Elevators were quietly going up and down in the large atrium of the Marunouchi Building

The Marunouchi Building located in Marunouchi near Tokyo Station is in its second generation. Although it is now a huge skyscraper with 37 floors above ground and four floors below, the Marunouchi Building was once only nine floors above ground. In other words, the reconstruction has made it about nine times taller. What is interesting, however, is that the pre-reconstruction Marunouchi Building often has a stronger presence in the minds of older people.

The root of such illusions seems to be that the image of the pre-reconstruction Marunouchi Building is outstanding. Certainly, in terms of physical size alone, the current building is much larger. But not only was the former building so large that it was called "the largest building in the Orient," it is also associated with a progressive image, as it pioneered the now common practice of opening the lower floors of office buildings to the public and developing shopping malls and other facilities.

In layman's terms, the Marunouchi Building once had a fashionable image, appearing in the 1929 hit song "Tokyo March" and in novels such as Uchida Hyakken's "Tokyo Diary" and "Marunouchi Souwa" by Okamoto Kanoko (Taro Okamoto's mother). It is a sign of the changing times that the Marunouchi Building, though beautiful nowadays, made such a big impression on the people of the city.

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