Demolition of the postwar hotel and plans to replace it led to complaints that Tokyo is razing architectural assets to accommodate 2020 Olympics
TOKYO — The outcry over the demolition last year of the 53-year-old Hotel Okura in Tokyo surprised no one more than some Japanese historians and architectural specialists.
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Hotel Okura Co. Ltd., whose largest investors include the Taisei Corporation, a construction company, and Mitsubishi Estate, Japan’s second-largest real estate developer, plans to build a 38-story high-rise with 510 rooms, 102 more than the Okura, and add 18 stories of office space. The renovation is estimated to cost $1 billion. The company promised to “faithfully reproduce” several beloved artifacts in the lobby, including wall tapestries, paper lanterns and sliding doors, the lacquered furnishings and map of time zones.
The hotel’s main building and its signature lobby were demolished in September. The South Wing, erected in 1973, will remain operational, and the owners plan to replicate the lobby’s mezzanine, based on a Japanese painting known as “Bridge of the Dream,” and its hexagonal ceiling lights. A newly designed bar will try to recapture the stylish retro-chic of the former Orchid Bar, the Okura’s elegant, dimly lit cocktail haven loved by diplomats, expatriates and journalists. The new complex will also incorporate upgrades to meet the latest standards in earthquake-resistant construction technologies.
But those plans have done little to assuage the concerns of preservationists, many of whom contend that Tokyo is destroying its greatest postwar architectural assets to accommodate the 2020 Olympics and a recent surge in tourism. In a twist worthy of Bond, the most outspoken critics are not from Japan.
“When the reconstruction was announced, many foreigners, especially well-known designers, voiced their regret,” said Yoshio Uchida, professor of architecture at Toyo University. “The magnitude of their protest was beyond our imagination.”
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Hiroshi Matsukuma, a professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and a champion of postwar modernism, sees the virtues of Tokyo architecture in its layers of history. Tokyo’s major edifices of the 20th century, like the 11-story Okura, were modest by comparison with other global cities. But they embodied the organic, rapid growth of the city’s reconstruction, like rings in a tree trunk.
Projects undertaken since 2000, like the reconstructed Marunouchi Buildings, tend to be massive, multipurpose skyscrapers. “The multi-layeredness of Tokyo is something we may be losing now in our city’s major centers,” Mr. Matsukuma wrote. “You can only find it in the back streets, the old neighborhoods, and they are disappearing, too.”
Another challenge for Tokyo is more prosaic: The city has a shortage of hotel rooms. The Japan National Tourism Organization announced late last year that the number of foreign visitors to Japan was expected to near a record-breaking 20 million by the end of 2015, an increase of over 40 percent.
