At Park Hotel Tokyo, the gallery doesn’t end when you close your bedroom door. For three nights, our Global Beauty Editor Catalina checked into a room that was itself the artwork.
By Catalina Tapia
There are hotels that collect art, hotels that exhibit it and then there is Park Hotel Tokyo, where you can actually sleep inside it.
High above Shiodome, the hotel turns contemporary Japanese art into part of the experience. Exhibitions appear throughout the property and along its guest-room corridors, while its Artist Rooms are individually created by different artists, with paintings extending directly across walls, doors and architectural surfaces.
For three nights, I stayed in Otafuku Face, created by Japanese artist Aki Kondo.
And subtle it is not.
A monumental smiling Otafuku face fills one side of the room, her enormous pink cheeks framing the bed, while an expressive plum tree explodes across the opposite wall and climbs towards the ceiling.
Kondo created the room during a nine-day stay at the hotel in 2015. Otafuku, sometimes described as a woman of five virtues, became her expression of a gentler, more internal idea of Japanese beauty.
It is joyful, strange and completely immersive.
Then you look outside.
Tokyo Tower rises across the skyline, with Mount Fuji appearing in the distance on a clear day. Inside is Kondo’s interpretation of traditional Japanese beauty. Outside is one of the world’s great modern cities.
That juxtaposition is really what makes Park Hotel Tokyo work.
The hotel itself unfolds almost like a vertical gallery. Different floors host changing and permanent exhibitions, giving you a reason to wander rather than simply take the lift directly to your room. Sculpture, painting, contemporary installations and the Artist Rooms turn the building into an ongoing encounter with Japanese creativity.
Even breakfast comes with a view.
Served at ART colours Dining on the 25th floor, mornings begin overlooking Tokyo’s skyline. Sitting there with the city stretched beneath you feels a little like having breakfast perched in the clouds.
My scrambled eggs were beautifully fluffy, accompanied by the hotel’s buffet of Japanese and Western breakfast dishes. It is a wonderfully civilised way to begin a day in Tokyo.
Dining continues throughout the hotel. ART colours Dining moves from breakfast into lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, while Hanasanshou explores Japanese cuisine and The Society offers somewhere to settle in for a drink as the city lights come on.
But the lasting impression is the art.
At Park Hotel Tokyo, it isn’t decoration added after the hotel was designed. It becomes part of how you experience the building, from the corridors you walk through to the room you wake up in.
For three nights, Otafuku wasn’t hanging above my bed.
She was my room.
The Raven Reports stayed as a guest of Park Hotel Tokyo.
To find out more about the Park Tokyo Hotel, visit their website parkhoteltokyo.com or follow them on instagram @parkhoteltokyo
