This is the Meguro Emperor, Japan’s all-time most famous love hotel. When it opened in 1973, it was the Cadillac of love hotels. Designed by the famous architect Yasuhisa Kurosaka, it was a monument to 1970s kitsch, and its fairy tale castle exterior became something of a touists attraction. The hotel’s 30 rooms featured a gondola, playground slides, and all manner of vibrating, rotating, and gyrating beds.
The boom quickly ended, though, and it was bought out by another company, and renamed the Meguro Club Sekitei. I was surprised to see that it has changed its name back to the Meguro Emperor. Unfortunately, they haven’t brought back the gondola beds.
There’s more information about the Meguro Emperor and other love hotels in my new book, Love Hotels: An Inside Look at Japan’s Sexual Playgrounds. I spent years visiting love hotels around Japan, interviewing love hotel designers, owners and staff, and wading through Japanese books on sex and love hotels to bring you this book.
It’s 182 pages of information about their history, the people who design and operate them, their place in Japanese society, crime, and much, much more. There’s also a love hotel guide with information on how to get to the best hotels in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama, Sapporo, and Fukuoka.
For more information about love hotels, please visit my newly updated love hotel page at: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotels.html
To order or find out more about the book, please visit: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotelbookintro.htm. There’s also a smaller guidebook, with just the hotel information for 500 yen: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotelguide.html.
There are more love hotel-related posts here.
March 4, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I heard about those love hotels. Interesting stuff.