Orizuru Tower

photo by Taisyo · CC BY 3.0

From the 12th floor you launch a paper crane down a 50 m glass wall, 90 m from the Dome.

If you go up to the 12th floor, you fold a paper crane and let it drop inside a glass wall about fifty metres high, all the way to the ground floor. On the roof, the ‘Hiroshima no Oka’ hill is designed specifically for taking the full force of the wind and sitting to look out over the peace park. To come down, you can walk along the external spiral ramp, the ‘sanpo-zaka’, which winds around the building from the roof to the ground floor.

The building opened in 1978 as the offices of Tokyo Marine Fire Insurance (‘Hiroshima Tōkyō Kaijō Bldg.’): eight storeys with a pale beige façade, deliberately designed in a subdued style so that the side facing the Peace Park would have no signs on the roof. In 2010 Hiroshima Mazda bought it and renamed it ‘Hiroshima Mazda Ōtemachi Building’; in 2013 it announced a renovation to bring it up to the 1981 earthquake-resistance standards and chose to rework the existing building rather than demolish it, precisely because it stands in the UNESCO buffer zone of the Genbaku Dome, under a municipal ordinance that restricts the appearance of buildings seen from the park. The architect Sanbuichi Hiroshi began work in December 2014: he stripped off the façade to leave only the structure, reducing the building's weight and improving its earthquake resistance, and covered the walls in greenery. It opened in two stages in 2016 under the new name Orizuru Tower: the 1st floor (café and shop) and the terrace on 11 July, the rest in September. The total cost was about 7 billion yen, all borne by Hiroshima Mazda, with no public funds. Since October 2024 it has been run by a dedicated company, Orizuru Tower Co.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–18:00, with tickets and last entry up to 30 minutes before closing (orizurutower.jp/opening-hours/). Tickets: adults 2,200 yen, junior high/high school students 1,400, elementary school students 900, preschool children aged 4 and over 600; folding and launching your own crane costs 100 yen extra; holders of a hibakusha certificate enter free (100 yen only for the crane); children of elementary school age or younger cannot enter on their own (orizurutower.jp/user-guide/ticket/). The Genbaku Dome-mae tram stop is right in front; 5 minutes' walk from the Hiroshima bus terminal.

🚉 Hiroshima Bus Center · 4 min walk

Sources: orizurutower.jp · orizurutower.jp · orizurutower.jp · ja.wikipedia.org

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