Architecture: The Emperor’s New Palace

Ever since U.S. B-29 bombers leveled Emperor Hirohito’s palatial quarters within Tokyo’s moat-encircled imperial compound in May 1945, the imperial family has made do with modest quarters, first the palace air-raid shelter and, since 1961, a 15-room house in the palace compound. Five years ago it was decided that proper settings for the Emperor’s ceremonial occasions could no longer be delayed. The architect picked for the honor of designing the Emperor’s $25.5 million palace: Junzo Yoshimura, now 56, a professor in Tokyo’s University of Fine Arts as well as the prestigious designer of a score of hotels, office buildings and private houses.*

Yoshimura set out with “passion, sincerity and artistic fervor” to achieve “the finest possible space effect through the simplest possible composition.” While using modern materials like steel and concrete, he hoped to build “a new palace for Japan so elevated in grace and dignity that it will be worthy of being preserved for posterity.” His design called for a quadrangle of ceremonial halls (the Emperor will “commute” from his nearby living quarters), each pavilion to be propped serenely on stilts like a Shinto shrine and set shimmering amid a beautiful pine grove. There would be escalators for elderly visitors, a color scheme (snow white and green) to please the Empress, room for horohiki (ancient Imperial horsemanship), polo, garden parties, banquets, and the crowds that gather to greet the Emperor on his birthday and New Year’s. In short, the finest building ever to grace Hirohito’s reign.

Abruptly, midway through construction, came a threat that the whole project might well turn out like the Emperor’s new clothes. In an unprecedented action, Architect Yoshimura resigned. “Palace authorities have persistently ignored my conscience as an artist,” he charged. The crux of the matter, it developed, was the old bugaboo of public projects—cost. Yoshimura’s idea of simplicity, claimed Ryoichi Takao, head of the Palace Construction Bureau, included too many costly details. Yoshimura, for instance, wanted the expansion joints connecting the buildings covered, and planned to use 45-ft.-long, exposed cypress beams for the ceiling. Finding a loophole in the architect’s contract that limited him to a supervisory capacity, Takao began instituting money-saving devices.

For Yoshimura, details—from the bronze sheeting on the concrete columns to the pebbles in the garden—were everything. “With design alone,” he said, “not even Picasso can do a painting. He has to affix color, and in the process of doing so he will revise the original design for the finest possible overall effect. It’s exactly the same with me as an architect.”

Once, such talk would have been punishable with honorable harakiri, but in modern Japan Yoshimura’s resignation merely sent a shock wave through the artistic community which brought him considerable support. Last week two artists commissioned to design a huge wall decoration also resigned, the Japan Institute of Architects published a manifesto backing Yoshimura, and Architect Kenzo Tange, creator of the bold, soaring Olympics stadium, said: “It is regrettable that Professor Yoshimura should have found it necessary to resign. I hope he will be reinstated, because without the benefit of a guiding architect, artistry is impossible.” Throughout it all, Emperor Hirohito remained silent. As for the Palace Construction Bureau, it announced grimly that the palace would be ready by 1967—with or without an architect.

*Including, outside Japan, the Motel on the Mountain in Suffern, N.Y. and a traditional Japanese house for Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art that has now been rebuilt and located permanently in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.