Eighteen Months to Build an Olympic Venue
Yoyogi National Stadium (代々木競技場, Yoyogi Kyōgijō, commonly called Kokuritsu Yoyogi Kyōgijō or the National Yoyogi Gymnasium) is a sports complex in Jinnan, Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, completed in 1964 for that year's Olympic Games, and its First and Second Gymnasiums were designated Important Cultural Properties of Japan on 2 August 2021.
The site had been Washington Heights, housing built for United States forces personnel during the occupation. Releasing it took roughly two years of negotiation, and only in October 1961 was it settled that the athletes' village and the swimming venue would go here. The design team was appointed early in 1962: Tange Kenzō (1913-2005) for the architecture, Tsuboi Yoshikatsu (1907-1990) for the structure, and Inoue Uichi for building services. Less than three years remained before the opening ceremony.
The window allowed for construction was eighteen months.
Shimizu Corporation carried out the work, and the building was finished on 31 August 1964, thirty-nine days before the Games opened. Its name at completion was the National Indoor Stadium (国立屋内総合競技場); the present name came into use afterwards. In October the First Gymnasium held the swimming and diving, the Second the basketball. Fifty-seven years later, at the Games held in 2021, the First Gymnasium took handball, wheelchair rugby and para-badminton, making this one of the very few venues anywhere to have served two Olympics.
The Reasons Behind the 2021 Designation
The Agency for Cultural Affairs recorded two grounds for designating the two halls under registration number 2723: excellence of design, and excellence of technique. Both point at the same thing, which is the roof.
In the First Gymnasium, two reinforced concrete masts about forty metres tall rise roughly 120 metres apart. Main cables run between them exactly as they would on a suspension bridge, the roof hangs from those cables, and the pull is carried out to anchorages at either end. Tsuboi is said to have looked at the Wakato Bridge, finished in 1962 with a 367-metre span, while working the problem through. Borrowing civil engineering of that order for a building had no precedent anywhere.
The first scheme used wire rope throughout. It could not produce the roof curve the architects were after, so the hangers were changed to pre-shaped steel members, and the result was christened a semi-rigid suspended roof. Hydraulic dampers were fitted to check the roof's movement in typhoon winds, reported to be the first time a Japanese building used them for vibration control. None of this could be modelled on a computer in 1962; the calculations were done by hand.
What the visitor sees from all that engineering is an arena with no columns in it at all, and a plan made of two half circles slid out of alignment with each other. The Japanese term for the resulting figure is tomoe, the comma whorl found on drum heads and roof tiles. The offset between the two halves opens the entrances and sorts the circulation, so twelve thousand people can arrive and leave without a bottleneck.
The Agency's record gives the First Gymnasium a building area of 22,258.42 square metres, two storeys above ground and two below, with steel-plate roofing; the stone paving at the Harajuku and Shibuya entrances, the eastern promenade and the southern paved path are all covered by the designation. The Second Gymnasium is 4,708.06 square metres, single storey with one basement, its main entrance paving likewise included. When the designation was announced, these were the most recently completed buildings on the national register.
Seeing It in Person
Come out of Harajuku Station and the roof appears above the trees before the building does, a long metal curve that reads more like a suspension bridge deck than a gymnasium. The stone promenade running east of the First Gymnasium is the place to stand: from there the two masts, the cables and the ribbed underside of the roof all line up, and in late afternoon the low sun rakes across the ribs and shows how the surface is not a smooth shell but a taut skin over a frame. The narrow band of glazing between the two roof planes above the arena is easy to miss from outside and unmistakable once you are within.
Inside there is more than the structure. Okamoto Tarō made four ceramic works for the First Gymnasium, titled Eye, Hand, Compete and Foot. Shimizu Seiji's Rock and Shinoda Tōkō's Suikan are also housed there, Mizui Yasuo's Fossil of Reverberation stands at the Second Gymnasium, and a sculpture by A. Cárdenas called Summer Butterfly of Manazuru sits in the grounds.
