This book, centered on the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 and 2020, compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between Kenzo Tange and Kengo Kuma, their work for the Tokyo Games, and their involvement with Paris, and explores the appeal of their architecture.
It offers an interpretation of the architectural philosophies of the two architects through essays by Kengo Kuma and architectural historian Saikaku Toyokawa and extensive use of photographs by Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Mikiya Takimoto. This is a bilingual (Japanese/English) catalog for the exhibition titled "Kenzo Tange - Kengo Kuma: Architects of the Tokyo Games" held at the Maison de la Culture de Japon à Paris in 2024. It also highlights the architectural appeal of the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, a candidate for the World Heritage List.

Born in 1954, graduated from Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, he established Kuma Kengo & Associates in 1990, and is currently a University Professor and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo.
He was astonished by Kenzo Tange’s Yoyogi Indoor Stadium built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and decided to become an architect in his childhood. He studied under Hiroshi Hara and Yoshichika Uchida at university, and crossed the Sahara Desert in Africa while in graduate school, studying villages and during the process awakened to the beauty and power of villages. He established Kuma Kengo & Associates in 1990 after serving as a visiting scholar at Columbia University. To date, he has designed architecture in over 40 countries, and received numerous awards in Japan and overseas (including Architectural Institute of Japan Award, Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award from Finland and the International Architecture in Stone Award from Italy). He strives to create architecture that blends into the environment and culture of each location, proposing designs on a human scale that are gentle and soft. Kuma is pursuing the ideal form of architecture in the post-industrialized society era through a search into new materials that replace concrete and steel. His latest book is “Japan and Japanese Architecture” (published by Iwanami Shoten in 2023).

Architect and architectural historian. Born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture in 1973. Completed graduate studies at the Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Urban Environment Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba University. His publications include Tange Kenzo: Sengo Nippon no Kososha (Tange Kenzo: Conceptualizer of Postwar Japan, Iwanami Shoten, 2016) and Kokuritsu Yoyogi Kyogijo to Tange Kenzo (The Yoyogi National Gymnasium and Tange Kenzo, TOTO Publishing, 2021.)