Tokyo Imperial Hotel

Imperial Hotel
The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo
General information
Location	1-1, Uchisaiwai-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8558, Japan
Management	Imperial Hotel, Ltd.
Website
imperialhotel.co.jp/e/tokyo/index.html

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.

Plans for the hotel were part of the effort to centralize government offices in the Hibiya area. A group of German architects visited Japan and made some preliminary drawings. The initial drawings for the hotel were created by Heinrich Mänz, in the German neo-Renaissance style. In 1886, a group of 20 Japanese were sent to Germany for training. Eventually, Yuzuru Watanabe would be picked to design the 60-room hotel, which would also be known as "Watanabe House". Watanabe used the original layout by Mänz, but because of soil conditions, changed the four story stone structure to a three story wood frame and brick structure, with the exterior painted to look like stone. He also added rooms under the eaves to accommodate more guests. Western (French) food had been the official banquet fare of the Imperial Palace since Emperor Meiji hosted a luncheon for the nephew of the king of Italy on 8 September 1873, and the Imperial Hotel followed that tradition.