Tokyo's retro shotengai arcades are falling victim to gentrification
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But individual-run retail businesses are still common in Japan. While it isn’t easy to make a living at it, many people still aspire to run their own shops or restaurants and distinctive new ones appear all the time. Just yesterday, I noticed a small, trendy-looking restaurant [2] that has opened a few blocks from where I live in Yokohama. It’s not the kind of food I particularly like and the location on a quiet residential street seems risky, but I was glad to see them there and hope they succeed.
[1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E8%A6%8F%E6%A8%A1%E5...
That said, I really wish some breakout architect would find a way to design a new building with space for more small shops that became a hit design. And then in my dream other architects would start copying. They built Shibuya Cast. There used to be 8-12 indie stores there. Now there's 3 chain stores. I think Sakara Stage might have done a better job there. I'm not sure but I think if I count the stores/restaurants it displaced there might be more now then before. Though I expect rent is way too high.
Some places, like Toranomon Hills have the indoor restaurant yokochou type areas though I'm sure they are too expensive. Shibuya Sakura Stage also has one. Neither get that feeling like say, Akabane's bar area though. Or Nakano or Koenji. I hope Nakano is not going to lose theirs with all the construction. Shibuya though is going to lose a bunch more. A 30+ story building is under construction on Dogenzaka next to Mark City. Another is 30+ story is going on Miyamasa-Zaka between Meiji-Dori and Aoyama Dori where the post office is. There's a bunch super indie of restaurants there because the rent is cheap given the buildings are old. But maybe it will be designed like Sakura Stage to support more. I can cross my fingers.
There's a 30+ story building going in where the Tokyu Honten was but given that was just a department store the new building will have more shops than the department store had, depending on how you count.
There's yet another 30+ story building going in behind Hikarie. I'm not sure there's anything there it's displacing though. I mean, it is displacing stuff but nothing I've ever gone to, unlike some of the others.
Maybe the Showa vibes are dying, but my impression is that it really is gentrifying.
It's not just a matter of being "behind the times", I think in the future we will regret having killed individuality in favor of convenience.
Agreed that it's sad :-(
In Belgium, most pubs (as in the physical buildings) are owned by one of three very large breweries. The rent is often steep, and there can be strict requirements on what drinks can be served. I suspect this is part of the driving force behind the decline of pubs.
I got my data from: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-is-the-average-...
Also, just for your information, the japanese yen was continuously deflated in US dollars in the last 2 years or so. So even if it might seem from the US that this is cheap, the prices were soaring during the last 2-3 years in japanese yen.
So if you were unlucky enough to have a japanese salary in the last few years (as the locals mostly do), chances are that your real wages got continuously deflated.
Tokyo is actually much more expensive than other huge asian cities like Shanghai or Bangkok (denominated either in JPY or Remnibi, Thai Baht). That was also largely the reason for the LDP's abysmal election results this last Sunday.
The only reference I can get is this, and Tokyo is not even in the top ten (but Osaka is #7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index
That why I said that all these "most livable city" or "happiest country" indexes are very debatable.
Sure, they might be economically less wealthy than they used to 30 years ago, but in practice you see them being bold in their projects and developments 24/7. Their cities are forward looking, more efficient, developing higher so less people need to commute it's a necessity that eventually will kill many of these older districts, but so be it if it spares tens of thousands from commuting every day.
What's the end game with this? Identikit cities with little to no character, all created to prioritise convenience. For people that care more about work than their life outside of work, they aren't going to care much, but for people that are the opposite the loss of culture is more strongly felt.
People say this but Tokyo preserves _way more_ weird subculture stuff and small stores than other major cities IMO, despite constant rebuilding. My theory is basically that because it's nice and dense, and the real estate is extremely liquid by my understanding, stores and restaurants can get their 100 superfans that support the business.
Like I moved to Australia a couple years ago and I have no idea how anyone could afford to open a small independent shop, and you see loads of chains.
Tokyo it's harder than before, but places like these shopping arcades offer some respite (along with other shopping centers).
I am worried that the Tokyo government isn't particularly interested in preserving these places though. They have openly said they want more places to be redeveloped like Ginza of all places.
> I am worried that the Tokyo government isn't particularly interested in preserving these places though
You're basically agreeing with me. The fact that Tokyo has interesting places now doesn't mean it will in the future.
