Chapter 64 – The Ootori Hotel (1)

“They say Ootori’s ‘castle’ is finally finished.”

“‘Castle’? Ah, you mean that building.”

I shared the news with Shizu after receiving a report.
It was a building both Shizu and I knew. 

A building Ootori was involved with. 

A building I had been eagerly waiting to see completed.
And now, the news had come: it was done.

“They told us not to get too close while it was under construction since it was dangerous.”

“Well, it was a rush job, and there were a lot of heavy machines involved. I think it was a reasonable precaution.”

“But now that it’s finished, they said we can come and see it. Shizu, let’s go!”

“Right now?”

“Of course. We can’t very well go there at night, can we? Besides, I’ll be attending the opening ceremony, so a preliminary inspection is essential.”

“Understood. I’ll make preparations, so please wait a moment.”

Having lost the argument, Shizu bowed silently and slipped out of the room.
It’s nearby, but she needs to arrange a car and other things like that.

Suddenly, on April 1, 1928, the Ootori Hotel opened for business.
It was located in one of the most prestigious parts of Tokyo—very close to the Ootori family’s main residence in Roppongi.

There, we built an enormous, jaw-droppingly large hotel. 

Personally, I thought it was only natural for something of this scale, but in this era’s Imperial Capital, there really weren’t that many tall or massive buildings.

Tokyo Station still felt like the biggest structure around, at least in terms of overall scale, even if not height.

At the time, the Marunouchi Building owned by Mitsubishi in Marunouchi was considered the largest in the Orient.
Even the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi, the various buildings in Ginza, and the government office buildings didn’t come close to this one in size.

What’s more, the construction finished much earlier than I had expected.

I had dumped in some extra money and rushed the project by importing construction machinery from America, but I didn’t even think it would be completed this quickly.

To complete a structure of this scale in just two years from the start of construction was probably record-breaking for the era.
During the build, the sight of all the imported machines constantly moving around apparently turned the site into a bit of a public spectacle.

By the way, I learned during this construction project that Japan in this era hardly had any construction machinery like the ones I used to see everywhere in my previous life. 

At least by the end of 1930, I had never seen any.

When I casually said, “Instead of hiring a bunch of people, why not just use a bulldozer?” Most people just tilted their heads in confusion.

In America and parts of Europe, development and widespread use of such equipment had already begun, but in Japan, even people in the Ootori family only knew about them in theory.

So, since I had a decent amount of extra money at hand, I rushed to import the necessary machines along with instructors and had them put into use for the construction.

Everyone’s eyes widened in surprise. It was something so obvious to me that I hadn’t even thought twice about it, but it really highlighted the gap in perception.

The equipment and personnel used to build the hotel had already been sent off to other construction projects, or assigned as training instructors—they were incredibly busy.
We weren’t buying in bulk yet, but we had placed additional orders for construction machinery from America.

Also, just like how we initially hired foreign instructors, Japan had almost no operators skilled in handling such machinery.
Since picks and shovels were still the norm, it was only natural, really.

Because of that, we had also started moving forward with plans to establish a technical school to train operators for such machinery, even if it would take some time. 

Not necessarily for the present, but it would definitely become essential in the years ahead.

To get back on track: in this era, the Imperial Hotel was about the only large-scale, Western-style hotel in Tokyo, the imperial capital.

There were plenty of inns and lodgings, and a few other places called “hotels” existed too.
Some inns had Western-style features in parts of the building, but they were fundamentally wooden Japanese-style structures. 

The hotels that did exist were either quite small or severely lacking in terms of luxury.

The number of hotels would only begin to increase once the Showa era got underway, and Ootori had essentially jumped ahead of that trend.

And as if following the course of history, the chosen land was the very site where the Sanno Hotel—famous for the February 26 Incident in my previous life—once stood.

At that time, hotels in the imperial capital were normally located south of the Imperial Palace, so the Ootori Hotel also took its place on the south side.
Since the government offices and many embassies were there, and foreign visitors for business or tourism, as well as people from the countryside, moved outwards from Tokyo Station, placing the hotel to the south made perfect sense.

However, when it came to a grand, luxurious hotel, it had to compete with the semi-national policy hotel, the Imperial Hotel, so it couldn’t be placed in the southeast near the Tokaido Line.

