Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the priority of the new government was to achieve economic and military modernisation as quickly as possible, with the aim of avoiding colonisation by the west.

In the architectural field, religious and vernacular structures continued to be built using traditional styles and techniques, but after 1868 the Japanese government actively promoted the systematic westernisation of public architecture.

The first buildings to result from this effort combined traditional Japanese methods of wood construction with western techniques and designs. The Kaichi Elementary School (1876) in the city of Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, is typical of the hybrid approach adopted for schools built across the country during this period.

Thereafter many government buildings, factories, schools and hospitals were constructed in orthodox historical European styles using stone and brick. However, since the Japanese lacked experience with such materials, the new structures were built by or under the guidance of foreign engineers and architects.

One of the earliest arrivals was Irish engineer Thomas James Waters (), who between 1872 and 1877 oversaw the reconstruction of the Ginza area. During the 1880s, German architects Ende and Böckmann were commissioned to design a complex of government buildings in Tokyo’s Hibiya district, including the Ministry of Justice and the Law Court.

However, the most influential foreign architect of this period was Englishman Josiah Conder (), who designed more than 70 buildings in Tokyo, including the Tokyo Imperial Museum (now the Tokyo National Museum), the Mitsubishi Building and the controversial Rokumeikan, which became the embodiment of the Meiji policy of bunmei kaika (civilisation and enlightenment). Remembered as ‘the Father of Japanese architecture’, Conder is noteworthy for his quest to synthesise a new ‘Oriental’ style rather than importing European architecture.

Priority was also given to the development of technical training curricula. Originating in 1871 as the Kogakuryo (College of Technology), the Imperial College of Engineering (now part of the University of Tokyo) was established in 1873 and attracted several British professors, including Scottish engineer Henry Dyer. From 1877 Josiah Conder was employed by the College as Professor of Architecture, in which capacity he taught most of the first wave of modern Japanese architects.

From the 1880s, graduates of the Imperial College of Engineering began to take the lead in architectural practice, and over the following decades the first Japanese modern architecture appeared. Most of the buildings designed by Japanese architects during this period reflected contemporaneous European architectural styles, albeit in a simplified form. Prominent figures included Tatsuzo Sone (), who designed Keio University Library; court architect Tokuma Katayama (), designer of Akasaka Imperial Palace and the Hyokeikan at Tokyo National Museum; Kingo Tatsuno (), who designed Tokyo Railway Station and the Bank of Japan building; Shichijiro Satachi (), designer of the Nippon Yusen K K Building in Otaru; and Yorinako Tsumaki (), who designed the head office of Yokohama Special Bank.

One of the key problems facing Japanese architects was the ever-present threat of earthquakes. Following the Nobi earthquake of 1891, iron bars were introduced into brick buildings as reinforcement, but after 1906 ferro-concrete structures began to appear, and by the 1920s the construction of brick buildings had ceased altogether.

The rebuilding of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo between 1916 and 1922 by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright () presaged an influx of Modernism into Japan. In 1920 a group of recent graduates from Tokyo Imperial University formed the Japan Secession Group (Bunriha Kenchikukai), the first movement in support of modern architecture in Japan. Among its founding members were Sutemi Horiguchi (), Mamoru Yamada () and Kikuji Ishimoto (), all of whom came under the influence of both Viennese Secessionism and German Expressionism.

A number of young Japanese architects spent time in Europe during this period, including Bunzo Yamaguchi () and Chikatada Kurata (), who studied in Germany with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, and Kunio Maekawa (), Junzo Sakakura () and Takamasa Yoshizaka (), who worked at the office of Le Corbusier in France. Following his return to Japan, Maekawa continued his studies with Antonin Raymond (), Czech-born former assistant to Frank Lloyd Wright, who was to make an important contribution to the spread of Modernist ideas in Japanese architecture.

During the 1930s the writings of expatriate German architect Bruno Taut () highlighted the similarity between traditional Japanese post-and-beam architecture and the essential frame structures of early Modernism, as well as their shared reliance on abstract, geometric forms. Japanese Modernist architects now began to see traditional architecture as a model of the spare, abstract work they had been trying to create. One such architect was Isoya Yoshida (), whose sukiya (tea house) style sought to reconcile traditional and Modernist architectural elements.

By the mid 1930s modern architecture was well rooted in Japan, as indicated in the plethora of Modernist buildings constructed during that decade – classic examples include the Tokyo Central Post Office (1930) by Tetsuro Yoshida () and the Nihon Dental College Hospital, Tokyo (1934) by Bunzo Yamaguchi (1902–1978), both early examples of the International style.

However, the rapid growth of nationalism and government suppression of progressive movements during the late 1930s stifled any further development. Instead, there were renewed calls for a national style that utilised traditional Japanese design in public architecture, leading to the appearance of the militaristic Teikan Yoshiki (Imperial Crown style), typified by the Kanagawa Prefectural Government Hall, Kyoto City Museum of Art and the Tokyo Imperial Museum building (now the main building of the Tokyo National Museum), in which massive tiled roofs and Japanese decorative motifs were added to heavy, symmetrical western-style facades.