is the

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It is located at 2520

Massachusetts Avenue NW Massachusetts Avenue is a major diagonal transverse road in Washington, D.C., and the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District is a historic district that includes part of it. Appearing in Peter Charles L'Enfant's original plan, Massachusetts Av ...

, Washington, D.C., in the

Embassy Row Embassy Row is the informal name for a section of Northwest Washington, D.C. with a high concentration of embassies, diplomatic missions, and diplomatic residences. It spans Massachusetts Avenue N.W. between 18th and 35th street, bounded by ...

neighborhood. In addition to serving as Japan's diplomatic mission in the United States, the embassy provides Japanese consular services to residents of the

District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

, and

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Ambassador

The incumbent

Ambassador of Japan to the United States The ambassador of Japan to the United States has existed since 1860, interrupted by disagreements and wars during World War II. Koji Tomita is the current Japanese ambassador to the United States, having presented his credentials on March 28, 201 ...

is Koji Tomita, who presented his credentials in February 2021. Past Ambassadors include Kenichirō Sasae, who presented his credentials in November 2012, and

Ichirō Fujisaki was Japanese Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2012. He was previously the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations and to the World Trade Organization. Fujisaki attended junior high school in Seattle, Washington as an exchange stu ...

, who served as ambassador from 2008 to October 2012. The ambassador lives at 4000 Nebraska Avenue NW. The home, which sits on eight acres in the

American University Park American University Park is a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., named for the American University. AU Park, as it is often abbreviated, is situated against the Maryland border in the Northwest quadrant, bounded by Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Neb ...

neighborhood of northwest Washington, D.C., was designed by Japanese architect

Isoya Yoshida was a Japanese architect. He graduated from Tokyo Art School (now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in 1923. His style, known as ''sukiya'', combines elements of traditional Japanese architecture and modernist architecture. Am ...

and completed in 1977 at a cost of $12 million ($50.85 million in 2022).

About the building

The embassy was designed by the U.S. firm of Delano & Aldrich (one of whose principals was

William Adams Delano William Adams Delano (January 21, 1874 – January 12, 1960), an American architect, was a partner with Chester Holmes Aldrich in the firm of Delano & Aldrich. The firm worked in the Beaux-Arts tradition for elite clients in New York City, Long I ...

, a distant relative of President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

Emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

Hirohito Emperor , commonly known in English-speaking countries by his personal name , was the 124th emperor of Japan, ruling from 25 December 1926 until his death in 1989. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kōjun, had two sons and five daughters; he was ...

allegedly approved the design personally. The United States Commission of Fine Arts approved the design of the building on September 16, 1930. Erected in 1931, the building is in the Georgian Revival architectural style, with subtle elements of

Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors (''fusuma'') and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space to ...

.''Washington, D.C.'', p. 209.Field, Gournay, and Somma, p. 139-140."Japanese Embassy." HABS No. DC-264. Historic American Buildings Survey. Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. National Park Service. Department of Interior. 1971, p. 1.
Accessed 2013-06-18. As originally designed, the embassy consisted of the ambassador's residence, two chancery buildings with strong Japanese architectural influence, a tea house, and tennis, gym, and other recreational facilities. The embassy features a cobblestone courtyard and driveway in front of the building. The original embassy building is now known as the Old Ambassador's Residence, and is located at 2516 Massachusetts Avenue NW. The original embassy and the two chancery buildings are two-and-a-half stories in height, with two underground levels. The total building height is about . The chancery buildings, which front onto Massachusetts Avenue NW, are about wide. The grounds were landscaped to complement Rock Creek Park, which abuts the rear of the embassy grounds. As of 1971, the Japanese Embassy was one of the few remaining formal estates in the city. The total cost of construction was $500,000. Following the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

in December 1941, the embassy was seized by the United States government and re-purposed to house the Far Eastern Commission. The embassy was returned to Japanese control in April 1952. In 1959, then-Ambassador Koichiro Asagai and

Tatsunosuke Takasaki was a Japanese businessman-politician. Takasaki was born in Takatsuki, Japan, on 7 February 1885. After finishing school in Japan, Takasaki spent his younger days in Manchuria, and was the chairman of Manchurian Industrial Development Company ...

