A new urban landscape is taking shape directly in front of Tokyo Station’s Yaesu Exit. TOFROM YAESU TOWER, the centerpiece of the large-scale TOFROM YAESU redevelopment, opens on September 10, 2026.

Rising 51 stories above ground and extending four levels below, the approximately 250-meter-tall complex brings together offices, retail, a theater and conference facilities, a bus terminal, medical facilities, and more.

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Calling it a new landmark for the area around Tokyo Station conveys the scale of the project. Yet walking through the building, what stands out just as much is something almost opposite in character: the fine-grained texture of the city.

There are passageways that evoke alleys, storefronts that face outward toward the street, and businesses with long histories in the neighborhood returning to the area. Throughout the complex, artworks also trace layers of time and memory accumulated in Yaesu.

Rather than creating an entirely new district from scratch, TOFROM YAESU seeks to reinterpret what was already there and reconnect it with the contemporary city.

Preserving the Scale of Yaesu’s Alleys Within a Massive Development

Before redevelopment, Yaesu 1-chome was characterized by a dense mix of small-scale buildings, restaurants, and narrow alleyways—some scarcely wide enough for a single person to pass through.

Around 250 rights holders were involved in the project, which took roughly a quarter of a century to bring to completion. The concept behind the development is “connecting people, time, and place.” The name TOFROM itself combines “TO YAESU” and “FROM YAESU.”

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That philosophy is expressed most clearly in the architecture of the lower levels.

Historically, Yaesu developed through a mixture of businesses of different scales and types, each presenting its own face to the street and collectively creating the area’s distinctive sense of neighborhood.

At TOFROM YAESU, many stores are therefore positioned to face outward toward the city rather than drawing visitors inside and circulating them entirely within the building, as is common in large commercial complexes. The facade uses an irregular composition of protrusions, recesses, and gaps in a stacked-box design that recalls the small buildings once clustered throughout the neighborhood.

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Staircases and escalators also provide direct access from the street to the second floor. Storefronts are given a degree of design freedom, allowing individual shops to present distinct identities toward the surrounding streets.

Rather than treating the base of a skyscraper as one enormous enclosed shopping complex, the design reinterprets the former streetscape of small, independent businesses through architectural scale and circulation.

Walking Through the Building Without Interrupting the Flow of the City

Another defining feature is that visitors can move directly through the building itself.

Three passageways connect four major surrounding streets—Yaesu-dori, Yaesu Naka-dori, Sotobori-dori, and Sakura-dori. Instead of allowing a massive development to cut across existing urban movement, the building incorporates pedestrian routes within it, extending the flow of people from Tokyo Station toward Yaesu, Nihombashi, and Kyobashi.

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At the center of this network is Himonocho Square, an approximately 1,200-square-meter space named after Himonocho, a former neighborhood name within the redevelopment area.

Furniture incorporating Japanese cypress has been installed throughout the square, while a mikoshi associated with the local Himonocho community and carried during the Sanno Festival will be permanently displayed there.

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Redevelopment inevitably changes the physical form of a city. Yet rather than erasing elements that once shaped the place—its streets, former neighborhood names, and festivals—TOFROM YAESU incorporates them into its new architecture in different forms.

Its design offers one possible model for how cities can be renewed without losing all traces of what came before.

A Food District of 68 Restaurants and Shops, With Long-Established Names Returning to Yaesu

The commercial zone, TOFROM YAESU Shop & Restaurant, brings together a total of 68 tenants, primarily food and beverage businesses, across approximately 6,000 square meters spanning the underground and above-ground levels of TOFROM YAESU THE FRONT and TOFROM YAESU TOWER.

As of September 10, 55 stores inside the TOWER are scheduled to open, with the remaining tenants, including those in TOFROM YAESU THE FRONT, opening in stages from winter 2026 onward.

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The concept is “Connecting individuality to create something new.”

Rather than assembling only the latest fashionable restaurants, the project seeks to reinterpret Yaesu’s alley culture and the lively atmosphere of its merchant community for the present day.

