The First Architectural Drawings for Keio University by Sone Chujo Architectural Office

The Sone Chujo Architectural Office, established by Tatsuzo Sone and Seiichiro Chujo, is said to have been the largest and finest private architectural firm in pre-war Japan. Their representative work, which readers are likely familiar with, is the red-brick Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) (Old Building). It was the first of the firm's works to be designated an Important Cultural Property and has, needless to say, been loved as a symbol of Keio University. Seven buildings designed by the firm remain at Keio University today, including the library, but if we include lost works such as the Mita Public Hall, where a unicorn gargoyle once looked down on Keio students from the balcony, the firm actually designed more than 30 buildings for the university. Why was this the case?

The exhibition "Sone Chujo Architectural Office and Keio University", starting June 27 at the Keio History Museum, will broaden its scope to include not only existing buildings but also many that have since been lost. For example, the firm handled everything from the overall concept to the design of the school buildings and hospital for the Shinanomachi Campus, but because they were made of wood, most were lost in air raids. The Hiyoshi Campus grand design was also put together by the firm, but the project ended halfway due to the deaths of Sone and Chujo, as well as the influence of the war. In conjunction with Hiyoshi, a major renovation of Mita was also underway. It is no exaggeration to say that the influence of the firm remains strongly reflected in the current appearance of Keio University.

During preparations for this exhibition, a record was discovered from 1971 showing that the Office of Juku History (the predecessor of the Fukuzawa Memorial Center) received 52 tubes of original architectural drawings for Keio-related buildings from the Chujo Architectural Office of Kunio Chujo, son of Seiichiro Chujo. These were not blueprints or copies, but the actual drawings directly drafted by the designers. These 52 tubes were searched for with the cooperation of the engineering staff at the Office of Facilities and Property Management and checked one by one. It was confirmed that various drawings for a significant number of buildings remain, including drawings for many of the buildings in Shinanomachi that were lost in air raids. The oldest drawing was for the "Sixth Building," a Western-style wooden school building. It is dated 1908, the year the firm was established. It was completed the following year, three years earlier than the library, and was located near the current Graduate School Building (see the postcard photo below). In 1939, it was moved to Hiyoshi to become the preparatory school building for the Fujiwara Institute of Technology, but was lost in an air raid six years later.

In the exhibition, we would like to not only introduce the buildings and their drawings but also consider why it was Sone and Chujo, focusing particularly on their connection and ideological resonance with Keio University.

(Takeyuki Tokura, Associate Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)