Fifty-five years ago today -- that is, from 1:30 p.m. on October 6, 1966 -- a celebratory banquet was held in a special venue on the ninth floor of the Palaceside Building: the reception marking the opening of the newly completed building. Some 4,000 distinguished guests, including former Prime Ministers Nobusuke Kishi and Tetsu Katayama, Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Kakuei Tanaka, Tokyo Governor Ryotaro Azuma, and the writers Jiro Osaragi, Yasushi Inoue, Hidemi Kon and Tsutomu Mizukami, gathered to celebrate in grand style the birth of the modern building.
Once the banquet began, guests holding cocktail glasses and cups of beer are said to have drifted, as if drawn by a magnet, toward the fully glazed windows on the south side. The Mainichi Shimbun morning edition of the following day, October 7, reported: “Beyond the forest of the Imperial Palace one could look out over the National Diet Building and Tokyo Tower, and at the magnificent view, cries of admiration escaped the lips of one guest after another.”
Two and a half years had passed since the groundbreaking ceremony of April 1964. On this day that all concerned had so eagerly awaited, a perfectly clear blue sky stretched overhead. It was a debut under fine autumn skies.