History of Japanese Architecture Timeline

The 1868 Kami and Buddhas Separation Act formally separated Buddhism from Shinto and Buddhist temples from Shinto shrines, ending an association that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

Thomas Waters designed the Osaka Mint in 1868, a long, low brick-and-stone building with a central pedimented portico. His influence helped advance Western-style architecture in Japan.

The Meiji Restoration of 1869 radically changed Japanese architectural history as the country reorganized its institutions and expanded its engagement with Western architecture.

Image source: Meiji Restoration

After the Tsukiji area burned in 1872, the government designated Ginza as a model of modernization, making it a prominent setting for new urban and architectural forms.

Image source: Ginza

The First National Bank building in Tokyo, built in 1872, was an early example of Western-influenced architecture in Japan.

Kaichi Primary School in Nagano Prefecture, built in 1876, is an example of early Western-influenced architecture in Japan.

Completed in Tokyo in 1883, the Rokumeikan was a large two-story building and became a controversial symbol of Westernization during the Meiji period.

Constructed in Asakusa in 1890, the Ryōunkaku was Japan’s first Western-style skyscraper.

Katayama Tōkuma’s Nara National Museum, completed in 1894, and Kyoto National Museum, completed in 1895, reflected his stronger influence from the French Second Empire style.

Tatsuno Kingo’s Bank of Japan, completed in 1896, represented the architect’s later Beaux-Arts-influenced work after his earlier Venetian-style projects.

Image source: Bank of Japan

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo between 1913 and 1923, using locally quarried Ōya stone and adapting modern design to Japanese materials.

Image source: Imperial Hotel, Tokyo

Tatsuno Kingo’s Tōkyō Station, completed in 1914, displayed the architect’s later Beaux-Arts direction.

Image source: Tokyo Station

In 1920, a group of young architects formed Japan’s first organization of modernist architects.

Image source: Modernism

Bruno Taut stayed in Japan from 1933 to 1937, contributing to international discussion of Japanese architecture and influencing architectural thought during the period.

Image source: Bruno Taut

The increasingly militaristic government required major buildings to use a Japanese style. Examples included Hitoshi Watanabe’s Tōkyō Imperial Museum and Nagoya City Hall, while modernist design was largely limited to infrastructure such as Bunzō Yamaguchi’s Number 2 Power Plant for the Kurobe Dam.

The Prefabricated Housing Association was formed in 1946 to address a chronic housing shortage. The War Damage Rehabilitation Board also proposed reconstruction ideas for thirteen Japanese cities, while the 1951 Public Housing Act supported private-sector housing.

Kenzo Tange’s winning 1949 competition entry for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum brought him international acclaim. The project was completed in 1955.

Image source: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

In 1955, Le Corbusier was asked by the Japanese government to design the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

Held in Tokyo in 1960, the World Design Conference helped internationalize Japanese architectural debate, in part through the influence of Kenzo Tange.

Designed by Kenzo Tange and built between 1961 and 1964, the Yoyogi National Gymnasium became a landmark through its suspension roof, which recalled traditional Shinto shrine elements.

In the Umbrella House, House with an Earthen Floor, and House in White, Tadao Ando explored relationships among the doma, raised tatami floors, earthen floors, and anchoring roofs.

Arata Isozaki, a former employee of Kenzo Tange, explored Metabolist ideas in theoretical projects including City in the Air and Future City.

The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo produced a major boost to new architectural design, with purpose-built venues and infrastructure.

Image source: 1964 Summer Olympics

Taniguchi Yoshirō and Moto Tsuchikawa established Meiji Mura near Nagoya in 1965, creating a place where rescued buildings could be reassembled and preserved.

The capsule emerged as an international symbol of the Metabolist movement in the late 1960s and was demonstrated in Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo in 1972.

Tadao Ando’s ideas about integrating nature informed Rokkō Housing 1 on Mount Rokkō and the Church on the Water in Tomamu, Hokkaidō.

Toyo Ito’s Tower of Winds integrated natural elements such as light and wind with technological systems, expressing the dynamism and mobility of the city’s urban nomads.

The UK practice Foreign Office Architects won an international competition in 1994 to design the Yokohama International Port Terminal.

After the 1995 Kōbe earthquake, Shigeru Ban developed cardboard tubes for rapidly constructed refugee shelters known as Paper Houses.

In his 1995 competition-winning proposal for Sendai Mediatheque, Toyō Itō continued exploring fluid dynamics through seaweed-like columns supporting a seven-story glass-wrapped building.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, both former employees of Toyō Itō, formed the collaborative practice SANAA in 1995.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima surveyed the city’s no-good architecture for their 2001 book Made in Tokyo.

Image source: Tokyo

SANAA’s Dior store in Shibuya, Tokyo, used cool white acrylic sheets on its facade to filter light and partially reveal the store’s contents, recalling Toyō Itō’s Mediatheque.

Moku Moku Yu in Kobuchizawa, Yamanashi Prefecture, completed in 2004, consists of interconnected circular pools and changing rooms with flat roofs and colored vertical timber cladding.

Image source: Foreign Office Architects

Toyō Itō’s library at Tama Art University in Tokyo, completed in 2007, demonstrated more expressive forms than the engineered aesthetic of his earlier work.

SANAA’s Rolex Learning Centre at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, completed in 2010, demonstrated the practice’s dynamic and fluid architectural approach.