Sunshine 60: The Tokyo Skyscraper Built on an Execution Ground

Ikebukuro is one of Tokyo's busiest districts: neon, department stores, crowds flowing endlessly through the station. Rising above it all is Sunshine 60, once the tallest building in Asia, a gleaming tower of offices, shops, and an observation deck with a dizzying view of the megacity. Millions pass through it. Most of them have no idea what the ground beneath their feet used to be. Because before Sunshine 60 was a monument to modern Tokyo, this was the site of Sugamo Prison, and this was a place where people were hanged.

It is a particular kind of haunting, the kind where a bright, ordinary, commercial place sits directly on top of a history of death, and the two coexist in uneasy silence. The shoppers and the executed share the same patch of earth.

Sugamo Prison

Sugamo Prison operated for much of the 20th century. Before and during World War II, it held political prisoners and those arrested under Japan's wartime laws. After the war, during the Allied occupation, Sugamo took on its most infamous role: it became the prison where individuals convicted of war crimes were held. A number of them were executed there by hanging, including some of the most prominent figures sentenced after the war's end.

The prison was eventually demolished, and in the 1970s and 80s the area was redeveloped into Sunshine City, the large commercial complex anchored by the Sunshine 60 tower. Where the gallows once stood, escalators now carry shoppers between floors of stores. But the history did not vanish with the walls.

The Memorial Stone

In a small park area near the base of Sunshine 60 stands a quiet, easily missed memorial stone. It marks the former site of Sugamo Prison and commemorates those who died there, carrying an inscription that expresses a wish for lasting peace. Among the rush of one of Tokyo's liveliest districts, it is a small island of solemn acknowledgment, a reminder of what this ground was before the tower rose over it.

For many who know the history, that stone changes how the whole complex feels. The observation deck's spectacular view, the crowded shopping floors, the aquarium and attractions, all of it sits atop a place of execution, and the memorial is the single visible thread connecting the bright present to the dark past.

The Haunting

Given the history, it is no surprise that Sunshine 60 and the surrounding area carry a reputation for the uncanny. Over the years, workers and visitors have reported uneasy feelings, a heaviness in certain spots, strange occurrences, and apparitions, often linked in local lore to the execution ground that once occupied the site. In a culture with a deep sensitivity to the spirits of the dead and the importance of honoring them, a towering commercial complex built over a place of hanging carries an inherent spiritual weight.

Whether one experiences anything or not, the knowledge itself is enough to unsettle. Standing on the observation deck, looking out over the endless lights of Tokyo, some visitors find the thought impossible to shake: that directly below, in the same footprint, lives once ended at the end of a rope.

The Tower Today

Sunshine 60 remains a thriving part of Tokyo, part of the sprawling Sunshine City complex with its shops, restaurants, offices, aquarium, and observation deck. For the millions who visit, it is simply a landmark of the modern city. But for those who pause at the memorial stone, or who know what Sugamo Prison was, the tower becomes something more layered, a symbol of how cities build over their darkest chapters, and how the past can persist quietly beneath even the brightest surfaces.

Sunshine 60 is not a crumbling ruin or an abandoned house. It is a gleaming, living building, and that is exactly what makes it such a distinctive haunted place: ordinary life carried on, floor after floor, above ground that remembers the condemned.