Japanese-American Relations

Following the opening of Japan to trade with the United States in the mid-1800s, a new building typology sprung up in the Asian nation: Western-inspired hotels. Andrea P. Leers, FAIA, a principal at Boston firm Leers Weinzapfel Associates, surveys six of these hotel projects in her new book Welcoming the West: Japan’s Grand Resort Hotels (Jovis, 2018): the Fuji View, the Nikko Kanaya, the Nara, the Biwako, the Gamagori, and the Fujiya (shown). “The story of Japan’s grand resort hotels is the story of the first exuberant contact between a broad spectrum of Western travelers and their Japanese hosts,” Leers writes.