Shinjuku Toho Building

A 30-storey mixed-use tower completed in March 2015 in the heart of Kabukicho. Developed by Toho Co., Ltd. and built by Takenaka Corporation, it stacks a cinema, retail and a hotel into a single landmark that reshaped the Kabukicho skyline.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shinjuku City

Completed

2015

Floors

30 above ground, 1 below

Developer

Toho Co., Ltd.

Architect

Takenaka Corporation

A New Skyline for Japan’s Most Famous Entertainment District

Kabukicho, the sprawling entertainment quarter of Shinjuku, gained a new vertical anchor in March 2015 when the Shinjuku Toho Building opened at 1-19-1 Kabukicho. Standing 30 storeys above and one below ground, the complex was developed by Toho Co., Ltd. — the film studio and distributor with deep roots in this exact neighbourhood, where it had operated multiple cinemas for decades. Rather than maintaining a cluster of low-rise theatres, Toho chose to consolidate those uses — along with retail and a hotel — into a single tall tower designed and built by Takenaka Corporation.

The site sits only a few minutes’ walk east of Shinjuku Station. Before this building rose, the block was defined by the three-to-five-storey scale typical of Kabukicho’s dense commercial fabric. Thirty storeys introduced a markedly different scale and gave the entertainment district a vertical presence more in keeping with the high-rises of West Shinjuku visible on the horizon.

Cinema, Commerce and a Hotel in Vertical Layers

The programme follows a straightforward stack: cinema and retail occupy the lower floors, while hotel rooms fill the mid and upper storeys. Takenaka handled both design and construction — a single-firm approach that kept the programme tightly integrated. Along the exterior, a large sculptural figure referencing the studio’s film heritage was placed at an upper terrace level, visible from street level and from the elevated walkways nearby. The element gives the building a distinctive character that no amount of signage could replicate, and it has become a point of orientation for first-time visitors to Kabukicho.

Summary

Completed in March 2015, the Shinjuku Toho Building is a 30-storey, one-basement mixed-use complex developed by Toho Co., Ltd. and built by Takenaka Corporation. It concentrates cinema, retail and hospitality in a single tower on the former site of Toho’s Kabukicho theatres, replacing a cluster of low-rise venues with a single tall landmark. The building is steps from Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, another tall entertainment complex from a later era, and the two make a rewarding pairing for anyone curious about how the district continues to reinvent itself at height.