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Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower (東京タワー, Tōkyō Tawā; pronounced [toːkʲoː taꜜɰᵝaː] ), a.k.a. Japan Radio Tower (日本電波塔, Nippon denpatō) is a communications and observation tower in the district of Shiba-koen in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, completed in 1958. At 332.9 metres (1,092 feet), it was the tallest tower in Japan until the construction of Tokyo Skytree in 2012. It is a lattice tower inspired by the Eiffel Tower, and is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations.

The tower's main sources of income are antenna leasing and tourism, and its five-story base building FootTown houses a number of restaurants, gift shops, and other attractions. Departing from it, guests can visit two observation decks: the two-story Main Deck at 150 m (490 ft), and the smaller Top Deck at 249.6 m (819 ft). The tower is repainted every five years, the process itself taking a year to complete.

In 1961, transmission antennas were added. They are used for radio and television broadcasting and now broadcast signals for media outlets such as NHK, TBS Television, and Fuji Television. The height of the tower was not suitable for Japan's planned terrestrial digital broadcasting planned for July 2011, and for the Tokyo area. A taller digital broadcasting tower, known as Tokyo Skytree, was completed on 29 February 2012. Tokyo Tower has become a prominent landmark and frequently appears in media set in Tokyo.

A large broadcasting tower was needed in the Kantō region after NHK, Japan's public broadcasting station, began television broadcasting in 1953. Private broadcasting companies began operating in the months following the construction of NHK's own transmission tower. This communications boom led the Japanese government to believe that transmission towers would soon be built all over Tokyo, eventually overrunning the city. The proposed solution was the construction of one large tower capable of transmitting to the entire region. Furthermore, because of the country's postwar boom in the 1950s, Japan was searching for a monument to symbolize its national recovery from World War II, as one of the countries most ravaged by the war.

Hisakichi Maeda, founder and president of Nippon Denpatō, the tower's owner and operator, originally planned for the tower to be taller than the Empire State Building, which at 381 m (1,250 ft) was the highest structure in the world at the time. However, the plan fell through because of the lack of both funds and materials. The tower's height was eventually determined by the distance the TV stations needed to transmit throughout the Kantō region, a distance of about 150 kilometres (93 miles).

Tachū Naitō, designer of tall buildings in Japan, was chosen to design the newly proposed tower. Looking to the Western world for inspiration, Naitō based his design on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. With the help of engineering company Nikken Sekkei Ltd., Naitō claimed his design could withstand earthquakes with twice the intensity of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake or typhoons with wind speeds of up to 220 km/h (140 mph).

The new construction project attracted hundreds of tobi (), traditional Japanese construction workers who specialized in the construction of high-rise structures. The Takenaka Corporation broke ground in June 1957 and each day at least 400 laborers worked on the tower. It was constructed of steel, a third of which was scrap metal taken from US tanks damaged in the Korean War. When the 90-metre (300 ft)-long antenna was bolted into place on 14 October 1958, Tokyo Tower was the tallest freestanding tower in the world, taking the title from the Eiffel Tower by 9 m (30 ft).[failed verification]

Though physically taller than the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Tower weighs about 4,000 tons, 3,300 less than the Eiffel Tower as it is significantly thinner and simpler in construction. It was opened to the public on 23 December 1958 at a final cost of ¥2.8 billion ($8.4 million in 1958). Tokyo Tower was mortgaged for ¥10 billion in 2000. It was the tallest artificial structure in Japan until April 2012, when it was surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree.

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tower in Tokyo, Japan
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