The coolest hotel lobby, in the coolest city, in the world

My favourite Bond film is You Only Live Twice, the fifth in the series.

Released in 1967 and starring Sean Connery, it’s set in Japan, with a screenplay written by Roald Dahl.

The new Okura Hotel lobby in Tokyo is the coolest in the world.

It was the film that introduced the super-villain Ernst Blofeld to the world. Played by Donald Pleasance, the evil Blofeld bears a scarred face, strokes a white cat and is the model for Dr Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

The stylish 60s interiors (although mostly filmed in the UK) made Tokyo look like the coolest city in the world. After the 1964 Olympics, it probably was.

It still is. And now I’ve found the coolest hotel lobby in the coolest city in the world.

The Okura Tokyo was opened in 1962, just before the Olympics, and built to receive international guests at the beginning of Japan’s great post-war opening to the West.

Indoor cool … the lobby in the hotel’s Prestige Tower.

The hotel’s founder, Baron Kishichiro Okura, was the son of Kihachiro Okura, an industrialist, philanthropist and art collector, who built Japan’s first private art museum, the Okura Museum of Art, in 1917 on the grounds of what is now the hotel. It was subsequently destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt, and the building is part of the property today.

His entrepreneurial son, Kishichiro, who founded several companies and was the first to bring the automobile to Japan, had the idea to build a luxury hotel that combined traditional Japanese traditions with Western comforts.

He engaged architect Yoshiro Taniguchi to design a 408-room building in Minato ward, home to many international embassies.

The original building has long been acknowledged as a masterpiece, combining modernism with serene Japanese classicism. When the building was slated to be demolished and rebuilt in 2015, there was an outcry against the proposed destruction of a cherished icon just when 1960s style was back in fashion.

Teppanyaki Sazanka … the hotel was the first in Japan to house a teppanyaki restaurant.

The outcry helped raise awareness of the importance of the original design. Yoshio Taniguchi, the son of the original architect, was engaged to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Yoshio, who is well known for his design of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, died in December at age 87. He first saw his father’s design of the hotel in 1965, when Yoshiro showed the young man around. In the new design, it was important to preserve the harmonious spirit of the original. The architect considers it an example of utushi, not copying but using the original style as a model.

The new design incorporated two towers – the 17-storey Heritage Wing, which has a refined Japanese aesthetic, and the 41-storey Prestige Tower, which has an international design. The reborn hotel opened in 2019.

The new design incorporated two towers – the 17-storey Heritage Wing, which has a refined Japanese aesthetic, and the 41-storey Prestige Tower, which has an international design.

The original lobby was elegant and spacious, with hexagonal pendant lanterns, paper screens, lacquer tables and fabulous chairs inspired by plum blossoms. It welcomed many US presidents, royal guests and movie stars over the years.

And, yes, James Bond “stayed” there in You Only Live Twice.

It would have been a travesty to destroy it. I’m happy to say that many interior elements of the old lobby have been painstakingly transferred or recreated in the new lobby, which sits in the Prestige Tower. The pendant lights are now lit with LED lamps and there’s a safety railing around the mezzanine.

I stayed in the serene Heritage Wing when I was in Tokyo recently for the Tokyo Art Fair, which partnered with the Okura Museum of Art. The heritage building has its own discrete entrance, but I found myself frequently drawn to the tower next door, to sit in or walk through the famous lobby.

The Okura is a member of Leading Hotels of the World, which has recently launched a coffee table book, Design: The Leading Hotels of the World (Phaidon), featuring more than 70 sumptuously designed hotels from LHW’s collection of over 400 independent hotels in 80 countries.

The Okura features in the book as a beacon of Japanese hospitality, for its celebration of heritage and craft. There’s culinary history too – the hotel was the first in Japan to have a teppanyaki restaurant.

The hotel has five restaurants and two bars and a 13,000-square-metre garden that’s open to the public. The Okura Museum of Art is just across the courtyard.

It’s worth a detour when next in Tokyo, even if you’re not staying there.

The new Okura lobby is the coolest lobby in the world. I’m sure agent 007 would agree.

The writer was a guest of The Okura Tokyo and Leading Hotels of the World.