The news that the Hotel Okura in Tokyo will be redeveloped in time for the 2020 Olympics has been greeted with dismay by surprisingly far-flung and influential group of admirers — an indication of the status of clientele that has patronized the hotel since it opened in 1962, U.S. President Barack Obama recently among them.
Monocle, the style magazine for suave globalists, has launched a passionate campaign to save the building, while the New York Times has elevated the news to its editorial page, noting with more resignation than indignation, the "end of an era."
Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi with a team of distinguished artists and craftsmen, the lobby of the main building is a peerless exemplar of early 1960s Japanese modernism, with shoji screens, geometric pendant lamps and low chairs grazing on a lush Serengeti of tatami-toned carpet, like "primeval moss on a far-northern island" in the words of the narrator of Haruki Murakami's novel "1Q84."