Junzo Sakakura, born in 1901, was a protégé of Le Corbusier and is credited as one of the first Japanese architects to blend western modernism with traditional Japanese architecture. Sakakura graduated from the Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in Art History in 1927, but soon moved to France to study architecture, working in Le Corbusier’s Paris atelier from 1930. He spent 7 years in Corbuser’s studio alongside luminaries like Charlotte Periand and rose to the position of studio chief. After a brief return to Japan, Sakakura was comissioned to design the Japanese Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition. His structure balanced the influences of traditional Japanese design with modernism and brought him world-wide recognition when it won the Diplôme de Grand Prix.

Sakakura worked in Japan throughout World War 2, designing portable structures for the Imperial Army and an unrealised masterplan for the Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria, China. After the war he opened offices in Tokyo and Osaka and in 1951 won his first major post-war commission for the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura. Sakakura often collaborated with other architects, working with Kunio Maekawa and Junzo Yoshimura on International House in Tokyo (1955) and again with Kunio Maekawa and Takamasa Yoshizaka on Corbusier’s National Museum of Western Art (1959). His collaboration with Yutaka Murata for the Electric Power Pavilion at Osaka’s Expo 70 resulted in the Electrium, a 1200-ton structure suspended by steel cables from 43 meter high columns. Over his career Sakakura designed over 300 projects and established himself as the pre-eminent practitioner of French-influenced modernist architecture in Japan. Notable projects included the Hajima Town Hall at Gifu (1959), the city hall at Hiraoka (1964), the Kanagawa Prefectural Office Building at Yokohama (1966), and the Shinjuku Station Square and Odakyū Department Store in Tokyo (1967).

Robin Boyd profiled Sakakura in New Directions in Japanese Architecture and made note of the Sakakura-designed Electric Power Pavilion in his article on Expo 70 for The Architectural Review.