Why you should experience The International House of Japan in Tokyo, Japan.
The International House of Japan is a refined modernist institution where Roppongi's postwar intellectual culture, Japanese architectural modernism, international exchange and an older tradition of landscape patronage converge within the former Iwasaki estate.
Set along Toriizaka near Azabu-dori and just steps from Roppongi's eastern residential quarter, the building extends horizontally across a sloping site through reinforced concrete, glass and broad garden-facing terraces conceived by Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Sakakura and Junzo Yoshimura. Low rooflines, exposed structural surfaces and long glazed rooms draw the adjoining Japanese garden into the architecture, with a projecting section above the pond derived from compositions found in Heian-period scroll paintings. Moving between the restrained interiors, terraces and water garden reveals how the architects made an inherited landscape part of the institution's physical composition. The result is a place where Maekawa, Sakakura and Yoshimura transformed postwar modernism into an unusually intimate setting for the international exchange the institution was created to advance.
What you should know about The International House of Japan.
The International House of Japan is best known for joining one of postwar Japan's major programs of international intellectual exchange with a building collaboratively designed by Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Sakakura and Junzo Yoshimura. John D. Rockefeller III and Shigeharu Matsumoto developed the institution from a relationship extending to their encounter at the 1929 Institute of Pacific Relations conference in Kyoto, then revived the idea of sustained cultural exchange as Japan rebuilt its international relationships after World War II. Rockefeller returned to Japan with John Foster Dulles's peace-treaty delegation in 1951 and subsequently advocated cultural centers and intellectual exchange between Japan and the United States, helping drive the institution established in 1952. Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida launched a national fundraising campaign that November, with inaugural chairman Aisuke Kabayama and Bank of Japan governor Hisato Ichimada helping secure contributions from more than 7,000 corporations and 5,000 individuals toward a 100 million yen goal, supplemented by $676,000 in Rockefeller Foundation matching funds. The completed building received an Architectural Institute of Japan Prize in 1956, entered DOCOMOMO Japan's selection of significant modern buildings in 2003 and gained national protection as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2006. Rockefeller, Matsumoto, Yoshida, Maekawa, Sakakura and Yoshimura consequently connected international exchange, private philanthropy and Japanese modern architecture within a single postwar institution.
Koyata Iwasaki established an older authored layer on the property when he commissioned seventh-generation Kyoto landscape designer Ogawa Jihei to create the Japanese garden for the Iwasaki residence in 1930. Ogawa developed the more than 6,600-square-meter landscape around a pond and terrain recalling Momoyama and early Edo garden traditions, continuing the naturalistic approach to water and topography he had advanced at projects including Murin-an in Kyoto. World War II destroyed the Iwasaki residence, yet Ogawa's garden survived the Tokyo air raids and subsequently became the landscape around which Maekawa, Sakakura and Yoshimura organized the postwar building. Minato Ward designated the garden a Place of Scenic Beauty in 2005, preserving the surviving Ogawa composition as a protected counterpart to the nationally protected architecture. Koyata Iwasaki's commission, Ogawa Jihei's prewar landscape and the garden's survival through wartime destruction give The International House of Japan a physical continuity extending beyond the institution's postwar foundation.
How to fold The International House of Japan into your trip.
The International House of Japan works as the architectural centerpiece within a daytime Azabu progression connecting early American diplomacy, Canadian missionary education and the religious history preserved across the surrounding hills.
Begin at Zenpukuji Temple, where a Buddhist institution traditionally tracing its foundation to Kukai became the first United States legation in Edo in 1859 under Townsend Harris. Harris and interpreter Henry Heusken worked from the temple during the turbulent opening of diplomatic relations, placing Zenpukuji at the intersection of Buddhist history and the foreign engagement that would reshape Japan during the final years of Tokugawa government. Continue to Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin, founded at Azabu Toriizaka in 1884 by Canadian Methodist missionary Martha Julia Cartmell with an initial enrollment of two students. Isabella Slade Blackmore later led the school across four terms as principal and established Toyo Eiwa Kindergarten in 1914, and alumna Hanako Muraoka carried the institution into Japanese literary history through her translation of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Conclude at Azabu Hikawa Shrine, whose history preserves competing traditions connecting its foundation with Minamoto no Tsunemoto during the tenth century and with Ota Dokan during the fifteenth. The shrine moved to its present Moto-Azabu site during the seventeenth century after its earlier precinct became associated with Zojoji land, and Tokugawa patronage subsequently connected the sanctuary with the ruling house of Edo. The progression moves from Townsend Harris's Bakumatsu diplomatic mission through Cartmell and Blackmore's Meiji educational project into Azabu Hikawa Shrine's deeper religious history, placing The International House of Japan within an Azabu tradition of cultural encounter extending across radically different periods and institutions.
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