Getting inside takes planning. This is a working venue in use more than three hundred days a year, and the Japan Sport Council runs no scheduled architectural tours. The practical route is a ticket: a B.League basketball game, a volleyball or figure skating competition, or one of the concerts that have been held here since the 1980s. The indoor pool accepts group bookings and runs a women's swimming class but does not admit individual drop-in swimmers.
The outside costs nothing and closes at no hour. Grounds, promenade and paved approaches are all public ground, and photographing the exterior is unrestricted; inside, the rules belong to whoever is running the event, and concerts almost always forbid cameras. Reaching it is easy, about five minutes on foot from Harajuku Station on the JR Yamanote Line and from Meiji-jingūmae Station on the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines, or fifteen minutes' walk from Shibuya. Seismic retrofitting closed the halls from 2017; they reopened in November 2019. Meiji Jingū and Yoyogi Park are on the far side of the road, which makes a half day out of what could be a ten-minute look.
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Q&A
- Where is Yoyogi National Stadium and which station is closest?
- It is at 2-1 Jinnan 2-chome, Shibuya Ward, Tokyo. Harajuku Station on the JR Yamanote Line and Meiji-jingūmae Station on the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines are both about five minutes away on foot, and Shibuya Station is a fifteen-minute walk.
- Can visitors go inside Yoyogi National Stadium, or is it only open on event days?
- There are no scheduled tours of the interiors. Entry means holding a ticket to a game, a competition or a concert. The grounds, the promenade and the stone-paved approaches are open at any time and free, so the exterior can be seen whenever you like.
- Why was Yoyogi National Stadium designated an Important Cultural Property?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs cited excellence of design and excellence of technique. The suspended roof brought suspension-bridge engineering into a building for the first time at this scale, and the resulting column-free arena and offset twin-crescent plan were judged a high point of postwar modernism.
- Who designed Yoyogi National Stadium?
- Tange Kenzō was responsible for the architecture, Tsuboi Yoshikatsu for the structure and Inoue Uichi for building services. Shimizu Corporation built it. The design work began in 1962 and the building was handed over on 31 August 1964.
- Which Olympic events were held at Yoyogi National Stadium?
- In 1964 the First Gymnasium hosted swimming and diving and the Second Gymnasium hosted basketball. At the Games held in 2021 the First Gymnasium was used for handball, and for wheelchair rugby and para-badminton during the Paralympic Games.
Basic Information
| Name | Yoyogi National Stadium (代々木競技場, Yoyogi Kyōgijō) |
|---|---|
| Location | 2-1 Jinnan 2-chome, Shibuya Ward, Tokyo |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (Structures), designation no. 2723 |
| Year Designated | 2 August 2021 (Reiwa 3) |
| Quantity | 2 buildings (First Gymnasium, Second Gymnasium) |
| Dimensions | First Gymnasium: building area 22,258.42 m², two storeys above ground and two below. Second Gymnasium: building area 4,708.06 m², one storey with one basement. Both reinforced concrete with partial steel framing, suspended roof, steel-plate roofing |
| Owner | Japan Sport Council |
| Public Access | Grounds and promenade open at all times without charge. Interiors accessible only to ticket holders on event days; no regular guided tours |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Yoyogi Kyogijo, First Gymnasium
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/102/00005355
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Yoyogi Kyogijo, Second Gymnasium
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/102/00005356
- Cultural Heritage Online: Yoyogi Kyogijo, First Gymnasium
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/551965
- Cultural Heritage Online: Yoyogi Kyogijo, Second Gymnasium
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/581576
- Japan Sport Council: Yoyogi National Stadium, official site
- https://www.jpnsport.go.jp/yoyogi/
- Japan Sport Council: Yoyogi National Stadium, facility guide
- https://www.jpnsport.go.jp/yoyogi/sisetu/tabid/64/Default.aspx
- Japan Sport Council: Yoyogi National Stadium, access
- https://www.jpnsport.go.jp/yoyogi/access/tabid/88/Default.aspx
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties (Structures)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/kokuho_bunkazai.html
Last verified: 2026.08.22
Cultural Treasures in the Same Area
All are within walking distance in the same area, so we recommend visiting them together.
- Yoyogi National Stadium Second Gymnasium 0.00 km
- Yoyogi National Stadium First gymnasium 0.19 km