Tokyo Tower


Tokyo Tower, a.k.a. Japan Radio Tower is a communications and observation tower in the district of Shiba-koen in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, completed in 1958. At, it was the tallest tower in Japan until the construction of Tokyo Skytree in 2012. It is a lattice tower inspired by the Eiffel Tower, and is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations.
The tower's main sources of income are antenna leasing and tourism, and its five-story base building FootTown houses a number of restaurants, gift shops, and other attractions. Departing from it, guests can visit two observation decks: the two-story Main Deck at, and the smaller Top Deck at. The tower is repainted every five years, the process itself taking a year to complete.
In 1961, transmission antennas were added. They are used for radio and television broadcasting and now broadcast signals for media outlets such as NHK, TBS Television, and Fuji Television. The height of the tower was not suitable for Japan's planned terrestrial digital broadcasting planned for July 2011, and for the Tokyo area. A taller digital broadcasting tower, known as Tokyo Skytree, was completed on 29 February 2012. Tokyo Tower has become a prominent landmark and frequently appears in media set in Tokyo.

Construction

A large broadcasting tower was needed in the Kantō region after NHK, Japan's public broadcasting station, began television broadcasting in 1953. Private broadcasting companies began operating in the months following the construction of NHK's own transmission tower. This communications boom led the Japanese government to believe that transmission towers would soon be built all over Tokyo, eventually overrunning the city. The proposed solution was the construction of one large tower capable of transmitting to the entire region. Furthermore, because of the country's postwar boom in the 1950s, Japan was searching for a monument to symbolize its national recovery from World War II, as one of the countries most ravaged by the war.
Hisakichi Maeda, founder and president of Nippon Denpatō, the tower's owner and operator, originally planned for the tower to be taller than the Empire State Building, which at was the highest structure in the world at the time. However, the plan fell through because of the lack of both funds and materials. The tower's height was eventually determined by the distance the TV stations needed to transmit throughout the Kantō region, a distance of about.
Tachū Naitō, designer of tall buildings in Japan, was chosen to design the newly proposed tower. Looking to the Western world for inspiration, Naitō based his design on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. With the help of engineering company Nikken Sekkei Ltd., Naitō claimed his design could withstand earthquakes with twice the intensity of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake or typhoons with wind speeds of up to.
The new construction project attracted hundreds of tobi, traditional Japanese construction workers who specialized in the construction of high-rise structures. The Takenaka Corporation broke ground in June 1957 and each day at least 400 laborers worked on the tower. It was constructed of steel, a third of which was scrap metal taken from US tanks damaged in the Korean War. When the -long antenna was bolted into place on 14 October 1958, Tokyo Tower was the tallest freestanding tower in the world, taking the title from the Eiffel Tower by.
Though physically taller than the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Tower weighs about 4,000 tons, 3,300 less than the Eiffel Tower as it is significantly thinner and simpler in construction. It was opened to the public on 23 December 1958 at a final cost of ¥2.8 billion. Tokyo Tower was mortgaged for ¥10 billion in 2000. It was the tallest artificial structure in Japan until April 2012, when it was surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree.
Planned as an antenna for telecommunications and brightly colored in accordance with the time's Aviation Law, the tower's two panoramic observatories are mostly frequented by tourists today. The tower constitutes a clear reference point in the center's skyline, forming a strong landmark, both night and day. The tower is periodically repainted in a process that takes about a year to complete. This traditionally occurred every five years, but the latest painting in 2019 utilized a new, more durable coating that extended the official timetable to seven years, projecting the next painting for 2026.

Functions

Tokyo Tower's two main revenue sources are antenna leasing and tourism. It functions as a radio and television broadcasting antenna support structure and is a tourist destination that houses a variety of attractions. The tower recorded its 190 millionth visitor in 2024. Previously, visitor numbers had steadily declined in the 1990s, bottoming out at 2.3 million in 2000 before rising again.
The first area tourists visit upon reaching the tower is FootTown, a five-story building stationed directly at the base. There, visitors can eat, shop, and enjoy various novelties and attractions. Elevators that depart from the first floor of FootTown can be used to reach the first of two observation decks, the two-story Main Observatory. For the price of another ticket, visitors can board another set of elevators from the second floor of the Main Observatory to reach the final observation deck—the Special Observatory. The names were changed following renovation of the top deck in 2018.