Fortunately, the Ootori conglomerate, having cultivated close ties with the government since the Meiji Restoration, owned a considerable amount of land in the central parts of the imperial capital.
They also leased out many parcels they didn’t use themselves, and some plots were barely touched—almost idle. 

Though nowhere near Mitsubishi’s scale, they were still one of the major land-owning conglomerates in the capital.

From this area, you can also sense how deeply the founder Genichirou understood the darker sides of the Meiji government.

One of these plots caught my attention about three years ago.
Above all, I chose it because I felt a strong historical connection and fate tied to that place.

Around the beginning of 1925, when I decided to build a hotel, I persuaded—under the guise of pleading—my great-grandfather to approve the construction of the most luxurious, European-style hotel possible.

The goal was to create a public-facing symbol for the Ootori conglomerate.

After all, the Ootori zaibatsu did operate an academy and a hospital, but otherwise, it was a no-nonsense organization centered around the petroleum industry.
While they did own a newspaper company, it was used more like an intelligence-gathering organization or security firm than for actual publicity or journalism.

As for the conglomerate family members themselves—some of whom even pursued military careers—they weren’t particularly interested in flashy things, at least at the time.

That’s why, although this Ootori Hotel was being built on a site whose significance only I could recognize thanks to my memories from a previous life, the more I looked into it, the more I felt that the hotel had to be built.

The reason was that in my previous life, the company that built the Sanno Hotel had partnered with Ootori Motors.
On top of that, they had also had a relationship with Mr. Idemitsu, who handled petroleum for Ootori, regarding gas station installations.

Furthermore, during the 1927 merger with Suzuki and the subsequent reorganization of Ootori, this company had ended up becoming one of the affiliated subsidiaries.
It used to handle the import and sales of Chrysler cars, but since Ootori had swallowed it up, whether they would even go on to build the hotel in a few years had become highly uncertain.

Before that, the entire area where the Sanno Hotel was to be built was already owned by the Ootori family.

Apparently, it had even been considered as a candidate site for the main Ootori family residence in the early Meiji period, but it was ultimately avoided because it was simply too close to the heart of Japan’s political center.

After all, the surroundings were right in the middle of the government district, with numerous foreign embassies nearby.

Right next door—so to speak—the Prime Minister’s Official Residence was under construction, scheduled for completion in 1929.

Just a short distance away stood the National Diet Building, which would be completed in 1936 (Showa 11), and if you went as far as the moat beyond that, you’d find the Army Ministry and the General Staff Office at Miyakezaka, where my grandfather worked.

And later in the second half of the 20th century, the area would become one of Tokyo’s major subway intersections.
Rising right above that would be this hotel.

It was, without question, an ultra-rare, prime piece of land.

Given all that, and since we were going to build it anyway, I decided it had to be both luxurious and large.
By spring of 1925, when we began planning, we already had financial breathing room.

More than anything, I wanted to leave behind a piece of architecture that would endure.

However, the tall building I casually suggested was technically impossible in Japan at the time.
The memory of the Great Kanto Earthquake was still fresh, so American-style buildings were out of the question. 

Still, I poured money into it and pushed to make it as large as technically feasible.

As a result, the building was constructed with 8 floors above ground and 2 below.

Its appearance is rectangular, but from the third floor upward, it’s structured in two tiers, with the upper part being a slightly smaller building stacked on top.
Part of the rooftop is designed as a sky garden, much like those found atop department stores.

At this point in time, it became the tallest building in the imperial capital, offering a panoramic view over the city.

Sanno Hotel
Present-day Sanno Park Tower. Located right next to the Prime Minister’s Official Residence.
During the “February 26 Incident,” it was used as a base by the rebel forces.

Major Hotels in the Imperial Capital
(Years in parentheses indicate the opening year)

• Imperial Hotel (1890, Wright-designed building completed in 1923)
• Tokyo Station Hotel (1915)
• Marunouchi Hotel (Opened in 1924, but major renovations to enlarge it happened in 1938)
• Sanno Hotel (1932)
• Dai-ichi Hotel (Shimbashi Dai-ichi Hotel) (1938) – exceptionally large for its time
• Yamanoue Hotel (Although it opened in 1954, the main hotel building was completed in 1937)

Many of Tokyo’s hotels rapidly increased in number during the postwar Allied occupation.