A Historical Perspective of Architecture Education at Waseda University in Japan: Analyses of the Waseda Architecture Lecture Notes for Correspondence Education in the early Shōwa period

The dawn of modern architecture education in Japan came as the Meiji Administration established public universities and technical training schools. During the the end of the Taishō period (1912–1926) to the Shōwa period (1926–1989), with rapid social modernization, construction technologies also needed to be modernized. In the private education sector, Waseda University, the pioneer in individualized architecture education, introduced and implemented a special education system called correspondence education (a form of distance learning) in the early Shōwa period to serve the society’s demand for architectural professionals and technicians. The Waseda Architecture Lecture Notes, used as course materials for correspondence education, play a vital role in understanding Japanese architectural education’s founding period. This paper focuses on current storage locations, publication time frames, educational background of the lecturers, proportional arrangements of the various subjects, as well as the design and characteristics of lecture syllabi of the Waseda Architecture Lecture notes. This analysis reveals that the Waseda Architecture Lecture Notes had specifically emphasized on architectonics courses. Therefore, Waseda University made significant contributions to the national reserve and the cultivation of architectural specialists through the distance learning approach tailored to the historical context of the Shōwa period.