The villa began as a doctor's country house. In 1927, the architect Ito Chuta designed the building for Tatsukichi Irisawa, a physician with the Imperial Household Agency. Ito was one of Japan's most prominent architects, known for weaving influences from his travels across China, India, and the Middle East into Japanese design. The Tekigai-so reflected this sensibility. Built in the traditional sukiya-zukuri style, it nevertheless featured unusually high ceilings to accommodate Irisawa's preference for Western-style chairs. Exotic ornamentation drawn from Ito's travels gave the rooms a cosmopolitan elegance unusual for a Japanese villa. Perched on a hill sloping southward, the property commanded a view over the Zenpukuji River all the way to Mount Fuji. Surrounded by 6,000 square meters of gardens, the villa felt far removed from downtown Tokyo, even though it was only a short train ride from the capital's center.

Konoe purchased the villa in 1937 and remodeled the interior into a more traditional Japanese style, adding new rooms and constructing a separate kura warehouse. Though he maintained a residence in the Mejiro district of central Tokyo, Konoe found the villa's quiet surroundings so appealing that Tekigai-so became his de facto prime minister's residence. The building's most fateful day came in July 1940 when Konoe convened what became known as the Ogikubo Conference. Here, Konoe, Tojo, and Matsuoka hammered out the framework for Japan's alliance with the Axis powers, a decision that led directly to the signing of the Tripartite Pact. Months later, in October 1940, Konoe used the same villa to announce the formation of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association alongside Yoriyasu Arima, effectively dissolving Japan's political parties into a single national body.

The villa hosted another pivotal gathering known as the Tekigai-so Meeting. Konoe sat across from Tojo, Admiral Koshiro Oikawa, and Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda to discuss whether Japan could reach a negotiated settlement of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Tojo refused any concessions. Konoe, unable to find a path to peace, resigned as prime minister in October 1941 without resolving the escalating crisis in US-Japan relations. Tojo succeeded him, and within two months, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Konoe retreated to his villa and spent the remaining war years working behind the scenes to oppose the conflict and help engineer Tojo's removal from power in 1944. After Japan's surrender, American occupation authorities charged Konoe with war crimes. On the morning he was to report for arrest in December 1945, Konoe swallowed potassium cyanide in his study at the Tekigai-so. He was fifty-four years old.

After Konoe's death, future Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida rented the property from the Konoe family and lived there for a time. In 1960, roughly half of the structure -- the entrance building and guest room where the wartime conferences had taken place -- was dismantled and relocated to Toshima ward, where it was rebuilt on the grounds of a Tenrikyo religious organization office. The Konoe family renovated the remaining half and continued to live there for decades. In 2014, the Suginami ward government purchased the property. The grounds opened as a public park in March 2015, though the interior of the building remains closed except on rare occasions. In 2016, an agreement was reached with Tenrikyo to return the relocated half. That portion was dismantled in 2018 and awaits reconstruction, a painstaking effort to reassemble the rooms where Japan's wartime fate was shaped. The current building area measures approximately 400 square meters -- a modest footprint for a site that carried such outsized historical weight.