This mini article was first published Sept. 19, 2020 on Wayfarer Daves Facebook. These will not be replacing regular full-length articles but may supplement from time to time on off weeks.
I was watching the 1987 Haikara-san ga Tooru (“Here Comes Miss Modern”) and noticed a familiar mansion in the opening credits background. The story is about a “modern” Tokyo girl in Taisho-era (1912-1926) Japan but in order to recreate that old Tokyo they filmed in Kyoto. This restaurant next to Maruyama Park (it has the Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro statue) is Chourakukan. It was built in 1909 as a villa for tobacco king Yoshibei Murai, who produced Japan’s first double-cut cigarettes in 1891. Murai hosted many influential and powerful guests here including prime ministers, genro (the oligarchy who ran Meiji-era Japan), Japanese, British, Korean and Russian royalty, and a former American vice president.
It was designed by Harvard-educated American architect and James McDonald (J.M.) Gardiner. Gardiner is best known for building churches, including Kyoto’s St. John’s Church, now preserved at Meiji-mura. It became a Tangible Cultural Property in 1986.
Today it is a wedding venue, hotel, restaurant, café and bar. Very elegant and evoking of the times, I’ve been told its worth visiting. I only went past it once in 2018 and took some photos of the exterior because it looked old and interesting.
And if the girl in the image looks familiar, it’s Minamino Yoko again. (See the Sukeban Deka II Yokohama Then and Now) She was the heroine of Sukeban Deka II and made this film a year after that show ended.
