II. Cityscape Guide (Part 2) Destination: Around Yaesu from the Meiji Period to the Showa Period

In his book Discussing Japan’s Three Metropolises: Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, Tadao Umesao, a great intellectual figure of Japan, described Tokyo as a “city under perpetual development” that has repeatedly collapsed and rebuilt itself. Since the Edo period, Tokyo experienced many massive fires, earthquakes, and wars. Each time it was rebuilt, the city adopted new technologies and updated itself.

However, in the 75 years since the end of World War II, no major disasters have struck Tokyo. So, the cityscape has not been updated? Yes, it has been updated. Large-scale redevelopment projects have been accelerated by a number of factors, including deregulation, aging buildings and infrastructure, heightened awareness of disaster prevention following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and the decision to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Looking at the cityscape, I feel that the remnants of the Showa period (1926–1989) are finally disappearing, as we enter a new era of Reiwa after more than 30 years of the Heisei period (1989–2019). How has Tokyo’s cityscape changed over the years? Let us take a fixed-point observation of a certain company that has changed in step with Tokyo’s cityscape.

The company is Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd., the oldest full-service real estate company in Japan. The company was established in 1896 at Gofukucho 18, Nihonbashi-ku, Tokyo (present Nihonbashi 2-chome). Since then, it has been doing business around the Yaesu area and embodied the changes in the east side of Tokyo Station. I chose this company because I thought I would take the opportunity to share with readers some valuable documents and materials that the company has.

Tokyo Tatemono was founded by Zenjiro Yasuda (1838–1921), the founder of the Yasuda conglomerate. At the end of the Edo period, at the age of 20, he moved from Toyama to Edo. He worked as an apprentice and peddler in a toy store and a money changer before starting his own business in 1864. He opened a retail store for dried bonito and money changer named Yasudaya (renamed Yasuda Shoten in 1868) in Nihonbashi Ningyocho and became powerful in the financial business from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji period. He founded the Third National Bank in 1876 and reorganized Yasuda Shoten into Yasuda Bank (later Fuji Bank and the present Mizuho Financial Group) in 1880. In addition to his success as a banker, he invested in a wide variety of businesses and made a substantial entry into the real estate business in which he had been involved for some time.

After 1888, when the Tokyo City Improvement Ordinance was promulgated, roads, sewers and other infrastructure were developed and improved, and real estate business transactions became active. Prior to this movement, he founded Japan’s first fire insurance company, Tokyo Fire Insurance Company (present Sompo Japan Insurance Inc.), in 1887.

By the way, in Japan, insurance companies were born in the order of marine, life, and fire. After the Meiji Restoration, as the shipping industry developed, the first came the need for the support to mitigate its risk. Next came the need for life insurance for the wealthy, who benefited from the economic growth and made fortunes. These were followed by insurance to protect buildings from fires, which frequently occurred in Edo. It is interesting to see that first priority was given to the economy and later attention was shifted to human life and then to the foundation of daily life. It is like watching the maturation process of a modern society.

To return to the main story, Tokyo Tatemono was founded when people’s interest in land and buildings was growing, and real estate companies were emerging to broker transactions in the 1880s and 1890s. What was groundbreaking about this company was that it not only bought, sold, and brokered real estate but from the beginning it bought and sold real estate through installment sales. This is the reason why Tokyo Tatemono is known as the pioneer in home loans.

In Scenic Beauty in Japan, edited by Mitsuyuki Segawa and published in 1900, there is a photograph and description of the company building at that time.

It emphasizes the importance of houses, saying, “The improvement of houses is an urgent task that must be undertaken to keep pace with the progress of civilization. It is necessary not only to make them sturdy and convenient but also to pay close attention to their appearance and hygiene.” It introduces Tokyo Tatemono by saying, “However, those who are not wealthy still have the misfortune of having to endure the inconvenience of small, shabby houses. This is the main reason why this company was founded.” It concludes, “Those who are ambitious, enterprising, and willing to accomplish anything can benefit both in name and in reality if they commission this convenient and useful company to construct a good and beautiful building and then try to expand their business.”

If I explain “enterprising and willing to accomplish” a little more, it means “willingly and positively tackling things and accomplishing them without giving in to difficulties.” If such ambitious people build an impressive and beautiful building and expand their business, they will be able to make no small profit. What an aggressive statement! Even today, we often hear people say that an office makes the first impression of a company and that if you want to gain the trust of your customers, you should have an impressive office. However, we do not believe that an impressive office will directly increase profits significantly. It would mean that a company with an imposing entrance was rare at that time.

The 1890s to 1900s was a time when the Japanese economy was booming after the Sino-Japanese War. People were gaining confidence in the modernization that they had begun to tentatively embrace. People no longer put up with conventional cheap houses and buildings that they could tear down and escape from in case of fire but looked for those that were more suitable for the new era.

So, how has the headquarters building of Tokyo Tatemono, a pioneer of this movement, changed over time? At the time of its founding, the company building was of a solid black-plastered Japanese warehouse construction. When you think of buildings built during the Meiji period, brick buildings may come to mind. However, as I wrote in Part 1 of this article, the design of this building supports the explanation that the brick streets were built on the Ginza side from Kyobashi, and warehouse-style buildings were lined up on the Nihonbashi side.