, a member of the House of Representatives of the

National Diet The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...

, proposed creating a replica of the rock garden at Ryōan-ji at the Japanese embassy. Constructed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese embassy to the United States, the scaled-down garden was finished in 1960. A small teahouse named Ippakutei (the "Teahouse of 100 Years"), built in the style found at the

Katsura Imperial Villa The , or Katsura Detached Palace, is an Imperial residence with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. Located on the western bank of the Katsura River in Katsura, Nishikyō-ku, the Villa is 8km distant fro ...

, is in back of the rock garden. The Japanese Embassy was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on February 20, 1973.

Chancery

A stark, Modernist chancery building (the offices of an embassy) was completed in 1986. The chancery was built after Congress passed the Foreign Missions Act in 1982, which made it easier for embassies in the District of Columbia to expand their chanceries.Mariano, Ann. "State Department, City Clash Over Zoning Rules For Japanese Chancery." ''Washington Post.'' February 19, 1983. Oddly, the new law significantly delayed construction of the chancery. The federal government lagged in promulgating regulations for the approval of chanceries, which meant that the chancery had to be approved by the District of Columbia Zoning Commission instead. But by the time the matter arose before the Zoning Commission in February 1983, the city was already in a multi-year process to revise its zoning regulations. The delay imperiled the funding provided by the Japanese government for the new building. Under intense pressure from the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...

as well as the Japanese and Saudi Arabian governments (both of which wanted to build new chanceries immediately), the city enacted emergency zoning regulations on April 12, 1983.Mariano, Ann. "District Passes Emergency Zoning Regulations." ''Washington Post.'' April 13, 1983. Construction of the chancery was approved on June 10.Mariano, Ann. "Japanese Get District Approval To Begin Expansion of Embassy." ''Washington Post.'' June 11, 1983. It was designed by architect Robert B. Anderson of the Benham Group. The local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the Sheridan-Kalorama Neighborhood Council applauded the design for "retaining the historical aspects" of the embassy compound. The project consolidated chancery offices from two rented buildings elsewhere in the District into a single structure on the embassy grounds. The chancery has 250 underground parking spaces, and a tunnel from Waterside Drive lead to the underground parking garage (providing a more secure entry for important diplomats or visitors).

Events

President

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...

visited the embassy on June 16, 1980, and on March 17, 2011, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

visited the embassy to express condolences over the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six minutes ...

. President Joe Biden visited the embassy on July 2022 after the Assasination of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. To pay respect and tribute.

Programs

The Washington Japanese Language School (ワシントン日本語学校 ''Washington Nihongo Gakkō''), a supplementary school for Japanese children subsidized by the Japanese government, was first established in 1958, with classes held in the basement.
Clipping
from Newspapers.com. the school offices are in Maryland and classes are held at

Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic, independent, college preparatory school, founded in 1923, in the Network of Sacred Heart schools for girls. The school offers grades 1-12 and a co-educational early childhood program. History ...

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in ...

References

Bibliography

*Federal Writers' Project. ''Washington City and Capital.'' Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. *Field, Cynthia R.; Gournay, Isabelle; and Somma, Thomas P. ''Paris on the Potomac: The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.'' Athens, Ga.: United States Capitol Historical Society, 2007. *Salmi, Noelle. ''Frommer's San Francisco Day by Day.'' Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. *Yamada, Shoji. ''Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. *''Washington, D.C.'' Greenville, SC: Michelin Travel Publications, 2001.

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Sheridan-Kalorama Historic District Historic district contributing properties in Washington, D.C. Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Japan–United States relations Japanese-American culture in Washington, D.C.