What buildings were commissioned and built by the Japanese during their occupation of Shanghai?
There wasn’t much time for building during the War, but the Japanese had been busy in the decade before the war, making in-roads into Shanghai. By the 1930s they had built three buildings on the Bund: the Yokohama Specie Bank, the awkwardly proportioned Bank of Taiwan, and the Nisshin Kisen Kaisha Shipping Company. I’ve often heard the Bund architecture referred to as the “face” of Shanghai. What do you think of this as a statement? The Bund was “the face” of British Shanghai, where their buildings were designed to extravagantly display the power of their empire. The HSBC building is the most obvious example of this, where the architects were told to “spare no expense, but dominate the Bund.” Other nationalities vied to obtain a spot on the Bund. When the Chinese government finally acquired land on the Bund, after confiscating German property during the first World War, they built the Bank of China so it would be the tallest building on the Bund, which it still is today. Many nationali
