In truth, it wasn’t just dedication to authenticity that kept me awake but excitement at returning, after more than two years of closed borders – Japan’s coronavirus restrictions were stringent. I was overwhelmed to be back, having lived in Tokyo as a child in the late 1980s, during the infamous “bubble era” when the country was a superpower. As much of Japan’s infrastructure was built then, to me, Tokyo feels like stepping into a futuristic fantasy as imagined in the 1980s, the future in stasis.
View from Scarlett Johansson’s character’s room at the Park Hyatt TokyoJohny Pitts
The Park Hyatt embodies this. Designed by Pritzker Prize winner Kenzo Tange, the Shinjuku Park Tower – a complex covering an astonishing 2,842,000 square feet, within which the Park Hyatt occupies the 39th to 52nd floors – began construction in 1990, during the bubble era, and wasn’t completed until 1994, after the bubble had burst. Tange acknowledged that the building might be the last of the bubble-era projects, with Murata adding that the Park Hyatt had never been renovated, its decor remaining the same as in 2003, when the film was released (and for that matter, in 1994, when the hotel opened).
