Yasuda Auditorium, Tokyo University, c. 1930.

Yasuda Auditorium, seen through the front gate of Tokyo Imperial University, c. 1930.

“[Tokyo Imperial University’s] buildings, including works by Josiah Conder [designer of numerous historic Tokyo buildings, including the Nikolai Cathedral], Hanroku Yamaguchi and Tatsuno Kingo [who also designed Tokyo Central Station, and the National Sumo Hall], were destroyed in the Kanto Earhtquake of 1923. Yoshikazu Uchida, a professor and the head of the Building Section of the university, assumed responsibility for the reconstruction of the campus.

“Over the next eighteen years, with the help of young instructors such as Hideto Kishida and Kiyoshi Muto and recent graduates of the architecture department, he designed some thirty buildings.

“A reinforced concrete building clad in tile, the auditorium is vaguely Gothic in its general massing, buttresses and pointed arches, buts streamlined cornices and overall abstract quality suggest an Expressionist influence.

“Yasuda Auditorium gained lasting notoriety in January 1969 when 8,500 riot policemen using helicopters and armored cars battled some 400 barricaded students tossing Molotov cocktails. As the symbolic center of Japan’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, the auditorium was almost an irresistible target for those challenging established authority. The students were dislodged after two days but at the cost of heavy damage to the building.”

– The Architecture of Tokyo, Watanabe Hiroshi, 2001.