Japan’s Guest House is a Sight to See!

TOKYO – The palaces of Japan’s emperor and empress and the princes and princesses – ensconced behind moats, ancient walls, the lay of the land and thick foliage – are hidden from all except for aerial views and on New Year’s Day.

But there is one “palace” that is not only out in the open, it is one of the most impressive sights in Tokyo, and yet very few visitors get more than a tantalizing glimpse of it as they drive by its spacious grounds.

This is the stately Geihinkan (Gay-ee-heen-kahn) or State Guest House, which was originally the Togu (Toh-guu) Palace, built during the first years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912).

In 1872 the Togu Palace was renamed the Akasaka Detached Palace. In 1873, when the Imperial Palace buildings burned down, it became the temporary residence of Emperor Meiji. Some years later, it was used as the official residence of the Crown Prince, who became Emperor Taisho in 1912.

Patterned after the Versailles Palace of France, the Geihinkan was designed by Tokuma Katayama, a Japanese architect who studied under England’s famous Josiah Condor and was one of the first Japanese architects to design a Western style building.

The present structure, completed in 1909, stands in grounds covering an area of 117,000 square meters and is built in French neo-baroque style, with a patina-green roof and granite facades.

From 1912 until 1972 the Detached Palace served as a site for ministerial meetings. A portion of it was also used as the National Diet Library, and in the early 1960s it became an office for the organizers of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Following the Olympics, the palace underwent major renovation and was reopened in 1974 as the State Guest House. To say that the Geihinkan is grand and opulent does not do justice to it. It is lavishly furnished with thick carpeting, elegant furniture, decorative tiles, ceiling murals that include a depiction of scenes from Noh plays, and a huge one-of-a-kind chandelier in the main hall.

The huge Guest House compound is on the southwest side of the Imperial Palace grounds, just outside what was once a palace moat that is now the bed for a commuter train line. It is a 7-minute walk form Yotsuya Station, where the JR Chuo and Sobu train lines and the Marunouchi and Namboku subway lines intersect.

Numerous kings, presidents, prime ministers and other notables, including Lady Diana, have stayed at the Geihinkan. It is also used as a banquet hall for entertaining dignitaries, and as a place to sign international treaties.

It is open to the public only a few days out of the year, and entrance is reserved for those lucky enough to win an annual drawing, which is held well in advance of the day.

Anyone interested in filling out an application for the drawing can access the application site at http://www8.cao.go.jp/geihinkan/index.html. Dates for application are announced in Japanese only on the Internet.

Geihinkan by itself just means “guest house,” and there are commercial geihinkan in many Japanese cities, generally popular as elite restaurants.

The State Guest House is known publicly as Akasaka no Geihinkan (Ah-kah-sah-kah no Gay-ee-heen-kahn), or “The Akasaka Guest House,” and that is the name you should use if going there by taxi.

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, first published in 1959 and still in print, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.