Tokyo, Tsukiji Carriage Prosperity: Hotel Building Fine View

The Tsukiji Hotel Kan is a hotel for people from overseas which was constructed in the foreign residential area in Tsukiji Teppozu, Tokyo, in August 1868. It was the first authentic western-style hotel in Japan and was designed by the American architect Richard Perkins Bridgens with construction work carried out by Kisuke Shimizu II. It incorporates traditional Japanese techniques in the external Namako wall, and in the four-story tower which rises at its center. The Tsukiji Hotel Kan which became a new Tokyo sightseeing spot due to its elegant appearance and was also known as the Edo Hotel, is depicted in many Nishiki-e colored woodblock prints as a building which blends Japanese and Western styles symbolizing the new era. However, it burnt to the ground in February 1872, only four years after its completion. The dearth of extant photographs in which the hotel can be seen clearly make this print a valuable resource as a bird’s-eye-view of the magnificent Tsukiji Hotel Kan.