Saint Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo (東京カテドラル聖マリア大聖堂)

A wooden church in the Gothic style was built at Sekiguchi in 1899. It became Tokyo's cathedral in 1920 and burned down completely in the war, in 1945. To replace it, an invited competition pitted Kunio Maekawa, Yoshirō Taniguchi and Kenzō Tange against one another, and Tange's scheme, whose summit traces a cross, won. The present cathedral was built with gifts from the faithful of Cologne, Germany, and dedicated on 8 December 1964, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

Tange says he visited several medieval Gothic cathedrals before drawing this one: he found there a grandeur that reaches toward heaven, and wanted to create new spaces by means of modern technology. He worked with the support of engineers from the University of Tokyo, for acoustics and for structure. When he died in 2005, his funeral was held here, as he had wished, and his ashes rest in the underground columbarium.

In 2006-2007 the exterior and the skylight were entirely renovated, the stainless steel of the cladding being replaced with a weather-resistant ferritic stainless steel. As of 2022, the interior had not been altered since construction. In August 2025 the cathedral and its bell tower were registered by the state as tangible cultural properties.

Eight reinforced-concrete shells, each a hyperbolic paraboloid, stand upright. They hold one another up and trace a cross at their summit. Where the walls meet, panes of glass lead up to a cross-shaped skylight at the summit. Stainless steel covers the whole and serves as roof and facade alike. The building stands about 39.4 m high.

Inside, a marble floor and walls of exposed concrete with swelling surfaces make up a volume where light comes gently down from the summit to the altar. There are 600 seats and room for 2,000 people standing.

South of the cathedral stands the bell tower, also by Tange: in reinforced concrete, 62 m high, with a plan in the form of a distorted rhombus and a section that narrows toward the top. Its summit is hollowed out in a rectangle to hang four bells, and the spire above it ends in a cross.

The building is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tokyo and the church of the Sekiguchi parish, established in 1900. Mass is celebrated here, and people can also come to pray alone.

The organ, installed in 2004 in the gallery behind the pews, was conceived for the liturgy as well as for concerts. Monthly meditations, free to attend, combine prayer with organ music.

The cathedral can be visited outside Masses and events, normally from 9 am to 5 pm. Visitors keep quiet, since worshippers are praying there. Groups let the parish know in advance.

Gokokuji Station, on the Tokyo Metro Yūrakuchō Line, is a ten-minute walk away.