the oak used for
the floor. The Suntory distillery is known around the world for its superior whisky,
so I decided to make use of the oak planks from their old barrels, applying heat to
flatten them, before laying them as floorboards. Some visitors say they can still
smell the whisky as they tread on them.
Inside the museum, we used washi (Japanese paper) made by Yasuo
Kobayashi, an artisan from Takayanagi (now part of Kashiwazaki) in Niigata
Prefecture. Kobayashi has his own field, where he grows the kozo trees (a kind of
mulberry) used in making washi. In recent years, it has become common to use
kozo from Thailand or Taiwan, but Kobayashi believes that this has resulted in a
loss of the lustre washi originally would have had when made from native kozo, so
he decided to grow his own. He also believes in the importance of the suketa, a
bamboo tray-shaped instrument used for straining the pulp and spreading it thinly.
By leaving a slight gap between the bamboo sticks in the suketa, a finely striped
pattern is created. Kobayashi revived the practice of creating these delicate stripes,
which were always found in washi prior to the 1950s.

Vertical louvres on the façade control the light (above). Inside, movable screens are
controlled by a mechanism inspired by traditional window design (below).
KITTE

As an in-house architect for the (now-defunct) Ministry of Communications,

Tetsurō Yoshida (1894–1956) designed numerous splendid municipal buildings.
One of his finest works, the Tokyo Central Post Office (1931), has been revived by
us as the Kitte complex, combining office and commercial space (we also
transformed his Kyoto Central Telephone Office from 1926 into an Ace Hotel).
While influenced by German modernist architecture, Yoshida also produced
designs that had more in keeping with traditional Japanese wooden buildings. His
work was hugely influential, and it is in no small part thanks to him that the design
of Japan’s post offices and telephone bureaus remained of a consistently high
standard.
Yoshida was a close friend of Bruno Taut, who lived in Japan in the 1930s,
and assisted the German architect in the design and construction of the only
building Taut completed in Japan, Hyuga Villa (1936) in Atami, Shizuoka
Prefecture. I designed the adjacent guest house Water/Glass (1995) as an homage to
Taut’s Glass Pavilion, built for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, which
established his reputation around the world (it has since become the Atami
Kaihourou hotel).
When designing the Tokyo Central Post Office, Yoshida incorporated
beautiful octagonal columns as a way of making the irregularly shaped plot
workable. He understood that by making the columns octagonal, minimizing the
width of each side, they would appear thinner than they actually were. As a tribute
to these columns, we fitted metal plates into the central atrium in the place where
they once stood and recreated them using strings of metal beads. For the handrails,
we designed a pattern of fine silver stripes using a ceramic print, as part of an
interior space based around the motif of the line. This harmonizes with Yoshida’s
original design and his fondness for vertical lattices. Indeed, it was Yoshida who
brought the vertical lattice from traditional Japanese buildings into the world of
modernist architecture.

In the commercial part of the facility, we decided to play on the building’s

former life as a post office. For the walls, we used interesting materials collected
from all over Japan – wood, daub and metalwork – making them into rectangular
boards reminiscent of postcards or envelopes, reinforcing the link to the old post
office (the name of the building, kitte, also means ‘stamp’). On the ground floor,
we preserved the customer-service windows, and on the first floor is the annex of
the Tokyo University Museum (the main building is in the Hongō campus). Here,
fossils, specimens and other treasures owned by the university are on display.
On the third floor, the director’s office has been preserved in its original
state, and the view of the huge plated roof of Tokyo Station (1914), designed by
Kingo Tatsuno (1854–1919), makes for an extremely impressive sight. It’s said that
Tatsuno’s design was influenced by Centraal Station in Amsterdam. Tatsuno was
also a huge fan of sumo wrestling, and the shape of the building, with its large
wings to either side, may have been inspired by the pose assumed by yokozuna
wrestlers as they enter the ring. The large roof, slightly baroque in feel, was
destroyed by American air raids during the Second World War, but in 2014, under
the guidance of Hiroyuki Suzuki, an architectural historian (and a former teacher of
mine), the roof was restored to its original dynamic form.

Our design reinterprets Yoshida’s octagon, creating a ‘pillar of light’ (above). Inside, we
added glass handrails, printed with a delicate pattern of thin lines.
SHINJUKU

Along with Shibuya (p. 12) and Ikebukuro (p. 64), Shinjuku is one of
the major stations on the Yamanote line. It serves as a gateway to
Tokyo’s western suburbs, and the area around the station has the
slightly anarchic feeling associated with the youth culture of that
region.
Outside the eastern exit are two bar districts – Shinjuku Nichōme,
the heart of Tokyo’s gay culture, and a magnet for people from the
worlds of the theatre and the arts, and Golden Gai – where one can
truly experience the atmosphere of the Shōwa period (1926–1989).
Also to the east is Shin-Ōkubo, a neighbourhood inhabited by non-
Japanese Asian communities. Visitors looking for ethnic food or
reasonably priced bars should head here, where the energy, diversity
and vivacity of Japan’s immigrant population can truly be experienced.
The western exit opens onto vistas that could have been designed
by Le Corbusier, with high-rise office buildings towering above leafy
parks. Originally, there was no town at all here, just a river: the
Yodogawa. But from the 1970s onwards, the area became home to the
high-rise complexes that seem out of place in Japanese cities. By the
1980s, Shinjuku’s western exit had become a showcase for Tokyo’s
architectural design scene.

Visitors looking for ethnic food or reasonably priced

bars should head to Shin-Ōkubo, where the energy,
diversity and vivacity of Japan’s immigrant
communities can truly be experienced.

Today, skyscrapers are frowned upon in Japan, and are

seen as the product of the mistaken mindset that
prevailed during the country’s period of enhanced
growth.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (1990), designed

by Kenzō Tange, is the area’s tallest structure. The design of its twin
towers – created at a time when Japan’s economy was moving full
steam ahead – was much discussed, with the building being compared
to Notre Dame in Paris. Today, skyscrapers are frowned upon in Japan,
and seen as the product of the mistaken mindset that prevailed during
this period of enhanced growth. The two-tower design has also been
much criticized as inefficient and prone to leaks.
 Head further west and you come to an old fashioned-looking
street, Jūniso-dōri (‘street of the twelve shrines’). Here, you will find a
more human, friendlier feel than in those parts of town littered with
skyscrapers. Old hotels have been renovated, and cheap, delicious
restaurants give new life to this old-style street.
MEJIRO

