Completion of Shinanomachi Building 1

2021/01/27

Image: Completion of the L-shaped Building 1 (April 1965). The first floor is a parking lot where red and white ceremonial curtains can be seen. The 3rd to 5th floors were hospital ward floors, with the 3rd and 4th floors housing semi-second-class and second-class patient rooms, and the 5th floor housing first-class and special patient rooms. Nameplates of benefactors who supported the construction costs were placed on the ward floors.

In the spring of 1964, when I advanced from the Hiyoshi pre-medical course to the specialized medical course in Shinanomachi, there was a massive Keio Hospital under construction. Seeing this, I felt for the first time the reality of becoming a "medical student." During the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in the fall of 1964, I remember watching Self-Defense Force planes draw the Olympic rings in the sky above the nearly completed Building 1 from the Department of Anatomy behind the hospital.

The opening of Building 1 in April of the following year was a major event, and medical students starting their clinical clerkships at Keio Hospital were full of curiosity. Keio Hospital was said to have the highest number of first-time patients, and an extremely functional reception area for the time appeared on the first floor of the three-story building at the front. The escalator that moved patients who had finished reception to the examination rooms on the second floor also became a topic of conversation. A hospital with an escalator in the outpatient department was rare at that time.

The five-story Building 1 was also a state-of-the-art ward at the time. The 3rd to 5th floors were patient rooms, and it became a hot topic as a ward where "all rooms were private," which was unusual for that era. In particular, many celebrities, including Yujiro Ishihara, were hospitalized in the 5th-floor ward on the top floor.

In 2007, then-Prime Minister Abe was urgently hospitalized. Inside the Prime Minister's hospital room, in addition to a treatment room, there were multiple rooms such as a room for meetings of several people, as well as an attached bathroom and kitchen; the Prime Minister continued his official duties in the hospital room even while hospitalized. Ten days after admission, a press conference was held where the Prime Minister announced his intention to resign. After that, until Prime Minister Fukuda was elected, the 5th floor of Building 1 fulfilled part of the functions of the Cabinet Secretariat. At the time, I was handling the Prime Minister's hospitalization as the hospital director, and I am proud that the private patient rooms on the 5th floor of Building 1, which were over 40 years old since construction, were able to temporarily carry out part of the central functions of the government.

Keio Hospital is also the university hospital closest to a JR station. If you exit the Shinanomachi Station ticket gate and cross the signal, you are at the main gate of the hospital, and many patients commute by train. Despite this, parking space was provided on the first floor, and a vast parking space remains in front of the entrance to this day. Building 1 will be demolished this summer and its appearance will no longer be seen, but we must not forget Building 1, which has carried the central functions of Keio Hospital for over half a century.

(Professor Emeritus of Keio University, former Hospital Director Naoki Aikawa)