The is the place where both houses of the Diet of Japan

Diet of Japan

The is Japan's bicameral legislature. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, called the House of Councillors. Both houses of the Diet are directly elected under a parallel voting system. In addition to passing laws, the Diet is formally...

 meet. It is located at 1-chome, Nagatachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo

Chiyoda, Tokyo

is one of the 23 special wards in central Tokyo, Japan. In English, it is called Chiyoda ward. As of October 2007, the ward has an estimated population of 45,543 and a population density of 3,912 people per km², making it by far the least populated of the special wards...

.

Sessions of the House of Representatives

House of Representatives of Japan

The is the lower house of the Diet of Japan. The House of Councillors of Japan is the upper house.The House of Representatives has 480 members, elected for a four-year term. Of these, 180 members are elected from 11 multi-member constituencies by a party-list system of proportional representation,...

 take place in the left wing and sessions of the House of Councillors

House of Councillors

The is the upper house of the Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, or designation of the prime minister, the House of Representatives...

 in the right wing.

The Diet Building was completed in 1936 and is constructed purely out of Japanese building materials, with the exception of the stained glass, door locks, and pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...

 system.

History

The construction of the building for the old Imperial Diet began in 1920; however, plans for the building date back to the late 1880s. The Diet met in temporary structures for the first fifty years of its existence because there was no agreement over what form its building should take.

Early designs

German architects Wilhelm Böckmann

Wilhelm Böckmann

Wilhelm Böckmann was a German architect who worked briefly as a foreign advisor to the government of Meiji period Japan.-Early career:...

 and Hermann Ende were invited to Tokyo in 1886 and 1887, respectively. They drew up two plans for a Diet building. Böckmann's initial plan was a masonry

Masonry

Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...

 structure with a dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

 and flanking wings, similar to other legislatures of the era, which would form the core of a large "government ring" south of the Imperial Palace

Kokyo

is the main residence of the Emperor of Japan. It is a large park-like area located in the Chiyoda area of Tokyo close to Tokyo Station and contains several buildings including the main palace , the emperor left Kyoto Imperial Palace for Tokyo...

. However, at the time there was public resistance in Japan to Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru

Inoue Kaoru

Count , GCMG was a member of the Meiji oligarchy during the Meiji period Empire of Japan. As one of the senior statesman in Japan during that period, he had a tremendous influence on the selection of the nation's leaders and formation of its policies.-Early years:...

's internationalist policies, and so the architects submitted a more "Japanese" design as well, substituting traditional Japanese architectural features for many parts of the building. Ende and Böckmann's Diet Building was never built, but their other "government ring" designs were used for the Tokyo District Court and Ministry of Justice buildings.

In 1898, Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi

Ito Hirobumi

Prince was a samurai of Chōshū domain, Japanese statesman, four time Prime Minister of Japan , genrō and Resident-General of Korea. Itō was assassinated by An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist who was against the annexation of Korea by the Japanese Empire...

 interviewed American Ralph Adams Cram

Ralph Adams Cram

Ralph Adams Cram FAIA, , was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked.-Early life:Cram was born on December 16, 1863 at Hampton Falls, New...

, who proposed a more "Oriental" design for the building, featuring tiled roofs and a large enclosure of walls and gates. The Itō government fell as Cram was en route to the United States, and the project was dropped.

First building (1890) and second building (1891)

With an internal deadline approaching, the government enlisted Ende and Böckmann associate Adolph Stegmueller and Japanese architect Yoshii Shigenori to design a temporary structure. The building, a two-story, European-style wooden structure, opened in November 1890 on a site in Hibiya

Hibiya

is a geographic name covering a part of Chiyoda ward . The zone along the Hibiya Street from Yūrakuchō to Uchisaiwaichō is Hibiya district. There are many residence indications, but some indications using this word, Hibiya, like Hibiya Park and Hibiya Station...

.
An electrical fire burned down the first building in January 1891, only two months later. Another Ende and Böckmann associate, Oscar Tietze, joined Yoshii to design its replacement. The second building was larger than the first, but followed a similar design: it housed the Diet until 1925.

Current building

In 1910, the Finance Ministry started a commission in an attempt to take control over the new Diet Building design from the Home Ministry. Prime Minister Katsura Tarō

Katsura Taro

Prince , was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, politician and three-time Prime Minister of Japan.-Early life:Katsura was born into a samurai family from Hagi, Chōshū Domain...

chaired the commission, which recommended that the new building emulate an Italian Renaissance architectural style. This recommendation was criticized by many who thought that choice to be too arbitrary.

The ministry sponsored a public design competition in 1918, and 118 designs were submitted for the new building. The first prize winner, Watanabe Fukuzo, produced a design similar to Ende and Bockmann's.

The Diet Building was eventually constructed with a floor plan based on Watanabe's entry. The roof and tower of the building were inspired by another entrant, third prize winner Takeuchi Shinshichi, and are believed to have been chosen because they reflected a more modern hybrid architecture than the purely European and East Asian designs proposed by other architects.

Further reading

• Reynolds, Jonathan M. "Japan's Imperial Diet Building: debate over construction of a national identity." Art Journal, September 22, 1996.