Built in 1895 and modeled on European prisons, Sugamo initially served as an ordinary detention facility. By the 1930s, Japan's Peace Preservation Laws filled its cells with political prisoners -- communists, labor organizers, and anyone the imperial government deemed a threat to public order. Among the most remarkable inmates was Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, founder of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, who died inside Sugamo in 1944 for refusing to comply with State Shinto directives. Richard Sorge, a German-born journalist who was secretly one of the Soviet Union's most effective spies, was hanged at Sugamo on November 7, 1944, along with his Japanese collaborator Hotsumi Ozaki. Sorge had warned Moscow of Hitler's plan to invade the Soviet Union and confirmed that Japan would not attack Siberia -- intelligence that helped Stalin redeploy divisions to the Western Front. The Soviets denied knowing him. When American B-29s incinerated vast stretches of Tokyo in 1945, Sugamo Prison survived the firebombing intact.

In December 1945, Allied occupation forces took control of the undamaged prison and converted it into the primary detention center for suspected Japanese war criminals awaiting trial before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The United States Eighth Army operated the facility with 400 to 500 soldiers at any given time, though some 2,500 military personnel rotated through duty assignments there. At its peak, Sugamo held around 2,000 inmates. The prisoners ate Japanese food prepared by Japanese staff and served by the prisoners themselves. In a surreal daily routine, former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo -- the man who had authorized the attack on Pearl Harbor -- sometimes served meals to fellow Class A war crime suspects. Some of the vegetables came from a garden the prisoners cultivated within the compound walls.

On December 23, 1948, seven convicted Class A war criminals were executed by hanging at Sugamo: Tojo, former Prime Minister Koki Hirota, and Generals Kenji Doihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Iwane Matsui. The date -- the birthday of Crown Prince Akihito -- was widely interpreted as a deliberate choice by the occupation authorities. Sugamo also served as the execution site for 51 Japanese war criminals condemned in the separate Yokohama War Crimes Trials, while 803 others convicted in those trials served their sentences behind its walls. The last executions took place on April 7, 1950. Iva Toguri D'Aquino, the Japanese-American woman branded as "Tokyo Rose," was photographed at Sugamo in March 1946 before being sent to the United States for trial, where she was convicted of treason, later pardoned in 1977.

After the occupation ended in 1952, Sugamo passed to Japanese civilian control. Many convicted war criminals were gradually paroled or pardoned. Nobusuke Kishi, a Class A suspect whose charges were dropped in 1948, went on to become Prime Minister from 1957 to 1960. The last 18 war criminals still serving time at Sugamo were paroled on May 31, 1958. The prison stopped functioning as a detention facility in 1962 and stood empty for nearly a decade before its buildings were dismantled in 1971. The site was cleared for commercial redevelopment.

In 1978, the Sunshine 60 building opened on the former prison grounds. At 239.7 meters and 60 stories, it was the tallest skyscraper not just in Japan but in all of Asia, holding that distinction until 1985. The complex -- known as Sunshine City -- includes an aquarium, a planetarium, shops, and offices, all built over earth that once held execution chambers. A small memorial stone sits nearby, its inscription asking visitors to pray for eternal peace, though most passersby have no idea what it commemorates. A water drainage outlet from the original prison has been preserved in the park in front of the Tokyo International University Ikebukuro Campus, which occupies part of the former prison grounds. In popular culture, Sunshine 60 is sometimes called Tokyo's most haunted building. The ghosts, if they exist, would have quite a roster to draw from.