Kenzo Tange — The Man Who Rebuilt Japan
The year is 1952: the century tilts on its axis. In Japan, the scars of the old imperial empire and the ruins of world war are beginning to heal. But, after the bloodshed and horror, a question lingers: how does Japan move forward?
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The answer arises from the crumbled streets of Hiroshima: for a bold new architect and city planner by the name of Kenzo Tange is tasked with rebuilding the city. Following on from his stunning pavilion at the Kobe Industry and Trade Fair in 1950, Tange once again forged a new path for the enervated nation. But it would be the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, peace centre and museum that would soothe the country's wounds and offer a vision of a peaceful and prosperous century.
It was fitting that this fledgeling architect should be the one to help rebuild the city. Over twenty years prior, Tange had moved to Hiroshima; having spent his early life in China, in the cities of Hankow and Shanghai. Here he first encountered the works of the genius Swiss architect, who towered above his age: Le Corbusier.
Few people experience the feeling of vocation, but those who do are irrevocably changed. So, it was with the young Tange. Struggling with maths and physics, he would labour for two years reading and learning enough to pass the entrance exams.
In 1935, after many difficulties, Tange finally arrived at the University of Tokyo's architectural department, studying under the formative Hideto Kishida and Shozo Uchida. During his tenure, upon his desk sat a picture of the Katsura Imperial Villa: a cultural treasure of traditional Japanese architecture and gardening.
Following his graduation in 1938, he briefly studied under Maekawa Kunio who had, in turn, studied under Le Corbusier. It was these two poles, the past represented by the Katsura and his two mentors and the dazzling modernism of Le Corbusier which fascinated Tange. Seemingly at odds in Japan-at-large, in Tange, they would find balance.
First in his works in Hiroshima, where the peace museum combined the bold shapes and geometry of Le Corbusier's modern vision with a latticework typical of traditional buildings. The bulk of the museum rests upon a series of pillars: the gardens – the lifeblood of Japanese culture – breath through the building. It was a revelation.
Next, he tackled the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office (1957), the Shizuoka Convention Hall (1957), and the Kagawa prefectural offices (1958). The latter building perfectly personifies Tange's vision of a new Japan – raw concrete with typical overhanging layers. Here the future blended seamlessly with the past.
As the '60s dawned, Tange grew bolder. His National Gymnasiums – built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games – were like a wave cresting upon the shore. The buildings asymmetry marked a departure from the blockwork of the past. As Japan began to shift, Tange reflected this movement.
From here on, Tange was a world architect. His buildings would dot five continents: from Chicago to Singapore. In 1987 he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize followed by the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture in 1993.
Under his tutelage, a generation of Japanese architects followed his vision, creating the cacophony of styles that line the streets and mark the skyline of the land of the rising sun. However, for Kenzo Tange, in March 2005, aged 91, the sun finally set.
He once said, ‘we live in a world where great incompatibles co-exist: the human scale and the superhuman scale, stability and mobility, permanence and change, identity and anonymity, comprehensibility and universality.’
The genius of Tange was to find the peace between the two – in doing so he soothed a nation’s soul.
