Photo/Illutration The Ginza Sony Park building stands on a corner of the Sukiyabashi intersection in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward on Sept. 12. (Koichi Ueda)

When Sony executives met in 2012 to discuss replacing the Sony Building in the heart of Tokyo’s Ginza district, the consensus was for a standard high-rise building. 

But Daisuke Nagano, who attended the meeting as a staff member supporting the company’s president, remained unconvinced. 

He felt that the proposal lacked the challenging spirit that Sony had in its early days.

After the meeting, Nagano asked then-Sony President Kazuo Hirai to re-examine the project, saying that he wasn’t sure the idea was worth putting into practice.

His advice was accepted and Nagano was appointed as the leader of a team to revise the project.

Today, Nagano’s bold suggestion for something that reflected Sony’s spirit has become a reality. 

Standing on the corner of the Sukiyabashi intersection in the posh Ginza in Chuo Ward, the new Ginza Sony Park building is particularly eye-catching for its modern-looking, bare concrete exterior.

The 34-meter-tall, five-story structure, which opened in January, is only about half the height of surrounding buildings.

But it boasts a significant presence.

Built by Sony Group Corp., it is themed on a “vertical park.”

The building houses event spaces on the third and fourth floors and also on the second basement floor, while restaurants are located on the third basement floor.

With all the other spaces open to the public, in principle, Ginza Sony Park bustles with people strolling around the building during the day while it is also used as a rest space and a meeting spot.

“We placed importance on ‘margins’ in the designing stage and aimed for a space like no other in central Tokyo,” said Nagano, 55, who is president of the operating company.

Before its construction, the Sony Building stood on the same location.

Designed by architect Yoshinobu Ashihara at the request of Akio Morita, one of the founders of Sony Corp., it served as an information hub for the electronics giant equipped with a showroom for its products.

The facility was open to the public as there was an open space in one corner of the premises facing the intersection, which Morita called “the garden of Ginza.”

A turning point came nearly 50 years after the Sony Building was built.

During the 2012 meeting, the proposal to build a replacement high-rise building seemed reasonable from the perspective of economic rationality because it stood on a prime location in the heart of Tokyo, allowing Sony to make profits from rents.

Located almost in the middle of Tokyo’s 23 wards, Chuo Ward is home to Nihonbashi, Tsukiji and other major commercial districts.

With many apartment complexes being built in the waterfront area, the ward had the highest population growth rate among cities and wards nationwide at 5.98 percent in 2024.

After the project was revised, Nagano’s team continued holding discussions that included outside experts to explore ways for the new building to retain Morita’s ideal.

The members went to great lengths to live up to the founder’s legacy.

After the old building was dismantled, the company offered the vacant lot to the public for three years and collected feedback from visitors to refine the redevelopment project.

Sony sold its old headquarters office building in the Gotenyama area of Shinagawa Ward, which is said to be its birthplace, and other facilities due to financial difficulties.

But after many years of twists and turns, the founder’s spirit still lingers in the Ginza.

(This story was written by Makoto Tsuchiya and Koichi Ueda.)

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