Tokyo Skytree — observation tower
Image by cegoh from Pixabay

Tokyo Skytree

  • 2 min read
  • 35.710° N 139.811° E

Interesting facts

  • The name Tokyo Skytree was picked by a nationwide public vote in 2008, winning about 30 percent of roughly 110,000 ballots cast.
  • The tower was originally planned at 610 metres; in October 2009 the design height was raised to the present 634 metres.
  • At ground level the tower's cross-section is an equilateral triangle, which gradually morphs into a circle higher up the shaft.
  • While still under construction it overtook Taipei 101 in December 2010 and then the 600-metre Canton Tower in March 2011.
  • The tower was completed on 29 February 2012, a leap day, at a cost of about 65 billion yen.
  • About 1.6 million people visited in its first week, and tickets for the ascent were booked out for the first two months.
  • Snow and ice sliding off the tower in winter storms have damaged nearby roofs, once punching a hole straight through a house.
  • Thirteen elevators serve the tower, and the upper observatory at 450 metres can hold about 900 people at once.
  • The mast carries the digital television signals of all the major Tokyo broadcasters, from NHK to TV Tokyo, along with several FM radio stations.
  • For the tower's tenth anniversary in 2022, the kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizō XI gave a performance to celebrate it.

Why it is worth it

Tokyo Skytree is the tallest tower in the world, a 634 m lattice of steel that Guinness World Records certified in 2011 as the tallest free-standing tower; among all structures, only the Burj Khalifa and Merdeka 118 are taller. It was built by Tobu Railway with a group of six broadcasters led by NHK, because the older Tokyo Tower, hemmed in by high-rises, could no longer send digital television signals across the whole Kanto region. The architects were Nikken Sekkei and the main contractor Obayashi. Construction started in July 2008, the tower reached full height on 18 March 2011, a week after the Tohoku earthquake, and it opened to the public on 22 May 2012. The height was chosen as a pun: read in Japanese, the digits 6, 3 and 4 spell Musashi, the old name of the province around Tokyo.

The form changes as it rises: a three-legged base gives way to a cylinder from about 350 m upwards. Its colour, officially Skytree White, is based on aijiro, a traditional pale indigo-white, and at night LED lighting alternates between Iki, a pale sky blue, and Miyabi, a deep purple. In a city that expects earthquakes, the tower is built around a central shaft of reinforced concrete that is tied to the steel frame only for the first 125 m; above that, oil dampers connect the two, and a tuned mass damper moves out of step with the structure to keep its centre of gravity steady. The designers say the system can absorb half the energy of a quake.

Visitors ride lifts to two observatories. The lower one at 350 m holds up to 2,000 people and has a section of glass floor looking straight down to the streets. From there a second lift climbs to the Tembo Galleria at 450 m, a glass-covered skywalk spiralling up the last five metres to the highest point open to the public. At the foot of the tower, the Tokyo Solamachi complex holds shops, restaurants and the Sumida Aquarium.

Getting there

Skytree stands in Sumida ward, about 7 km north-east of Tokyo Station and about 1.6 km from Asakusa. Trains stop at Tokyo Skytree Station, next to the tower, and at Oshiage Station, about 200 m away. Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND) is about 18 km away and Narita (NRT) about 53 km.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

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From the encyclopaedia

Tokyo Skytree , a.k.a Tokyo Sky Tree, is a broadcasting and observation tower, located in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan. It has been the tallest tower in Japan since opening in 2012, and reached its full height of 634 metres in early 2011, making it the tallest tower in the world, displacing the Canton Tower, and the third tallest structure in the world behind Merdeka 118 and Burj Khalifa.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

35.71006, 139.81072per Wikidata