Sano Toshikata

Sano Toshikata (1880 to 1956) was a Japanese architect and scholar of structural engineering, born Yamaguchi Yasuhei in the village of Aratohamura, now part of Shirataka in Yamagata Prefecture. He studied architecture at the Tokyo Imperial University under Tatsuno Kingo and graduated in 1903, then taught there as a lecturer, assistant professor and from 1915 professor. After a 1906 trip to survey the San Francisco earthquake damage and study abroad in Britain, the United States, Germany and Italy from 1910 to 1914, he earned a doctorate in engineering in 1915 with his thesis on earthquake-resistant house construction, work regarded as the foundation of Japanese structural engineering and, at the time, the first attempt in the world to build a seismic theory of building structure. He designed the structure of the Maruzen bookstore in Nihonbashi, helped bring about the city planning and building laws of 1919, served as director of the building bureau of the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Agency after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, led the engineering school of Nihon University, and became a member of the Japan Academy in 1950. He stressed architecture as engineering rather than as art.