Imperial Hotel, Kyoto Opens in Gion’s Historic Yasaka Kaikan

The Imperial Hotel, Kyoto opened on 5 March 2026 in Gion, in the building known as Yasaka Kaikan. It is the first new hotel in thirty years for the Imperial Hotel company, whose Tokyo flagship has received state guests since 1890, and it is small: 55 rooms, in a city where the company had never operated.

Yasaka Kaikan was completed in 1936 as a hall for theatre and entertainment within the grounds of the Gion Kobu Kaburenjo, the theatre where the geiko and maiko of Gion perform the Miyako Odori each spring. With its tiled roofs and copper-green details it is one of the landmarks of the district and a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, but it had long needed structural repair. The hotel project was a way of saving it: parts of the old building were preserved and reinforced, and the rest rebuilt behind the historic outline.

The rooms fall into three groups. Those in the preserved part of the main building keep original elements such as pillars and window frames. Others are in the rebuilt part of the main building, and a new north building introduces tatami flooring, a first for the Imperial. There are five categories, from Premier rooms to a Signature Suite.

The hotel has a French restaurant and an all-day dining room, a classical main bar in the tradition of the Old Imperial Bar in Tokyo, and a rooftop bar reserved for guests, with a view over the roofs of Gion to the Higashiyama hills. A spa, a pool and a gym complete the facilities. The hotel joined The Leading Hotels of the World before it opened.

The company describes the aim as combining Gion’s sense of the extraordinary with its own idea of relaxation. What is distinctive is the position: guests are staying inside the geiko quarter itself, on Hanamikoji, rather than beside it.

The opening came seventeen days before that of Capella Kyoto, in the neighbouring district of Miyagawa-cho, and both show the same approach: a new luxury hotel as the means of restoring a historic building that the neighbourhood wanted to keep.