Japan’s historic luxury hotels predate most of the international five-star brands by well over a century. They were built during the Meiji era specifically to host the first wave of foreign visitors after Japan reopened to the world, and three properties in particular are treated as the classic trio: the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, the Fujiya Hotel in Hakone, and the Nikko Kanaya Hotel.
Imperial Hotel, Tokyo (1890)
Commissioned by Eiichi Shibusawa, often called the father of Japanese capitalism, the Imperial Hotel opened in 1890 as Japan’s official guesthouse for foreign dignitaries. Its most famous chapter came in 1923, when the second-generation building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mayan Revival style using Oya stone, opened on the same day as the Great Kanto Earthquake and withstood it while much of the surrounding city was destroyed. That building was demolished in 1967 in favor of the current high-rise, but its lobby and entrance hall were preserved and now stand at the Meiji Mura architecture museum near Nagoya. The hotel today still houses the only officially authorized Frank Lloyd Wright Suite in the world, built around his original furniture, rugs, and lighting design. It sits directly across from Hibiya Park and a short walk from the Imperial Palace, Ginza, and Tokyo Station.
Fujiya Hotel, Hakone (1878)
One of Japan’s oldest Western-style hotels, founded by Sennosuke Yamaguchi after he traveled through the United States and Europe and returned wanting to build a hotel specifically for foreign guests in Hakone’s hot-spring country. The main building dates to 1891, with high ceilings and antique furniture, while the Flower Palace annex, completed in 1936, blends Japanese and Western interior styles more explicitly. Guests describe the property as closer to a lived-in museum than a conventional hotel, and it remains one of the more atmospheric ways to combine Hakone’s onsen tradition with genuine architectural history.
Nikko Kanaya Hotel (1873)
Japan’s oldest resort hotel began when Zenichi Kanaya, a court musician at Nikko Toshogu Shrine, converted his own samurai residence into a guesthouse for a foreign visitor who had nowhere else to stay. The hotel moved to its current hillside site above the Daiya River in 1893 and has hosted guests including Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, and Frank Lloyd Wright himself. It is registered as one of Japan’s Tangible Cultural Properties, and its Western-style exterior conceals Japanese architectural details throughout, including wooden carvings echoing the nearby UNESCO-listed Nikko Toshogu Shrine, a five-minute walk away. The hotel completed a renovation of its Annex Royal House around its 150th anniversary, adding 22 refreshed rooms while preserving the original character of the property.
Why These Three Matter
Each of these hotels was built for the same original purpose, to give Meiji-era Japan a way to host Western visitors on Western terms, and each has survived earthquakes, fires, and a century and a half of ownership changes without losing its architectural identity. Staying at any of them is less about amenities than about the sense of continuity: the same hills, the same rivers, and in the Imperial Hotel’s case, the same architect’s furniture that guests were seeing a hundred years ago.
Visiting Tips
All three hotels are open to non-guests for lunch or a drink, which is worth doing even if you are staying elsewhere, since the public spaces (the Imperial’s Old Imperial Bar, the Fujiya’s dining hall, the Kanaya’s lobby lounge) are as much the attraction as the rooms. The Imperial Hotel sits directly in central Tokyo and needs no special routing. Fujiya Hotel and Nikko Kanaya Hotel are both easiest to reach as a day trip or overnight extension from Tokyo, roughly 90 minutes to Hakone and about two hours to Nikko by train, making either a natural add-on to a Tokyo-based itinerary rather than a standalone destination.
See our guide to 5-star hotels in Tokyo for the modern counterpart to this list, or the best luxury hotels in Japan overall.
