Luxury Hotels Atlas / The Maison / Imperial Hotels
Imperial Hotels hotels
Opened in 1890 to receive the Meiji court's foreign guests, now reaching from Tokyo to Gion.
Imperial Hotel, Ltd. was founded in 1887 to give the Meiji court a Western-style hotel for its foreign guests. It opened in Tokyo in 1890 and still runs four houses: the Tokyo flagship on the palace moat, Osaka, the seasonal Kamikochi hotel in the Northern Alps, and, since 2026, a small Kyoto hotel inside a Gion theater. The Imperial in New Delhi shares the English name only; it belongs to the Akoi family and is filed as an independent hotel.
4 Imperial Hotels hotels in 1 country on the Luxury Hotels Atlas, each placed on the six LHA Tiers.
- Owned by Imperial Hotel, Ltd.
- Worldwide: 4 hotels, all in Japan
- On the atlas: 2 Grand Luxury, 2 High Luxury
History
The company’s story runs through its buildings: Watanabe’s neo-Renaissance hotel of 1890, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1923 building that rode out the Great Kanto earthquake, the 1970 tower that replaced it, and the alpine Kamikochi hotel of 1933. Kyoto, in 2026, is the first new house in three decades.
Timeline
- 1887 — Eiichi Shibusawa and Kihachiro Okura form the Tokyo Hotel company, later Imperial Hotel, Ltd., with backing from the Imperial Household Ministry.
- 1890 — The original Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, designed by Yuzuru Watanabe in a German neo-Renaissance manner, opens on 3 November.
- 1923 — Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel opens on 1 September, the morning of the Great Kanto earthquake. The floating foundation holds. Wright had left Japan in July 1922. His assistant Arata Endo finishes the last months.
- 1933 — Imperial Hotel, Ltd. opens the Kamikochi Hotel, Japan's first purpose-built mountain resort hotel, a Swiss-chalet form with a steep red roof.
- 1968 — Wright's Tokyo building is demolished. The lobby is later rebuilt, piece by piece, at the Meiji-Mura museum near Nagoya.
- 1970 — The 17-story Tokyo tower opens. It is the hotel operating today, 909 rooms toward the palace moat.
- 1977 — Kamikochi's wooden hotel is rebuilt in reinforced concrete. The red-roof silhouette stays.
- 1996 — Imperial Hotel, Osaka, opens on the old Mitsubishi Metal smelting works, redeveloped as Osaka Amenity Park beside the Okawa. Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei designs the 24-story tower. 378 rooms.
- 2005 — Princess Sayako, Emperor Akihito's daughter, holds her wedding reception at the Tokyo hotel in November, after marrying a commoner and leaving the imperial family.
- 2026 — Imperial Hotel, Kyoto, opens on 5 March inside a preserved portion of the Yasaka Kaikan, 55 rooms, the company's first new hotel in three decades and its smallest.
The houses to know
- Imperial Hotel Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan — Japan's first Western-style hotel for the Meiji court, opened in 1890, now a 1970 tower of 909 rooms on the palace moat.
- Imperial Hotel, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan — Fifty-five rooms in the Yasaka Kaikan, opened 5 March 2026, with a maiko tea and the geiko revue next door.
- Imperial Hotel, Osaka, Osaka, Japan — A 24-story tower of 378 rooms on the Okawa, opened in 1996 beside the cherry trees of Sakuranomiya.
- Kamikochi Imperial Hotel, Kamikochi, Japan — A 74-room alpine hotel from 1933, red roof in the Northern Japan Alps, open from late April to early November.
Newest openings
- Imperial Hotel, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan, opened 5 March 2026. Fifty-five rooms in three wings inside a preserved portion of the Yasaka Kaikan, a theater and dance hall nearly ninety years old, on the grounds of the Gion Kobu Kaburenjo. The building carries Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property designation. Each wing keeps a different piece of the original character. The hotel arranges private teahouse meetings with a maiko, and reserved seats for the geiko dance revue next door. It is Imperial Hotel's first new property in three decades, and its smallest.
Opening next
- No further Imperial openings with a confirmed location and year were identified in the sources reviewed. Kyoto is listed as open in those sources.
Every Imperial Hotels hotel on the atlas
Japan
- Imperial Hotel Tokyo — Tokyo · Grand Luxury
- Imperial Hotel, Kyoto — Kyoto · Grand Luxury
- Imperial Hotel, Osaka — Osaka · High Luxury
- Kamikochi Imperial Hotel — Kamikochi · High Luxury
Open The Maison in the atlas for Imperial Hotels's full dossier, with prices and maps.