Broadcasting

Tokyo Tower, a member of the World Federation of Great Towers, has been used by many organizations for broadcasting purposes. The structure was intended for broadcasting television, but radio antennas were installed in 1961 because it could accommodate them. While analog and digital television broadcasts are no longer conducted from the site, two FM radio stations remain on Tokyo Tower. Stations that use or have used the tower's antenna include:

Current

Japan employs both analog and digital broadcasting. In July 2011 all television broadcasting was changed to solely digital. Tokyo Tower is not a reliable broadcasting antenna for completely digital broadcasting because the tower is not tall enough to transmit the higher frequency waves to areas surrounded by forests or high-rise buildings. As an alternative, a new tower called the Tokyo Skytree was opened in 2012. In an attempt to make Tokyo Tower more appealing to NHK and the five other commercial broadcasters who planned to move their transmitting stations to the new tower, Nihon Denpatō officials drafted a plan to extend its digital broadcasting antenna by at a cost of approximately ¥4 billion.
As a result of their move to the Skytree, only one digital television station remained on Tokyo Tower: that of the Open University of Japan, whose JOUD-DTV and JOUD-FM continued on the tower until shutting down in 2018. FM radio stations will continue to use the tower for broadcasting in the Tokyo area. Masahiro Kawada, the tower's planning director, raised the possibility of the tower becoming a backup for the Tokyo Skytree, depending on what the TV broadcasters want or need.
The antenna's tip was damaged on 11 March 2011 by the Tōhoku earthquake. On 19 July 2012, Tokyo Tower's height shrank to 315 meters while the top antenna was repaired for damage from the earthquake.

Attractions

As tourism was always one of the tower's intended purposes, its five-story base building opened with a number of attractions in addition to housing elevators for the tower proper. The building was initially advertised as a "modern science museum," with the lower two floors focused on shops and restaurants, and the third and fourth on showrooms for the latest technologies from various electronics and broadcast companies.
With public interests shifting over time, attractions have constantly been renovated or rotated out for new ones, among the more notable:
  • A wax museum on the third floor in 1970, advertised as Japan's first, displaying London-made figures of Leonardo and The Last Supper, John F. Kennedy, Chiune Sugihara, The Beatles and more.
  • An aquarium on the first floor in 1978, offering many exotic fish for both display and sale.
  • A "trick art" gallery on the fourth floor in 1994, dedicated to various forms of Trompe-l'œil and other optical illusion art.
The building's roof leads to the tower's outside stairwell, comprising approximately 660 steps up to the Main Deck; on weekends and holidays only, visitors may use these stairs as an alternative to the tower's internal elevators and earn a certificate for completing the climb. For many years, the roof also held a small playground that offered several simple rides and old-fashioned arcade games, and hosted live performances for children.

FootTown

In 2005, the base building was heavily renovated and renamed FootTown. While a few historical mainstays such as the Tower Restaurant, aquarium, wax museum and trick art gallery survived for a time, many new tenants were added, including a FamilyMart convenience store on the first floor and a Guinness World Records museum and hologram gallery named Gallery DeLux on the third floor. The second-floor food court was also heavily reorganized, and many of the older souvenir shops consolidated into a single area called Tokyo Omiyage Town.
The rooftop playground was also initially retained, albeit incorporated into a larger area known as the "Glass Plaza" meant to better accommodate live performances and FootTown's seasonal beer gardens. In late 2013 the playground was quietly removed; since then, the roof space has continued to host expanded beer gardens as well as a pickleball court.
As of 2026, FootTown's current major tenants include MOS Burger, Baskin-Robbins, Lawson S, and Pizza-La in addition to RED°. Galleries and murals dedicated to the tower's history may also be found on the first and third floors.