Kenji Ishihara

Japanese architect Kenji Ishihara was a man of varied interests and experiences. In 1919, he graduated from the Imperial University in Tokyo. As early as the 1920s he published two books on urban planning. From 1920-22 and 1922-41, he served as an architectural officer at the Osaka and Tokyo Municipal Offices, respectively, where he was in charge of the design and construction of municipal buildings. He was also involved in planning facilities for the scheduled 1940 Tokyo Olympics. At this time, he spent a fortune collecting foreign books on housing and urban planning and published several books on urban planning and urban design in the 1920s, some on foreign urban planning.

In 1941 Ishihara was named to a new scholarly post in the research division of the Juhtaku Eidan (Japan Housing Authority) and for a very short period, from 1944-45, was installed as a professor of architecture in the Military College of Technology in Bandung on the occupied Indonesian island of Java. After Japan’s defeat he lived for one year on a sparsely inhabited island. After World War II Ishihara became a professor at the Architectural Department of Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1949, and was one of the pioneering professors of urban planning in Japan until the 1960s. Ishihara was a well-known figure in the urban planning academic community in Japan and held the position of the president of the City Planning Institute of Japan from 1961-63. His main scientific interest, however, focused on farmers’ traditional houses, writing a series of 16 volumes called Farm Houses in Japan during the period 1934-1943. In 1950, he founded a group that has developed into the Japan Association of Folk House.

From the late 1920s to his death, Ishihara was also a devoted Christian and Pacifist. Before World War II, he was involved in socialist activities with young architects and architectural students. In 1930, he was an active member of the most radical of these groups, named Rising League of Architects. The group disbanded after only a few months under major pressure by the police. During his later years he published a newsletter Peace and Gospel. He also provided services to the poor in a housing settlement, which was founded and developed, along with several of his students, in a former slum area in Tokyo. At the age of 89 Ishihara died after having heart problems for several years. Most likely his project was a part of the transformation of Tokyo into a “cultural city” with a large number of new educational institutions, parks, etc., which was promoted in 1932.