Mejiro is a station on the Yamanote line, and a district of Toshima, one

of Tokyo’s special wards. At the top of its plateau towers St Mary’s
Cathedral, designed by Kenzō Tange. It was completed in 1964, the
year of the first Tokyo Olympics and the apotheosis of Tange’s career
as an architect.
Rather than designing a straight path into the cathedral from the
street, as would normally be seen in religious buildings in the West,
Tange instead created a dramatic entry that sends visitors to the back of
the building, before turning around and ascending a staircase. This
circuitous route into the cathedral, similar to the processional path to
Meiji Jingū (see p. 24), reflects a particularly Japanese approach to
design.
Tange’s design, with its hyperbolic paraboloid thin-shell
construction, was not only ground-breaking, but also structurally
daring. Yoshikatsu Tsuboi, a fellow professor at Tokyo University, was
the structural engineer for both the cathedral and the Yoyogi National
Gymnasium (p. 8), which also had a distinctive suspended form. At the
time, it was Tange’s practice to create shapes that had not been seen
before. The light pouring down from the ceiling in the cathedral is as
dramatic as in the gymnasium, and worshippers and visitors alike find
it very affecting.
Also on the plateau is the Eisei Bunko Museum, which exhibits
art and artefacts once owned by the Hosokawa of Kokura (later
Kumamoto), a family of daimyō with a rich history from the Kamakura
period (1185–1333) to the present day. The eighteenth descendant,
Morihiro Hosokawa, served as governor of Kumamoto and prime
minister of Japan, before becoming a ceramicist. Nearby are the
Wakeijuku student dorms, the setting for Haruki Murakami’s novel,
Norwegian Wood (1987). Murakami himself lived in the dorms while a
student, and would travel down the hill to attend lectures at Waseda
University.
Within the university campus is the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre
Museum, designed by Kenji Imai (1895–1987) in 1928 to resemble the
seventeenth-century Fortune Playhouse in London. It is named for
Tsubouchi Shōyō, who, like Imai, was a professor at Waseda. Next to
the museum is our Waseda International House of Literature, which
houses Murakami’s books and record collection. In his novels,
different times interconnect like a maze of tunnels, so we decided to
convert this narrative structure into architecture, using wood as the
primary material. Inside is a café where visitors can sip coffee while
listening to the jazz that Murakami loved.
Next to the university is the distinctively shaped Kannon-ji
Temple, designed by Osamu Ishiyama (b. 1944) in 1996, who taught
for many years at Waseda. The university is known for its liberal style
of education, of a quality to rival that of Tokyo University, and has
produced many architects with a different style and philosophy to
Tange, Isozaki, Maki and others from the Tōdai school. Tōgo Murano
(1891–1984), who countered Tange’s macho style with a feminine
gracefulness, is a prime example of this, and Ishiyama himself, who
championed self-build structures and the use of recycled materials, has
also been hugely influential on the next generation.

Tange’s design for the cathedral was not only ground-

breaking, but also structurally daring … The light
pouring down from the ceiling is as dramatic as that
seen in the Yoyogi National Gymnasium.
IKEBUKURO

Ikebukuro, in the north of the capital, has always been thought of as the
roughest and most dangerous of Tokyo’s principal stations, and, unlike
Shibuya (p. 12) and Shinjuku (p. 56) seen as a shady part of town. This
is particularly true of the area around its eastern exit, where Sugamo
Prison – which counted political prisoners, dissenters and spies among
its inmates – once stood.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as Japan’s birthrate
decreased, society became older, and the population in general grew
smaller, towns and cities began to be labelled as ‘at risk of extinction’.
Ikebukuro was the only area in Tokyo that was deemed at risk, and
became the focus of much negative discussion.
The local government of Toshima ward decided to flip the area’s
unsavoury reputation on its head, turning Ikebukuro into a destination
known for its counterculture, which in turn would draw in young
people. The person who initiated this great turnaround was the ward’s
mayor, Yukio Takano, a former secondhand bookshop owner.
We were asked to design a new ward office (ill. p. 67), to be
located outside the station’s eastern exit. This new type of multi-
purpose space, combining housing with a town hall, and using solar
panels and recycled wood panels, became a symbol of the
neighbourhood. The random arrangement of small panels on the façade
allows the building to blend into its surroundings. In the grounds was a
cluster of small wooden houses, and nearby was a graveyard – this
certainly wasn’t an area with a good image, but our building changed
all that.
The most memorable part of the design, the vertical 3D garden, is
built up from ten layers. A small stream recycles rainwater and is home
to tiny killifish, recreating the lush, peaceful nature that was typical in
Tokyo in the past. Schoolchildren visit here and learn about the old
ways, when people lived at one with nature.
Since the new ward office was completed in 2015, Minami
Ikebukuro Park has also been restored, and is now the neighbourhood’s
answer to Central Park. With the previous regional office demolished,
six theatres have been planned for the area, including one that will host
kabuki performances and plays by the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female
musical theatre troupe. Ikebukuro, which was once so distant from high
culture of any kind, is in the process of being transformed into Tokyo’s
Broadway.
 In contrast to the eastern exit, the western exit is more subdued.
Jiyū Gakuen School (1921), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, can be
found here. Japanese architecture had a profound influence on Wright –
who admired Japanese woodblock art and visited the country several
times – particularly the traditional low-hanging eaves that project
beyond the façades of buildings. In Wright’s design for the school, the
shadows created by these eaves are a major theme.
Wright used Ōya stone, a kind of soft and porous volcanic rock
found near Utsunomiya, for both the Imperial Hotel (1923), opposite
the Imperial Palace, and Jiyū Gakuen. We also used Ōya stone in our
design for Hoshakuji Station (2008) in Takanezawa, near to the stone’s
extraction site. This was our homage to Wright, who valued the natural
material of this location so highly.
UENO & YANESEN

In Edo-era Japan, much importance was attached to the tenets of feng

shui. Temples were erected in certain areas of towns and cities to ward
off negative energy, with the northwestern section being the most
auspicious, and the area to the northeast being the worst. This
northeastern district was known as the kimon, or ‘demon’s gate’.
In Tokyo, the neighbourhood of Ueno lay in the kimon. To
prevent evil from flooding into the city, the shogunate built a large
temple, Kan’ei-ji, in 1625, fronted by Shinobazu Pond. In the Meiji era,
Ueno Zoo (1882) was built beside it, and the area grew lively with
visitors who came to see the pandas brought over from China.
Ueno is also home to several cultural venues and attractions,
including the Tokyo National Museum, built in 1872 and inspired by
the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert) in
London, and the Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures (1999), designed by
Yoshio Taniguchi (b. 1937), which contains objects from the collection
of the seventh-century Hōryū-ji Temple in Nara. The International
Library of Children’s Literature (2000) and the National Archives of
Modern Architecture (2013), both designed by Tadao Andō, can also
be found here.
Ueno Station, which opened in 1883, was known as the ‘gateway
to Tokyo’. Agricultural labourers would arrive here from the Tōhoku
region of Honshu Island, where the winters were too cold for farming.
Having come south looking for work, a form of seasonal migrant
labour known as dekasegi, they settled in Ueno. The Ameya-yokochō
open-air market sprang up near the station, and is still bustling today.
In the Tora-san series of films directed by Yōji Yamada, which depict
life in Japan in the period immediately after the Second World War, the
market (often abbreviated to ‘Ame-yoko’) appears many times.
A number of neighbourhoods in the city retain a working-class
feel, reminiscent of Tokyo as it was in the old days. Yanaka, Nezu and
Sendagi (known collectively as YaNeSen), in particular, is a good
place to come to experience this, with many of the old houses
converted into restaurants, hotels and galleries.
An artist friend, Bosco Sodi, who was drawn to the feel of the
area, decided to convert one of the old wooden houses into a studio.
The design was undertaken by Rafael Balboa, one of my students at
Tokyo University. Nearby is one of the meccas of contemporary art,
SCAI The Bathhouse, where Sodi hosts exhibitions from time to time.
The gallery was converted from a public bathhouse, and its tiled
curving roof, which used to indicate public baths, remains to this day.

