Tachū Naitō

Tachū Naitō (内藤 多仲, Naitō Tachū^?, 12 June 1886 - 25 August 1970) was a Japanese architect, engineer, and professor from Yamanashi Prefecture, Minami-Alps, Yamanashi. He was a father of earthquake-proof design and built many broadcasting and observation towers, including the Tokyo Tower.

Tachū Naitō attended the Old System Kofu Middle School (presently Yamanashi Prefectural Kofu First High School), he passed high school, then attended the Tokyo Imperial University (presently the University of Tokyo). Natiō started out studying naval architecture, but then turned to architecture due to the shipbuilding depression after the Russo-Japanese War. He studied with Kino Toshikata and graduated in 1910. In 1913, he became a professor at Waseda University.

In 1916, he went to America as an international student where he devised his seismic theory of the earthquake-proof wall. While on the First Transcontinental Railroad, he made observations about the movements of the luggage depending on the trains acceleration after noticing the scattered trunks when the train made sudden stops. The lack of partitions in the luggage compartment and the disarray of the trunks led him to the structural idea of the earthquake-proof wall, effectively a shear wall.

Using the seismic structural theory that he devised, he engineered the Industrial Bank of Japan's main office which was designed by Setsu Watanabe. Three months after the building's completion in 1923, the Great Kantō earthquake happened. This structure withstood the damage and Naitō included this fact in his lectures as the effectiveness of his earthquake-proof design theory had been proven.

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