Akasaka Prince Classic House, Tokyo

Why you should experience Akasaka Prince Classic House in Tokyo, Japan.

Akasaka Prince Classic House is a refined historic residence where Kioicho's aristocratic past, Tudor architecture, intimate garden spaces and surviving prewar craftsmanship endure within a dramatically redeveloped high-rise district.

Set along Prince-dori near Kioicho-dori and just steps from Nagatacho Station, the house occupies a landscaped corner of Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho, preserving the scale of an early Showa residence within a 30,360-square-meter redevelopment whose towers and terraced public spaces transformed the former hotel property. Pointed arches, steep slate roofs, dormer windows and a central tower give the exterior its Tudor character, joined by Gothic and Renaissance decorative elements. Interior rooms shift among Jacobean, classical, modernist and Japanese treatments, with a stained-glass staircase, fireplaces, lattice ceilings and private rooms surviving inside the two-story structure. The result is a rare architectural enclave where the proportions and decorative craftsmanship of an aristocratic 1930 residence remain legible against one of Kioicho's largest contemporary developments.

What you should know about Akasaka Prince Classic House.

Akasaka Prince Classic House is best known for beginning as the Tokyo residence of Yi Un, the last crown prince of the Korean Empire, and his Japanese-born wife Yi Bangja. The Imperial Household Ministry's Construction Bureau designed the residence under Kozo Kitamura, Yokichi Gondo and other bureau engineers, completing it in 1930. Yi Un had married Princess Masako of Nashimoto in Tokyo in 1920, and the couple subsequently occupied the Kioicho residence with their family. Their second son, Yi Ku, was born in 1931 and later became the final head of the former Korean imperial household. Japan's defeat in 1945 and the postwar abolition of aristocratic privileges fundamentally changed the family's position. The property eventually passed from its residential role into commercial ownership during the postwar period. Seibu Railway acquired the house and opened the Akasaka Prince Hotel there in 1955. The residence continued as the hotel's Old Building after larger additions expanded the property, allowing its original domestic architecture to survive through decades of hotel development. Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka closed in March 2011, ending 56 years of hotel operation associated with the historic house. Tokyo designated the former Yi Royal Family Residence a Tangible Cultural Property on June 9, 2011, formally protecting a building whose political history crosses the Korean imperial household, Japan's prewar court system and the postwar hotel industry.

Redevelopment of the former Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka property subsequently produced an exceptional preservation engineering project around the protected house. Seibu Properties retained the residence as the historical centerpiece of Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho as the surrounding hotel structures were removed. Construction plans required new underground structures beneath its existing position, making ordinary preservation in place impossible. Engineers first constructed a prestressed-concrete mat slab beneath the first floor and integrated it with the existing structural beams. Hydraulic equipment then lifted the entire building so it could be temporarily moved away from the excavation zone. After construction of the new underground structure, engineers moved the house back to its permanent position in a second relocation operation. Nikken Sekkei directed the preservation and renovation design, using surviving Imperial Household Agency documentation to restore exterior walls, interior finishes, doors and lighting fixtures toward their original appearance. A new banquet structure was added without sacrificing the principal protected residence, expanding the total floor area to 3,007 square meters. The restored building reopened in 2016 as Akasaka Prince Classic House with restaurant, bar and event functions. The preservation project received a BELCA Award in the Best Reform category, and Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho received the 60th BCS Award in 2019 for a redevelopment that retained the historic residence through relocation and restoration.

How to fold Akasaka Prince Classic House into your trip.

Akasaka Prince Classic House works as the anchor for a daytime progression through a Meiji political memorial landscape, Japan's foremost surviving Western-style state palace and a historic garden occupying ground once held by a major daimyo family.

Begin at Shimizudani Park, whose name derives from spring water that emerged through a valley bordered during the Edo period by estates of the Kishu Tokugawa, Owari Tokugawa and Ii families. The ground acquired national political significance on May 14, 1878, when Home Minister Toshimichi Okubo was assassinated nearby by Ichiro Shimada and fellow attackers during the Kioizaka Incident. A 6.27-meter memorial subsequently rose in his honor, and land donated to Tokyo in 1890 became the present park. Continue to Akasaka Palace, completed in 1909 as the Crown Prince's residence under architect Tokuma Katayama after approximately a decade of planning and construction. The 5,150-square-meter Neo-Baroque main building combined stone, steel and brick with elaborate Japanese decorative subjects executed by leading artists and craftspeople. Postwar government use included the National Diet Library before a major renovation prepared the palace for foreign dignitaries in 1974; national landmark designation followed in 2009, making the former Crown Prince's Palace one of Japan's most consequential surviving Meiji state buildings. Conclude at Hotel New Otani Japanese Garden, occupying ground once belonging to the Ii family of Hikone before ownership passed through the Fushimi-no-miya household and industrialist Yonetaro Otani. Otani resisted proposals to sell the property after World War II and later developed the hotel for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, retaining the historic garden across approximately ten acres of the estate. Stone lanterns, bridges, ponds and a six-meter waterfall now preserve a landscape lineage reaching through daimyo, princely and twentieth-century ownership. The progression moves from the site of Okubo's assassination through Katayama's imperial palace into a former Ii estate preserved through postwar hotel development, placing Akasaka Prince Classic House within Kioicho's exceptional concentration of political, aristocratic and architectural history.

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