Imperial Crown Style

[2][3][4] Starting in Japan in the 1930s, this Western and Japanese eclectic architectural style was promoted by Itō Chūta,[5][3] Sano Toshikata,[3] and Takeda Goichi.

[5][3] Shimoda presented a design with a Japanese-styled roof set atop of the body of the building, naming this Emperor's Crown Amalgamate Style, and actively distributed pamphlets about this cause, but was rejected by the architectural industry.

[5][3] From 1906 to 1922 both Frank Lloyd Wright and Shimoda Kikutaro, who had been active together in Chicago,[8] submitted separate design proposals for the rebuilding of the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo.

Shimoda had submitted a proposal for a Japanese style roof set on a low profile masonry building before Wright had become involved in the project.

Wright did not sign a memorandum with the Imperial Household for the project until March 1916,[9] and not without protest from Kikutaro, who claimed that his design had been appropriated by Lloyd.

[5] Kunio Maekawa's entry was supported by the youngest judge Kishida Hideta, but his decision was overturned by Chūta Itō, and the proposal was not successful.

[5][8] In 1937 the Sino-Japanese War began, and the Steel Fabrication Real Rights Building Approval Regulation (鉄鋼工作物権造許可規制, Tekkō kōsaku bukken kyoka shisei).

On the other hand, the increasing influence of Modernist architecture benefited from the regulatory standards governing building functionality, and rebound after the end of the war.

[5] The end of World War II, began a period repudiation of pre-war Statism in Shōwa Japan to give way to post-war democratisation.

[12] In March 1916, Following Shimoda's submission, the project architect was changed to Frank Lloyd Wright, who signed a memorandum with the Imperial Household.

However his petitions to the National Diet were successful in having the final design changed, and to draw attention to what became known as Imperial Crown Amalgamate Style to the government, public, and his professional peers.

The use of scratched tiles were adopted from Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, and the flowering motifs used throughout the building are based on the features of Byodō-in temple.

According to the post war architecture critiques the accepted position was that Imperial Crown Style was synonymous with Statism in Shōwa Japan (天皇制ファシズム) which was a type of fascism.

[5][3] The position these critiques took was despite differences between the Japanese wartime building regulations, which only limited the construction materials that could be used for a project, compared how the Third Reich to implemented and promoted Nazi architecture.

Buildings in this style were characterised by having a Japanese-style roof such as the Tōkyō Imperial Museum (1937) by Hitoshi Watanabe; and Nagoya City Hall and the Aichi Prefectural Government Office.

[19] Ide Kaoru was responsible for many significant structures in Taiwan, including the Executive Yuan building and Zhongshan Hall in Taipei.

Francis Chia-Hui Lin, a Taiwanese architectural historian, notes that the shape of the Museum's central tower is suggestive of the Han character "高" which forms part of the name, "Kaohsiung City" (高雄).

[21] Lin also notes that the building's site incorporates a symmetric "日" shaped Han character, which symbolises the Japanese Empire's southernmost political centre.

[25] For some years after World War II, as part of a process of 'de-Japanisation' (qu Ribenhua in Chinese), anti-Japanese sentiment led to some examples of Japanese architecture being demolished or modified to a more 'Chinese' style.

A pencil drawing of a large four story municipal building with curved Japanese style roofs
Drawing of Shimoda Kikutaro 's design for the National Diet building, in the Imperial Crown amalgamate style (1919)
In front of a brick and concrete building, with driveway to a covered entrance, and a curved Japanese gable
The Kyōto Municipal Museum of Art, then Darei Memorial Kyōto Museum of Art won a Japonesque architectural design competition in the 1930s
Across this street is a large five story brick building with several sloped Japanese green tiled roofs
The Military Hall was another winning design in architectural competitions encouraging entries to have Japonesque components. Today the building is known as Kudan Hall in Kudanminami
An architectural drawing of a Japanese temple with several of the sloping roofs highlighted in blue
In this Ground front elevation of Byōdō-in, the roof components Kikutarō Shimoda incorporated into Imperial Crown amalgamate style, are highlighted in blue.
There are two identical drawings of large municipal buildings, except that one has a classic roof and the other has a sloped Japanese roof
Drawings of Shimoda Kikutaro's design of the Diet building in the Imperial Crown amalgamate style (1919)
A photograph of a scaled down model of a hotel with two building wings either side of a main building with a fountain in front
Model of the Imperial Hotel, a project both Kikutarō Shimoda and Frank Lloyd Wright had been employed to design