University of Tokyo Law and Letters Building No. 2

The Twin That Refuses to Be a Twin

Faculty of Letters and Law Building 2 at the University of Tokyo (東京大学法文２号館, Tōkyō Daigaku Hōbun Nigōkan) is a four-storey reinforced-concrete teaching building on the Hongo campus in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, completed in 1938 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 9 October 1998.

It faces Building 1 across the campus's east-west axis, and at first glance the two read as a matched pair. Both were designed by Uchida Yoshikazu. Both carry a Gothic arcade at ground level with a walkway passing through. Both were later given a rooftop penthouse of quarter-circle vaults. The symmetry is real and deliberate.

Then the western end breaks it. Instead of terminating as a straight block, the plan turns and becomes L-shaped. The reason is contextual: Faculty of Law Building 3 stands nearby, and the plan was shaped in response to it. A pair of buildings intended to mirror each other, with one of them bending at the last moment to acknowledge a third.

Three years separate the two. Building 1 was completed in 1935, Building 2 in 1938, both to the reconstruction programme that Uchida ran as head of the university's building office after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

What Was Added, and Why It Is Hard to See

The registered structure is reinforced concrete, four storeys, building area 3,435 square metres, making this the larger of the two buildings on the axis. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record notes that part of the fourth floor was extended in relatively recent years, which applies to Building 1 as well.

The roof addition is the more interesting intervention. Both buildings were becoming cramped after the war, and additional storeys went up on the roofs. Koyama Hisao designed them. The dominant element is a quarter-circle vault, repeated along the length, built with a steel the university's account identifies by trade name. Koyama appears to have taken the idea from the attic floors of Parisian apartment blocks, and the outer corners were handled with the existing design in mind so that the whole campus would keep its visual coherence. The first phase completed in 1976 and the work finished in 1981.

The result is an addition most visitors read as original fabric. Whether that counts as a success depends on one's view of how new work should sit against old, and the debate is live enough that the university's own account presents the corner treatment as a considered choice rather than a neutral fact.

None of this was constrained by heritage law at the time, because the registration came later. Registered Tangible Cultural Property, the category applied here in 1998, is the lighter of Japan's two systems. Created in 1996 for buildings of roughly fifty years or more, it requires the owner to notify the government before substantial alteration and otherwise leaves the structure in ordinary use. Designation, the older and stricter route that produces National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties, would have made the 1970s roof addition considerably harder. The criterion applied at registration was that the building is a model of its kind in design terms.

Seeing It

Walk the axis rather than approaching from one side. Starting at the main gate and heading towards Yasuda Auditorium, turn where the cross-axis opens and Buildings 1 and 2 come into view facing each other. From that position the intended symmetry is at its clearest, and the L-shaped western end of Building 2 is out of sight, which is presumably how Uchida wanted the composition read.

Then go and look at the western end. The turn in the plan is abrupt and unornamented, and it makes plain that this was a working solution to a site problem rather than a compositional flourish.

The ground-floor arcade is a public walkway and can be used freely. Upper floors hold lecture rooms and offices and are closed, as faculty interiors are in principle. Look up at the roofline from a distance of thirty metres or so; the quarter-circle vaults are easier to read from across the open space than from directly below.

Campus entry is free, with no application needed for parties of fewer than about fifteen. Groups of fifteen or more register through the university's online form at least seven days ahead. Visiting hours are 7:00 to 18:00. The campus closes to visitors on national entrance examination days in mid-January and on the university's second-stage examination days in late February. Visitors are asked to keep quiet, since classes are in session in these buildings, and no visitor parking is available.

Photography outdoors is permitted for personal use, and the university asks that images not be published in print or posted to social media. Nearest station is Hongo-sanchome on the Marunouchi and Oedo subway lines, roughly eight minutes on foot to the main gate.