National Diet Building

The National Diet Building stands in central Tokyo and has housed both houses of Japan's national legislature, the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, since its completion in 1936 after roughly seventeen years of construction. Its design was chosen through a public architectural competition held in 1918, and the finished building took the form of a symmetrical structure with two nearly identical wings flanking a stepped, pyramidal central tower, a distinctive silhouette unlike the classical domes common to other national legislatures of the period. Every stone used in the building's construction was quarried within Japan, with granite drawn from quarries across the country's prefectures, a deliberate choice to make the building a showcase of Japanese materials and craftsmanship. The building survived the bombing of Tokyo during the Second World War largely intact and remains the seat of the Japanese Diet today.