Teikan (Imperial Crown) Style (帝冠様式)

Teikan (Imperial Crown) Style is a Japan-west blended architectural style that is a modern architecture; a reinforced concrete building, which was popular in the early Showa period, with a Japanese tiled roof.

Summary

Teikan (Imperial Crown) Style was generated against modernism architecture in the context of Nationalism that appeared in the 1930's. Teikan (Imperial Crown) Style; a modern building with a Japanese traditional tile roof, has extremely characteristic features. It is also known as an architectural style with the name of "building wearing gun puku" (military uniform).

Since it is practical, yet easily expresses Japanese design, it has been used in Manchukuo (Manchuria), which was Japan's allied country, as well as in Japan; some buildings still exist. However, they were built in the early Showa period, and as a result, few buildings existed in Korea or Taiwan, which were colonized before the appearance of buildings in Teikan (Imperial Crown) Style. In Korea and Taiwan, buildings in the neoclassical architectural style remaining from the period of Japan's rule are prominent.

Representative buildings

Kanagawa Prefectural Office Building (Yoshiro KOBI in 1928)
Nagoya City Hall Building (Kingo HIRABAYASHI in 1933)
Military Officer's Club (present day Kudan Kaikan Hall) (Takeo ONO in 1934)
The General Headquarters of Kwantung Army (Japanese armed forces in Manchukuo) (present day Jilin Province committee of Chinese Communist Party) (in 1934)
Tokyo Imperial Museum (present day Tokyo National Museum) (Jin WATANABE in 1937)
Shizuoka Prefectural Office (Yoshihei NAKAMURA in 1937)
Former Karafuto-cho (Karafuto Government Office) Museum (present day Sakhalin Provincial Museum) (Yoshio KAIZUKA in 1937)
Aichi Prefectural Office Building (Aichi Prefectural Architectural Division, Maintenance Section in 1938)

[Original Japanese]