In Edo-era Japan, much importance was attached to the

tenets of feng shui, and temples were erected in certain
areas of cities and towns to ward off negative energy.
JUGETSUDO KABUKI-ZA

During the Edo period, there were four theatres in Tokyo, for the performance of
kabuki: Nakamuraza, Shimuraza, Moritaza and Yamamuraza. The ruling shogunate
were wary of the art form, however, and imposed various restrictions, including
limiting the width of the theatres to 5.5 m (nearly 18 ft). In 1889, the writer and
critic Fukuchi Ōchi, along with the actor Ichikawa Danjūrō IX, decided that the
new, modern Japan must create a theatre tradition that would amaze Western
visitors, and therefore needed a new performing space, exclusively for kabuki, to
rival the Opéra in Paris. The first kabuki-za was built, and came to be loved not
only as a symbol of Japanese tradition and theatre, but also as the cultural heart of
the districts of Ginza and Tsukiji.
After it was destroyed by fire in 1921, the theatre was rebuilt, but burned
down again during the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. It was rebuilt in 1925, but
this third version, too, was destroyed – this time by American air raids during the
Second World War. The US occupation, led by General MacArthur, had initially
considered banning kabuki altogether, but it was allowed to continue, thanks to
MacArthur’s aide-de-camp, Faubion Bowers, who ensured that a fourth kabuki-za
was built in 1950.
When it was decided that this building needed updating to make it
earthquake-resistant, we were commissioned to design a fifth version of the
building. The exterior essentially follows the form of its predecessor, but we
extended the eaves to augment the shadows, and exaggerated the design of the
karahafu (a kind of undulating gable roof, unique to Japan), at the centre of the
façade. The karahafu originally appeared in the third incarnation of the building,
and was replicated in many of the public bathhouses built after the earthquake.
Today, upon seeing a karahafu, most Japanese will either think of public baths or
the kabuki-za. Until the Second World War, there were no baths in private homes,
and public bathhouses formed a key part of everyday life, serving as a place for
interaction and communication. Even today, there are over 500 public bathhouses
remaining in Tokyo, giving one a taste of what life was like during the Edo period.
We also created a twenty-nine-storey tower behind the Jugetsudo Kabuki-
za. For the front side of the tower, facing the theatre, we did away with
conventional windows and instead created a three-dimensional façade with many
shadows, drawing inspiration from the nejiri renji kōshi (narrowly spaced lattices
with twisted bars) often observed in temples and shrines. The interior is designed in
a vivid shade of scarlet known as ‘kabuki-za red’, and a muted, dull gold.
The foyer boasts a hand-embroidered carpet created for the fourth kabuki-za
in 1950, with a pattern featuring the Chinese phoenix, a sacred bird and the symbol
of the building. The design is taken from the Phoenix Hall at Byōdō-in Temple in
Uji, Kyoto, which appears on the ten-yen coin. The carpet is made by Oriental
Carpet, a small Yamagata-based company, set up in 1935 to provide a place for
unemployed women to work during the winter months in this snowy region
(Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Snow Country, published in 1937, was set in
Yamagata), and they continue to produce handmade carpets to this day. On the roof
is a Japanese garden, which is open to the public. A small museum faces onto it,
where visitors can learn about the history of kabuki, and a café in which to enjoy
green tea and Japanese sweets.
TSUKIJI & SHINBASHI

To the east of Ginza, Tokyo’s largest downtown area, lies Tsukiji.

Until 2018 it was the site of Japan’s largest market, with lots of little
shops and cafés (known as jōgai, or ‘outside the market’) surrounding
it, which sold fish and seafood, traded wholesale inside. Even after the
market moved to Toyosu, these jōgai remained open, retaining the
area’s bustling spirit, and there are still plenty of delicious, reasonably
priced sushi restaurants to be found here.
Nearby is the headquarters of Japan’s biggest advertising agency,
Dentsu. When Kenzō Tange designed the original building in 1967, he
was refining his ‘Plan for Tokyo, 1960’, a large-scale urban masterplan
that featured an enormous floating city out in Tokyo Bay, offering a
solution to the city’s land-shortage problem. Tange put Tsukiji as the
centre of his plan, which now seems grandiose and delusional. His
design for the Dentsu building had much in common with the
Metabolist philosophy of the 1960s, which maintained that buildings
needed to continually evolve in a flexible way.
The current Dentsu headquarters (2002) was designed by Jean
Nouvel, and features a distinctive curtain wall of ceramic printed glass.
Nouvel was unhappy with the finished building, and refuses to
acknowledge it as his own work. Today, it is now used solely by one of
Dentsu’s subsidiary companies.
Shinbashi, which lies to the south, was once famed for its geisha.
The Japanese culture of inviting geisha to entertain guests with dancing
and singing dates from the Edo period in the nineteenth century, and
Shinbashi was its epicentre. As well as being a historic neighbourhood,
it also looked to the future, and Japan’s first railway was built here in
1872.
There are many tatami-floored restaurants (known as ryotei) in
Shinbashi, with one of the most famous being Shinkiraku (1962).
Designed by architect Isoya Yoshida (1894–1974), it combined the
minimalism of Modernism with traditional wooden architecture. In its
heyday, Shinkiraku was frequented by politicians and other public
figures, and today it is where judging takes place for Japan’s most
prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize.
Nearby is the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972), designed by Kishō
Kurokawa and comprised of re-arrangeable pods. Kurokawa, a former
student of Kenzō Tange, was one of the founders of the Metabolist
movement, which quickly came to worldwide attention and rocketed
Kurokawa to fame as a young star of the architectural world.
 With this building, Kurokawa’s Metabolist philosophy was fully
realized. After it was completed, however, it became almost impossible
to switch over the capsules – indeed, since its completion, not one of
the capsules has been moved. As a result, the Metabolist movement has
been forgotten. Yet its core principles, which sought to draw
architectural lessons from living organisms, has much inspiration to
offer society today.

As well as being a historic neighbourhood, Shinbashi

also looked to the future, and it was here that Japan’s
first railway was built in 1872.
TAKANAWA GATEWAY STATION

