When a building comes down, we lose not only a physical entity: a sense of place, a link to history and a wealth of memories go with it. Naomi Pollock in Vanishing Japan
What happens when a building that once seemed impossible to ignore simply disappears? Japan’s post-war decades produced some of the country’s boldest and most inventive architecture, from futuristic civic buildings and theatres to extraordinary department stores, offices and even petrol stations. Designed by architects including Kenzo Tange, Kunio Maekawa and Junzo Sakakura, many became landmarks in the cities they were built to transform.
Today, a surprising number are gone. Since 2000, around ninety significant post-war buildings have been demolished, for reasons ranging from soaring land values to the demands of earthquake safety and redevelopment. Some were little mourned; others were beloved landmarks and architectural milestones.
In this extract from Vanishing Japan: Modern Architecture, Gone But Not Forgotten, Naomi Pollock revisits some of these lost buildings, revealing the remarkable ideas behind them and asking what happens when the architecture that once defined a place is no longer there.
1. SONY Building
In 1957, the SONY Corporation rocked the world by introducing the first dual-band transistor radio. Less than ten years later, the electronics giant wowed audiences again with the opening of the SONY Building on a busy corner at Ginza’s Sukiyabashi Crossing. Contrasting with the area’s blaring neon, pedestrian crowds and streams of cars, the two-part building consisted of a rectangular volume wrapped with aluminium louvres plus a white, antenna-like lift tower adorned with a mosaic of moving lights made with 2,300 cathode-ray tube TVs plus ‘SONY’ emblazoned in large red letters. Here was an architecture that stood out from its site but harmonized perfectly with the sleek precision and functional beauty of SONY’s products.
Instead of broadcasting its contents outward like a conventional advertisement tower, the interior was all but concealed. More akin to shoji paper panels than standard shop windows, the metal screens revealed little of the building’s inner workings. Neither a manufacturing facility nor an administrative centre, its sole purpose was to promote SONY goods to consumers. ‘In terms of building type and space, it was very unique,’ says Taro Ashihara, the architect’s architect son.
Inside, his father created a spiralling sequence of showrooms inspired by the popular pastime known as Ginbura or strolling, shopping and eating in Ginza.
SONY Building, Yoshinobu Ashihara, Tokyo, 1966 – 2017 MIWA Kokyu
2. Idemitsu Apollo Gas Stations
For many architects, small buildings are opportunities to experiment – especially when greenlit by the client. Between 1956 and 1962, the president of the Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. petroleum company commissioned Junzo Sakakura to create fifty-three gas stations – all unique. At that time, Japan’s automotive industry was moving into high gear and its citizens were acquiring cars at record speed. Appropriately, Sakakura’s attention-grabbing fresh takes were fuelled with the excitement of car travel.
Built countrywide, the stations shared several common features. Functionally, all were engineered for ease of movement between the street and the pumps. And visually all incorporated the brand’s red and white colour scheme, plus its dashing logo featuring the stylized profile of the Greek god Apollo, authored by graphic designer Hiroshi Ouchi in 1950. Perhaps the sun god was a particularly apt image in the land of the rising sun.
For the roofs, however, Sakakura went into overdrive – each one being equally dramatic. While triangulated panels topped the Hiroshima outpost, umbrella-shaped circular covers hovered over the Ikebukuro station. Fun and futuristic, they reflected Japan’s forward momentum.
Idemitsu Apollo Gas Stations, Junzo Sakakura, Tokyo and other locations, 1956-Unknown Courtesy Sakakura Architects & Engineers
3. National Aquarium, Okinawa
The southernmost tip of the Japanese archipelago, Okinawa is a subtropical island where the sun is strong, the skies are blue, and the fish are plentiful. Constructed at the time of the International Ocean Expo of 1975, the National Aquarium celebrated local sea creatures of various sorts. ‘One might see it as an art museum of fish’, wrote architect Fumihiko Maki. Instead of the usual string of small, boxy displays, Maki’s main events were two giant tanks for coral sea and deep-sea critters respectively. These were integrated with carpeted seating areas where visitors could sit back and watch the fish frolicking while listening to piped-in electronic music.
The facility was encased in an L-shaped concrete shell of a building composed of arches piled on top of arches, ziggurat-style. Curbing the intense sun, the curved openings formed the covered approach to the main entrance as well as an ocean-facing promenade. As the sun shifted position throughout the day, the arches created an ever-changing play of light and shadow on the building’s concrete exterior. Painted brown to match the island’s local brick, Maki’s building was completely at home in the Okinawan landscape.
