Finally got around to replacing my laptop from 2011 and successfully (fingers crossed) transferred all of my photos to the new computer. This naturally led to taking-stock of the thousands of images I’ve accumulated. One folder that I’ve long neglected is a small collection of pictures from my first trip to Japan in 2010.

At the time of the trip I recall making a strange pronouncement to a coworker that I vowed not to take any pictures in Japan because I didn’t want picture-taking to overshadow the experience of being in Japan. Other than my Blackberry, I had no other means of taking photographs, and I generally followed the spirit of the vow. Over the course of two weeks I took no more than a few dozen pictures.

One photo I regret not taking was of a row of tired looking apartment buildings next to my hotel east of Ueno Station. (Why regret? It has something to do with the fact that I subsequently became obsessed with danchi, and the history of public housing in Japan.)

I knew nothing about Tokyo at the time, and certainly wouldn’t have known that this building, Ueno-shita Dojunkai 上野下アパートメント (map), was the last remaining Dojunkai 同潤会 in Tokyo. Overall, sixteen Dōjunkai housing projects were built between 1926 to 1934 by a government-managed corporation 財団法人同潤会 in response to housing shortages resulting from the great 1923 earthquake. One of the most famous of the Dojunkai apartments was located in the swanky Omotesando shopping distict.¹

Tokyo in the wake of the 1923 earthquake:

Ueno-shita Dojunkai in 2010 (originally built in 1929, it was demolished in 2013):

Interior (source, broken link: taito-culture jp/topics/uenoshita_apartment/)

Aerial photo from 1936 (source):

What was I doing when NOT photographing the Uenoshita Dojunkai? Well, instead of pointing my camera out my hotel window, I pointed it at the television and took this, my first photograph on Japanese soil: Domo-kun どーも くん and friends

Also from my first trip to Tokyo: Things random, Vol. 1 ランダムに選択すること Vol.1

Links:

• Looking back on the final days of the Dojunkai apartments (Japan Times, 2017)
• Last of the Dojunkai – Ben Beech Photography
• Ueno Dojunkai 大正・昭和の歴史と街を見つめてきたアパートがありました。 (Taito Culture)²
• Urban struggle: Tokyo’s tussle with preservation of architecture (Tokyo Reporter, 2009)
• Tokyo (1923- 1930) Changes in communal housing after the Great Kanto Earthquake (University of Hong Kong)³
• Do|Co|Mo|Mo|Japan|02 : Dojunkai Apartments : Tokyo : Dojunkai Corporation
• Gallery Dojunkai (Tokyo Art Beat)
• Tokyo Sky Tree under construction, 2010
• Dojunkai (Wikipedia)

Footnotes:

1. Do|Co|Mo|Mo|Japan|02 : Dojunkai Apartments : Tokyo : Dojunkai Corporation ↩︎
2. Broken link: taito-culture jp/topics/uenoshita_apartment/ ↩︎
3. Broken link: fac.arch.hku hk/asian-cities-research/revolutionary-changes-in-communal-housing-after-the-great-kanto-earthquake/ ↩︎