Takanawa Gateway is a new station designed by us, located on the Yamanote line
between Shinagawa and Tamachi. It will probably be the last new station to be
added to the line, which runs in a loop around the Imperial Palace, threading its
way through the sloping land between the high and low areas of the city. Many of
the stations have one entrance on the uphill side and another lower down, and the
neighbourhoods around them have a totally different feel, depending on which exit
you use to leave the station.
The hilly areas in Tokyo are mostly made up of quiet, well-to-do residential
districts, while the lower sections often have more of a populist feel, with shopping
arcades and small urban factories. As a result, the atmosphere outside the entrances
are dramatically different in character. Take the wrong exit, and you might find
yourself lost in a completely different kind of neighbourhood than you were
expecting. In Tokyo, elite and working-class cultures exist alongside one another
and mix together. I think the fundamental cause of this is the complexity of the
city’s topography.
A huge rail depot formerly stood where the station now stands. When it fell
out of use, a new neighbourhood that would serve as a centre for Tokyo, halfway
between Haneda Airport and Tokyo Station, was put forward. The station name
arose from the fact that it would function as a ‘gateway’ to this new
neighbourhood. The Chūō Shinkansen, a maglev line that will take passengers from
Tokyo to Nagoya in just forty minutes, will arrive 100 m (328 ft) underground at
Shinagawa, the next station along. The two stations are connected by a mall that
spans between them, so the development around Takanawa station will also act as a
gateway for passengers from the western part of Japan travelling on this super-fast
train line.
When designing the station, we knew we needed to create one that would be
suitable for Tokyo as an international city of the twenty-first century, visited by
people from around the world. To give them a sense of Japanese culture, we
decided to cover the entire station with a large roof with geometric creases,
resembling origami (overleaf). In most Japanese stations, the platforms and the
main concourse have their own separate roofs, but here we used a single roof over
the whole structure, which does away with the boundary between the station and
the surrounding neighbourhood, creating a more fluid relationship between them.
In the future, I believe that stations will be more like this, with the town and station
becoming a single, unified space, where ticket barriers may no longer be necessary.
The large roof is supported by a frame constructed from a combination of
metal and wood. The wooden frame is covered with a white translucent film, based
on shōji screens. These sliding screens, made from washi paper stuck onto a
wooden frame, represent what I like best about traditional Japanese architecture. In
the wooden house where I grew up, built before the war, there were lots of these
shōji screens.
In his essay In Praise of Shadows, Juni’chirō Tanizaki wrote about the
effect of light and shadow, noting that light plays the main role in Western
architecture, but in Japanese architecture, the gentle light that passes through shōji
screens serves a key purpose. It reaches right to the back of the room, so that the
space feels bright, even without the aid of artificial light. The soft light filtering
through the white film at Takanawa Gateway Station represents a form of light that
was forgotten about by Japanese Modernism.

Takanawa Gateway Station, under construction (above), and the 110 m (361 ft)-long roof,
inspired by origami (below).
LA KAGU

The neighbourhood of Kagurazaka is home to Japan’s publishing industry. One

company, Shinchosha, famous for publishing many of Haruki Murakami’s novels,
including 1Q84 (2009), asked us to convert their former warehouse into a multi-
purpose building that would combine shop, café and lecture space. Much of our
efforts went into the great wooden staircase, which we added outside the building.
The warehouse was originally cut off from the road and difficult to access, but we
re-connected them by placing a large, organically shaped staircase between the
road and the warehouse, allowing the building to become part of the
neighbourhood.
The topography of Kagurazaka is somewhat complex; the roads are narrow,
and there are steep slopes and flights of steps that cars cannot drive down (the -zaka
in ‘Kagurazaka’ means ‘slope’ or ‘hill’). It occurred to me to use these hills as a
way of expressing the culture and architecture of the neighbourhood. Tokyo is a
city of hills, with most of it lying on an alluvial plain between the Tama and Kanda
rivers. It is via these hills that the upland, elite neighbourhoods are connected with
the more working-class areas down below. The slopes are thus a key part of the co-
existence of these two worlds, used by people to come and go between them.
Kagurazaka is particularly notable in this respect.
All of the wooden shelves used for storing books were on the warehouse’s
first floor. We decided to keep these shelves as they were to form a library, and we
also created a small lecture hall for holding talks by writers and makers. Although
contemporary society is moving away from books and towards computers and
information technology, people nevertheless have a strong feeling of connection to
– and nostalgia for – trees and things that are made from wood. La Kagu is a space
where visitors can really get a sense of the culture of books. When they step inside,
some even say that they can smell wood.
Near to La Kagu is SHAREyaraicho (2012), an apartment block designed
for shared living, designed by my wife, the architect Satoko Shinohara (b. 1958).
Kagurazaka is an old district that still retains the feel of the hanamachi, an area
where geisha live and work, and recently, this nostalgic atmosphere has been
gaining popularity among young people. Here, young artists and designers who are
fond of the Kagurazaka neighbourhood can live alongside one another.
More and more buildings, designed explicitly for co-living, have been
popping up all over Tokyo. The Japanese have not embraced house- and flat-
sharing in the way that people do in the West, but in the last few decades this has
begun to change. Prior to 1970, there were many mokuchin aparto, two-storey
wooden apartment blocks that offered residents both low rents and a kind of co-
living arrangement. It was common for youngsters who arrived in Tokyo from the
provinces to live in these mokuchin aparto, and residents formed close
relationships with their fellow tenants. But as Japan grew more affluent, this culture
began to disappear. After the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, however, the
mokuchin aparto tradition has been revived, and the practice of co-living is
becoming popular again. These apartments offering co-living are known as shea
hausu (‘share houses’).
 Since the 1970s, owning a house or an apartment in the city has been seen
as a symbol of wealth, sparking the appearance of medium-height concrete
condominiums, which spoil the beauty of Tokyo. Since the tsunami, however,
people have increasingly come to feel that sharing both spaces and things is better
and easier than owning them, and SHAREyaraicho symbolizes that trend. There is
a rooftop garden for growing vegetables and herbs, and the façade of the building is
covered by a soft, semi-transparent sheet of fabric, giving it an entirely different
feel to the coldness of concrete or glass condominiums.

The external wooden staircase.

AKAGI SHRINE

Of all of the districts in Tokyo, it is Kagurazaka that is seen as still possessing the
kind of narrow streets the city had in the past. The Akagi Shrine, believed to have
been built around 1300, is situated in the middle of the neighbourhood. Its name
derives from the view from the shrine to Mount Akagi, 150 km (93 miles) to the
north, a sacred place where the gods were believed to live. Unfortunately, with all
the buildings that have been built around the shrine, one can no longer see Mount
Akagi from the grounds.
Historically, Japan’s shrines have been built in order to worship the gods
who live in the sacred mountains or seas; they don’t reside in the shrine itself, but
in the space beyond it. This belief that the spirits and deities exist beyond the
confines of the shrine, and that the shrine itself acts not as a centre, but as a kind of
gateway, is very different to the grand, imposing churches and cathedrals of
Christianity.
The majority of shrines are not found in the mountains or in the middle of
the fields, therefore, but at the borders of mountain villages – which is to say, at
what is seen as the edge of the mountains. The torī gate, marking the entrance to a
shrine, indicates that there are gods on the other side of it. When redesigning the
Akagi Shrine complex in 2010, I also designed the torī, painting it in a
comparatively pale shade of orange known as mizu-urushi. I felt that the traditional
bright-red colour was overly forceful for the smaller, intimate feel of Kagurazaka.
During the first half of the twentieth century, Kagurazaka flourished as a
hanamachi. For an enkai, a specific type of party held in traditional tatami-floored
buildings, geisha would be invited through the okiya (geisha houses), and would
dance and sing nagauta songs, accompanied by a shamisen (a three-stringed
wooden instrument), and drink with the guests. This became seen as the most
luxurious form of entertainment that could be had in Japan. There were several
hanamachi in Tokyo, although the only ones left today are in Shinbashi, Akasaki
and Kagurazaka. Even in Kagurazaka, the tradition has dwindled to the point of
extinction. This seems to me a terrible shame. During the Edo period, hanamachi
served as the epicentres of Kyoto and Tokyo culture, and it was thanks to them that
the traditional dances and songs have survived.
With many of its low wooden buildings still remaining, Kagurazaka is
beloved by artists and creatives. Director and screenwriter Yōji Yamada (see also
p. 69) wrote his scripts in a room at Wakana, a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn
with tatami mats and communal baths) here. In 2020, we redesigned Wakana as a
ryōri-ryokan (a ryokan specializing in food), but retaining its Japanese style. Hideki
Ishikawa, one of Japan’s most celebrated chefs, is in charge of catering, and guests
can enjoy meals prepared by him in the comfort of their compact guest rooms,
complete with bathtubs made from Japanese cypress. The room where Yamada
wrote the Tora-san film series has been preserved as it was.

