Tokyu Capitol Tower

A 29-story mixed-use tower completed in 2010 at the foot of the National Diet Building in Nagatacho, Tokyo. Designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates, the tower houses The Capitol Hotel Tokyu alongside office floors, its timber-screen façade offering a quiet counterpoint to the political surroundings.

Use

Office tower

Area

Chiyoda City

Completed

2010

Floors

29 above ground, 4 below

Developer

Tokyu Corporation

Architect

Kengo Kuma and Associates

Kengo Kuma’s Timber-Screen Tower in Japan’s Political Centre

A few hundred metres south of the National Diet Building, where the Sakurada-dori and Uchibori-dori avenues intersect, stands a tower whose skin sets it apart from every neighbouring building: horizontal aluminium louvers stacked to suggest a traditional timber lattice. That is the Tokyu Capitol Tower, a 29-floor mixed-use building completed in 2010. Tokyu Corporation commissioned Kengo Kuma and Associates for the design, a choice that brought one of Japan’s most recognisable contemporary architects into direct dialogue with the austere civic architecture of Nagatacho.

The hotel occupying the upper floors, The Capitol Hotel Tokyu, sits on a site with its own history. An earlier hotel — part of the Hotel Okura group — once stood here, and before that the area formed part of the grounds of the Meiji-era Sanno Hotel. By redeveloping the site under the Tokyu brand, the company reclaimed a location that had long served as a discreet retreat for dignitaries and politicians. The integration of office and hotel floors in a single envelope extends that tradition while updating it for contemporary mixed-use expectations.

Nagatacho: Governed Ground

Few addresses in Japan carry more weight than Nagatacho 2-chome. The National Diet, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Official Residence, and the Supreme Court all sit within a short walk. Nearby, the Kasumigaseki Building — Japan’s first skyscraper, completed in 1968 — and the Toranomon Hills Mori Tower anchor the broader government-and-business corridor stretching south toward Toranomon. Within that austere civic fabric, Kengo Kuma’s warm timber-screen aesthetic reads as an intentional softening: architecture that mediates between the weight of institutions and the lighter grain of human hospitality.

Summary

Tokyu Capitol Tower was completed in 2010, rising 29 floors in Nagatacho, Chiyoda City. Designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates for Tokyu Corporation, it places a hotel whose texture deliberately recalls traditional Japanese craftsmanship at the foot of the National Diet. A walk through the surrounding blocks, where ministerial buildings alternate with quiet residential lanes, rewards close attention — and the tower itself is among the more thoughtfully contextual additions to central Tokyo’s government quarter.

Looking for a hotel in the Nagatacho or Akasaka area? Check Rakuten Travel for options nearby.