ABOUT THE MIDDLE of the nineteenth century a great revolution in architecture broke out in Japan. Although Japanese architecture had been affected several times by other countries before this revolution, the chief characteristics of Japanese architecture – the wooden structure and the trabeated style – had been preserved unchanged throughout the preceding two thousand years. The revolution of the nineteenth century which was caused by the introduction of Western architecture was in building material and architectural style; the traditional wooden structure began to give place to brick or stone construction and consequently the trabeated style had to give place to the new arcuated style. We can divide the history of Japanese architecture into two periods by this revolution; it may be said that Japanese architecture had developed continuously without its style being changed before this revolution and since then it has developed into modern architecture under the strong influences of the West. It is, therefore, very important for us to solve the following two problems: (1) When and by whom was the Western style introduced into Japan? (2) How has the new style developed into the modern style? On the second problem, suffice it to say here that reinforced concrete construction was introduced into our country early in the twentieth century and since then the new problem of the relation between construction and design in the modern sense of the word has come to the front. In this paper I will take up the first problem to show the early development of Western architecture in Japan.

The problem must be focused on the first seven years of the Meiji Era (1868—1911), i.e., 1868-1874. The earlier year, 1868, means the Meiji Restoration and at that time things Western began to be introduced rapidly in consonance with the general trend of thought. The latter year, 1874, means the time when almost all the public buildings came to be erected by the Building Bureau of the Ministry of Engineering, established in 1870, and thereafter several foreign experts in architecture, fine arts and civil engineering, invited by the government, began to introduce Western architecture into our country.