After moving twice, the company finally moved into a non-warehouse style building in 1917. In those times, the buildings of the Yasuda Group companies were starting to be rebuilt using brick. In Gofukucho 1-banchi (present Yaesu 1-chome), Tokyo Tatemono’s new headquarters building was constructed of steel, brick, and stone with one basement floor and three floors above ground. The former dirt floor was transformed into a modern entrance hall, the tatami room into a reception room, and the cashier’s desks into a sales office.

However, this elegant building was severely damaged by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Although it did not collapse, the fire that broke out after the quake burned the interior of the building and almost all the documents were lost. Only three months after the quake, the company completed repairs to this building and resumed its operations. However, a plan was developed to renovate the building to make it more resistant to earthquakes and fires.

While land readjustment was progressing as a part of the earthquake recovery project, the company temporarily moved to Marunouchi after some bumps and detours. In October 1929, the new headquarters building was completed at 7-banchi, Nihonbashi Gofukubashi 3-chome (present Yaesu 1-chome). In March of the same year, Yaesu Street was completed, and an entrance and exit were created on the east side of Tokyo Station for the first time.

The new building was an eight-story steel-framed reinforced concrete structure with two basement levels and eight floors above ground, using wooden piles as the foundation. There was a bank on the first floor and a restaurant, bar, and barbershop for the general public in the first basement. The top floor had a special design with many windows. This design was influenced by the trend of the time to use the top floor as a rental meeting room. The architect was Mikishi Abe, who had studied reinforced concrete construction in the United States and expanded the technique after returning to Japan. He was called “Dr. Concrete.”

The March 1930 issue of the architectural magazine Construction Pictorial Magazine featured an article introducing the company’s new building, the Tokyo Tatemono Building (later called the Tokyo Tatemono Headquarters Building). It says, “Although the land area is only about 262 tsubo (866 m2), the total floor area of the building is more than 2,451 tsubo (8102 m2). This is a rare design in terms of land use these days.” At the time, the concept of high-rise buildings—increasing the height of a building to gain more floor space in a limited land area, which is now taken for granted—was greeted with surprise. What made this concept a reality was the state-of-the-art reinforced-concrete structure.

Roughly speaking, if you look at the history of Japanese architectural technologies, you will find that the use of stone and brick spread from the first half of the Meiji period, the age of iron arrived at the end of the same period, and the use of concrete expanded from the Taisho period to the Showa period. It should be noted, however, that buildings constructed with such most advanced technologies were often built on the initiative of the government, mainly in urban areas. In fact, it was fireproof earthen warehouse-style buildings that became very popular in the Meiji period. Later, in Tokyo, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 led to the almost complete disappearance of such warehouse-style buildings. Still, there are some areas, such as Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture, where the cityscape consisting of this type of building built during the Meiji period still remains.

From earthen warehouse-style to steel-framed, brick and stone, and further to reinforced-concrete structures, Tokyo Tatemono’s headquarters building, as its name suggests, has changed in step with the history of Tokyo’s buildings.

The Tokyo Tatemono Headquarters Building continued to be used for more than 90 years. During World War II, the building suffered the hardship of having to surrender metals from the elevators, heaters, and handrails to the government under the Metal Recovery Order. However, the building managed to survive the war. As Yaesuguchi was improved during the postwar reconstruction process, the street became busier. In 1958, a new annex was added next door. It later housed a dance hall and a movie theater for a time and also served as a place to provide entertainment for people using Tokyo Station.

The building has long been in actual use. However, in 2020, this year, it quietly ended its role in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a redevelopment project. A new building is scheduled to be completed in 2025.

This building is not the only example of redevelopment. In recent years, redevelopment has been accelerated in the Yaesu area. It began earlier in the Marunouchi and Otemachi areas on the other side of Tokyo Station, and these areas have already changed significantly. The history of the area must have had a great influence on the time difference in the progress of the redevelopment on the east and west sides of the station.

During the Edo period, the Marunouchi area, located close to Edo Castle, was a samurai district. The streets were lined with the large residences of feudal lords. After the Meiji Restoration, it was used as an army facility and training ground for a while, and later the decision was made to sell all the land to the private sector. At first, a plan was proposed that a group of entrepreneurs, including Eiichi Shibusawa, set up a joint company to purchase all the land and then divide it among the participating companies. In the end, however, the land was purchased by Mitsubishi alone. An office district was formed here under the leadership of the Mitsubishi conglomerate. This is the history of the area.

On the other hand, the Yaesu area was a quarter where merchants and workers lived. Although there were some wealthy merchants who owned large plots of land, most were small landowners. Therefore, the land was divided into small plots and owned by many people. It is not difficult to imagine that this situation continued into the Meiji period and that it would have slowed the pace of redevelopment there. Even now, more than 150 years after Edo was renamed Tokyo, the influence of Edo still remains in the character of the land.

Even so, is this the very last piece of Edo’s influence that remains to this day? No, it is too early to draw any conclusions. Shops that used to be lined up horizontally are now in tall buildings that rise vertically. High-rise buildings may be a modern version of the row houses, turning the horizontal spread into a vertical spread. When I thought that way, I felt that the way I saw buildings under construction in a city that is under perpetual development changed.

References:
Tadao Umesao (1987) Discussing Japan’s Three Metropolises: Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, Kadokawa Sensho
Terunobu Fujimori (2004) Tokyo’s Plan in the Meiji Period, Iwanami Gendai Bunko
Teijiro Muramatsu (2005) History of Modern Architecture in Japan, Iwanami Gendai Bunko
Trust for the Future: Tokyo Tatemono Centennial History (1998), compiled by Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd.