South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Japan’s time capsule of Western architecture
INUYAMA, Japan — This nation may have more theme parks per capita than any other country. Besides Disneyland, Legoland and Universal Studios, there are smaller parks featuring a miniature Spain and celebrations of Pokemon.
Then there’s Meiji-mura in central Japan — an openair museum that pays homage to Western-inspired architecture that appeared in Japan as it opened its borders to foreign trade after 200 years of isolation.
The 250-acre site, open since 1965, is home to more than 60 structures from the Meiji era (1868-1912), including schools, police stations, bus terminals, administrative buildings, churches, private residences and even a prison.
These aren’t reproductions. They are actual buildings, each procured, dismantled, moved and painstakingly rebuilt.
The prize is the original lobby and first floor of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel, opened in June 1923. It’s one of the few major structures to have withstood the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto quake three months later and the World War II firebombing of Tokyo. Wright’s masterwork was demolished in 1968, and the park’s owners shipped the remnants of the lobby and reflecting pool to their then-new theme park.
I spent five happy hours last summer traipsing around the park, wondering at the Japanese workers’ houses relocated from Hawaii and Brazil. Also lovingly re-created are a lighthouse, several bridges and factories that once produced beer and sake. My favorite might have been the bathhouse, the butcher’s shop or the barbershop — all with period-correct vintage equipment and implements — or the Foreigner’s House, its interior accurate down to the last 1887 detail. Meiji-mura preserves historical buildings including the main lobby of the Imperial Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.