Hotel Gajoen, Tokyo

Hotel Gajoen, Tokyo

Three minutes on foot down the slope from Meguro Station, at the foot of Gyoninzaka where the hill gives out onto the Meguro River, Hotel Gajoen Tokyo is the hotel wing of a complex that began in 1928, when Rikizo Hosokawa turned his own house in Shibaura into a Japanese restaurant called Shibaura Gajoen, moved the idea to Meguro, and grew it through the 1930s into a lacquered, painted, gilded banqueting compound that Tokyo nicknamed the Dragon Palace of the Showa era and that became the first all-in-one wedding hall in Japan. Most of the original was rebuilt in the late twentieth century, office towers included, but the Hyakudan Kaidan survives, a wooden building of 1935 in which a 99-step staircase climbs the hillside past seven painted banquet rooms, designated a Tangible Cultural Property of Tokyo in 2009 and one step short of a hundred, as the story goes, so there is always further to rise. The hotel itself took its current name in 2017, with 60 suites, none smaller than 80 square metres and the Ambassador Suite at 120. Brookfield took a stake in the whole complex in 2025 and Hilton now manages the hotel, which closed in October 2025, reopened to guests in the summer of 2026 after a phased refurbishment, and will formally become Gajoen Tokyo, LXR Hotels & Resorts by 2027, the brand’s second Japanese address after Roku Kyoto. The building is, in effect, a museum that happens to have bedrooms, with more than 2,500 Japanese paintings and craft pieces hung, set and inlaid through corridors, lifts, and the lacquered restrooms that the hotel’s own press materials describe, without much modesty, as probably the most expensive most visitors will ever use. Inside the Hyakudan Kaidan the stairs are thick slabs of wood, worn by nearly a century of wedding parties, and rooms such as the Jippo no ma carry coffered ceilings painted panel by panel, opened to the public only for exhibitions, the best known being the summer Wa no Akari lantern and light show. The suites run on a concept the hotel calls Wakei Seishin, with a floor of tatami rooms on the sixth, bathrooms built as small private spas, and windows onto the river or the atrium garden, where a waterfall drops beside the glass-walled lounge. Dining has traditionally covered Japanese, Chinese and Italian kitchens plus the lounge, and the line-up is being reworked as Hilton settles in. What staying here actually feels like depends heavily on the day of the week, because Gajoen has been a wedding factory for almost a hundred years and remains one, so a Saturday brings photographers, formal kimono and processions through the lobby, while a Tuesday can feel like having a cultural property largely to yourself. The aesthetic is Showa maximalism, mother-of-pearl, gold leaf, carved beams, painted beauties, the opposite of the pared-back cedar and stone most foreign travellers have been taught to expect from Japanese luxury, and it is far more interesting for it. The suites are some of the largest standard rooms in Tokyo, Meguro is residential and quiet after dark, and the guest-only art tours and tea ceremony give the place a reason to exist beyond the bed. You should not come if you want minimalism, a rooftop bar, Shibuya on the doorstep, or a hotel that is entirely finished, since the move to LXR means parts of the experience are still being settled. You should come for the staircase, for the sheer floor space, for a version of Japanese taste that was loud and proud in 1935 and has been kept that way, and for a Tokyo neighbourhood where the cherry trees, the temples and the river do more than the concierge ever could. The short version: A 60-suite hotel in Meguro, built around a 1935 wooden staircase that is a Tokyo cultural property, with more than 2,500 Japanese artworks, every suite over 80 square metres, and a near-century of weddings still under its roof.