Hotel Kokusai Kanko, Marunouchi, Tokyo, c. 1965.

“On [Shimbashi Station’s] N. side stands the Kokusai Kanko Kaikan Building, housing the Hotel Kokusai Kanko …”

“Hotel Kokusai Kanko means ‘International Tourist Hotel’ and this Tokyo hostelry fits its name. … with 626 guest rooms, many of them singles, occupying the whole of an 8-story building near the Shimbashi Railway Station. On the 8th floor of this imposing building you’ll also find the headquarters of the Japan Tourist Association.”

– All the Best in Japan, 1959

Hotel Kokusai Kanko, Tokyo, c. 1965. Constructed as part of the extraordinary kanko [‘tourist hotel’] development wrought by Japan’s accelerating postwar economic growth, the rapid rise in domestic tourism, and the increased demand for international tourist hotel room capacity prior to and after the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

“The 1907 Hotel Development Law lay legal groundwork for the Railway Bureau to construct foreign tourist sites and hotels [kanko] around the country. In 1912, the Japan Tourist Bureau was created and began selling tours designed to attract foreign visitors. Such efforts promoted the practice of hisho (escaping the heat, or summering), which subsequently gained widespread currency among Japan’s new middle class.

– “Contested Utopias: Civilization and Leisure in the Meiji Era”, by W. Puck Brecher, Asian Ethnology, 2018