Yabu Pushelberg has finished a hotel on the upper floors of a thirty-storey tower in Takanawa Gateway. From the bath, Tokyo Tower sits at the window. Forty floors below, the trains make no sound.
The omakase counter, JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo, with Rainbow Bridge at night beyond the glass
The JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo opened on the second of October. Yabu Pushelberg drew the interiors. The brand's first Japanese property sits two hundred miles south in Nara, six storeys, low and quiet, a hotel for the deer park. This one occupies floors twenty-three to thirty of THE LINKPILLAR 1 SOUTH. Two hundred rooms. Tokyo Bay on one side, the railyards and Tokyo Tower on the other.
The opening drew Anthony Capuano in person on the twenty-third. Marriott's third Japanese debut in eighteen months. The deeper signal sits with the developer: JR East, the rail company, putting a flagship luxury house on top of its first new Yamanote Line station in fifty years.
The site
Takanawa Gateway opened in 2020 and the district built around it is still rising. Office towers, residential blocks, dining and retail, the Kengo Kuma Museum of Narratives that opened in March. Robots clean the corridors and ferry deliveries. Shinkansen runs through Shinagawa one stop away. The next-generation Maglev terminus is going up two minutes from the door, eventually linking Tokyo to Osaka in around an hour.
The neighbourhood reads, on first arrival, as a vision of how Tokyo plans to behave for the next thirty years. Elevated walkways, no cars, the quiet hum of automation. The hotel sits on top of all of it, on floors twenty-three through thirty of one of three new towers.
Inside
Yabu Pushelberg took the brief from Zen philosophy and classical Japanese minimalism. The lobby on the upper floor is dim, low-ceilinged, panelled in dark wood. Warm copper finishes catch the light from a Lasvit glass installation overhead. A fireplace runs along one wall. A custom Flamingo Estate scent moves through the air. The city below disappears at the lift door.
An Executive Suite, JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo, with Rainbow Bridge beyond the bay windows
Two hundred guest rooms run between the twenty-third and twenty-eighth floors. Twelve room types. The Urban Deluxe King at the lower end, forty-three square metres. The Presidential Suite at the upper end, two hundred and thirty-five. Bathtubs sit at the window. The view is sliced clean by the building's edges. The soundproofing is total: trains rush past forty floors below, through the JR yards and out toward Yokohama, in complete silence.
The bath sits at the window. Trains rush past forty floors below in complete silence.
Juliette MarchandUp high
On the twenty-seventh floor, the Executive Lounge serves seasonal small plates and a tea cart. On twenty-eight and twenty-nine, nine banquet rooms. The JW Ballroom holds four hundred guests against a curved LED screen that wraps two hundred and seventy degrees. Below them, the indoor pool runs the length of the building's west face. Tokyo Tower sits at the level of the lap line. On a clear morning Mount Fuji is visible past it.
The indoor pool, JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo, with Tokyo Tower at dusk
Seven restaurants and bars in total. A kaiseki house. A modern Mediterranean room. A croissant bar that has already drawn a small queue at half past seven in the morning. A spa, a twenty-four-hour gym. The plates, the rooms, the service all aim at the same thing: a guest who has flown in for work and would like to behave, for a few days, as though they have not.
The Mindful wing
Added in December, the Mindful Rooms and Suites sit on the same floor as the spa. Guests bypass reception entirely and go straight to the room. No check-in counter, no lobby cross-traffic, no waiting. The thinking is recovery: avoid the people in the lobby, sleep, swim, leave. Seventy percent of bookings since opening have come from overseas, primarily the United States. The Mindful wing is built around those guests and their flights.
The verdict
The Park Hyatt has the romance. The Aman has the silence. The Mandarin Oriental has the view across to every other tall building in the city. The JW Marriott Takanawa has the trains, the bay, the mountain in the distance, and a hotel built around the idea that for a few days the right thing to do is sit in the bath and watch them go past.
Book the bay side. Book the Mindful wing if the flight has been long. Stay above the city.
The JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo opened on 2 October 2025 and is the brand's second property in Japan. Standard rates from approximately ¥125,000 per night. Mindful Rooms and Suites launched December 2025. Book through marriott.com.
Photography courtesy of JW Marriott Hotel Tokyo, via Wallpaper*