The Commission to replace the Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance's old headquarters in the Marunouchi
business district with a new high-rise building was offered to Kunio Makawa in January 1965.
Kunio Maekawa designed several high-rise buildings in his career, but saw only one of thes actually constructed.
The Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance Building placed Maekawa once again at the center of controversy.
This Project proved to be one of the most protracted and frustrating projects in his entire career.
The building is located directly across from the Imperial Palace. This area had been subject to prewar
building codes, which restricted structures to the height of maximum 31 meters. As a consequence of
these building codes, the skyline along the east side of the palace grounds was very consistent.
Changes in the building conde in 1950 and 1963 opened the way for taller buildings. One of the first companys
that sought to take advantage of the new regulations was the Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance.
The preliminary design showed a 130-meter office tower with 30 storeies. When the first model was
unveiled a firestorm of protests was set off. The proposal was immediatly criticized by the Imperial
Household Agency, argumenting that the skyscraper would destroy the beauty of the existing skyline.
In fear that the project would diminish the value of their property, the neighboring landowners resisted
to the construction plans. The project provoked a public discussion about the future of Tokyo.
The critics feared that Tokyo would be transformed into a forest of office towers, if new height
restrictions were not imposed. At the same time, the old height restrictions were already being broken
elsewhere in Tokyo.

The originally proposed plan meant, that the tower would occupy only one-third of its site.
This is in contrast to older buildings in the Marunouchi area, which occupied their entire sites.
The Design of a higher-density tower mad it economically feasible to set aside the rest of the
site as a plaza opent to the public. Maekawa did not consider his own design as an exception
in the district. He even mad proposals for a preliminiary plan for the future development of the area.
The building should have been joined by a score of other high-rise buildings in the years to come.

As a consequence of the controversy, the project was delayed for five years. Eventually,
the governement came up with a compromise that established a new restriction af 100 meters
on the area. This compromise forced Maekawa to take off 30 meters from his original design.
This resulted in a markedly alteration to the original proportions and made the building look more stout.
The construction of the modified desing was finally completed in 1974. In the end, the building that
was constructed satisfied no one completely. It interrupted the once consistently low skyline
of Marunouchi, which displeaded certain parties, while the client gained less office space than
they had wished. Maekawa himself felt that the integrity of his design had been compromised
because of the forced change in proportions.

The main structural frame of the tower is placed on the exterior, in order to leave the office space
unobstructed as far as possible. The glass curtain wall is set back from the exterior frame, and the
window recesses establish a regular grid across the facade. This texture preserves a sense of human scale.
As protection from the weather and from fire, the steel frame is clad with prefabricated concrete panels,
which were covered with cast-in-place ceramic tiles. These ceramics complement the deep red brick
of the nearby Tokyo Station from 1914.