during the allied occupation of japan following world war ii, many members of the japanese peerage lost their titles and were subject to crippling taxation on their real estate holdings. yasujirō tsutsumi, who controlled the seibu railway through the kokudo corporation, arranged to buy several of these families' properties at a discount and used them to develop hotels. the first of these hotels, the grand prince hotel takanawa, opened in 1953 on the site of the takeda-no-miya residence. the tokyo prince hotel opened in 1964 on a site that originally housed graves of several tokugawa family shoguns, whose bodies were moved to the neighboring temple of zojo-ji.