Togo Murano Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Togo Murano (1891-1984) was a Japanese architect who worked for more than half a century from his office in Osaka. Rejecting both rigid modernism and historical revival, he created buildings full of craft, texture and invention, from the Sogo Department Store in Osaka and the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima to the Nissay Theatre in Tokyo, the Japan Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Yatsugatake Art Museum, which he designed in his late eighties.

Karatsu, Waseda and Osaka

Murano was born in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, in 1891 and grew up in the industrial city of Kokura. He worked in a steel works before studying electrical engineering and then architecture at Waseda University, graduating in 1918. He joined the Osaka office of Setsu Watanabe, where he worked on banks and commercial buildings, and opened his own practice in Osaka in 1929.

Between modernism and craft

In buildings such as the Morigo Shoten office building (1931) and the Sogo Department Store in Osaka (1935), Murano used modern structure and planning but clad them with carefully crafted facades and interiors. He described his position as working 99 per cent according to the client’s needs and keeping one per cent for his own expression, a balance that made him widely respected in practice.

The World Peace Memorial Cathedral

After the war Murano designed the World Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima (completed 1954), a Catholic church built in memory of the victims of the atomic bombing, in concrete frame and brick made with local materials. In 2006 it became one of the first postwar buildings to be designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan, together with Kenzo Tange’s Peace Memorial Museum.

Nissay Theatre and late works

His later works include the Nissay Theatre in the Nippon Life Hibiya Building in Tokyo (1963), with its auditorium lined in pearl shell mosaic, the renovation of the Akasaka Palace State Guest House (1974), the Japan Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mitaka (1969), the Yatsugatake Art Museum (1980) and Takarazuka City Hall (1980). He received the Order of Culture in 1967 and died in 1984.