is the

diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually denotes ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It is located at 2520 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., in the

Embassy Row Embassy Row is the informal name for a section of Northwest Washington, D.C., with a high concentration of embassies, diplomatic missions, and diplomatic residences. It spans Massachusetts Avenue N.W. between 18th and 35th street, bounded ...

neighborhood. In addition to serving as Japan's diplomatic mission in the United States, the embassy provides Japanese consular services to residents of the

District of Columbia Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, and

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

Ambassador

The incumbent Ambassador of Japan to the United States is Shigeo Yamada. Past Ambassadors include Kenichirō Sasae, who presented his credentials in November 2012, and Ichirō Fujisaki, who served as ambassador from 2008 to October 2012. The ambassador lives at 4000 Nebraska Avenue NW. The home, which sits on eight acres in the

American University Park American University Park is a Neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Washington, D.C., named for American University. AU Park, as it is often abbreviated, is situated against the Maryland border in the Northwest, Washington, D.C., No ...

neighborhood of northwest Washington, D.C., was designed by Japanese architect Isoya Yoshida and completed in 1977 at a cost of $12 million ($50.85 million in 2022).

About the building

The embassy was designed by the U.S. firm of Delano & Aldrich (one of whose principals was William Adams Delano, a distant relative of President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

Emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Hirohito , Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...

allegedly approved the design personally. The United States Commission of Fine Arts approved the design of the building on September 16, 1930. Erected in 1931, the building is in the

Georgian Revival Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover, George I, George II, Ge ...

architectural style, with subtle elements of

Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors ('' fusuma'') and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space ...

.''Washington, D.C.'', p. 209.Field, Gournay, and Somma, p. 139-140."Japanese Embassy." HABS No. DC-264. Historic American Buildings Survey. Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. National Park Service. Department of Interior. 1971, p. 1.
Accessed 2013-06-18. As originally designed, the embassy consisted of the ambassador's residence, two chancery buildings with strong Japanese architectural influence, a tea house, and tennis, gym, and other recreational facilities. The embassy features a cobblestone courtyard and driveway in front of the building. The original embassy building is now known as the Old Ambassador's Residence, and is located at 2516 Massachusetts Avenue NW. The original embassy and the two chancery buildings are two-and-a-half stories in height, with two underground levels. The total building height is about . The chancery buildings, which front onto Massachusetts Avenue NW, are about wide. The grounds were landscaped to complement

Rock Creek Park Rock Creek Park is a large urban park that bisects the Northwest, Washington, D.C., Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. Created by Act of Congress in 1890, the park comprises 1,754 acres (2.74 mi2, 7.10 km2), generally along Rock Cr ...

, which abuts the rear of the embassy grounds. As of 1971, the Japanese Embassy was one of the few remaining formal estates in the city. The total cost of construction was $500,000. Following the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Territory of ...

in December 1941, the embassy was seized by the United States government and re-purposed to house the Far Eastern Commission. The embassy was returned to Japanese control in April 1952. In 1959, then-Ambassador Koichiro Asagai and Tatsunosuke Takasaki, a member of the House of Representatives of the

National Diet , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

, proposed creating a replica of the rock garden at Ryōan-ji at the Japanese embassy. Constructed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese embassy to the United States, the scaled-down garden was finished in 1960. A small teahouse named Ippakutei (the "Teahouse of 100 Years"), built in the style found at the

Katsura Imperial Villa The is an Imperial residence with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan. Located on the western bank of the Katsura River in Katsura, Nishikyō-ku, the Villa is 8km distant from the main Kyoto Imperial P ...

, is in back of the rock garden. The Japanese Embassy was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on February 20, 1973.

Chancery

A stark,

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

chancery building (the offices of an embassy) was completed in 1986. The chancery was built after Congress passed the Foreign Missions Act in 1982, which made it easier for embassies in the District of Columbia to expand their chanceries.Mariano, Ann. "State Department, City Clash Over Zoning Rules For Japanese Chancery." ''Washington Post.'' February 19, 1983. Oddly, the new law significantly delayed construction of the chancery. The federal government lagged in promulgating regulations for the approval of chanceries, which meant that the chancery had to be approved by the District of Columbia Zoning Commission instead. But by the time the matter arose before the Zoning Commission in February 1983, the city was already in a multi-year process to revise its zoning regulations. The delay imperiled the funding provided by the Japanese government for the new building. Under intense pressure from the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...

as well as the Japanese and Saudi Arabian governments (both of which wanted to build new chanceries immediately), the city enacted emergency zoning regulations on April 12, 1983.Mariano, Ann. "District Passes Emergency Zoning Regulations." ''Washington Post.'' April 13, 1983. Construction of the chancery was approved on June 10.Mariano, Ann. "Japanese Get District Approval To Begin Expansion of Embassy." ''Washington Post.'' June 11, 1983. It was designed by architect Robert B. Anderson of the Benham Group. The local Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the Sheridan-Kalorama Neighborhood Council applauded the design for "retaining the historical aspects" of the embassy compound. The project consolidated chancery offices from two rented buildings elsewhere in the District into a single structure on the embassy grounds. The chancery has 250 underground parking spaces, and a tunnel from Waterside Drive lead to the underground parking garage (providing a more secure entry for important diplomats or visitors).

Events

President

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...

visited the embassy on June 16, 1980, and on March 17, 2011, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

visited the embassy to express condolences over the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011, at 14:46:24 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46:24 UTC), a 9.0–9.1 Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region. It lasted approx ...

. President

Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...

visited the embassy in July 2022, after the Assassination of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe to pay respect and tribute.

Programs

The Washington Japanese Language School (ワシントン日本語学校 ''Washington Nihongo Gakkō''), a supplementary school for Japanese children subsidized by the Japanese government, was first established in 1958, with classes held in the basement.
Clipping
from

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...

. , the school offices are in Maryland and classes are held at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Located just northwest of Washington, D.C., it is a major business and government center of the Washington metropolitan region ...

References

Bibliography

*Federal Writers' Project. ''Washington City and Capital.'' Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937. *Field, Cynthia R.; Gournay, Isabelle; and Somma, Thomas P. ''Paris on the Potomac: The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.'' Athens, Ga.: United States Capitol Historical Society, 2007. *Salmi, Noelle. ''Frommer's San Francisco Day by Day.'' Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. *Yamada, Shoji. ''Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. *''Washington, D.C.'' Greenville, SC: Michelin Travel Publications, 2001.

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Sheridan-Kalorama Historic District Historic district contributing properties in Washington, D.C. Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Japan–United States relations Japanese-American culture in Washington, D.C.