Tokyo

Tokyo Tower

Sixty-eight years old, 333 metres, and still the better photograph of the city's two towers. Where to shoot it from, what the paint is for, and why the newer one wins on views and loses on everything else.

Tokyo Tower went up in 1958 as a broadcast mast, thirteen metres taller than the Eiffel Tower it was modelled on, and built partly from the scrap of American tanks left over from the Korean War. It has been superseded as a transmitter, out-measured by the Skytree, and surrounded by buildings almost as tall as its main deck.

It is still the better photograph, for one reason: it is orange, and the city around it is not.

At a glance

Height: 333m, finished 1958. Main deck at 150m, top deck at 250m
The paint: International orange and white, required for aviation. Repainted about every five years
Lit until: Around midnight, with the colour changing by season
Best views of it: Shiba park, the temple forecourt, and the streets to the north-east
Getting there: Akabanebashi, Kamiyacho or Onarimon stations, all 5–7 minutes' walk

Shoot it from underneath

The orange steel lattice of Tokyo Tower seen from directly below against a blue sky — October. From the base, the structure becomes an abstraction — which is the only way to photograph it without the surrounding offices.Minato, Tokyo · September 2023

Close view of the tower's painted steel lattice and cross-bracing — The orange is specified by aviation rules, not by design. It is repainted over about a year, section by section.Minato, Tokyo · September 2023

The classic wide shot from across the city puts the tower against a wall of grey offices. From directly beneath it, the lattice reads as pattern, and the only competition is the sky.

Then from the park

Tokyo Tower rising above trees and open lawn — Shiba park, immediately below the tower. The one patch of ground near it with trees in front and nothing behind.Shiba, Tokyo · September 2023

The tower seen through dense green foliage — Foreground first: a branch, a gate, a roofline. The tower is a strong enough shape to survive being half hidden.Minato, Tokyo · September 2023

The temple grounds on the north side give you the other standard view — a seventeenth-century gate with a steel tower behind it, which is the single most reproduced image of modern Tokyo and still works.

At night it changes colour

Tokyo Tower lit warm orange at night above city buildings — The standard winter lighting is warm orange; summer runs cooler and whiter. Special colours mark events.Minato, Tokyo

The tower is lit from below until around midnight, and the scheme changes with the season — warmer in winter, cooler in summer, and occasionally a single colour for a campaign. The warm version photographs best against a blue sky in the twenty minutes after sunset.

Is the deck worth paying for?

The main deck at 150 metres costs about the price of a cinema ticket and gives you a view hemmed in by nearby buildings; the top deck at 250 metres costs considerably more and is a guided slot.

The honest answer: pay to go up the Skytree if you want the view, and photograph Tokyo Tower if you want the photograph. The one thing the Tokyo Tower deck has that the Skytree does not is the glass floor panels at your feet, and the stairs — six hundred-odd steps you can climb in daylight, which is free with the main-deck ticket and is the best thing about the building.