Assessing the remains of Japanese colonialism

Like the British, the Dutch, the Spanish and the French before them, Japanese colonists were prolific builders in their Asian empire prior to its collapse 60 years ago.

For the Japanese, however, architectural splendor came a distant second to the goal of serving the needs of empire and the war effort and although many imposing buildings were built, few had genuine architectural merit.

"Most of what the Japanese put up was shoddy and there is really only a tiny handful left," said Peter Bartholemew, a historian and expert on architecture in Korea, a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945.

In the rapid industrialization of Northeast and Southeast Asia in the past few decades, many Japanese buildings in places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan have been swept away by the wrecker's ball to make room for modern development.

Other buildings, like the most imposing colonial structure in South Korea that served as the Japanese occupation headquarters, were destroyed in a display of nationalist fervor.

"Frankly, the demolition of these buildings was no great loss to the world's architectural heritage," said Bartholomew, a director of the century-old Seoul branch of Britain's Royal Asiatic Society.

Japanese colonial buildings sprinkled across the Asian mainland from northern China to Singapore and on the islands of Taiwan and Hong Kong broadly fit into three categories: industrial plant to supply the war machine and the expanding empire; colonial administrative buildings to house the growing corp of colonial administrators; and private housing for officials.

Some graceful structures were erected and a few survive including temples and shrines in Taiwan, colonized by Japan from 1895 to 1945.

An effort to preserve them began after Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), a Japan-educated politician, became the president in 1988 and served as the head of state for 12 years.

The headquarters of the Japanese colonial governor has been used as Taiwan's Presidential Office Building since 1949 and a cluster of other Japanese colonial offices also survive including the Executive Yuan and the old National Taiwan University Building.

In South Korea, the Bank of Korea, Seoul City hall and the Seoul railway station are among more prominent examples of Japanese colonial architecture, which essentially aped the bulky neo-classical stone structures popular in Europe in the early 20th century.

"All of these buildings are European style and many of the architects were in fact Europeans working for the Japanese," said Bartholomew.

One of those European architects was Georg de Lalande, a German who designed the most famous Japanese structure ever built in Korea.

That was the copper-domed granite monolith that served as the Japanese governor general's office. Finished in 1926, more than a decade after Lalande's death, the building blocked the front of Kyongbok Palace, the ancient residence of Korea's kings, and portions of the palace were demolished to make way for the Japanese structure.

"This was to remind the Koreans who were the real masters in their country," said Andrei Lankov, a history professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, in a recent commentary.