Tokyo’s ‘Sagrada Familia’ stands defiant after 20 years of building | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
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The Asahi Shimbun
National Report<br>article
Tokyo’s ‘Sagrada Familia’ stands defiant after 20 years of building
By MANABU UEDA/ Staff Writer
May 16, 2026 at 07:00 JST
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The “Arimasutonbi-ru”(Arimasuton Building) standing against a backdrop of skyscrapers in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on March 18 (Manabu Ueda)
In the shadow of the sleek glass-and-steel towers that dot the modern skyline of Tokyo’s Mita district, a monument to idiosyncrasy has passed a major hurdle on its two-decade road to completion.
The “Arimasutonbi-ru” (Arimasuton Building) looks like an attempt to overturn every modern architecture convention.
It rejects smoothness, symmetry and polish. Irregular openings, protruding forms, handmade textures and expanses of exposed, board-formed concrete give the structure the raw, stubborn presence of something carved out of resistance rather than designed on paper.
The Arimasutonbi-ru earned the nickname “the Sagrada Familia of Mita” after Spain’s famously unfinished cathedral, for the two decades it took for completion.
Its name is a playful composite of creatures from land, water and sky: “ari” means ant, “masu” means trout and “tonbi” means black kite.
The final syllable also carries a nod to Le Corbusier, the modernist master whose name is rendered in Japanese as “Ru Korubyujie.” The last element, “biru,” means building.
The craftsman behind the Arimasutonbi-ru is Keisuke Oka, 60, a first-class registered architect.
He did not build the 12-meter-tall structure with a fleet of heavy machinery or a large construction crew.
Instead, he built it with his own hands, a pickaxe and a radical philosophy of “self-building,” which challenges the ephemeral nature of Japanese urban architecture.
The reinforced-concrete building stands about 12 meters tall, with four stories above ground and one basement level. Oka plans to use the basement as an art gallery, the first floor as a rental shop and the upper floors for his private residence.
On March 10, the building passed its final legal inspection, marking a major milestone.
The project began with a casual remark from his wife shortly after they married: “You can design houses, right? You can do carpentry too, right? Then why don’t you build the house we’re going to live in?”
At the time, Oka had just obtained his architect’s license at age 30 and was struggling with a sense of inferiority as he watched his peers move ahead in their careers.
In September 2000, after searching across Tokyo, he bought a 40-square-meter plot of land for 15.5 million yen ($97,500). Yet, when it came to the actual question of how to build the house, he found himself groping for a way forward.
The breakthrough came during a workshop led by Osamu Ishiyama, an architect Oka admired.
There, he was struck by the idea of “self-building” — taking on everything from design to construction himself. Ishiyama encouraged him, saying, “Go with that.”
Construction began in November 2005. Oka initially expected the work to take about three years. Instead, it took a year and a half just to excavate the basement, using only shovels and pickaxes.
From assembling rebar to pouring concrete into molds, more than 100 people — including friends and others he met through social media — lent a hand along the way.
'IMPROVISATIONAL' DESIGN
There are no detailed blueprints. The design evolved through “improvisation,” with ideas emerging in the course of construction.
Oka found inspiration in “butoh,” a form of Japanese dance-theater in which he was deeply involved during his 20s. He applied to the building process a butoh-like principle: move the body before the mind has time to impose a fixed plan.
In contrast to the short lifespan of many buildings in Japan, Oka was exceptionally particular about his building materials. For the concrete, he reduced the water content as much as possible, mixing it into a highly viscous paste and layering it little by little.
Although low-water concrete is far more physically demanding to handle, it produces extraordinary strength. Experts have certified that the building could stand for 200 years.
It reportedly did not suffer a single crack during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, which devastated a wide swath of the Pacific coast in northeastern Japan and also shook Tokyo.
Oka’s commitment to self-building is rooted in his experience as a laborer. After studying design at a college of...