Why you should experience InterContinental the Strings Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan.
InterContinental the Strings Tokyo is a vertical design hotel where Shinagawa's railway geography, early twenty-first-century redevelopment, contemporary architecture and music-inspired hospitality converge high above Konan.
Set along Konan-dori near Shinagawa Station and just steps from Shinagawa Grand Commons, the hotel occupies the upper reaches of Shinagawa East One Tower, the 2003 high-rise designed by Nihon Sekkei and constructed by Takenaka Corporation as part of the district's transformation from former railway land into a new metropolitan business center. A soaring central atrium reorganizes the experience above the city, with natural light descending through the multi-storey volume while a glass bridge, piano and changing ikebana compositions translate the Strings character into an architectural sequence. The defining moment comes when that interior verticality opens toward Tokyo's skyline, allowing Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Tower and the surrounding city to become visual extensions of the music-driven environment. The result is a hotel where Nihon Sekkei, Takenaka Corporation, Shinagawa East One Tower and the Strings concept progress from Shinagawa's redevelopment into an unusually theatrical expression of Tokyo above the railway city.
What you should know about InterContinental the Strings Tokyo.
InterContinental the Strings Tokyo is best known for opening on May 20, 2003 within Shinagawa East One Tower, the 32-storey skyscraper completed that year by Nihon Sekkei and Takenaka Corporation as part of Shinagawa Grand Commons. The tower emerged from a 1998 design competition won for the site closest to Shinagawa Station's Konan exit, with its mass rotated 45 degrees relative to neighboring towers to reduce wind effects around the station plaza while incorporating a major hotel into the upper structure. The completed building rises 149 meters and formed part of the wider Shinagawa Grand Commons development completed between January and May 2003, a major concentration of offices, hotels, shops, housing and public landscape created during Shinagawa's emergence as a new high-rise center. The hotel subsequently became owned by Best Global and operated by IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan, connecting the independent Strings character with InterContinental's international hospitality network while preserving the May 2003 institution within its original Shinagawa tower. The May 20 debut, Nihon Sekkei architecture, Takenaka construction, 1998 competition, 45-degree tower orientation, 149-meter height and Shinagawa Grand Commons context establish InterContinental the Strings Tokyo as an integral architectural artifact of Shinagawa's turn-of-the-century reinvention.
A major 2019 reinvention developed the hotel's musical character into a more comprehensive creative system, transforming the property and introducing its first Club InterContinental Lounge alongside the interconnected dining concept now known as The Score Dining. Melodia Italian Grill, Rhythmos Café & Bar and Teppanyaki Kazane translated melody, rhythm and Japanese jo-ha-kyu progression into distinct culinary expressions beneath the atrium, while China Shadow continued the hotel's Cantonese tradition against the Tokyo skyline. Executive Chef Jesús Niño assumed culinary leadership on March 1, 2025 after more than sixteen years of international experience spanning Hotel Santa Marta, Sheraton San Jose and Six Senses, as well as work alongside Martín Berasategui at his three-MICHELIN-starred restaurant. Together, The Score Dining, Jesús Niño, Martín Berasategui and the 2019 transformation extend the Strings concept from architectural metaphor into an evolving culinary program, allowing music and named creative authorship to remain central to the hotel more than two decades after its Shinagawa debut.
How to fold InterContinental the Strings Tokyo into your trip.
InterContinental the Strings Tokyo works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing daimyo patronage, modern Japanese architecture and postwar cultural collecting through Shinagawa and neighboring Takanawa.
Begin at Sengakuji Temple, founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1612 before becoming inseparable from the story of Asano Naganori and the Forty-seven Ronin, whose graves transformed the Zen temple into one of Tokyo's most enduring sites associated with loyalty and the Genroku era. Continue to Takanawa Gateway Station, where Kengo Kuma and JR East opened the station in 2020 beneath a vast folded roof inspired by origami, creating a contemporary architectural threshold for the enormous redevelopment unfolding north of Shinagawa. Conclude at Hara Museum ARC Collection at the former Hara Museum lineage, whose Tokyo institution originated when businessman Kunizo Hara's 1938 residence, designed by Jin Watanabe, became a contemporary-art museum in 1979 under Toshio Hara, building an internationally oriented collection that included works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Yayoi Kusama before the Shinagawa museum closed in 2021 and its activities consolidated in Gunma. The progression moves from Tokugawa-era memory through Kuma's contemporary railway architecture into the Hara family's modern-art patronage, revealing successive layers of cultural reinvention around InterContinental the Strings Tokyo.
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