A visit to Taimei Elementary School, king of elementary schools

Featuring semicircular lines, including the arched windows, the building is not the works of a prominent architect, and yet it is beautiful. The bird’s eye view of it looks like the streamlined train cars that were popular in the early Showa period. Considering that there is a bed of water on its side, it may have been designed in the image of a ship. The Asahi Shimbun building that was constructed around the same period on the other side of Sukiyabashi Bridge was also often referred to as a battleship.
Wajiro Kon’s Shinban Dai-Tokyo Annai (New Guide to Larger Tokyo), published in December 1929 (Showa 4) contains a description of the newly built school building (used from June). “Back in the times when Ginza was built with red bricks, the school, being the first brick elementary school in Japan, was to be described by no other word than “modern.” This long history has been updated with a “super-modern” dark cream-colored three-story building that reminds one of a steam ship. It took 450,000 yen in construction costs and a period of one year and three months for the building, covering a total of 1,298 tsubo (a traditional Japanese unit of areal measure, roughly 3.3 m2), to be completed. The building houses twenty classrooms, a hall with a seating capacity of 700, a roof-top athletic field, and a basement. The classrooms are spaciously lined in one row, and thus can take in much sunlight from the windows. The science lab, handicraft room, music room and art room are all equipped with cutting-edge facilities. In particular, the shower room where children have access to hot water lives up to its “super-modern” name. Each classroom is also equipped with an electric steam heating unit, A small playground has been completed adjacent to the rooftop athletic field and the roof constitutes a corner of the flower bed. The location being one of the most high-end spots in Tokyo with the Imperial Hotel nearby, the school was conscious about visits to be paid by foreigners and spent a great amount of money to use the best materials so that it would not be something to feel shameful about.”
It is often said that after the great earthquake, elementary schools were restored with a priority on disaster prevention and safety and were thus robustly built even if it meant more costs. However, reading this description, we learn that Taimei Elementary School was exceptional. (According to Mr. Wada, the description of the rooftop is rather questionable.) Kon’s insight of “visits to be paid by foreigners staying at the Imperial Hotel” is particularly impressive.
Furthermore, according to Taimei hyakunen monogatari (The centennial history of Taimei Elementary School), which was published in commemoration of its centennial anniversary, “the first-aid room was equipped with the same medical devices as those that would be found in a small hospital, and weak children were periodically given medical treatment using a sunlamp. Well, by “sunlamp” he probably meant that they were exposed to ultraviolet rays so that would be unthinkable today.
The centennial history book contains an excerpt from a book published in 1937 (Showa 12) to commemorate the school’s sixtieth anniversary that explains the characteristics of the children that went to Taimei. I found this observation to be quite interesting.
“1. Alert, with worldly wisdom and cheerful
2. Gentle, graceful and elegant
3. Physically extremely weak with little stamina
4. Lacking in strong minds, some with no spirit of independence
5. Easily controlled by calculative and speculative sentiments
Setting aside 1 and 2, the third line leads us to imagine a connection with the sunlamp in the first-aid room. In other words, many of the boys and girls were clever but weak… and perhaps that has not fundamentally changed today. The importance of physical education is stressed in the principal’s message on the school website, using the keyword “PE knowledge.”
“Perhaps owing to entrance exams for junior high school, children are academically capable, but physical education is also an important part of learning. Given the low school average in the ward-wide physical fitness test, we have launched what we call “Taimei time,” or twenty minutes for light exercises before first period.”
The twenty minutes in the morning are also sometimes used for reading or singing together.
Meals are just as important as exercise. I was curious to know what kind of lunch children were served in a school in the middle of Ginza. For example, according to the school website, their menu on July 1 was: “wakame (brown seaweed) rice, miso soup, deep-fried sandfish, spicy stir-fried minced meat and glass noodles, melon, milk.” They seem to be having more sumptuous school meals than what we used to have when I was in school, but the menu is the same in all elementary schools in Chuo-ku. However, they do enjoy one special option exclusive to Taimei Elementary School. Once a semester, their school lunch is made using broth prepared by Toru Okuda, the head chef of Ginza Kojyu, a Michelin-starred traditional Japanese kaiseki restaurant in Ginza.
Speaking of taking advantage of location, their social studies field trips include visits to local art galleries as well as to the theater for kabuki and Takarazuka Revue Company shows.
On the day of the interview, the principal gave me a tour of the school. The faculty room and nurse’s office (which is probably what used to be the first-aid room, but most likely without a sunlamp today) are on the first floor, as well as the facilities of the kindergarten that was opened after World War II. Beyond the window in the back, I could see the swimming pool. Adorable penguins stand by the smaller pool for kindergarteners.

On the second floor are the classrooms for the lower grades. What fascinated me is the reference room that exhibits the works and biography of Tokoku and Toson and all the other famous graduates, including Fumimaro Konoe, Mitsuharu Kaneko, Yoshiko Okada, Kunitaro Kawarasaki (kabuki actor and son of Shozo Matsuyama, owner of Café Printemps), Shinzo Fukuhara of Shiseido, Yataro Ikeda (professor at Keio University and whose family ran Tenkin), followed by Takeshi Kato, Yukiji Asaoka, Chinatsu Nakayama, Mari-Chiyo, a popular geiko from Shimbashi…. What a lineup!

Burnt down entirely in the May 1945 air raid, the building was fully restored with attention to the smallest detail (leaving some of the reinforcing bars that were bent in fire); and therefore, the gymnasium had antique wall bars – old, but perhaps not from before the war.
The tour ended outside, in the schoolyard. Looking out to Miyuki Dori through the French gates I could see the café, Aux Bacchanales. Now that I think of it, they may have grown ivy on their building to match the ivy on the walls of Taimei Elementary School.