Soho House 东京新会所：极繁主义与东西方美学的交汇

November 7, 2026

When the Soho House team first began considering their first-ever Japanese property in 2019, one challenge stood out above all—given their hybrid members’ club with rooms model, the hospitality brand’s Tokyo outpost would need to be all things to all people.

For long-time members touching down in the Japanese capital, it had to deliver a genuine sense of place, immersing them in the city’s creative scene and offering a taste of the local cuisine. For Tokyoites, meanwhile—especially those of an Anglophile persuasion, given Japan’s long-standing reverence for British tailoring, subcultures, and craft—the appeal lay in the opposite direction. With the wealth of exceptional Japanese restaurants and bars already on their doorstep, they’d be looking for a slice of that louche, convivial London clubbiness (and possibly a Sunday roast). On top of that, private members’ clubs are still a relatively foreign concept in Tokyo: the few equivalents that do exist tend to skew more corporate.

It was a tricky square to circle, but if Soho House Tokyo—which opened its doors this summer in the design-forward neighborhood of Aoyama, just a stone’s throw from the frenetic energy of Omotesando crossing—is anything to go by, they’ve pulled it off. Credit belongs in large part to Soho House design director Domhnall Nolan, a self-professed Japan obsessive whose six-year odyssey began before the pandemic hit and involved years of traveling back and forth to study the country’s vernacular architecture, interiors, and craft traditions. “One key thing we honed in on was Soho House being inherently maximalist and Japan having a reputation for minimalism—with Tokyo specifically having that contrast,” Nolan explains. “It’s a city of juxtaposition where you have beautiful moments of calm, and then it’s also extremely dense and chaotic. Everything we were doing was always thinking about that juxtaposition of a minimal detail, but a maximal execution.”

When I arrived a few months back straight off a long-haul morning flight, my brain was still sputtering through the fug of jetlag—though the friendly, laid-back welcome certainly took the edge off. Stepping through the discreet timber double doors off Minami-Aoyama, I discovered a moody, amber-lit reception space wrapped in gridded panels of handmade washi paper and a smart check-in desk swathed in glossy Kyoto lacquer. (Even the staff looked almost absurdly sharp, outfitted in custom Japanese denim uniforms created in collaboration with Onitsuka Tiger; at first glance, they may appear intimidatingly cool, but they’re universally lovely and excited to offer tips for what to check out in the surrounding neighborhood.) The mood, both in the design and the general philosophy, is delightfully irreverent: one corner houses a custom graphic-wrapped Japanese vending machine dispensing striped beach towels, while the walls feature tongue-in-cheek artworks painted to look like oversized Uniqlo and convenience-store receipts. If high design is treated as something of a religion in Tokyo, Nolan clearly wasn’t afraid to commit a little heresy.

From there, I headed up to my bedroom—an “Extra Large” that felt like stepping into the apartment of a well-traveled Tokyo art collector. Passing along corridors lined with further custom washi paper, this time in a shade of indigo inspired by Japanese denim, the doors opened onto a living and dining area bathed in a soothing matcha palette and framed by a wraparound balcony overlooking the Aoyama skyline. (Every single room has a balcony, it turns out—a real rarity here.) The devil is in the details: on a crimson-stained credenza sat a row of Japanese spirits, a cocktail shaker, a ceramic sake set—and, in a delightfully retro touch, a rotary phone. Moving through to the bedroom, a timber bed was dressed with a fringed throw woven from upcycled vintage kimono fabrics in the traditional sakiori style, while the sprawling bathroom featured slabs of striated green marble, speckled Nagoya floor tiles, and a freestanding tub stocked with Cowshed bath salts. Even more thoughtfully, a trio of herbal Ross J. Barr patches had been left out on the table, a lifesaver after my 14-hour flight—I reached for the Sleep variety, stuck them behind my ears, and collapsed onto the immaculate cotton sheets.

That attention to local design extends well beyond the headline suites, however; even the “Cosy” rooms are packed with craft details that are rich with backstory. Nolan tells me later that while putting together a mock-up bedroom back in 2023, he spotted a traditional Japanese jewelry box whose dappled lacquer finish caught his eye, which led him to Makino Urushi, a small family-run workshop in Kyoto. “We went to see their factory, which is a handful of people doing everything themselves,” Nolan recalls. “They have a base of three standard colors—black, gold, and red—and when they show you how they create the other shades, you see the incredible depths of color they get. At one point, someone suggested we could make it cheaper in China, and I said, ‘I’m not going to China to make a Japanese finish.’” That persistence paid off: those intricate dappled lacquer finishes now grace mirror frames and drawer fronts, alongside parquet flooring laid in an interlocking tatami-mat grid.

Anyway, despite slapping on those herbal Sleep Patches, my body clock remained wholly uncooperative. By around 9 a.m., I was still sitting in bed staring out at the foggy Tokyo skyline like Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. Admitting defeat, I headed upstairs to explore the two club floors on the 13th and 14th levels, connected by a monumental timber spiral staircase. Here, Nolan’s East-meets-West tightrope walk is at its most nimble. The so-called Club Lounge is cocooned in glossy burgundy paneling inspired by traditional lacquerware, offset by vintage European and Japanese mid-century armchairs, shelves of vinyl records, and a ceiling paneled with woven sea-grass wallpaper and authentic tatami border trims. “I knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to put actual tatami flooring on the ceiling,” Nolan notes. “There’s a sensitivity to it that Japanese members appreciate.”

