Waro Flat Building No. 4

A 1936 Apartment House Behind Azabudai

Waro Flat Building No. 4 (和朗フラット四号館, also written Warō Flat Yongōkan) is a two-storey wooden apartment house in Azabudai, Minato City, Tokyo, built in 1936 and added to the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 29 March 2019. It stands on a narrow private lane a short walk downhill from Iigura-katamachi, and it is still rented out and lived in today.

The man behind it was Ueda Bunzaburō, whose working life was spent in rice policy rather than architecture. He had no formal training as an architect. What he had was a strong interest in buildings and a memory of American apartment hotels seen on a trip abroad, where a tenant could arrive with a single trunk and find everything already in place. Ueda drew the plans himself and worked them out with his carpenters.

That idea reached Tokyo in a concrete form. The eight dwellings were let furnished: a built-in tatami sleeping platform, wardrobes and shelved cupboards behind wall doors, and a table, desk, chairs, sofa, rug and vase supplied as fittings. Every unit had its own bathroom from the outset, with a flush western toilet on a septic system, a washbasin and a gas-heated bath. In 1936 that was an unusual specification even close to the centre of the capital.

The name is a small piece of wishful thinking. Wa (和) carries the sense of harmony and rō (朗) of cheerfulness, chosen so that the people living there might pass their days on good terms and in good spirits.

Why the Building Was Registered

Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties is a lighter form of protection than the Important Cultural Property designation. It was created in 1996 for buildings roughly fifty years old or more that still earn their keep in daily use, and owners are encouraged to keep using them rather than freeze them. Building No. 4 was registered under the criterion covering structures that contribute to the historical character of the landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes a wooden two-storey block with its ridge running north to south, a gabled roof, and its face turned east onto the lane. Four dwellings sit on each floor, and the plan and finishes differ from one to the next. The front carries bay windows and alcoves placed at irregular intervals, which is what gives the lane its particular look. The record closes by calling it valuable prewar city housing surviving in a district under heavy redevelopment, and the wording has become more pointed since it was written.

Seven Waro Flat blocks once stood here. Air raids and later rebuilding reduced them to three, numbered 1, 2 and 4, and in August 2026 it was reported that No. 2 would be pulled down, with local residents petitioning Minato City to keep it. Only No. 4 carries national registration. Anyone who walks the lane now is looking at a group in the middle of losing another of its parts.

Reading the Facade From the Lane

The undulating front is not decoration for its own sake. The site is a long north-south rectangle, roughly one to four in proportion, wedged between the private lane and a cliff, with its long side facing east. Build a plain box on ground shaped like that and most of the eight dwellings get no southern light. Ueda's answer was to cut the street elevation back at right angles in three or four places and stagger the volumes, so that every unit gained a south-facing window. The rippling wall and the deep pockets of shadow are the by-product of that arithmetic.

Stand still and count the openings. Doors and windows across the front are outward-opening casements in three shapes: arched, plain rectangular, and cut off at the corners. Each entrance door is different. Each unit has its own window pattern and its own alcove. The walls are white plaster over the traditional post-and-beam frame, and the roof is slate, which is where the pale, un-Japanese quality that earned the block its old nickname of the Spanish Village comes from.

The interiors, which visitors do not see, hold to a common vocabulary: lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings in white, lauan tongue-and-groove floorboards, dark brown oil stain on the joinery, brass hardware on the fittings, and milk-glass globes on the lights. Repairs from the 1980s onward followed a simple rule. Wet areas were brought up to date; living rooms went back toward the original specification. The old bathroom was divided into a toilet, a washroom and a shower unit; window air conditioners were swapped for split units so the windows could be opened again; wooden screen doors have been remade in recent years.

All eight dwellings are private homes, so there is no interior tour and no scheduled opening. The building is looked at from the public lane, and quietly, since people are at home on the other side of those windows. A small shop occupies part of the ground floor, and parts of the building have been used for a café and gallery. Photographs of the exterior from the lane are ordinary enough, though pointing a lens into a window is not. Six-honmatsu-icchōme, Kamiyachō and Azabu-jūban stations are each about ten minutes away on foot, and the towers of Azabudai Hills rise directly above the neighbourhood, which makes the contrast hard to miss.