National Aquarium, Okinawa (Marine Life Park), Fumihiko Maki, Okinawa, 1975-2002 Photo Kaneaki Monma
4. Hiroshima Children’s Library
When it comes to Japanese cities, none carry the weight of Hiroshima. Decimated by an Allied atomic bomb in 1945, the city was largely levelled, and the loss of life was catastrophic. This event was commemorated by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the competition-winning commission that established Kenzo Tange’s career. His elegant scheme created a place for mourning, as well as a place to hope for peace, in a park-like setting. Suitably, it was on these grounds that his Children’s Library also once stood.
A modest circular building encased with glass, the building was essentially one big room divided by free-standing bookshelves with clusters of kid-sized tables and chairs in between. But the most striking feature was its complete integration of architecture and structure – it was hard to say where one ended and the other began. This was Tange’s first collaboration with engineer Yoshikatsu Tsuboi, with whom he went on to design, among other things, the Yoyogi National Gymnasium for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Rising from the centre of the library, the trunk-like concrete core branched out into a shallow bowl supporting the roof. Both a structural innovation and a symbolic gesture, this was a sunny, welcoming place where growing kids could stretch their imaginations.
Hiroshima Children's Library, Kenzo Tange 1953-1978 Kenzo Tange Archives. © Michiko Uchida
5. Fukuoka Sogo Bank
Shortly after setting up his architectural practice, Arata Isozaki had a game-changing meeting with the president of the Fukuoka Sogo Bank. Though the newly minted architect only had one built work under his belt, the young bank executive made the bold move of commissioning him to design the bank’s branch in Isozaki’s hometown, Oita. What the banker sought was a fresh take on a stodgy building type. What he got was a sound investment. Over the next ten years, Isozaki went on to design several buildings for the bank – a major coup for the client and a phenomenal opportunity for an architect just starting out.
Turning tradition on its head, the top-heavy Oita branch featured a squat, stone-clad tower with sliced-off corners and few windows. Hovering three-stories above the ground, it was propped up by chunky columns.
‘My intent at that time was to take a building – that is, an object overwhelmingly dominated by the force of gravity – and try to dematerialize it,’ wrote Isozaki. This bold strategy granted the building a distinctive presence that was visible from afar, while the low-scale banking hall hugging the ground welcomed customers with an entrance slanted towards the street – a taste of what awaited them inside. Devoid of right angles and boxy spaces, the double-height hall enabled customers to move freely as they went about their business. This informal atmosphere was complemented by soft daylight entering from stripes of skylights and a profusion of colour: salmon pink walls and squiggly air-handling pipes painted bright red.
Fukuoka Sogo Bank Oita Branch, Arata Isozaki, Oita Prefecture, 1967-2007 Courtesy Arata Isozaki & Associates
6. Kirin Plaza Osaka
Rarely do buildings have the impact of Shin Takamatsu’s Kirin Plaza Osaka. This over-the-top edifice was dominated by four twenty-metre (sixty-six-foot) high light towers jutting skyward from the corners of its contrasting black granite base. Highly articulated with gridded lines and gleaming metal, the building’s components fit together with mechanical exactitude and industrial precision. ‘There are many ways to create something, but the one that interests me is the power hidden in machines’, says the architect. In addition to epitomizing his streamlined aesthetic, this building emblemized the economic overdrive of Japan’s bubble economy.
The interior was equally impactful. Commissioned by Kirin Holdings in honour of the 100th anniversary of the brewery’s founding, the seven-storey building held cultural amenities as well as entertainment venues: bars, restaurants, a gallery and a theatre. It occupied a conspicuous corner amid Osaka’s nightlife district where so-called eat-and-drink buildings – multistorey stacks of clubs and pubs – stand chock-a-block. Vying aggressively for customers, each one has more garish signage than its neighbours. But none rivalled Kirin Plaza Osaka. While its stone surfaces reflected the pulsating neon nearby, its pillars of light – each one generated by five thousand fluorescent tubes – glowed heroically.
Kirin Plaza Osaka, Shin Takamatsu, Osaka, 1987 – 2009 © Nacása & Partners
Words by Naomi Pollock.
Vanishing Japan: Modern Architecture, Gone But Not Forgotten by Naomi Pollock is available now.