The entrance to the shrine, with the Park Court Kagurazaka apartment building to the right.
DAIWA UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING RESEARCH
BUILDING

Of all the university campuses in Japan, the University of Tokyo in Hongō is one of
the oldest and most beautiful. The site contains the ruins of the residence of the
Maeda clan, a family of daimyō from Kanazawa. The Akamon (‘red gate’), a grand
lacquered gate built in 1827 to welcome the daughter of a Tokugawa shōgun as a
bride for one of the Maeda clan, is still prized as a symbol of the campus.
When the Great Kantō Earthquake destroyed much of the campus in 1923,
and claimed the lives of over 100,000 people, Yoshikazu Uchida (1885–1972), an
architecture professor, was tasked with spearheading its reconstruction. He would
later go on to serve as chancellor of the university in the 1940s. His son,
Yoshichika Uchida (b. 1925), was my professor at the University of Tokyo, and is
one of the architects I have been most influenced by. It was from him that I learned
about the brilliance of Japan’s traditional wooden architecture.
At the same time that Frank Lloyd Wright was designing the Imperial Hotel
in the 1920s, Yoshikazu Uchida was using scratch tiles made by artisans from
Tokoname in Aichi Prefecture across the entirety of the building façades at the
University of Tokyo, designing a distinctive canvas that harmonized with the
surrounding greenery. Thanks to Wright’s influence, the use of these tiles and Ōya
stone became widespread across Japan. Wright’s choice of materials was based on
his belief that rough-textured materials that create plenty of shadow were well
suited to the country’s scenery and climate. His hunch proved to be correct.
When we set out to design a new research centre for the IT department at
the southern edge of the university campus, we drew inspiration from the scratch
tiles so beloved of Wright and Uchida, creating a textured façade by using
hundreds of strips of cedar wood. Positioning the strips randomly with gaps
between them, we created four kinds of panels, which we overlapped like scales to
give the building a gentle, organic feel, much like the hide of an animal. Precisely
because it was to be a new centre for cutting-edge research, we felt that the use of
soft, natural materials was appropriate. We created a large opening, which runs
right through the centre of the building, to connect it with the garden of the Maeda
residence and the rest of the campus. Next to the opening is a glass-fronted box,
inside of which is a popular sweetshop run by Kurogi, one of Tokyo’s best
restaurants.

A statue of Josiah Conder, a British architect who arrived in Japan in 1877

to serve as professor for the Imperial College of Engineering (which later became
part of the University of Tokyo), stands in the grounds. Influenced by the Arts and
Crafts movement of the nineteenth century, Conder was fascinated by Japanese
culture. At the time, Japan was looking to classical architecture of the West, rather
than to its own traditional architecture, and he designed grand buildings in the
European style for the elite of Japanese society, including the Mitsui Club (1913).
Conder married a Japanese woman (and had an illegitimate child with a teacher of
traditional dance), and studied nihonga (Japanese painting) under Kawanabe
Kyōsai. Many of his paintings survive today.
 Scattered across the University of Tokyo are buildings designed by
architects who have taught here over the years: Kenzō Tange, Fumihiko Maki,
Hisao Kōyama (b. 1937), Tadao Andō, and more. We were involved in renovating
Haseko Kuma Hall and its foyer area on the ground floor of the Engineering
Building, using wooden boxes, inside of which are displayed the university’s latest
research results.

Detail of the façade, showing the strips of cedar wood (above), and the interior of Haseko
Kuma Hall (below).
WESTERN TOKYO

Western Tokyo is dotted with university campuses, some with

buildings designed by notable architects. Tokyo Zokei University
(1992) is positioned along an axis in a style that its architect, Arata
Isozaki, clearly inherited from his teacher, Kenzō Tange, while Tama
Art University Library (2007), designed by Toyo Ito (b. 1941), features
rows of columns that recall Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax
Headquarters (1936), in Racine, Wisconsin.
In his design for the Musashino Art University Library (2010),
Sou Fujimoto (b. 1971) assigned the main role to the bookshelves.
Fujimoto sees buildings as a conglomeration of small fittings and parts,
and this library is an excellent example of that vision. At the
International Christian University in Mitaka is the ICU Library (1960),
designed by Antonin Raymond, who arrived in Tokyo to work as chief
assistant to Wright during work on the Imperial Hotel, and remained in
Japan after they parted company. Raymond went on to design many
famous buildings, including St Luke’s International Hospital (1928) in
Tsukiji and St Alban’s Church (1956) in Minato, and St Paul’s Church
(1935) in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, becoming a hugely influential
figure in Japanese architecture. Kunio Maekawa (1905–1986) and
Junzō Yoshimura (1908–1997), leading architects of the Modernism
movement in Japan, both worked in his studio.
Raymond preferred to design buildings in wood, and his work
stands out from postwar Japanese architecture, which can seem like an
endless sea of concrete. One of my first-ever clients, the industrialist
Fusaichirō Inoue, was a patron of both Raymond and Bruno Taut. In
the 1960s, he commissioned Raymond to design the Gunma Music
Centre (1961) in Takasaki, and his own house was a copy of
Raymond’s home in Azabu, and was built with the architect’s
permission. This delicate wooden structure still stands, and is open to
the public as the Takasaki Museum of Art. I was lucky enough to hear
of his memories of Taut and Raymond in that very house.
Within the ICU campus is our New Physical Education Centre
(2008), with its large wooden roof held up by folded plates that blend
into the natural surroundings. This folded-plate structure was also used
in Raymond’s Gunma Music Centre, and was one of his favourite
techniques.
In the Tokorozawa neighbourhood of western Tokyo, the
publishing firm Kadokawa created a new cultural centre, which they
asked us, together with Kajima Associates, to design. Combining a
printing factory with a digital-printing system, a library, museum and a
shrine, the centre – when completed – will be a new mecca for anime
and other forms of Japanese subculture.
For the Kadokawa Culture Museum, which forms the heart of the
building, we came up with a design that was modelled around an
enormous rock. Next to the museum is the Ej Anime Hotel, which is
themed around Japanese anime, and the Musashinonimasu Uruwashiki
Yamatonomiyashiro shrine, which offers a new mix of subculture and
high culture within a single facility in a way that would have been
unthinkable in the past.

