The is a 36-story

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

located in

Kasumigaseki Kasumigaseki (霞が関, 霞ヶ関 or 霞ケ関) is a district in Chiyoda Ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is the location of most of Japan's cabinet ministry offices. The name is often used as a metonym for the Japanese government bureaucracy, whi ...

, Chiyoda,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

History

The building is owned by the '' Kasumi Kaikan'' (霞会館), an association of the former ''

kazoku The was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947. They succeeded the feudal lords () and court nobles (), but were abolished with the 1947 constitution. Kazoku ( 華族) should not be confused with ' ...

'' high nobility. The plot was once owned by the ''Kazoku Kaikan'' (華族会館), the previous association, which was changed after World War II in 1947. Completed in 1968, the building is widely regarded as the first modern office skyscraper in Japan. The reason high-rise buildings were not built in the country earlier was that Japan's Building Standard Law set an absolute height limit of until 1963, when the limit was abolished in favor of a

Floor Area Ratio Floor area ratio (FAR) is the ratio of a building's total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built. It is often used as one of the regulations in city planning along with the building-to-land ratio. The ...

limit.

Tenants

The

Asian Development Bank Institute The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) is an Asian think tank focused on identifying effective development strategies for Asia and the Pacific, and on providing support to ADB member countries in managing development challenges. It was esta ...

has its head office on the 8th floor of the Kasumigaseki Building. On the same floor, the

Asian Development Bank The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in the Ortigas Center located in the city of Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field office ...

has its Japan offices.

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

has offices on the 15th floor of the building. At one time

All Nippon Airways , also known as ANA (''Ē-enu-ē'') or is an airline in Japan. Its headquarters are located in Shiodome City Center in the Shiodome area of Minato ward of Tokyo. It operates services to both domestic and international destinations and had m ...

had its headquarters in the building, as did

Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese chemicals company listed on the Nikkei with business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. It is one of the leading chemical companies in Japan and is part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company mainly ...

. In July 1978, when

Nippon Cargo Airlines , or NCA, is a cargo airline with its head office on the property of Narita International Airport in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, outside Tokyo. It operates scheduled cargo services in Asia and to Europe and North America. Its main base is Narita ...

first began, it operated within a single room inside

's space in the Kasumigaseki Building. Two airlines, Garuda Indonesia and

Union des Transports Aériens Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

, at one time had offices in the building.''Director of Foreign Residents, Volume 31''.

Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

, 1978
479
Retrieved from

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

(original from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, digitized December 9, 2008) on February 19, 2010. The ''Kasumi Kaikan'' has their club rooms on the 34th floor and is strictly for members only, namely descendants of the ''

''.

In popular culture

The Kasumigaseki Building is the main subject of the film ''

Chōkōsō no Akebono ''Chōkōsō no Akebono'' ( ja, 超高層のあけぼの, , Dawn of the Skyscraper) is a 1969 Japanese film about the construction of the Kasumigaseki Building, the first high-rise building in Japan. Kajima Construction, the builder of the Kasumi ...

'', which was backed by

Kajima Construction is one of the oldest and largest construction companies in Japan. Founded in 1840, the company has its headquarters in Motoakasaka, Minato, Tokyo. The company is known for its DIB-200 proposal. The company stock is traded on four leading Ja ...

, the company that built the Kasumigaseki Building. The building was often used for comparison to things with large volumes in Japan which continued until the construction of the

Tokyo Dome is an indoor stadium in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. It was designed as a baseball stadium following its predecessor, Korakuen Stadium. Construction on the stadium began on May 16, 1985, and it opened on March 17, 1988. It was built on the site of th ...

, a huge indoor stadium.

References

External links

Kasumigaseki Building
Official site (in Japanese) {{Authority control Skyscraper office buildings in Tokyo All Nippon Airways Office buildings completed in 1968 Airline headquarters Mitsui Fudosan 1968 establishments in Japan Buildings and structures in Chiyoda, Tokyo