Central to that idea are businesses that have preserved the flavors of Yaesu and its surrounding districts for generations.

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Kappo Shimamura, with a history spanning more than 170 years, serves its Bakumatsu Kaiseki, a multi-course meal recreated from recipes dating to around the 1850s in the final years of the Edo period.

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Founded in 1902, Yaesu Nihombashi Yabukyu is a long-established soba restaurant known for noodles made using a traditional foot-kneading method passed down since its founding, together with a richly flavored broth made from honkarebushi dried bonito.

Its signature curry nanban soba now becomes part of the new Yaesu streetscape.

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Mixology salon, meanwhile, is led by mixologist Shuzo Nagumo. Its first location, opened in 2009, originally stood within the very area now occupied by the redevelopment.

Built around tea cocktails using Japanese ingredients such as matcha and gyokuro, the bar now returns to the place where it began.

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The idea is neither to preserve only old establishments nor to replace them entirely with new ones.

By placing flavors long rooted in Yaesu alongside restaurants that may shape the next generation of Tokyo’s food culture, the development gives form to its theme of “Tokyo Yaesu: New & Classic”

A Mermaid Story by Shunji Iwai Traces the Memory of Yaesu Through Art

Another highlight is the public art installed throughout the complex.

TOFROM YAESU TOWER ART: Ningyo no Machi (Mermaid City) begins with an original story written by filmmaker Shunji Iwai and set in Yaesu. Eight groups of artists then created works inspired by that narrative, with eight pieces distributed from the underground bus terminal level through the fourth floor.

Together, they are loosely connected through a single story, turning the building into a space where visitors encounter different layers of Yaesu through art.

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The mermaid motif is not treated merely as fantasy.

Although Yaesu is now defined by high-rise buildings, the area retains memories of a waterside landscape, including former seas, rivers, and the outer moat of Edo Castle.

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Installed on the first floor of TOFROM YAESU THE FRONT, Hiroto Kobayashi’s Fumon uses stainless-steel panels that move with the wind, creating shifting reflections reminiscent of rippling water.

The work connects Yaesu’s former waterside landscape—including the sea, Momijigawa River, and the outer moat of Edo Castle—with the image of a city that continues to transform over time.

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Tomohiro Kato’s Anonymous-human #68: The Veiled, installed on the third-floor Sakura-dori Terrace, is a sculptural interpretation of a mermaid composed of overlapping steel outlines set at the center of a reflecting pool.

Inspired by how mermaid legends have changed across different eras and regions, the work avoids presenting a single definitive figure. Instead, its layered structure shifts in appearance depending on the viewer’s position, allowing different stories and memories to emerge within the same form.

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MULTISTANDARD’s loading reworks standardized concrete blocks—materials that ordinarily support urban construction—into functional art furniture that visitors can sit on.

By cutting, recombining, and assigning new purposes to these materials, the work reconsiders the constantly changing city of Yaesu through the act of material reinterpretation.

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Viewed in sequence, the artworks turn the act of looking at art into an experience of moving through the building and tracing the memories embedded in Yaesu.

Building Something New, and Rebuilding the City

Large-scale redevelopment is continuing around Tokyo Station.

Within that wider transformation, TOFROM YAESU points to a kind of urban value that cannot be measured simply in building height, floor area, or the number of new tenants.

A former streetscape of small buildings is translated into a stacked-box architectural language. Circulation is designed so that people can move from the city into individual shops much as they would along an alley. Surrounding streets are reconnected through the building. Former neighborhood names and local festivals are carried forward. Long-established restaurants return to newly built spaces, while new businesses join them. Memories of water and people are made visible through art.

The physical landscape changes dramatically, but the elements that once gave the neighborhood its identity are not entirely erased.

“TO YAESU” and “FROM YAESU.”

People, objects, and culture arrive in Yaesu, intersect here, and then move outward again.

That sense of movement embedded in the name TOFROM is expressed not only in the branding of the development, but also in the way its architecture attempts to connect city and building, past and present.