Japan accepted reluctantly the opening of the country to the West due to gunboat diplomacy by Western countries in the second half of the 19th century. Then Tokugawa samurai government concluded the Ansei Five-Power Treaties in 1858 with the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Netherland and France to set forward the specific diplomatic procedures. Based on the treaties, the five countries established a diplomatic agency respectively in Edo, present time Tokyo, in 1859. British legation built in the grounds of Tozen-ji Buddhist Temple in present time Minato-ku, Tokyo, was one of them. The officers of the legation, however, were repeatedly attacked by excessive samurai exclusionists, it once was relocated to Yokohama. Because the inhabitants in Yokohama were mainly merchants, so Yokohama was thought to be safer than Tokyo the inhabitants of which are mainly samurais. Shortly after that, an era of samurai came to an end and an era of Japan’s modernization began. The many mansions of daimyo feudal lords in Tokyo (Edo) were not needed anymore. Several mansion sites of daimyos adjacent to Edo Castle, 35,000 square meters in total, were allocated to Britain for its new embassy in Tokyo, which is the present site of British Embassy Tokyo.
The first building built here in 1905 was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the second one was built in 1929, which is the present time building. This is the greatest embassy building among other ones in Tokyo in terms of the size as well as the location, matching Great Britain, the super power of the world at that time.
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