Fusaichirō Inoue, one of my first clients, was a patron of

both Antonin Raymond and Bruno Taut … His house is
a copy of Raymond’s home in Azabu, and is open to the
public as the Takasaki Museum of Art.
ASAKUSA CULTURE TOURIST INFORMATION CENTRE

During the Edo period, Asakusa was one of the liveliest areas of Tokyo, and the
heart of the metropolis until it was replaced by Ginza. The Sumida River, lined
with sakura trees, ran along its east side. In the spring, when the cherry blossoms
were out, the river banks grew crowded with people drinking and making merry as
they admired the flowers. Today, people still come in cherry-blossom season to
drink and sing until late at night.
In the centre of Asakusa is Sensō-ji, a temple built in 628 AD. It attracts
thirty million visitors each year, making it the most-visited temple in Tokyo.
Between the temple building and its main gate, the Kaminari-mon, lies a 300 m
(984 ft)-long, two-storey shopping arcade – the Nakamise – which sells the kind of
souvenirs and sweets that help give visitors a sense of what it was like in Edo-
period Japan.
Across the road from the Kaminari-mon is our design for the Asakusa
Culture Tourist Information Centre (2012). In the temple grounds is a five-storey
pagoda (gojūnotō, or ‘five-fold tower’), and to honour this, we designed the new
centre in the form of a seven-storey pagoda. At 40 m (131 ft) tall, it has eaves at
each storey, which join up with the interior. The façades are fixed with wooden
louvres, which give a feeling of warmth and intimacy, whether you are on the
ground floor or higher up. Unlike other tourist information centres, our design has
a calm, serene atmosphere, so that visitors can feel truly at home. On the third floor
is a small theatre, and on the top floor is a café with a terrace, where guests can sit
with a beer and look down on the wind ruffling the Sumida River.
Unlike their Chinese counterparts, Japanese pagodas have deep,
overhanging eaves. They were generally made from wood (whereas Chinese
pagodas were made from brick or stone), and the extended eaves provided
protection from the rain. Over time, pagoda design became perfected in Japan, and
there are many beautiful examples, including the Hōryū-ji and Hōshō-ji pagodas,
and the Eastern Tower of the Yakushi-ji, all in Nara; the pagoda at Daigoji in
Kyoto; and the Rurikō-ji pagoda in Yamaguchi. The Hōryū-ji pagoda, completed at
the end of the seventh century, is the world’s oldest wooden structure. When
designing the new National Stadium (p. 42) for the Olympic Games, we were
influenced by the pagoda technique of stacking eaves on top of one another to
protect the wood.

On the opposite bank of the Sumida River lies the Asahi Beer headquarters
(1989), a strange building with a golden sculpture mounted on top of a granite-
plated black box. It was designed by Philippe Starck, and completed in 1989 when
the Japanese economy was still going strong. The sculpture, with no clearly defined
use, is a clear representation of its time. Today, the building is known as the
‘golden poo’, a reference to the shape of its crowning object.

The seven ‘roofs’ of the new Asakusa centre, with a different activity beneath each one
(above). Each floor relates differently to the outside, giving each space a unique character
(below).
MUKOJIMA

To the east of the Sumida River lies Mukojima, one of Tokyo’s six
hanamachi. These ‘flower towns’, or geisha districts, are in decline, as
are the number of geisha, but business continues unabated in
Mukojima. Comprising two elements, meaning ‘across’ and ‘island’,
the neighbourhood’s name refers to the fact that it lies on the other side
of the river. The Sumida is a symbol of Tokyo, but is not like the
Thames in London or the Seine in Paris, or other rivers that are woven
into the geography of the city. Its banks were pushed back, so that the
river became extremely wide and travelling across it feels liberating,
like crossing the sea.
Inner-city hanamachi, such as Akasaka and Shinbashi, previously
served as playgrounds for the establishment. From the 1990s onwards,
however, the hospitality trade in Japan shifted, with people seeking
increased levels of sophistication and politicians and public figures
becoming far more cautious of the potential for media scandals, and the
inner-city hanamachi began to dwindle in popularity.
But thanks to its location on the other side the river, Mukojima
has been a place to be free from the cares of everyday life. It remained
much loved and unaffected by the societal changes of the 1990s.
Indeed, Mukojima has been described as a place that everyone could
enjoy, ‘from the Emperor to the tatami-maker’ – a democratic
experience that can be felt not just in the hanamachi district, but
throughout the neighbourhood. It has proved popular with young
people, who head to the shopping arcades here, where there are always
new things going on.
Currently, there is a movement known as rojison, where people
collect rainwater for use in the case of a natural disaster, which has
attracted attention as a grassroots disaster-prevention strategy. Roji–
means alley or narrow street, while –son is a suffix applied to the
names of deities or the nobility, so rojison suggests a feeling of
honouring the local streets. Mukojima is home to the Sumida Hokusai
Museum (2016), designed by Kazuyo Sejima (b. 1956). Its sharp
façade with aluminium panelling stands out from the muted, humble
surroundings.
Travelling south along the river brings you to the Edo-Tokyo
Museum (1993), designed by Kiyonori Kikutake (1928–2011) and
Kishō Kurokawa. Kikutake is best known for his proposal to solve
Tokyo’s land shortage by reclaiming land from the sea, and using
pilotis to elevate the buildings above the ground. For Expo 75 in
Okinawa, he designed Aquapolis, a floating city supported by pilotis,
which he also used in his design for the museum. These pilotis now
seem an extension of that bubble-era mentality, with all of its attendant
illusions of grandeur. With a declining population and increasing
numbers of abandoned buildings, it seems somewhat misplaced and
ridiculous.
Nearby is the Ryōgoku Sumo Hall (1985), where a two-week
sumo championship is held three times each year, in January, May and
September. It was designed by Takashi Imazato (b. 1928), a former
student of Isoya Yoshida, the architect who created a new, distinctly
Japanese style by blending traditional architecture with modernist
principles.

Thanks to its location on the other side of the river,

Mukojima has always been a place to be free from the
cares of everyday life, and remains much loved and
unaffected by the society changes of the 1990s.
TETCHAN

Harmonica Alley, which lies outside Kichijōji station on the Chūō line, is a curious
place, established by squatters during the period of chaos and poverty after the
Second World War. It takes its name from the way that the line of little shops, with
their small entrances, give the street the look of a harmonica. In the period
immediately after the war, it was something of a dangerous part of town, populated
with brothels (at the time, Tokyo wasn’t the regulated, safe city it is now).
Restaurateur Ichirō Tezuka is committed to ensuring that the atmosphere of
Harmonica Alley is preserved, and asked us to design a branch of Tetchan, a
yakitori restaurant, near its entrance. I was surprised by how small the budget was,
but after visiting the warehouse of a renovation company, I decided to furnish the
restaurant with the kinds of discarded items one wouldn’t normally use in interior
design, from recycled LAN cables to acrylic by-products. When designing another
of Tezuka’s restaurants, Amami, I used lots of logs with the bark still on them as an
homage to the semi-tropical feel of Amami Island, which is close to Okinawa, but
without its burgeoning tourist industry. Its natural surroundings and traditional
culture remain untouched, making it a highly attractive place to visit.
Another part of Tokyo known for appealing alleyways is Shimokitazawa,
which came second, after Arroios in Lisbon, in Time Out’s ranking of the coolest
neighbourhoods in the world. Like New York’s Brooklyn, Shimokitazawa is a
young, fun-loving area, and cheaper than the more central parts of the city. We also
designed two restaurants for Tezuka here: for one, we used discarded shop signs,
and for the other, we created a façade from old aluminium sash windows and the
interior from skis and snowboards. When using discarded objects in interior design,
it gives even brand-new places the feeling that they have always been there. I think
this is due to the inherent history of these thrown-away items, which lives on inside
of them. This kind of recycled waste seemed the most appropriate building material
for the area.
The reason Shimokitazawa evolved into such an interesting neighbourhood
was that the two private railways passing through it – the Odakyū and Keiō lines –
do not cross at right angles, but at an acute one, creating lots of ‘static noise’ in the
form of level crossings and irregularly shaped plots of land. This area, full of static,
wasn’t suitable for large shopping centres or department stores, and instead became
densely clustered with small boutiques, such as secondhand clothes shops, forming
some of the most charming shopping streets in Tokyo.
The presence of small theatres such as Honda Gekijō and Ekimae Gekijō
have also helped shape Shimokitazawa into the neighbourhood it has become. For a
long time, the area was the haunt of youngsters from the world of the theatre.
Before they make it on the stage, however, getting things cheaply is of primary
importance – which is how Shimokitazawa came to be known for its reasonable
prices. The Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo is nearby, and I would
often go out drinking here as a student, lured by how cheap it was. In 2019,
Shimokitazawa station was renovated. The tracks were replaced and a new station
built, although, in a way, this preserved the area’s ‘static noise’, so that its unique
character has not vanished completely.
For the interior, we applied recycled LAN cables and melted acrylic by-products (above).
The wall painting (below) is by Teruhiko Yumura.
DIRECTORY

