Why you should experience Tochomae-dori in Tokyo, Japan.
Tochomae-dori is a soaring corridor where Nishi-Shinjuku's postwar reinvention, skyscraper architecture, civic ambition and carefully engineered public realm converge within Tokyo's first great high-rise district.
Running through Nishi-Shinjuku between Shinjuku Station and the western edge of the subcenter, the corridor passes through a precinct whose immense towers replaced the former Yodobashi Purification Plant and radically altered Tokyo's western skyline. Broad avenues, elevated walkways and underground passages connect office towers across superblocks planned at a scale distinct from the older streets east of Shinjuku Station. The avenue reaches its architectural crescendo around the metropolitan government complex, where towers frame a formal sequence of plazas and pedestrian routes extending toward the western edge of the district. The result is a corridor where Tokyo's postwar leap into high-rise urbanism remains unusually concentrated and legible.
What you should know about Tochomae-dori.
Tochomae-dori is best known for crossing territory remade from the Yodobashi Purification Plant into Shinjuku Fukutoshin, the high-rise subcenter that established a radically new western skyline during Japan's postwar economic expansion. The national Capital Region Development Act took effect in 1956, and the 1958 Capital Region Development Plan designated Shinjuku alongside Shibuya and Ikebukuro for development as secondary metropolitan centers. Tokyo's assembly approved its basic policy for Shinjuku Fukutoshin in March 1960, followed by establishment of the Shinjuku Subcenter Development Corporation that year as plans advanced for relocation of the purification works and redevelopment of the surrounding territory. Yodobashi Purification Plant closed on March 31, 1965 after approximately 70 years supplying Tokyo, releasing a roughly 34-hectare site within an approximately 59-hectare redevelopment district. Planning changes gave portions of the subcenter a 1,000-percent floor-area ratio in 1965, opening the district to a scale of construction previously absent from Tokyo. Keio Plaza Hotel became the first skyscraper completed on the former purification-plant grounds in 1971, rising 179 meters and initiating the high-rise cluster that would define Nishi-Shinjuku.
The district's circulation system developed alongside its towers through an extensive separation of pedestrians, surface traffic and underground movement. Shinjuku Pedestrian Route No. 2, known as Times Avenue, was planned as an underground passage approximately 1,040 meters long and six to eight meters wide, linking the western business district with Shinjuku Station and neighboring rail stations. Its first section between the metropolitan-government precinct and Nishi-shinjuku Station entered service in December 1997, followed by a second section reaching the Shinjuku Nomura Building area in May 2011. A new entrance beside Sumitomo Fudosan Shinjuku Building was completed in April 2013, and construction of the third phase began during fiscal 2015. Another 140-meter section opened on January 26, 2023 between the Shinjuku Police Station intersection and the Shintoshin pedestrian-bridge intersection. The progressive extension of Times Avenue carried the subcenter's original separation of movement into the twenty-first century, adding a subterranean pedestrian axis beneath a district conceived around superblocks, broad roads and high-rise construction.
How to fold Tochomae-dori into your trip.
Tochomae-dori works as the anchor for a daytime exploration tracing modernist hotel architecture, Japanese skyscraper engineering and the maturation of Nishi-Shinjuku's high-rise district.
Begin at Keio Plaza Hotel, completed in 1971 as the first skyscraper on the former Yodobashi Purification Plant grounds and the building that announced Nishi-Shinjuku's arrival as Tokyo's new high-rise center. The 179-meter tower preceded the dense vertical cluster now surrounding it, placing hotel architecture at the beginning of the district's dramatic postwar change. Continue to Shinjuku Mitsui Building, completed in 1974 during the first generation of towers that rapidly followed Keio Plaza. Rising more than 200 meters, the building became a major corporate anchor within the new subcenter and helped establish the immense office-building scale that would characterize western Shinjuku through subsequent decades. Conclude at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, where Kenzo Tange's 243-meter Main Building No. 1 forms the centerpiece of a three-building complex constructed from April 1988 through March 1991. The metropolitan government transferred its principal operations from Marunouchi to Shinjuku in 1991, placing Tokyo's administrative center within the high-rise district created from the former purification grounds. The progression moves from Keio Plaza Hotel's pioneering 1971 tower through the first generation of corporate skyscrapers and onward to Tange's metropolitan government complex, tracing twenty years in which Nishi-Shinjuku advanced from cleared utility land into one of Tokyo's most consequential architectural precincts.
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