Meiji Japan set out to build a modern city in brick. But in an earthquake country, brick that is simply stacked is weak. Steel-framed brick construction built steel into the walls. Taking Tokyo Station’s Marunouchi building as our example, we read the bonds of brickwork, the trick behind its red facing brick, and the fates the Great Kanto Earthquake divided.
Stacking brick was not enough
Building with stacked blocks of stone or brick, so that the walls carry the building, is called masonry construction. Many of Europe’s old streets are built this way. But masonry is generally considered disadvantageous in earthquakes. Stacked blocks are strong under weight from above, but when shaken sideways they slip at the joints and fall.
The answer was to build steel into the brick walls and to frame the floors in steel. That is steel-framed brick construction. Records describe the structure of Tokyo Station’s Marunouchi building as brick walls with built-in steel, and floors framed in steel. The original steelwork was made and erected by the Ishikawajima shipyard.
The bond changes the face of the wall
A brick wall’s pattern depends on how it is laid. The long side of a brick is the stretcher, the short end the header. Laying a course of stretchers and a course of headers alternately is English bond. Alternating stretchers and headers within every course is Flemish bond.
When brick building began in Japan, Flemish bond was common, and English bond took over later. The Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse is laid in Dutch bond, a variant of English bond that differs only at the corners. When you look at a wall, check whether headers come in whole courses, or mixed into every course.
The red face is not the structure
Tokyo Station’s red outer walls are not the bricks that hold the building up. The structural brick is laid in a “geta-ba” toothed bond that leaves a jagged surface, and facing bricks 15 mm and 45 mm thick are set alternately into the teeth. Bricks of different thicknesses interlock so the facing does not come away.
In the 2012 preservation and restoration, about 400,000 new facing bricks were made for the third floor lost in the war. More than 15,000 sample bricks were made to match colour and shape, and only about 40 percent of the facing bricks produced passed inspection. The joints were recreated, as at the start, with rounded, raised fukurin joints.
The red wall is a garment laid over the structure, but one sewn on so that it will not easily come off.
Meiji architects, and a brick factory
Modern Japanese architecture begins with Josiah Conder, the British architect who arrived in 1877. Under Conder at the Imperial College of Engineering, Kingo Tatsuno graduated top of the first class in 1879. Tatsuno succeeded Conder as professor in 1884 and designed the Bank of Japan head office and the Central Station, Tokyo Station.
The bricks came in vast numbers from Nippon Renga Seizo in Fukaya, Saitama. Eiichi Shibusawa and others applied to found the company in 1887, and the next year it began firing in a Hoffmann ring kiln. Its surviving No. 6 kiln, completed in 1907, is 56.5 m long and fired about 650,000 bricks a month. Its bricks went into Tokyo Station and the former Crown Prince’s Palace, now the State Guest House Akasaka Palace.
- 1877Conder arrives in Japan
- 1879Kingo Tatsuno graduates top of his class
- 1888Nippon Renga Seizo (Fukaya) fires its Hoffmann kiln
- 1908Construction of the Marunouchi building begins25 March
- 1914Tokyo Station opens20 December
- 1923Great Kanto Earthquake; the station escapes major damage
- 1945Air raids destroy the third floor and roof
- 2003Designated an Important Cultural Property
- 2012Preservation and restoration completed1 October
What the Great Kanto Earthquake divided
In the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923, brick and stone buildings in Tokyo and Yokohama were badly damaged. In Asakusa, the brick tower Ryounkaku, the “Twelve Storeys”, snapped above its eighth floor and was later demolished with explosives. In Yokohama, many stone and brick buildings, including government offices and hotels, collapsed.
Amid all this, the Marunouchi building escaped notable damage even though buildings around it were badly hit. The steel built into its brick walls was, you might say, the answer to using brick in an earthquake country.
Even so, brick construction vanished quickly after the earthquake. In 1924 the Urban Building Act’s rules were revised to require seismic calculations. Steel and reinforced concrete took over, and Japan’s age of brick building ended after only about 50 years.
Brick buildings to visit and stay in
- Tokyo Station Marunouchi building (1914): steel-framed brick, base-isolated in 2012. You can stay inside, at The Tokyo Station Hotel.
- Osaka City Central Public Hall (1918): steel-framed brick, from an original scheme by Shinichiro Okada, detailed by Kingo Tatsuno and Yasushi Kataoka. Base-isolated in a 2002 preservation project.
- Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse (1911 and 1913): brick warehouses combined with iron. Warehouse No. 2 alone used some 3.18 million bricks.
- Bank of Japan head office (1896): designed by Kingo Tatsuno, with brick structure behind a stone exterior.
- Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum (rebuilt 2009): Conder’s 1894 building, recreated in brick masonry on base isolation.
Look at the brick when you stay
When you stay at The Tokyo Station Hotel, step outside and walk up close to the station wall. The rows of red facing brick, the rounded fukurin joints, the bands of white stone. In the slanting light of evening, the shadows of the joints are at their deepest. After its decades as a two-storey building, the station now pairs new third-floor brick with original brick on the first and second floors. Looking for the difference in colour is a pleasure reserved for guests.
Where to see this technique
- The Tokyo Station Hotel (Tokyo, 1915, Kingo Tatsuno): stay inside the steel-framed brick Marunouchi building
Sources
- Heibonsha World Encyclopedia, Britannica Japan: “Masonry construction” (Kotobank)
- BELCA Award materials (Tokyo Station Marunouchi building); Japan Construction Machinery and Construction Association journal (October 2007, December 2009)
- Japan Federation of Construction Contractors, ACe, March 2020; JR East Technical Review No. 52 and No. 44
- City of Yokohama, Red Brick Warehouse bricks and historic buildings; City of Maizuru, red brick materials
- National Diet Library, “Modern Japanese architecture”; Fukaya City, Nippon Renga Seizo visitor guide; Saitama Prefecture, places linked with Eiichi Shibusawa
- Cabinet Office disaster information, “The Great Kanto Earthquake”; Osaka City Central Public Hall; Chuo City, Bank of Japan head office; Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum
