Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Ephemera for Lunch #23:
Hakone Kanko Hotel


On the heels of yesterday's Hotel Minaguchi-Ya luggage tag, here is another piece of hotel ephemera from my great-grandmother's trip to Japan in the 1960s.

This one is for the Hakone Kanko Hotel in Hakone National Park.1 Hakone is a beautiful town that thrives primarily on its tourist and hot-springs industries. This time of year, tourists might travel there to see the Miscanthus sinensis (pictured at right) in its autumn bloom.2

I cannot determine whether the Hakone Kanko Hotel is still in existence.3 I might need some assistance from someone in Papergreat's Tokyo Bureau on that matter. But I was able to discover these tidbits...

  • It was designed in 1961 by the architectural firm of Yamashita Sekkei.
  • Its offerings, according to an old advertisement I found on Flickr, included "new modern comfortably furnished rooms each with a scenic view," "large new swimming pool," and "excellent Western and Japanese food which makes you wish for second helpings."
  • In November 1961, the Hakone Kanko Hotel was host to a secret meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Japan Foreign Minister Zentaro Kosaka. The uncomfortable topic was the stationing of tactical missiles on the U.S. military base in Okinawa. The meeting is detailed in a 2012 article in The Japan Times by Jon Mitchell.
  • In October 1986, the hotel hosted "Microclusters: Proceedings of the First NEC Symposium on Fundamental Approaches to New Material Phases."4

BONUS

Here's one more of my great-grandmother's luggage stickers, from a different hotel in Hakone...


Footnotes
1. Hakone National Park is officially known as Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.
2. In North America, however, Miscanthus sinensis is considered an invasive species.
3. I did, however, discover something called the Funspace Ashinoko Camp Mura Lake-Side Villa.
4. At the Microclusters symposium, "about 40 partic­ipants stayed together at the symposium sites during this period. They enjoyed intense and wide-ranging discussions in a conference room facing Mt. Fuji and the beautiful lake Ashinoko extending from the foot of the slope in the old crater." There's a whole eBook about it for just $69.99.

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