Hoshinoya Tokyo Opens, a Ryokan in a Tower in Otemachi

Hoshinoya Tokyo opened on 20 July 2016 in Otemachi, the financial district beside the Imperial Palace. It is a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, in the form of a tower, with 84 rooms on 17 floors, and it was the fifth property in the Hoshinoya collection of Hoshino Resorts, a company that began as a hot-spring inn in Karuizawa in 1914.

The idea was to take everything that defines a ryokan and stack it vertically. Guests remove their shoes at the entrance, where a wall of bamboo and chestnut boxes stores them, and walk on tatami from that point on, in the corridors and lifts as well as the rooms. Each floor has six rooms and works as a small inn of its own, with a shared lounge, the ochanoma, where tea, sake and snacks are served through the day and where staff are always present. Rooms have futon-style beds on low platforms, shoji screens and deep cypress-scented baths.

The building was designed by Rie Azuma, the architect of the earlier Hoshinoya properties. Its black exterior is wrapped in a metal lattice cut in a hemp-leaf pattern, a komon motif of the kind printed on kimono, which filters the view of the surrounding office towers.

The most surprising feature is on the top floor. A hot spring was drilled 1,500 metres beneath the site, and its water feeds indoor and outdoor baths on the 17th floor, where high walls open to the sky. In the basement, the dining room serves a contemporary form of the multi-course ryokan dinner.

The opening came as the district was changing. The offices of Otemachi and Marunouchi had begun to acquire hotels, with Aman Tokyo next door from 2014 and Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi following in 2020. Hoshinoya offered something none of them did: the manners and rhythm of a country inn, a few minutes’ walk from Tokyo station.

For visitors to Tokyo who will not have time to travel to a hot-spring town, it remains the most complete introduction to ryokan culture in the city. Those who do have time should consider Kinosaki Onsen.