Imperial Hotel, Tokyo
| Imperial Hotel | |
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The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo
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| General information | |
| Location | 1-1, Uchisaiwai-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8558, Japan |
| Management | Imperial Hotel, Ltd. |
| Website | |
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The Imperial Hotel (帝国ホテル teikoku hoteru?) is a hotel in Tokyo that was created in the late 1880s at the request of the Japanese aristocracy to cater to the increasing number of Western visitors to Japan. The hotel site is located just south of the Imperial Palace grounds, next to the previous location of the Palace moat. The modern hotel overlooks the Palace, the 40-acre (16 ha) Western-style Hibiya Park, and the Ginza neighborhood.
Three main buildings have stood on the hotel site, each of which embodied the finest Western design of its era. Including annexes, there have been at least 10 structures that have been part of the Imperial Hotel, including two designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:
The original Imperial Hotel opened in November 1890 on the Northeast corner of what is now the hotel property. The hotel faced roughly North, with parts of the Imperial Palace moats (no longer extant) across streets on the North and East sides of the building.
The hotel was backed by key Japanese leaders, such as Foreign Minister Count Inoue Kaoru and Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi. Shibusawa and Okura Kihachiro submitted an application to form the Tokyo Hotel Co. on November 28, 1887, in order to "build a large hotel in Tokyo and to conduct the business of renting rooms to foreign guests, and for parties and other events...". There were initially 21 investors, with the largest (21.15%) being the Imperial Household Ministry. Site preparation for the hotel started in July 1888, and construction began in the fall of that year. On 7 July 1890 the name was changed to Imperial Hotel Ltd. The hotel was opened in November 1890.
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Wikipedia