Model of Mita Campus Just Before the Great Kanto Earthquake

2023/02/21

Coming from Mita-dori, looking up at the octagonal tower of the Library and passing through the slope of Maboroshi no Mon to emerge "Oka no Ue," one sees the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) exactly as it was in the era of Yukichi Fukuzawa, with the red brick architecture of the former Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration) to its left. Turning right past the Jukukan-kyoku, a main street opens up lined with wooden school buildings on both sides. Beyond the Ginkgo Tree in the Quad, one can see the Public Hall, which was loved by Keio students and also called the Keio-za. In the southeast corner of the campus lies the Japanese-style residence of the Fukuzawa family; on the northwest side is the Preparatory Course of the School of Medicine; below the cliff on the west side is the Yochisha Elementary School; and the Keio Futsubu School stands where the Chutobu Junior High School is currently located.

At that time, Keio University facilities were all located in Mita, except for the School of Medicine (undergraduate) and hospital in Shinanomachi, and the dormitory in Tengenji where the Yochisha is now located. Of the buildings reproduced here, only the Library and the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) still exist. Due to the sorrow of a private institution with few assets, the wooden buildings that made up the majority were repeatedly relocated; some moved to Lake Yamanaka (Building No. 3), while others moved to Hiyoshi and then returned to Mita after the war to become one of the first school buildings for the Chutobu Junior High School (Building No. 4). A foreign teacher at the Juku reportedly said, "Japanese real estate is actually movable property."

In exhibitions of school history, the topic of school buildings is a standard feature. On the other hand, it is also true that no one but alumni feels much interest in them. Therefore, I chose to exhibit a model that has an inherent charm in itself. Since the oldest existing aerial photograph dates to 1923, and the remnants of the campus from Fukuzawa's lifetime were almost entirely lost due to the Great Kanto Earthquake, I decided to recreate this specific point in time.

Regarding the hardships of the restoration, Daiki Shiraishi, a researcher at the Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies, wrote about it in detail in this magazine (February 2021 issue). Even if we didn't know for sure, we had to decide on the number of windows and the color of the walls; for things like the back of the buildings or the toilets—which were all outside the school buildings at the time—we had no choice but to make an educated guess.

What can be seen of the history of Keio University within this reproduced space? I hope you will "experience" this small world, where even the daphne and trumpet vines once composed in poems by poets have been casually recreated. This year marks exactly 100 years since the Great Kanto Earthquake, when this landscape was lost.

(Takeyuki Tokura, Associate Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)