Kunio Maekawa, who had studied under the greatest Swiss architect Le Corbusier, educated Kenzo Tange and other big Japanese architects after the Second World War.

 

 

 

 

 

Talking about what is called modernist architecture, a name of Le Corbusier comes first.   The greatest Japanese architect Kunio Maekawa went to France alone after he graduated from Tokyo University, to study under Le Corbusier for two years, and returned to Japan in 1930.   He created a great impact on Japan’s architectural world of the day, with his sense of modernist architecture after his great master.

Many masterpieces were built across Japan until he died at the age of 81, among which The National Museum of Western Art, The Tokyo Bunka Kaikan in Ueno, and The National Diet Library in Nagata-cho are the most important works.

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The picture shows his private house originally built in Shinagawa in 1942.   This house stands now in The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei City, Tokyo after being carefully relocated together with its small garden.   Although being built in the midst of the Second World War, when floor space of a private house was restricted to under 100 square meters, this house is featuring modernism filled with brightness both in and out.

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