Dōjunkai Explained

Dōjunkai (shinjitai:, kyūjitai:) was a corporation set up a year after the 1923 Kantō earthquake to provide reinforced concrete (and thus earthquake- and fire-resistant) collective housing in the Tokyo area. Its formal name was Zaidan-hōjin Dōjunkai, i.e. the Dōjunkai corporation. The suffix kai means organization, and dōjun was a term coined to suggest the spread of the nutritious benefit of the water of river and sea.^[1] It was overseen by the Home Ministry.

The corporation was in existence from 1924 through 1941; it was involved in construction between 1926 and 1934, primarily 1926–30, building 16 complexes. The last complex, Uenoshita apartment, was finally demolished in 2013.

History

From 1926 to 1930, Dōjunkai created fifteen apartment complexes (apāto or apātomento), two in Yokohama and the rest in Tokyo. Among the latter, the best known is Dōjunkai Aoyama Apartments (built 1926 - 27), which stood on the avenue of Omotesandō toward its Harajuku Station end. Toward the end of what was by Tokyo standards a long life, the ivy-covered building was increasingly used for ateliers and small independent shops. It was demolished for the 2005 construction by Mori Building of Omotesando Hills, a conventional shopping mall. Dōjunkai built one last complex in Tokyo, Dōjunkai Edogawa apāto, between 1932 and 1934.

Dōjunkai was wound up in 1941.

Remarkably, all the apartment complexes survived wartime bombing.

After the war, the government sold the land of most of the complexes to real estate companies, notably Mori Building. Thereafter, the combination of desire for greater profits, lack of advance publicity, and lack of government interest in this genre of architecture, in addition to inadequate maintenance and the lack of amenities (notably individual bathing facilities) now taken for granted, have led to the destruction of most of the complexes in the name of "site development".

Currently the only original building can be seen at a conversion project at Dojunkan building, Omotesando Hills. Some shops and galleries are in the building with its facade of a genuine three-stories apartment.^[2]

List of Dōjunkai Apartments

Apartments	Japanese name	Completed	Location (present-day "wards")	Demolished (and replaced^[3] by)
Nakanogō Apartments		1926	Sumida, Tokyo	1990 (Setoru Nakanogō)
Aoyama Apartments		1926 - 7	Shibuya, Tokyo	2003 (Omotesando Hills)
Yanagishima Apartments		1926 - 7	Sumida, Tokyo	1995 (Primēru Yanagishima)
Daikan-yama Apartments		1927	Shibuya, Tokyo	1996 (Daikan-yama Address)
Sumitoshi Apartments (Sarueura-chō Kyōdō Jūtaku)		1927 - 30	Kōtō, Tokyo	1994 (Twin Tower Sumitoshi)
Kiyosumidōri Apartments (Higashidaiku-chō Apartments)		1927 - 9	Kōtō, Tokyo	2002
Yamashita-chō Apartments		1927	Naka, Yokohama	1989 (Reiton House)
Hiranuma-chō Apartments		1927	Nishi, Yokohama	1984 (Monteberte Yokohama)
Minowa Apartments		1928	Arakawa, Tokyo	2009
Mita Apartments		1928	Minato, Tokyo	1988 (Shanpōru Mita)
Uguisudani Apartments		1929	Arakawa, Tokyo	1999 (Rīdensu Tower)
Uenoshita Apartments		1929	Taitō, Tokyo	2013
Toranomon Apartments		1929	Chiyoda, Tokyo	2000 (Daidō Seimei Kasumigaseki Biru)
Ōtsuka Joshi Apartments		1930	Bunkyō, Tokyo	2003
Sumitoshi Apartments (Higashi-chō Apartments)		1930	Kōtō, Tokyo	1994 (Twin Tower Sumitoshi)
Edogawa Apartments		1934	Shinjuku, Tokyo	2003

Further reading

• Design of Doujunkai. (Japanese title). Tokyo: Kenchiku Shiryō Kenkyūsha, 2000. A book of new photographs of the buildings, with (minimal) text in both Japanese and English.
• "Dōjunkai apāto" in Japanese-language Wikipedia
• Hashimoto Fumitaka, et al. Kieyuku Dōjunkai apātomento (The disappearing Dōjunkai apartments). Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2003. . Informative book about all the buildings but concentrating on Edogawa Apartments (where Hashimoto lived), with plenty of plans, historic photographs, and new photographs taken by Youki Kanehira.
• Kanehira Youki. Photographs of Dōjunkai Aoyama apāto.
• Pompili, M. Dojunkai Apartments: Tokyo 1924-1934. Rome: Editrice Librerie Dedalo, 2001. . The Dōjunkai Apartments in the context of the development of housing in Japan during the early 20th century.
• Dōjunkai Aoyama apāto chronology.
• Miscellany about Dōjunkai Aoyama apāto.
• Ueda Makoto. Shūgō jūtaku monogatari (The story of collective housing). Tokyo: Misuzu, 2004. . This historical survey of collective housing in Japan (whose content was previously published within Tokyojin) has sections devoted to the Aoyama, Kiyosumidōri, Uguisudani and Ōtsuka Joshi Apartments, with new photographs by Hiroh Kikai and some archival photographs.
• Wijers-Hasegawa, Yumi. "Dwellers bought off; ball to fall on Aoyama flats". Japan Times, 19 April 2002.
• Web site: Resident of last Dojunkai laments passing of '20s icons. The Japan Times Online. June 17, 2012. Edan. Corkill. 2012-06-18.

Notes

1. For a full explanation of the term dōjun, see Seizō Uchida, "Apātomento hausu o wagakuni ni mochikonda Dōjunkai", p. 17, within Hashimoto et al., Kieyuku Dōjunkai Apātomento.
2. Web site: Omotesando Hills page . 2014-04-13 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140413145607/http://www.omotesandohills.com/floor/fl/dojunkan.html?e . 2014-04-13 . dead .
3. Replacements from Hashimoto et al., Kieyuku Dōjunkai Apātomento, p. 152. This gives the names in Japanese script only. Where the names are obviously in English or pseudo-English, English names have been provided; otherwise, they have been rendered in Hepburn romanization.