San Francisco Peace Pagoda

The San Francisco Peace Pagoda stands one hundred feet tall as a five-tiered concrete monument in the heart of the Japan Center. The city of Osaka, Japan, presented this structure to San Francisco in nineteen sixty-eight as a gesture of friendship and sisterhood between the two cities. Its architect, Yoshiro Taniguchi, chose to reject the traditional square or octagonal roof shape in favor of circular roofs. He drew this aesthetic inspiration from miniature seventh-century pagodas known as the Million Pagoda, which were originally placed in temples by Empress Koken.