Tsukiji Hotel

• Built: 1868
• Destroyed: 1872
• Japanese:　築地ホテル館 (Tsukiji hoteru kan)

The Tsukiji Hotel was a hotel in the Tsukiji area of Tokyo, built in a Western-inspired style in 1868, and destroyed by fire in 1872. It is often cited as Japan's first hotel (in the Western/modern sense).

The hotel was constructed over a wooden frame, incorporating that fundamental aspect of Japanese traditional architecture, much like many of the Western-style buildings in the Westerners' neighborhoods in Kobe and Yokohama. Traditional style roof tiles were used on the roof, which was topped with a belvedere (small tower for enjoying the view) and weathervane. Terracotta tiles were used to line the walls, to protect the building from fire, though this would ultimately prove ineffective, as the building was lost to a fire only four years after it was built.

The Tsukiji Hotel as seen in a woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniteru II.

References

• Coaldrake, William. Architecture and Authority in Japan. Routledge, 1996. p216.

External Links

• Former site of the Tsukiji Hotel, today a multi-story parking structure for the Tsukiji Fish Market.