Why you should experience HUB Roppongi in Tokyo, Japan.
HUB Roppongi is a convivial British-style pub where Roppongi's international nightlife, postwar theater culture, draught beer and one of Japan's earliest experiments with British pub drinking converge at an address occupied since 1980.
Set near Roppongi-dori and just steps from the former Haiyuza Theatre, the pub occupies the first floor of the building where HUB made its Tokyo debut more than four decades ago. Beer, whisky and cocktails accompany fish and chips, shepherd's pie and roast beef in a room conceived around counter ordering and informal drinking. Sports screenings add another dimension, drawing groups around football, rugby and other major fixtures without erasing the branch's unusually deep connection to its site. The result is a Roppongi pub where an imported British drinking model has survived through more than forty-five years of change in one of Tokyo's most restless entertainment districts.
What you should know about HUB Roppongi.
HUB Roppongi is best known for opening in August 1980 as the first Tokyo branch of a British-style pub company created only months earlier by Daiei founder Isao Nakauchi. Nakauchi had become fascinated with British pub culture during repeated visits to Britain and wanted to transplant its informal communal drinking model to Japan, leading Daiei to establish HUB on March 18, 1980 and open the first branch in Kobe's Sannomiya that April. Roppongi followed four months later inside the newly completed Haiyuza Building, placing HUB on the first floor above Daiei's Victoria Station steak restaurant. The site carried considerable theatrical history before the pub arrived: Haiyuza Theatre Company had opened its original Roppongi theater there on April 20, 1954 as a tenth-anniversary project, financed in part by actors pooling earnings from film work. The 1980 reconstruction joined Haiyuza's attempt to broaden the theater's audience with Daiei's entrance into Roppongi, and HUB became part of the new building from its completion. Corporate ownership changed repeatedly afterward, passing from the original HUB company to Daiei subsidiary Captain Cook in 1986 and Rikishaman in 1989 before the present HUB company was created in 1998 and assumed 15 branches that September. HUB Roppongi survived those corporate transitions at its original address, making the Tokyo pioneer one of the clearest surviving links between Nakauchi's 1980 experiment and a company that had grown to 110 locations by February 2026.
Fish and chips give the British premise its clearest culinary form, pairing thick cod with crisp batter and tartar sauce before draught beer cuts through the fried coating. Shepherd's pie shifts toward slow, savory richness through lamb beneath its potato topping, creating a warmer counterpoint to the fish. Roast beef continues that pub-food progression through sliced meat and mashed potato, then whisky or another pint can carry the table beyond dinner as the room turns toward drinking. Counter ordering keeps that sequence flexible because drinks and plates can be added individually as the evening develops. HUB Roppongi works best through precisely that looseness, translating the British pub model that fascinated Nakauchi into an evening governed by pints, shared food and the decision to stay for another round.
How to fold HUB Roppongi into your trip.
HUB Roppongi works as the drinking anchor for an evening tracing the district from postwar theater through twenty-first-century contemporary art and the Japanese decorative-arts collection that arrived with Tokyo Midtown.
Begin at Haiyuza Theatre, opened on April 20, 1954 as Haiyuza Theatre Company's tenth-anniversary project before a 1980 reconstruction transformed the building that subsequently housed HUB; the theater completed its final season and closed on April 19, 2025. Continue to Mori Art Museum, opened on October 18, 2003 atop Roppongi Hills Mori Tower as Minoru Mori's international contemporary-art institution, receiving 6.65 million visitors during its first five years. Conclude at Suntory Museum of Art, founded under Keizo Saji in Marunouchi in 1961 before moving to Kengo Kuma's Tokyo Midtown galleries in 2007, with a collection now numbering 3,000 works including one National Treasure and 18 Important Cultural Properties. The progression moves from Haiyuza's postwar stage through Mori's contemporary-art ambitions into Suntory's six-decade collecting history, revealing how performance, corporate patronage and museum building repeatedly reshaped Roppongi around HUB's long-running address.
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