The Nagoya Hotel, Nagoya, c. 1900. It was here where Prince Arthur of Great Britain stayed during his tour of Japan in February, 1906.

“[The] Nagoya Hotel is a fine building in strictly foreign style. The food is most good; the management excellent. The proprietor, who is by trade a carpenter, designed himself the interior of his house in a most charming and artistic way; the dining room, in plain maple and hinoki [Japanese cypress], is a dream of beauty. There are reading rooms, smoke rooms, card rooms, and more things of comfort than one would ever expect to find in this out of the way place. My respects to it.”

– The Land of the Tatami: Travels in Japan, by George T. Murray, 1906

Nagoya Hotel, Nagoya, c. 1900, with inset illustration of Nagoya Castle.

“Nagoya, like most other large towns, possesses a number of new, uninteresting buildings in the style or no style known in the Japan of to-day as ‘foreign.’ Such are the Prefecture and local Assembly Hall, opposite which stands a monument, shaped like a fuse, dedicated to the memory of deceased soldiers.

“The pepper-caster top of the Nagoya Hotel looms above the rest as a convenient beacon.”

– A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, by Basil Hall Chamberlain & W. B. Mason, 1913

Street entrance of the Nagoya Hotel, Nagoya, ca. 1920.