Akagi Shrine [pp. 92–7]

1-10 Akagi Motomachi, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 162-0817
akagi-jinja.jp

Ameya-yokochō street market [p. 69]

4-9-14 Ueno, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0005

Asahi Beer Hall [p. 110]

1-23-1 Azumabashi, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0001
asahibeer.co.jp

Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre [pp. 108–13]

2-18-9 Kaminarimon, Taito City, Tokyo 111-0034

Christian Dior [p. 20]

5-9-11 Jingūmae, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0001
dior.com

Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building [pp. 98–103]

7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 113-0033
u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/whyutokyo/hongo_hi_003.html

Dentsu Building [pp. 76–7]

8-1-8 Higashishinbashi, Minato City, Tokyo 105-0021

Edo-Tokyo Museum [p. 116]

1-4-1 Yokoami, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0015
edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/en

Eisei Bunko Museum [p. 61]

1-1-1 Mejirodai, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 112-0015
eiseibunko.com

Hillside Terrace [pp. 16–19, 38]

18-8 Sarugakucho, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0033

ICU Library & New Physical Education Centre [pp. 104–6]

3-10-2 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8585
lib.icu.ac.jp/index-e.html

Imperial Hotel [pp. 66, 98, 104]

1-1-1 Uchisaiwaichō Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-8558
imperialhoteltokyo.guestreservations.com

Imperial Palace [pp. 12, 66, 81]

1-1 Chiyoda, Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-8111
sankan.kunaicho.go.jp/english

International Library of Children’s Literature [p. 69]

12-49 Uenokoen, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0007
kodomo.go.jp/english
Jiyū Gakuen School [p. 66]
2-31-3 Nishiikebukuro, Toshima City, Tokyo 171-0021
jiyu.jp

Jugetsudo Kabuki-za [pp. 72–5]

4-12-15 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0061

Kadokawa Culture Museum [p. 106]

3-3-31 Higashitokorozawawada, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359-0023

tokorozawa-sakuratown.jp

Kan’ei-ji Temple [p. 68]

1-14-11 Uenosakuragi, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0002

Kannon-ji Temple [p. 62]

1-7-1 Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 169-0051

Kasumigaseki Building [p. 9]

3-2-5 Kasumigaseki,
Chiyoda City, Tokyo
kasumigaseki36.com

Kitte [pp. 52–5]

2 Chome-7-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-7090
jptower-kitte.jp/en

Komazawa Gymnasium [p. 8]

1-1 Komazawakoen, Setagaya City, Tokyo 154-0013

La Kagu [pp. 86–91]

67 Yaraicho, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 162-0805

Meiji Jingū Museum [pp. 24–9]

1-1 Yoyogikamizonocho, Shibuya City, Tokyo 151-0052
meijijingu.or.jp/english

Miu Miu [p. 20]

3-17-8 Minamiaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062
miumiu.com

Musashino Art University Library [p. 104]

1-736 Ogawacho, Kodaira, Tokyo 187-0032
mauml.musabi.ac.jp/en

Nakagin Capsule Tower [p. 78]

8-16-10 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0061

National Archives of Modern Architecture [p. 69]

4-6-15 Yushima, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 113-0034
nama.bunka.go.jp/global/eng.html

National Stadium [pp. 6, 10, 42–5, 110]

10-2 Kasumigaokamachi, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 160-0013
Neil Barrett [p. 20]
3-17-6 Minami-Aoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062
neilbarrett.com

Nezu Museum [pp. 30–5]

6-5-1 Minamiaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062
nezu-muse.or.jp

One@Tokyo [p. 18]

1-19-3 Oshiage, Sumida City, Tokyo 131-0045
onetokyo.com

One Omotesandō [pp. 20–3]

3-5-29, Kitaaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0061

Prada [p. 20]

5-2-6 Minamiaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062
prada.com

Ryōgoku Sumo Hall [p. 116]

1-3-28 Yokoami, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0015

St Mary’s Cathedral [pp. 60–1]

3-16-15 Sekiguchi, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 112-0014
tokyo.catholic.jp/english

SCAI The Bathhouse [p. 70]

6−1−23 Yanaka, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0001
scaithebathhouse.com/en

Sensō-ji Temple [p. 108]

2 Chome-3-1 Asakusa, Taito City, Tokyo 111-0032
senso-ji.jp

SHAREyaraicho [p. 87]

Shinjuku City, Tokyo 162-0805
facebook.com/shareyaraicho

Shibuya Scramble Square [pp. 13, 15]

2-24-12 Shibuya, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-6101
shibuya-sq.tokyu-hands.co.jp

Shinkiraku [p. 77]

4-6-7 Tsukiji, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0045

Starbucks Reserve Roastery [pp. 18, 37]

2-19-23 Aobadai, Meguro City, Tokyo 153-0042
starbucksreserve.com

Sumida Hokusai Museum [p. 115]

2-7-2 Kamezawa, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0014
hokusai-museum.jp

Sunny Hills [pp. 36–41]

3-10-20 Minamiaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062
Suntory Museum of Art [pp. 46–51]
9-7-4, Akasaka, Minato City, Tokyo 107-8643
suntory.com

Takanawa Gateway Station [pp. 80–5]

3-26-27 Takanawa, Minato City, Tokyo 108-0074

Tama Art University Library [p. 104]

2-1723 Yarimizu, Hachioji, Tokyo 192-0394
tamabi.ac.jp

Tetchan [pp. 118–23]

1-1-2 Kichijoji Honcho, Musashino, Tokyo 180-0004

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building [p. 59]

2-8-1 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 163-8001

Tokyo National Museum & Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures [p. 68]

13-9 Uenokoen, Taito City, Tokyo 110-8712
tnm.jp

Tokyo Skytree [p. 18]

1-1-2 Oshiage, Sumida City, Tokyo 131-0045
tokyo-skytree.jp/en

Tokyo Zokei University [p. 104]

1556 Utsunukimachi, Hachioji, Tokyo 192-0992
zokei.ac.jp/en

Toshima Ward Office [pp. 65–7]

1-39-2 Higashiikebukuro, Toshima City, Tokyo 170-0013

Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum [pp. 61–2]

1-6-1 Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 169-8050
waseda.jp/enpaku

Ueno Station [p. 69]

7 Chome Ueno, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0005
tokyometro.jp/station/ueno

Ueno Zoo [p. 68]

9-8-3 Uenokoen, Taito City, Tokyo 110-8711
tokyo-zoo.net/english/ueno/index.html

Wakeijuku [p. 61]

