National Route 246, Tokyo

Why you should experience National Route 246 in Tokyo, Japan.

National Route 246 is a consequential corridor where Aoyama's Edo-period pilgrimage geography, postwar metropolitan expansion, Olympic-era reconstruction and contemporary commercial culture converge along one of Tokyo's principal western approaches.

Running through Aoyama between Akasaka and Shibuya before continuing southwest across Setagaya toward Kanagawa and Shizuoka, the Tokyo section is widely known as Aoyama-dori before the route becomes Tamagawa-dori farther west. Broad carriageways and substantial building frontages distinguish the avenue through Aoyama, where fashion, architecture, galleries and corporate headquarters occupy an alignment with roots extending centuries beyond the surrounding modern cityscape. The corridor then descends toward Shibuya and continues into southwestern Tokyo, preserving the westward trajectory that preceded its national-highway designation. The result is a corridor where an old approach to Sagami acquired the scale of modern Tokyo without losing the geographic direction that first established its importance.

What you should know about National Route 246.

National Route 246 is best known for carrying a modern highway across the historic trajectory of Oyama Kaido, the Edo-period route that connected Akasaka with the sacred mountain of Oyama and moved goods between Edo, Sagami, Suruga, Izu and the inland districts to the southwest. Oyama Afuri Shrine made the mountain a major pilgrimage destination, and organized Oyama-ko groups traveled the road as religious journeys became intertwined with commerce. Sagami River ayu and other regional products moved toward Edo along the same western approach, giving the route an economic function alongside its devotional importance. Aoyama-dori formed the urban opening of that journey, extending from Akasaka through territory associated with the Aoyama family before travelers continued toward Futako and the crossings into Kanagawa. Twentieth-century Tokyo inherited that alignment as motor traffic replaced the movement patterns of the older highway. National Route 246 subsequently extended the axis from Central Tokyo to Numazu, preserving within a modern interprefectural road the basic western geography established by Oyama Kaido centuries earlier.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics produced the decisive physical break between the old Aoyama-dori and the avenue recognizable in contemporary Tokyo. Preparations for the Games widened the road from 22 meters to 40 meters, nearly doubling its breadth as the city rebuilt major approaches serving Olympic venues and transportation corridors. Construction was already underway in 1963, and the enlarged avenue encouraged replacement of smaller buildings with four- and five-story structures visible along the road by 1967. Tokyo's streetcars remained part of the Aoyama streetscape during the early stages of that reconstruction before disappearing in 1968 as automobile traffic increased. Underground transportation had already reached the corridor through Tokyo Rapid Railway in 1938, including stations at Aoyama-itchome, Gaiemmae and the original Aoyama-Rokuchome, later renamed Jingumae and then Omote-sando. The 40-meter Olympic avenue, disappearing streetcars and surviving subway axis converted an older pilgrimage road into a radically enlarged metropolitan corridor, establishing the physical scale that still distinguishes National Route 246 through Aoyama.

How to fold National Route 246 into your trip.

National Route 246 works as the anchor for a daytime exploration tracing private collecting, postwar artistic experimentation and international contemporary architecture through Aoyama's unusually concentrated cultural institutions.

Begin at Nezu Museum, founded around the collection of railway entrepreneur Nezu Kaichiro, whose son established the foundation in 1940 and opened the family's Aoyama residence to the public as a museum the following year. Wartime bombing destroyed much of the complex in 1945, yet exhibitions resumed in 1946 and a rebuilt hall followed in 1954. Kengo Kuma designed the present main building, completed in 2009, for a collection now exceeding 7,600 works, including seven National Treasures and 93 Important Cultural Properties spanning Japanese and East Asian painting, calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics, lacquer and tea culture. Continue to Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, occupying the home and studio Junzo Sakakura designed for Taro Okamoto in 1954 on the site of the artist's prewar family residence, which had been destroyed during wartime bombing. Sakakura, a former Le Corbusier collaborator, used concrete-block walls beneath a curved roof for the financially constrained project, with Yutaka Murata overseeing construction. Okamoto worked there until his 1996 death, developing projects including Tower of the Sun for Expo '70, before Toshiko Okamoto drove the conversion of the studio into a museum that opened in 1998. Conclude at Watarium Art Museum, the private contemporary-art museum that opened in September 1990 in a building commissioned from Swiss architect Mario Botta. The project brought Botta's geometric architectural language into a narrow Jingumae site near Aoyama, giving the institution a purpose-built home for exhibitions spanning contemporary art, architecture and related cultural practices. Watarium Art Museum extended the area's collecting tradition into an international contemporary program, completing a sequence that moves across three distinct forms of twentieth-century cultural patronage. The progression moves from Nezu Kaichiro's private collection and its survival through wartime destruction through Okamoto and Sakakura's postwar creative partnership and onward to Mario Botta's architecture for Watarium Art Museum, revealing how successive patrons, artists and architects made the territory surrounding National Route 246 one of Aoyama's richest concentrations of authored cultural institutions.

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