The First to Fifth Research Offices at Mita

2020/12/28

Photo: Second Research Office

The research offices on the Mita Campus were completed at the end of 1969 and were long referred to as the New Research Building. Faculty research offices for the four undergraduate faculties at Mita—Letters, Economics, Law, and Business and Commerce—are arranged on separate floors, and the Faculty Lounge on the first floor facilitates interaction among faculty members across different departments.

Prior to that, five research offices, from the First to the Fifth, had been established at Mita. The origins of the research office plan at Mita date back as far as 1937. In September of that year, the First School Building was completed, and the construction of research offices was planned as the second phase of construction, but it was postponed due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War and other factors. Research offices continued to be housed in parts of the Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration) and the First School Building. It was not until 1951 that the First Research Office was opened by renovating a reinforced concrete building, meaning it took nearly 15 years for a dedicated research office building to be realized.

Even leading up to this renovation, there were efforts to construct new research offices. After the war, building research offices became an urgent matter. Keio University estimated approximately 5 million yen for the temporary construction of 1,000 tsubo for research offices and seminar rooms for three faculties, with 1.2 million yen planned for the first year's expenditure. Fundraising activities were also conducted among Keio University alumni, but the actual construction was slow to materialize. In the meantime, the Second (Building No. 5) and Third School Buildings (Building No. 4) were completed, resolving the shortage of classrooms, and the plan to renovate the reinforced concrete building into research offices resurfaced.

The reinforced concrete building renovated into the First Research Office was completed in 1920 as the Preparatory Course building, making it the first reinforced concrete school building in Japan. It was a U-shaped structure with entrances on the inside of both wings. Subsequently, it was used as a building for the Koto-bu (High School) and the Technical School, and was also temporarily used by the Keio Futsubu School and Chutobu Junior High School (formerly the Commerce and Industry School) after their buildings were destroyed in the war. With the Office of Correspondence Courses, which opened in 1948, and the Senior High School also using parts of it, the building served a variety of purposes at a time when many facilities had been lost to war damage.

Following the birth of the First Research Office in April 1951, the Second Research Office (which housed the Noguchi Room on the first floor and was also known as the Shin-Banraisha) was completed in August of the same year, followed by the Third Research Office the next year. The Second and Third offices, designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi, housed professors' research offices, while the First office contained research offices for associate professors, assistants, and graduate students, as well as a research library. On the day of the 1954 celebration of Yukichi Fukuzawa's birthday, a bust of Yukichi Fukuzawa was unveiled inside the U-shape of the First Research Office. From then until its removal in 1967, it became a popular spot for taking graduation photos and other commemorative pictures.

Even after the construction of the First through Third Research Offices, the shortage of research space persisted. In May 1959, the Fourth Research Office was established on the fifth floor of the South School Building, which was built as part of the Centenary Project. Furthermore, in January 1965, the Fifth Research Office, a single-story lightweight steel structure with 34 rooms, was built on the roof of the First School Building, and 54 people moved there from the First Research Office. The Design Planning Committee, tasked with fundamentally resolving the issue of research offices being scattered across the Mita Hilltop Square, was established the following year.

(Atsuko Ishiguro, Former Director of the Keio University Office of Communications and Public Relations)