1-21-2 Mejirodai, Bunkyo City, Tokyo 112-8682
wakei.org/english

Waseda International House of Literature [p. 62]

1-104 Totsukamachi, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 169-8050
waseda.jp/culture/en/about/facilities/wihl

Yoyogi National Gymnasium [pp. 8–11, 20, 42, 60, 63]

2-1-1 Jinnan, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0041
jpnsport.go.jp/yoyogi
BUILDINGS BY KENGO KUMA & ASSOCIATES

Akagi Shrine [pp. 92–7]

Area: 4,069 m2 (43,798 sq ft)
Completed: 2010

Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre [pp. 108–13]

Area: 2,160 m2 (23,250 sq ft)
Completed: 2012

Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building [pp. 98–103]

Area: 2,710 m2 (29,170 sq ft)
Completed: 2014

ICU New Physical Education Centre [pp. 105–6]

Area: 5,966 m2 (64,217 sq ft)
Completed: 2018

Jugetsudo Kabuki-za [pp. 72–5]

Area: 127 m2 (1,367 sq ft)
Completed: 2013

Kitte [pp. 52–5]

Design: Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei
Area: 212,000 m2 (2,281,949 sq ft)
Completed: 2012

La Kagu [pp. 86–91]

Area: 962 m2 (10,355 sq ft)
Completed: 2014

Meiji Jingū Museum [pp. 24–9]

Contractor: Shimizu Corporation
Structural engineer: Kanebako Structural Engineers
MEP engineer: P.T. Morimura & Associates, Ltd
Area: 3,200 m2 (34,445 sq ft)
Completed: 2019

National Stadium [pp. 6, 10, 42–5, 110]

Area 194,000 m2 (2,088,199 sq ft)
Completed: 2019

Nezu Museum [pp. 30–5]

Area: 4,014 m2 (43,206 sq ft)
Completed: 2009

One@Tokyo [p. 18]

Area: 3,740 m2 (40,257 sq ft)
Completed: 2017

One Omotesandō [pp. 20–3]

Area: 7,690 m2 (82,774 sq ft)
Completed: 2003
Shibuya Scramble Square [pp. 13, 15]
Completed: 2019

Starbucks Reserve Roastery [pp. 18, 37]

Area: 3,187 m2 (34,305 sq ft)
Completed: 2019

Sunny Hills [pp. 36–41]

Area: 297 m2 (3,197 sq ft)
Completed: 2013

Suntory Museum of Art [pp. 46–51]

Area: 4,663 m2 (50,192 sq ft)
Completed: 2007

Takanawa Gateway Station [pp. 80–5]

Construction began: 2015 (ongoing)

Tetchan [pp. 118–23]

Completed: 2014

Toshima Ward Office [pp. 65–7]

Design: Nihon Sekkei
Landscape: Landscape Plus
Lighting: Architectural Lighting Group
Signage: Terada Design
Area: 94,682 m2 (1,019,147 sq ft)
Completed: 2015

Water/Glass [p. 52]

Area: 1,125 m2 (12,109 sq ft)
Completed: 1995
BUILDINGS BY OTHER ARCHITECTS

Asahi Beer Hall [p. 110]

Architect: Philippe Starck
Completed: 1986

Christian Dior [p. 20]

Architect: SANAA
Completed: 2004

Dentsu Building [pp. 76–7]

Architect: Jean Nouvel
Completed: 2002

Edo-Tokyo Museum [p. 116]

Architects: Kiyonori Kikutake, Kishō Kurokawa
Completed: 1993

Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures [p. 68]

Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi
Completed: 1999

Hillside Terrace [pp. 16–19, 38]

Architect: Fumihiko Maki
Completed: 1998

ICU Library [p. 104]

Architect: Antonin Raymond
Completed: 1960

Imperial Hotel [pp. 66, 98, 104]

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Completed: 1923

International Library of Children’s Literature [p. 69]

Architect: Tadao Andō
Completed: 2000

Jiyū Gakuen School [p. 66]

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Completed: 1921

Kannon-ji Temple [p. 62]

Architect: Osamu Ishiyama
Completed: 1996

Komazawa Gymnasium [p. 8]

Architect: Yoshinobu Ashihara
Completed: 1964

Miu Miu [p. 20]

Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Completed: 2015
Musashino Art University Library [p. 104]
Architect: Sou Fujimoto
Completed: 2010

Nakagin Capsule Tower [p. 78]

Architect: Kishō Kurokawa
Completed: 1972

National Archives of Modern Architecture [p. 69]

Architect: Tadao Andō
Completed: 2013

Neil Barrett [p. 20]

Architect: Zaha Hadid
Completed: 2008

Prada [p. 20]

Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Completed: 2003

Ryōgoku Sumo Hall [p. 116]

Architect: Takashi Imazato
Completed: 1985

St Mary’s Cathedral [pp. 60–1]

Architect: Kenzō Tange
Completed: 1964

SHAREyaraicho [p. 87]

Architect: Satoko Shinohara
Completed: 2012

Shinkiraku [p. 77]

Architect: Isoya Yoshida
Completed: 1962

Sumida Hokusai Museum [p. 115]

Architect: Kazuyo Sejima
Completed: 2016

Tama Art University Library [p. 104]

Architect: Toyo Ito
Completed: 2007

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building [p. 59]

Architect: Kenzō Tange
Completed: 1990

Tokyo Skytree [p. 18]

Architect: Tadao Andō
Completed: 2011

Tokyo Zokei University [p. 104]

Architect: Arata Isozaki
Completed: 1992
Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum [pp. 61–2]
Architect: Kenji Imai
Completed: 1928

Yoyogi National Gymnasium [pp. 8–11, 20, 42, 60, 63]

Architect: Kenzō Tange
Completed: 1964
PHOTO CREDITS

Original drawings are by and courtesy of Kengo Kuma.

23 Mitsumasa Fujitsuka; 26, 28–9 Kobayashi Kenji Photograph Office; 33–5 Mitsumasa
Fujitsuka; 39–41 Daichi Ano; 48, 50–1 Mitsumasa Fujitsuka; 55 Courtesy of Kengo Kuma
& Associates; 82–5 Courtesy of Kengo Kuma & Associates; 90–1 Keishin Horikoshi; 95–7
Akagi Jinja; 100, 102–3 Takumi Ota; 111–13 Takeshi Yamagishi; 121–3 Erieta Attali
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wrote this book because I wanted to share my personal experience of Tokyo with visitors to
the city. It would be wonderful if readers could explore Tokyo with this little book in hand,
and make their own discoveries. I also touched upon relationships between the buildings I
designed and their locations.

I would like to express my gratitude to Lucas Dietrich, Fleur Jones, Elain McAlpine, Poppy
David and Ramon Pez at Thames & Hudson. My thanks also go to the staff of Kengo Kuma
& Associates for putting together the text and materials necessary to help realize this project.
 First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 as
Kengo Kuma: My Life as an Architect in Tokyo

ISBN 978-0-500-34361-6

by Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX and in the
United States of America by
Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110

Kengo Kuma: My Life as an Architect in Tokyo © 2021 Thames & Hudson Ltd,
London
Text © 2021 Kengo Kuma

Photographs and drawings © 2021 Kengo Kuma

Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton

This electronic version published in 2021 by

Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX

This electronic version published in 2021 in the United States of America by

Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.

eISBN 978-0-500-77663-6
eISBN for USA only 978-0-500-77664-3

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