Invisible Infrastructure: Reinforcing Postwar Gender Inequality in Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

Abstract

1970s Japan saw major changes in the way society lived and worked. A changing family structure, one led by the patriarchal “salaryman,” created new demands for housing. The Nakagin Capsule Tower, completed by architect Kisho Kurokawa in 1972, formerly located in the business district of Shimbashi, Tokyo, Japan, was Kurokawa’s utopian model for Japan’s salarymen. This presentation investigates how the Nakagin Capsule Tower inscribed gendered institutional thought in its construction, restricting women to the home and maintaining male power in the public sphere. Moreover, I explore the relationship between the construction of masculinity and urban space in postwar Japan and discuss the ways in which a housewife is unable to fulfill societal expectations within the Nakagin Capsule Tower. While Kurokawa believed the Nakagin Capsule Tower was a utopian architecture that would improve society, it maintained the salaryman/housewife relationship that prevented Japan from socially evolving to include women in their workforce and reinforced the city as a place only for men in service to the economy. This assessment investigates how the built environment has the power to detract from women’s opportunities outside of the home and the ways architecture met the social demands of men in postwar Japan.