The Architecture of Tokyo

The Tôkyô region is the most populous metropolitan area in the world and a place of extraordinary vitality.
The political, economic and cultural center of Japan, Tôkyô also exerts an enormous international
influence. In fact the region has been pivotal to the nation’s affairs for centuries. Its sheer size, its
concentration of resources and institutions and its long history have produced buildings of
many different types from many different eras.
Over 500 buildings are presented in this guide, from 15th-century Buddhist temples to 21st-century
cultural buildings, from venerable folkhouses to works by leading contemporary architects of Japan
such as Kenzô Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki, Hiroshi Hara, Toyô Itô, Riken Yamamoto and
Tadao Ando as well as by foreign architects such as Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman and
Steven Holl.
The buildings are arranged chronologically and grouped into six periods: the medieval period (1185–1600),
the Edo period (1600–1868), the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Taishô and early Shôwa period (1912–1945),
the post-war reconstruction period (1945–1970) and the contemporary period (1970 until today). This
comprehensive coverage permits those interested in Japanese architecture or culture to focus on a
particular era or to examine buildings within a larger temporal framework. A concise discussion
of the history of the region and the architecture of Japan develops a context within which the individual
works may be viewed. When this guide was first published in 2001, it was the only one to introduce in
one volume the architecture of the Tôkyô region, encompassing Tôkyô proper and adjacent prefectures,
in all its remarkable variety. Having been out of print for some time, it is now being reissued in a revised
and extended edition, this time with Japan expert Ulf Meyer as co-author.