Katayama Tokuma

The main building (honkan) at the Nara National Museum.

The main hall of the Kyoto National Museum.

The Hyôkeikan at the Tokyo National Museum, completed in 1909, survived both the 1923 Great Kantô Earthquake and the 1945 bombings intact.

• Born: 1854
• Died: 1917

Katayama Tôkuma was a prominent Meiji period architect, the designer of the Japanese Red Cross Central Hospital (1890), the Nara National Museum (1894), Kyoto National Museum (1895), the Hyôkeikan of the Tokyo National Museum (1908), and the Akasaka Palace (1909), among other famous structures of the period.

References

• Dallas Finn, "Reassessing the Rokumeikan," in Ellen Conan (ed.), Challenging Past and Present: The Metamorphosis of Nineteenth-Century Japanese Art, University of Hawaii Press (2006), 227.