Amazing Tokyo central post office (KITTE)!
Tokyo Central Post Office building was selected by DOCOMOMO as a leading example of architectural modernism in Japan.
When you get off at Tokyo station near the Marunouchi South exit you see the facade of a building that has not changed in many years – the Tokyo Central Post Office. The building was erected at the end of 1931 and designed by Tetsuro Yoshida, an architect employed in the Ministry of Communication, Building, and Repairs Section. Yoshida also designed the Osaka Central Post Office, later erected in 1939. Both of the buildings are good examples of modernist works in Japan.
The Tokyo Central Post Office building has endured through turbulent times – war damage, natural disasters, and booming economic growth wrought by the Japanese economic miracle. The building has left an impression on not only Japanese people, but foreign people as well. The world-famous German architect and urban planner Bruno Taut lavished the building with praise, calling it a “masterpiece of modernist architecture in Japan”. The building’s beauty lies in having a rather simple and constant design in its ratio of walls to windows thus ensuring an abundance of interior light.
Through the years many building in the Marunouchi and metropolitan area have imitated the elegant window lines of the Tokyo Central Post Office. The building was selected as one of the top 20 most representative modern Japanese buildings by DOCOMOMO Japan. At one point in time the post office was at the color of a disagreement to either retain the structure or to rebuild it with the final outcome being to leave the overall structure but renovate the interior.
The new glass building made during the renovation scatters light like a chandelier on the old government office. The building serves as a comparatively rare case of giving priority to the preservation of modernist architecture in Japan.
