Cerulean Tower

A 41-story, 184-meter tower completed in 2001 on the former Tokyu headquarters site in Sakuragaoka, Shibuya. The building combines offices, a luxury hotel, a noh theater, and a jazz club — an unlikely mix that reflects Shibuya's cultural depth.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shibuya City

Completed

2001

Floors

41 above ground, 6 below

Height

184 m

Total floor area

approx. 106,000 m²

Developer

Tokyu (formerly Tokyu Corporation)

Architect

Tokyu Design Consultant

A Tower Built on Tokyu’s Past

A short walk from Shibuya Station, up the gentle slope of Sakuragaoka, a 41-story tower rises 184 meters above the district below. Cerulean Tower was completed in March 2001, designed by Tokyu Design Consultant and built by Tokyu Construction, with a total floor area of approximately 106,000 square meters. The name — “cerulean,” evoking the open sky — signals the tower’s ambition: not just height, but a layering of uses meant to represent Shibuya in its full variety.

The site was the headquarters of Tokyu Corporation from 1950 until 1992. When the railway company vacated, all eyes were on what would replace it. The answer was a mixed-use tower combining offices, restaurants, a luxury hotel, a noh theater, and a jazz club under one roof. The Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel opened on the upper floors in 2001 and became one of the defining upscale hotels in the Shibuya area. The tower arrived before the wave of high-rise development that would remake Shibuya’s skyline over the following two decades, making it the district’s first major superstructure of the twenty-first century.

Noh and Jazz Beneath a Skyscraper

The building’s most distinctive quality is not its height but what it contains. Beneath the lobby level, a traditional noh stage holds regular performances — a form of theater that would seem more at home in a historic shrine garden than beneath a curtain-wall tower. On the same lower level, a jazz club ran regular sessions for years, turning the basement of a skyscraper into one of the city’s more eclectic live-music venues.

The tower’s massing tapers slightly toward the top, giving the hotel floors wider sightlines across the Shibuya basin. The facade is restrained in color and detail — understated by the standards of 2001, and still coherent today. While Hikarie, Scramble Square, and Sakura Stage have since remade Shibuya’s profile, Cerulean Tower arrived first and still reads as the quiet anchor of the station’s less-trafficked Sakuragaoka side.

Summary

Cerulean Tower was completed in 2001, with 41 floors above ground and a height of 184 meters. Built on the former Tokyu headquarters site in Sakuragaoka, it brought together offices, a luxury hotel, a noh theater, and a jazz club before Shibuya’s larger redevelopment truly began. Climb the slope from the south exit, look up at the building’s clean silhouette, and you will find a vantage point — and a piece of Shibuya’s story — that the busier redevelopment zones rarely offer.

Related: Shibuya Hikarie / Shibuya Scramble Square / Shibuya Stream

Visiting Shibuya? Rakuten Travel has a wide range of hotels in the area.