Changing Marunouchi

OMY District is an abbreviation for the area that includes Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakucho. This district covers an area of 120 hectares between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace. This special location, with its proximity to the center of government and law-making in Kasumigaseki and its convenient access by public transport (there are seven subway lines crisscrossing this district, as well as Tokyo Station), has caused many leading Japanese corporations to establish their head offices here, which has given the district a role as the center of the Japanese economy. This history of the area as a business center goes back to the Meiji Government's disposal of state-owned land in the second half of the nineteenth century.

"To be prosperous, a modern nation must have an international business center."

While Shoda Heigoro, Mitsubishi Corp. executive and head office manager, was in Europe in 1890, he saw a newspaper article saying "The Japanese government has put the Marunouchi parade ground up for sale, but there are no buyers because of the high price." He then sent a telegram to Mitsubishi Corp. President Iwasaki Yanosuke saying, "We should purchase Marunouchi."

Right from the beginning, President Iwasaki had a plan to convert the area that he had purchased—formerly state-owned land in the Marunouchi area that the Japanese government no longer required—into a business center oriented to the world. The area has gone through several phases since the first office building, Mitsubishi Ichigokan, was completed in Marunouchi in 1894. First there was a period where a series of brick office buildings went up, one after the other. Then there was a period where large-scale office buildings were constructed in response to the strong demand for offices during the period of high economic growth in Japan, followed by a period where the area was regarded as lacking in vitality and attraction, being described as the "Marunouchi twilight" or a "nine-to-five town." The current period is one of urban renewal, with the ongoing development of initiatives to make Tokyo more internationally competitive.

Momentum for Redevelopment

The OMY District has been able to secure its status as Japan's business center since the Meiji period, but this status came under threat from two developments during the last two decades of the last century. On the one hand, new large-scale business areas were established at Shiodome and Shinagawa on land that had formerly been used by Japan National Railways before that organization was privatized. At the same time, there was also a push to relocate capital city functions, from the point of view of correcting the overconcentration of such functions in the center of Tokyo. During this period, the OMY District faced a number of issues, such as aging office buildings, a chronic shortage of expansion space, and a lack of vitality and attraction. There were even cases of some major corporations leaving the area.

This situation led to the formation of the OMY District Redevelopment Project Council in 1988, whereby Mitsubishi Estate and other landowners came together of their own initiative to consider urban development with a view to the future of the area. In 1996, this organization was expanded to include the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Chiyoda Ward Local Government and the East Japan Railway Company. The new organization became the Advisory Committee on OMY Area Development, and a system for urban development through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) was established. The Advisory Committee discussed issues such as the rules, methodology and future vision for urban development using PPPs, and the results of these discussions were compiled into City Planning Guidelines. The development that is taking place in the OMY District today is proceeding in accordance with these guidelines.

The OMY District Enters a New Era

Since the completion of the Marunouchi Building in 2002, a series of new developments have taken place in the OMY District, including Marunouchi Oazo, the TOKIA Tokyo Building, and the Shin-Marunouchi Building. These newly constructed buildings not only have generous floor space, high ceilings and advanced office functions such as thorough security, they also have commercial functions, such as boutique fashion stores and bars and restaurants that are open until late at night, and social functions, such as high-class hotels and multi-purpose auditoriums, thereby completing the huge transformation of the OMY District from a town of nothing but offices to a town that is full of life and energy, all day and every day. Moreover, the new initiatives are not limited to infrastructure, but encompass day care centers and fitness clubs to support workers, business incubation functions to support entrepreneurs, and facilities that link industry and academia so that people can work and study at the same time. There are also initiatives aimed at supporting metropolitan tourism, including introducing area guides, operating a sky bus and using venues such as the Tokyo International Forum to hold numerous events, among them the La Folle Journée Music Festival.

As well as large Japanese companies, many foreign companies have also moved into the newly constructed office buildings, particularly European and North American financial institutions. Because of the dense concentration of business interests, the clean and tidy streetscape, and the quality of its business support functions, central Tokyo and the OMY District are rated very highly, even as competition between cities in Asia continues to intensify.

Symbolic Project Completed in Spring 2009

Three aging buildings on a 1.2 hectare block of land roughly halfway between Tokyo Station and Yurakucho Station were demolished to make way for a new project that redeveloped the block as a single site, and the Marunouchi Park Building was completed in April 2009. As well as relocating capacity from the grounds of Tokyo Station, this project has achieved intensive land use which is appropriate for an urban center by utilizing the site as a Special Zone for Urban Regeneration, which is one of the city planning methods based on the Act on Special Measures concerning Urban Reconstruction. The project also manages to combine three distinctive elements: restoring the Mitsubishi Ichigokan building, establishing the Ichigokan Square and working in harmony with the natural environment.

The Mitsubishi Ichigokan building was inaugurated in 1894. This building was designed by Josiah Conder, an English architect who also worked on the Rokumeikan building and the Nicholai-do Holy Resurrection Cathederal. The building is distinguished by the planar form of its partitioned structure and by its beautiful red-brick structure in the Queen Anne style that was popular in England in the late Victorian period. Until it was demolished in 1968, the Mitsubishi Ichigokan building was loved by many people for more than seventy years, and the history of this building is surely no more and no less than the history of the business district itself. Now, 115 years on from the birth of the Marunouchi office district, Mitsubishi Estate has once again recognized the ideas of this pioneering period, and has restored the building as faithfully as possible as a fully-fledged art gallery.

Strengthening the Competitiveness of the Capital

A city's competitiveness is made up of many different elements, covering a wide range of aspects, such as language, culture, the size of the city's market, the height of barriers to entering the market, the taxation system, and the existence of an environment that supports both work and life, and so on. Perhaps the thing that is most sought after in the center of a city is the all-encompassing high standard of quality of the area as a stage for advanced knowledge-intensive industries, such as finance, where new value is created through formal and informal exchanges between people, which occurs when there is a critical mass of business people working with a global perspective.

"To be prosperous, a modern nation must have an international business center."

The words at the beginning of this article express a universal theme that is still very true today. The OMY District will continue to develop, to play a role in lifting Tokyo's international competitiveness.