It is rare for a hotel—operating in real life, not fictional—to occupy the public imagination as something bigger than just a hotel. I can think of only a few: The Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles for its ghosts of Hollywood past and gadabouts of Hollywood present. The Plaza in New York City for its children’s book association. The Four Seasons outposts at which The White Lotus’s various dramas have unfolded (this example is slightly different, however, as the series never actually discloses the Four Seasons brand by name, though it is fairly common knowledge that the alignment exists).
And then, there’s the Park Hyatt Tokyo, which reopened last week after a 19-month closure to undergo a very thoughtful, daresay cautious, renovation.
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Housed atop the Shinjuku Park Tower—designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Kenzo Tange and originally launched in 1994—the hotel was telegraphed into pop culture’s circuitry in 2003 thanks to Sofia Coppola’s cult-status film Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. So resolutely did (and do) the movie and its visuals echo through the zeitgeist—the magnetic entrancement of Tokyo’s endless blinking sprawl, the angular and monolithic aesthetic glamour of the city’s early tech boomtown-core, the slightly adrenal ennui of passing time in a hyper-foreign place—that, when Park Hyatt Tokyo’s Chief Concierge Adrian Fautt is asked if the movie still looms large, he replies, bluntly, “The answer is yes. I mean, I get it all the time. Go up to the New York Bar, and people ask, ‘Were they sitting here?’ Show them the room [Scarlett’s character was in], take a picture on the window ledge. It’s all the time.”
“Many people bring up that movie, and Tokyo, and the Park Hyatt to me,” says Coppola in a written note. “It’s a place I love, so I’m glad I could share it, and I will always appreciate how helpful they were to me during filming.” (Fautt, who has worked at the hotel since its pre-opening days, remembers that the Lost In Translation crew could film only in the afterhours—something like 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.—and that he’d often find Bill Murray resting on a settee on the 41st floor lobby).
Coppola added a separate but key point in our email conversation: “I was hoping they didn’t change the look of [the hotel during the renovation.] It has a quiet sophistication to me. When I went in the 1990s, I had never seen a place like that. It feels like an elegant blend of the East and the West.”
She and the hotel’s legions of other fans (myself included) can rest assured that very little feels immediately different. This was essential to the team; Fautt even goes so far as to say the update is more of a soft “renewal” versus a major overhaul. In public spaces, carpet colors remain similar to how they were before, including a famous cool-toned green—selected by the hotel’s first designer John Morford—that has become one of the property’s visual hallmarks. As is the woodwork, the art (some of it has been shifted to different locations), and the overall low-lit anterooms and hallways that give way to cinematic light-filled squares and pyramidical atriums, with windows overlooking the dense urban sprawl below, all the way out to the majestic Mount Fuji.
“For a project like this, the design challenge [was] like walking a tightrope,” said Patrick Jouin of Studio Jouin Manku, the firm tasked with the Park Hyatt Tokyo’s update, in a statement. “Do too much, and you risk disrespecting the past.”
The biggest differences lie in the rooms themselves. Where once there were freestanding bathtubs and mostly right-angled finishes, lines have been smoothed and curved, bathrooms self-contained, and headboards lengthened and updated with a kind of clay-hued leather. The restraint and understatement are still very present, though. Sanjit Manku, Jouin’s professional partner, echos Coppola’s sentiment: “In a city as vibrant as Tokyo, silence itself can be a form of luxury. The hotel has always embodied a quiet strength. Our goal was to rekindle its warmth… while preserving its iconic character for the next 30 years.”
There have also been some notable service updates. “Afternoon tea remains extremely popular at the Peak Lounge,” says Takuya Ozawa, executive sous chef (who, like Fautt, has been with the Park Hyatt Tokyo since the very beginning). “But with this reopening, we have completely refreshed the presentation, now serving individual portions on beautiful white Arita porcelain.”
A final note: Even if you’re not overnighting, the Park Hyatt Tokyo is worth visiting for its own crown jewel, the New York Grill Bar, which is tucked atop the Shinjuku Park Tower’s highest tier. From its 52nd-floor vantage point and surrounded by Valerio Adami’s colorful murals, it is one of Tokyo’s most recognized venues. That might suggest it would be overrun by tourists, but the hotel does an excellent job of limiting crowds. It’s always comfortable as jazz tinkles through the vaulted rooms and the sky dims outside in all directions.
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On reopening evening, the energy felt fresh, yet the martinis were just as cold and the wagyu sliders just as tender as on any other night over the past three decades. And that, ultimately, is exactly how it’s meant to be.