Hotel Hosenkaku, Kanda Nishikicho, Tokyo, c. 1925.

Hotel Hosenkaku, Kanda Nishikicho, Tokyo, c. 1925, surrounded by a motif of famous Tokyo sights: Mt. Fuji, Nijubashi (Imperial Palace), Cherry blossoms (Ueno Park), and Five-Story Pagoda (Asakusa). Constructed after the Great Kanto Earthquake, the hotel was engineered to withstand any future earthquake. Captioning on the right advertises the hotel’s convenient access in the central city, western rooms with meals, ofuro or western bath availability, billiard room, room telephones, and a rooftop garden — and the hotel pays your way to/from nearby Tokyo Station by taxi! Large windows all around the building allowed for maximum natural interior lighting.

Hotel Hosenkaku was built in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, constructed of reinforced concrete (advertised on the card with “post-earthquake construction”) as part of Tokyo’s post-earthquake rebuilding efforts.

After the vast devastation of the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, the City of Tokyo introduced strict new municipal building codes requiring fire- and earthquake-resistant materials only be used for the construction of multi-story properties within the central city.

The hotel’s architecture is one example of fukkō kenchiku — a Taishō-Shōwa Reconstruction style that rose from the rubble in the years to follow. (Post-earthquake Mitsukoshi department store is another example.) The postcard advertised fireproof engineering (reinforced or steel-framed concrete construction) and modern utilities (e.g., cast-iron plumbing, electrical wiring in place of gas lamps and lanterns) to reassure patrons concerned about earthquake safety.

Hotel Hosenkaku’s appearance emphasized vertical rusticated pilasters, heavy cornices, a flat roof line, and wide steel-framed multi-pane windows to allow for maximum interior natural lighting during the day and additional reflective lighting for nighttime soirées. The flat-slab roof was specifically engineered to support a landscaped rooftop garden, a pioneering marketing feature in 1920s modern Tokyo used most often by Tokyo department stores but also by commercial properties able to profit from the relative lack of ground-level green space in pre-war central Tokyo that was open to the public.

Advertised highlights of the Hotel Hosenkaku included its rooftop garden, in-room telephones, a billiard room, and taxi fare reimbursement that marked sophisticated urban hospitality in mid-1920s Tokyo. The hotel was sited along the Nihonbashi River in the Kanda Nishikicho neighborhood nearby the Imperial Palace and government ministries, and not far from Nihonbashi, the city’s large financial district.