While in Miyakonojo I stopped by a strange piece of architecture, the Miyakonojo Civic Center.
It was built in 1966 and was designed by architect Kiyonori Kikutake.
Kikutake was part of an architectural movement called Metabolism that operated in the 1950's and 60's, and was almost a purely Japanese movement. It claimed to be a reaction to Western modern architecture that it said was too much based on the machine.
Quite a few of the top architects of late 20th Century Japan were part of, or influenced by, Metabolism, but in reality not a lot got built, rather utopian designs for cities and towns were the main focus.
World Expo 70 in Osaka was perhaps the peak of metabolism with many of the architects and designs being featured there.
I'm sure that when it was constructed, with fresh white concrete, it must have looked quite impressive.......
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