Visitors see work on the Red Gate in Tokyo

The University of Tokyo, a big university in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, has a famous old gate. It is called the Red Gate. The gate is an important cultural property^*1 of Japan. On September 5 and 6, 2026, the university opened the work site and showed visitors how workers are making the gate strong against earthquakes^*2.

The Red Gate has been closed since February 2021. A high fence stands around it now. On the morning of September 5, about 20 reporters^*3 went inside the fence. In the afternoon and on the next day, 117 more people visited. Some of them finished university after the gate closed, so they had never seen it open.

Workers are changing many things. The roof will become lighter. Before, the roof tiles sat on a layer of mud. Now they will be fixed with nails. Under the ground on the campus^*4 side, workers will bury heavy blocks of concrete^*5. Steel rods^*6 will tie the bottom of the pillars^*7 to these blocks and pull them down. This will stop the gate from falling over in a strong earthquake.

Some pillars were repaired a long time ago. Workers cut off the old, bad part at the bottom and joined on a new piece of wood. These joined parts will now be made stronger with carbon fiber^*8. The small guard houses^*9 next to the gate had mud walls. These walls will be replaced with strong wooden boards.

The gate will look almost the same as before. Workers will put new lacquer^*10 on only a few parts. The work is planned to finish in the fall of 2027. The university wrote about the visits in its newsletter on September 24, 2026.

1. *1 cultural property: an old building or thing that the government protects because it is important to the country's history
2. *2 earthquakes: times when the ground shakes hard
3. *3 reporters: people who write news for newspapers, TV, or websites
4. *4 campus: the land and buildings of a university
5. *5 concrete: a very hard building material made from cement, sand, and water
6. *6 steel rods: long thin bars of strong metal
7. *7 pillars: tall strong posts that hold up a roof
8. *8 carbon fiber: a very light and very strong material made of thin threads of carbon
9. *9 guard houses: small buildings by a gate where guards once sat and watched
10. *10 lacquer: a shiny paint that protects wood