Housing in urban areas


Modern Apartment Complex in Tokyo

Apartments in the photo are located in Akabane area in Tokyo, which is easily accessible to the business centers such as Marunouchi, Shinjuku and so on. The rent per month is from 90,000 JPY for 1 bedroom to 300,000 JPY for 3 bedrooms. The owner of apartments is Urban Renaissance Agency(UR) which was originally established in 1955 by the government to aim to provide a lot of affordable good-quality housing for people after World War Ⅱ devastated Japan, when shortage of housing was the critical issue.

Dining and Sleeping in the same room
Around 1965, a typical room in Japanese housing is seen like that. On the right hand side, if you open sliding doors called Fusuma, some sets of bedding called Futon are found to be stored in Japanese-style closet called Oshi-ire. The scene is nostalgic, being remembered for my parent home built in 1956.
Modernized Housing 
The kitchen and dining room in housing which the original body of UR started providing for people in 1957 was like that. Housing like that was based on a suggestion of separation between dining and sleeping by an architect. The sink was not made of stainless steel but artificial stone.  
Consequence of Natural Disaster
On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake hit the Kanto region including Tokyo. The number of death and missing toll reached 105,000 in which over 90% was fire casualty. That was why the prototype of apartments by UR originated in the government-affiliated organization, Dojunkai apartmenthouses which were built several years after its devastation. The old photo(copied from Wikipedia) shows one of the apartments in Omote-Sando in or around 1930.  
Reconstruction
A part of Dojunkai apartment on Omote-Sando was reconstructed in an original style after the old apartments were demolished in 2003 and redeveloped as a new Omote Sando Hills Complex in 2006. New Omote Sando Hills consists of commercial facilities and upper residential floors. The Great Kanto Earthquake teaches us how important both fire and earthquake resistance are, when constructing apartment houses though wooden detached houses have mainly been adopted in Japan. 
Omote Sando Hills on Omote-Sando Avenue
Omote-Sando literally means "Front Approach" which leads to Meiji Jingu Shrine and was constructed in 1920 when the shrine was founded. Omote-Sando is 1 kilometer long in which Omote Sando Hills(the old Dojunkai apartments) is 250 meters long.