My favorite detail? Over at the bar, traditional ceramic roof tiles have been flipped vertically to clad the front counter in a ripple of glazed olive green—an especially wry, witty touch—while the 14th-floor bar pairs glowing Italian Murano chandeliers with handmade lanterns and a swirling ochre-and-green onyx bar top. It’s a lot, but it all comes together to form a pleasing, surprisingly serene whole.

Eventually settling into a low-slung velvet sofa, I ordered the traditional Japanese breakfast: a wooden tray bearing a flaky fillet of grilled salmon, sweet rolled tamagoyaki, sesame-dressed greens on chunky glazed earthenware, and miso soup in a turned wood cup. (It proved to be merely the opening salvo of an extraordinary culinary lineup across the house, but more on that shortly.)

Sufficiently fueled for the day, it was time to brave Aoyama, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on earth for anyone with a weakness for archival fashion—a category into which, much to the disappointment of my accountant, I very much fall. The surrounding backstreets are a labyrinth of designer flagships and meticulously organized secondhand boutiques; I spent the afternoon darting between three different outposts of the designer resale shop Kindal before wandering through the nearby Issey Miyake mini-district, where the late designer’s sculptural fashion wonders occupy their own string of gallery-like storefronts. (Issey-san’s designs are also significantly cheaper here than in the West, though the stock available can be a little spotty depending on the time of the month.) Eventually, with my jet-lagged limbs about to give way, I walked into Kuu, a nearby Japanese head spa recommended to me by the front desk staff. There, a therapist subjected my scalp, neck, and shoulders to an hour of steam, warm water halos, and pressure-point massage so relaxing I practically sleepwalked back to my room, before collapsing for a catatonic afternoon nap feeling like a freshly steamed dumpling.

That evening, we reconvened for dinner in the private dining room tucked behind frosted glass pocket doors at the far end of the house brasserie. Interestingly, Nolan had originally envisioned an Asian-led concept for the restaurant before pivoting late in the process. “As we looked at everything we had in the house already, we thought, ‘We need something that’s very not Japanese to balance these things out,’” he says. The result is a menu that riffs on British comfort classics using hyper-seasonal Japanese produce: our table groaned under plates of crisp tempura courgette flowers and Yamayuri pork loin glazed in a sweet mead reduction, alongside silver cups of French fries and rounds of spicy Picantes. For pudding, slices of tart topped with jewel-like arrangements of green muscat grapes arrived, alongside coupes of soft-serve ice cream crowned with white miso-infused popcorn—an unpretentious and fabulously umami-rich triumph.

The following morning required an even more brutal wake-up call: a 4:20 a.m. departure for Toyosu Fish Market (an hour that Soho House regulars usually meet on the way to bed, not breakfast) accompanied by Soho House Tokyo’s tuna supplier for backstage access to the morning’s bluefin auction. Pulling up to the recently modernized market complex under a drizzly dawn, we were led through a series of Backrooms-esque corridors before finding ourselves right next to the auction floor, watching dozens of frosted bluefin carcasses lined up on wooden pallets under the fluorescent lights. Buyers in rubber boots moved briskly between the rows, using hooks and flashlights to inspect the fat marbling and ruby-red sheen of each tail cross-section before the rapid-fire hand-signal bidding began. Afterward, we ducked into the wholesale stalls to watch a crew wield sword-length knives to break down the colossal tuna loins with surgical precision—and this exact supply chain made its way onto Chef Shinohara’s sushi counter back at Aoyama hours later, where we enjoyed the tuna with freshly grated Shizuoka wasabi and several pitchers of chilled sake.

After lunch, I spent my final afternoon scoping out the wellness and rooftop spaces. Down on the 13th floor, the dual-zone wellness studio—a jewel box of copper-toned walls, carved timber, and a hand-painted gold ceiling—was in full swing; while the rest of my group admirably threw themselves into a dynamic Reformer Pilates session, after a 4 a.m. fish market excursion, I opted to admire the bespoke leather kettlebells strictly as decorative objects, matcha in hand. Instead, I headed out to the 4,000-square-foot rooftop terrace, where the real showstopper—an infinity-style pool tiled in a geometric grid of bespoke ceramic tiles—looked across the sprawling skyline toward Tokyo Tower. (On a clear day, you can even spot the snow-dusted silhouette of Mount Fuji.)

Sitting by that indigo-tiled rooftop pool as the late-afternoon sun dipped behind the high-rises, my Lost in Translation malaise had been entirely dispelled. In a city that can make even the most seasoned traveler feel like an outsider, Soho House has pulled off something pretty remarkable: a space that honors the rigor of Japanese craft while wrapping you in the heady and ever-so-slightly unruly embrace of a great London club. Another shiso Picante, please.

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Liam Hess is American Vogue’s senior lifestyle and weddings editor, overseeing coverage of homes, travel, food, design, parties, and weddings remotely from London. Between editing stories, he can also be found writing about music, film, books, and reviewing fashion collections in London for Vogue Runway. Previously, he has worked at ... Read More