The Former Crown Prince’s Palace (Akasaka Palace) was Japan’s first Western-style palace constructed in 1909. Dr. Tokuma Katayama conducted the construction project as the head architect of the Imperial Household Ministry. This palace was designated as a national treasure in 2009. This is a monumental architecture which represents the Meiji era. Though it was designed by Japanese architects, its exterior and interior decoration reached as high degree of perfection as real western palaces. Especially, the exterior decoration represents the Neo Baroque style. The objective of this research is to understand the design process of the exterior decoration by analyzing the documents in the imperial household archives. The archives include the documents, drawings and blueprints on the construction of this palace, and many of which were opened to public in 2011.

The research clarified the following points: 1) According to his telegraphs and local newspaper articles, Dr. Katayama visited the United States to purchase steel frames in 1899. Before traveling, he had decided on the basic design of the exterior, but he had a strong desire to improve the decoration by combining the Japanese, European and American art. We found several drawings and blueprints of the front elevation in the imperial household archives, which show that he had the idea to use the Japanese motifs from the very beginning of the construction project.

2) French decorators participated not only in the interior decoration, but also in the facade decoration. It is known that the interior decoration was imported from European countries, mainly from France. The furniture was supplied by Henri Fourdinois and Georges Hoentschel. In our past research, we pointed out that they played important roles as interior decorators in the construction project. The account documents in the archives show that almost all facade decorations were supplied by Hoentschel. We also find the drawings and the receipt of the sculpture of western knight which was purchased by Seiki Kuroda, a famous Japanese painter, who was in charge of research for the interior decoration for the palace.

3) Dr. Katayama decided to use Japanese motifs into the sculptures designed by the French decorators. Several decorative models of the sculptures imported from France were changed during the construction work. The comparison between the drawings and real sculptures shows that the key motifs were changed into Japanese motifs, such as chrysanthemum and paulownia, which are the imperial crest, and Japanese armor.

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