The original Kantei residence was born from necessity. After the Meiji Restoration established the post of prime minister in 1885, Japan's leaders had no proper official home. Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi pushed for one, and the residence was completed on March 18, 1929 -- a two-story mansion designed by Muraji Shimomoto of the Ministry of the Treasury. The architecture drew heavily from the styles sweeping through Japan in the late Taisho and early Showa periods: Art Deco flourishes, expressionist angles, and a strong influence from Frank Lloyd Wright, particularly his design for the second Tokyo Imperial Hotel. When Tanaka first saw the finished building, he reportedly exclaimed, "This is just like a cafe, isn't it?" The remark captured something genuine about the place -- it was elegant but slightly theatrical, more salon than fortress. That openness would prove tragically consequential.

On May 15, 1932, a group of young naval officers stormed the residence and assassinated Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. The killing shattered the already fragile hold of civilian government over Japan's military. Four years later, on February 26, 1936, renegade soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army launched a full-scale assault on the compound during an attempted coup d'etat. Their target was Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, who survived only by hiding in a closet while the attackers searched the building. Six people were killed, including Okada's brother-in-law, who was mistaken for the prime minister. A single bullet hole from the 1936 attack was deliberately preserved in the building's interior -- a scar the residence chose to keep. These two incidents, separated by less than four years, embedded themselves in the building's identity so deeply that they would outlast every subsequent renovation.

The violent history gave rise to persistent rumors that the old residence is haunted. Multiple prime ministers and their families have reported unsettling experiences. Yasuko Hata described an "eerie and oppressive presence" during her time there in the mid-1990s and wrote about seeing figures in military uniforms in the garden. Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori reportedly saw ghosts. The rumors became so entrenched that successive leaders simply refused to live in the residence, preferring private homes or hotels. The building sat entirely unoccupied from 2012 to 2021, through the premierships of Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga. When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida finally moved in, it was national news. In late 2025, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also moved into the residence, making her own headlines. Reports suggest a Shinto exorcism was performed during the building's renovation period to cleanse the site.

Beside the haunted old residence, the current Kantei office building opened in April 2002 -- a practical, five-story structure with two and a half times the floor space of its predecessor. Fitted with solar panels and a rainwater harvesting system, it was designed to minimize environmental impact. The first floor holds the press conference room where the prime minister and chief cabinet secretary address the nation. The fourth floor contains the Cabinet meeting room for government deliberations and international summits. The fifth floor houses the Prime Minister's Office itself, along with reception rooms and the chief cabinet secretary's office. The building also contains a national crisis management center. In Japanese political shorthand, "the Kantei" functions as a metonym for the prime minister's administration, much as "the White House" does in America.

The Kantei complex sits at the intersection of governance and ghosts, modern pragmatism and unresolved history. The old residence, with its Wright-influenced Art Deco lines, its retained bullet hole, and its spectral visitors, remains the prime minister's personal quarters -- a building where the architecture is beautiful and the memories are terrible. The new office building beside it hums with the daily machinery of government. Together, they occupy one of the most politically significant plots of land in East Asia, a short diagonal from the National Diet Building where Japan's parliament convenes. The compound has survived assassination, coup, earthquake, decades of neglect, and persistent supernatural reputation. That it endures -- both buildings, both histories -- says something about how Japan holds its past: not erased, not celebrated, but preserved alongside the present.