Artworks

Akasaka Detached Palace

Artwork · Katayama Tōkuma · 1909 · building

The first Meiji building of true grandeur in Western vocabulary, by Katayama Tōkuma (1853–1917), one of Josiah Conder’s first students and architect to the imperial family: often called the Japanese Versailles, with a magnificent staircase, a large state dining room, a ballroom, ceiling paintings by leading Japanese painters and gilt lamps; Japanese only in the sequence of reception rooms. Its splendour was its undoing — the emperor found it too luxurious for his son, and it was never used as an imperial residence; it housed the Diet library until the 1970s and is now the state guest house. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 346–347, fig. 403. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.