I think that the attitude of the government has shifted but not by _that_ much, and I don't think we can discount the past 50 years of urbanism as having no effects (plenty of the stores I'm thinking about aren't 100 years old after all). But I won't pretend to believe that we can't have nice things taken away from us.
I don't know how we get new Nakano Broadways in the current environment.
Constant change and cities that are no longer recognizable after few decades *is* japanese culture, from millenia.
99% of their historical buildings, whether it's the imperial palace in Kyoto or the Todaiji temple in Nara have been rebuilt multiple times over and over or haven't been rebuilt at all.
Those shotengai arcades are a byproduct of a specific timeframe and conditions: rebuilding their cities quickly after ww2 in a fastly developing urban landscape. The same way they didn't exist few decades before they won't exist few decades from now.
That's clearly false. Yes there have been periods of time with large changes, such as the post WW2 era, but that doesn't reflect how Japan has always been. There have been large periods of cultural conservatism as well.
Japanese have built with wood for millenia, thus their cities have been destroyed multiple times over due to natural disasters, fire and war in a neverending cycle. And every time they have rebuilt and adapted to the new political, cultural and social reality.
The entire country, literally, the entire country has one single building that is largely unchanged and survived since their earliest feudal age: Horyu-Ji. One.
Even if you go back by few centuries the number of buildings in the whole country that survived in their original forms is insanely small.
Doesn't mean that every time they rebuilt something based on new designs, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with the historical sites they have. The following webpage shows a small number of the historical sites that exist in Japan:
https://www.tsunagujapan.com/8-must-see-buildings-in-japan-w...
Also, the cycle of creation and destruction of buildings due to wars and earthquakes are different than changes due to economic pressures. People that value a culture have little choice if it's destroyed by wars and natural disasters.
There are small homes near me that were built right after WW2. They were built as quickly and cheaply as possible, with almost no effort made at looking pretty. Now considered charming.
It's not about the buildings, it's about the human interactions. The buildings that replace the ones at risk may be more aesthetically pleasing, but it seems very unlikely to support something that is as interesting to visit as what they currently have in that area. Gentrification rarely leads to a blossoming of culture.
What's forward looking about that? Other than that, the japanese tend to build roughly the same kind of low-riser/high-riser condominiums with varying quality literally everywhere. So it's not very easy to find and buy truly livable areas in downtown Tokyo right now, unless you are highly above the 80th-90th wage bracket.
Also, I find it odd to say that it's a society which only looks forward right now, when a right-wing populist party has just become tenfold stronger in the last parliamentary elections by propagating the idea of "traditional family values" (as in women to stay home instead of working).
While it's true that there are aspects of life which are more advanced than in other countries, but after living here for a decade, I can confidently say it's a mixed bag.
Just a silly example: when I came to the country, front loading drum type washing machines were a rare sight here, while that had been the norm for decades in many European countries. Also, the idea of insulating the houses from cold and heat and condensation was not at all considered until the government started pushing some tax breaks and whatnot to make the idea catch on and make housing more energy conscious. Etc, etc. Japan in many aspects were/is behind the times.
I wish people would stop idealizing japan as some kind of wonderland...
If Japan insists on these projects, they should look at Sanatana Row in San Jose or the Assembly in Somerville. Offer assistance and transition help to existing small businesses. (What supermarket is planned? Don-Qui?)
It still remains though. In Osaka dendentown there is a shop that exclusively sells screws.
I remember when living there of the marvel of teenagers having GPS in their own cars circa 1999. Or the incredibly advanced cell phones miles ahead of their western counterparts. That's no longer the case.
Now you can find everything, much cheaper, and more conveniently, right here in the US.
Akihabara was over when Amazon and Alibaba opened the floodgates of distribution to Chinese and American electronic manufacturers.
If you want kirkland brand, you have to go to Costco. There's no equivalent for japanese electronics anymore.
Saying Goodbye to Tokyo's TINIEST Shop | Akihabara Tokyo Lens · Aug 14, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1UNJirOTI
I Rebuilt JAPAN'S TINIEST SHOP!! Tokyo Lens · Aug 20, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsimPVu1aLU
It started out like that and then lot of otaku shops opened and now akiba is known more for its otaku shops than the electric ones.