ABSTRACT
Nothing signalled new beginnings more clearly than the Western-style buildings that arose in Meiji Japan, designed either by foreign architects or by the first generation of Western-trained Japanese architects. It should be stressed that for the Japanese, especially those Meiji oligarchs who had journeyed in the West, Western architectural models were symbols of a new era, one that would in the course of time demonstrate Japan’s modernity.1 The first foreign architects were British, but later others from Germany, France and the United States were influential. But the involvement of these outsiders was only a passing phase. The first generation of Japanese architects were trained in Japan but, later, spent months and sometimes years working in and studying architecture in Britain, France, Germany or the United States.
