Chronicle No. 58 · People
The Hotel Manager Who Hired Frank Lloyd Wright and Lost His Job For It
Aisaku Hayashi staked the Imperial Hotel on an American architect, was forced out before it opened, and was proved right by an earthquake.
Aisaku Hayashi became general manager of Tokyo's Imperial Hotel in 1909, its seventh manager. He was an unusual appointment: before hotels, he had worked for an Oriental art dealer in New York.
That detour decided the building. Hayashi had met Frank Lloyd Wright through Wright's obsession with Japanese woodblock prints, and when the Imperial needed a new home, he went after the American rather than an established Tokyo firm. Wright arrived in 1913 to make preliminary drawings. In 1916 Hayashi travelled to the United States and signed the memorandum awarding him the commission. Wright also designed Hayashi's own Tokyo house, completed in 1917.
Then came the bill.
- The building was due for completion in 1921 and ran badly late
- Costs nearly doubled against the original budget
- Hayashi defended Wright against the board throughout
- In April 1922 the old Imperial burned down in an accidental fire
- Hayashi resigned as manager, before the new hotel ever opened
Wright's Imperial officially opened on 1 September 1923. That was the day of the Great Kanto earthquake, magnitude 7.9.
The building was damaged - a slumped central section, bulged floors, fallen stonework, a kitchen fire - and the legend of its untouched survival is an exaggeration. But it stood while Tokyo burned. It housed the American, British, French and Italian embassies, and in the first four days of relief it fed up to 2,500 people twice daily, free.
Baron Kihachiro Okura cabled Wright the words above.
Hayashi was not there to read them. It is the quiet lesson of every long project in this industry: the person who takes the risk and the person who cuts the ribbon are often not the same person.
“Hotel stands undamaged as a monument of your genius hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service congratulations”
Lesson: The people who commission a hotel's long-term future rarely get to stand in the lobby on opening night.
