Shotengai arcades have been dead or dying since the 1990s if not earlier, and it's not gentrification that's killing them, it's lack of demand. For daily needs, in Japan as everywhere else in the world, one-stop shopping spots like supermarkets and convenience stores win out over visiting lots of specialty retailers that can't compete on price.
I often watch travel vloggers visit these places and you can't help but notice that all the vendors are also in their 70s or older, and they run them on their own. With no generational hand-over these places are doomed not matter how succesful or not they might be.
Other factors behind the decline of shotengai are the relaxing of restrictions on the size, location, and operating hours of larger retailers, partly as a result of international pressure [1, in Japanese]; fewer young people wanting to take over family businesses; more women with full-time jobs and less time to shop; and, as elsewhere, competition from online shopping.
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.
Yup like pubs in the UK. Times change, it's nice to keep a few examples of such things but why go out of our way to save them all; it's only preventing the next generation from having their thing. Which tbh given the current generation in power, makes sense.
I think you're right. Like the giant one in Musashi-Koyama is thriving at the start but dead at the end. The one in Musashi-Shinjou is really dead. So is the Kyoto Sanjo Shotengai. There's no "gentrification". There's just no customers.
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.
Tokyo is the most livable big city in the world, and the only one where housing is still vaguely affordable, because they constantly rebuild and regenerate. Long may it continue.
Prior to this didn't they lose a lot of the little parts stores/stall in... I think it was Akihabara IIRC? I am struggling to re-find the name of the area, it was like a giant open air radio shack and it's my understanding has been shrinking and/or disappeared.
Radio kaikan. It's been remade to focus on anime/otaku stuff like the rest of akibahara. There just isn't the demand for buying niche electronic parts in person anymore.
It still remains though. In Osaka dendentown there is a shop that exclusively sells screws.
The new construction projects are sad as evidenced by the horrendous Osaka train station. What a waste of space and concrete.
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?)
Enlighten me as to what's wrong with the Osaka train station? Conceivably I would imagine that it's built with a bit of a buffer to handle the demand that such an infrastructure project could eventually service. What do you think they did wrong?
I am just back from Japan and I am not going to lie, I think they are great in how they both value their traditions and history but as a society they only look forward.
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.
The core of the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka are like that, but as soon as you move a little bit outside, Japan quickly devolves into endless urban sprawl. I live in a Japanese city of 40k and it is just stroads, two-story buildings, and big box stores, and the buildings are all really ugly...
I am not sure what do you mean by forward looking? There are huge shopping districts under construction even right now in very central locations in Tokyo, basically building office towers and shopping malls.
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...
> 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.
> What's the end game with this? Identikit cities with little to no character, all created to prioritise convenience.
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.
A lot of the new redevelopment that is going on is in areas where the Tokyo Metropolian goverment have relaxed/suspended the old zoning laws etc, hence the fact the new development is all big high rises, and more identitkit than previous development stuff. So is it more of a concern than it was historically
> but for people that are the opposite the loss of culture is more strongly felt.
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.
> Constant change and cities that are no longer recognizable after few decades is japanese culture, from millenia.
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.
Just because you state something it doesn't make it true.
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.
> And every time they have rebuilt and adapted to the new political, cultural and social reality.
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:
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.
Shotengai arcades have been dead or dying since the 1990s if not earlier, and it's not gentrification that's killing them, it's lack of demand. For daily needs, in Japan as everywhere else in the world, one-stop shopping spots like supermarkets and convenience stores win out over visiting lots of specialty retailers that can't compete on price.
I often watch travel vloggers visit these places and you can't help but notice that all the vendors are also in their 70s or older, and they run them on their own. With no generational hand-over these places are doomed not matter how succesful or not they might be.
Other factors behind the decline of shotengai are the relaxing of restrictions on the size, location, and operating hours of larger retailers, partly as a result of international pressure [1, in Japanese]; fewer young people wanting to take over family businesses; more women with full-time jobs and less time to shop; and, as elsewhere, competition from online shopping.
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...
[2] https://haseshige.jp/
Yup like pubs in the UK. Times change, it's nice to keep a few examples of such things but why go out of our way to save them all; it's only preventing the next generation from having their thing. Which tbh given the current generation in power, makes sense.
I think you're right. Like the giant one in Musashi-Koyama is thriving at the start but dead at the end. The one in Musashi-Shinjou is really dead. So is the Kyoto Sanjo Shotengai. There's no "gentrification". There's just no customers.
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.
Kyoto Sanjo got "killed" by COVID. Lived in the area for a bit, and when I visited in 2024 there were so many things just gone
Tokyo is the most livable big city in the world, and the only one where housing is still vaguely affordable, because they constantly rebuild and regenerate. Long may it continue.
Most livable according to whom?
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
I think the average rent is about $600 in a 'central' location. Any other big city in the world would be at least 3x the price, insane.
I think this largely depends on the size of the flat. So how large of a flat are you referring to?
Prior to this didn't they lose a lot of the little parts stores/stall in... I think it was Akihabara IIRC? I am struggling to re-find the name of the area, it was like a giant open air radio shack and it's my understanding has been shrinking and/or disappeared.
Are you thinking about Tokyo Lens coverage?
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
No, it was a long line of stalls... the origin of the term "electric town" not any singular place.
That is akihabara itself https://www.gotokyo.org/en/spot/55/index.html
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.
I may be wrong, but I'm 99% certain that has to be Akihabara.
Radio kaikan. It's been remade to focus on anime/otaku stuff like the rest of akibahara. There just isn't the demand for buying niche electronic parts in person anymore.
It still remains though. In Osaka dendentown there is a shop that exclusively sells screws.
The new construction projects are sad as evidenced by the horrendous Osaka train station. What a waste of space and concrete.
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?)
Enlighten me as to what's wrong with the Osaka train station? Conceivably I would imagine that it's built with a bit of a buffer to handle the demand that such an infrastructure project could eventually service. What do you think they did wrong?
I am just back from Japan and I am not going to lie, I think they are great in how they both value their traditions and history but as a society they only look forward.
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.
The core of the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka are like that, but as soon as you move a little bit outside, Japan quickly devolves into endless urban sprawl. I live in a Japanese city of 40k and it is just stroads, two-story buildings, and big box stores, and the buildings are all really ugly...
I am not sure what do you mean by forward looking? There are huge shopping districts under construction even right now in very central locations in Tokyo, basically building office towers and shopping malls.
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...
> 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.
> What's the end game with this? Identikit cities with little to no character, all created to prioritise convenience.
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.
> People say this but Tokyo preserves _way more_ weird subculture stuff
> 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.
A lot of the new redevelopment that is going on is in areas where the Tokyo Metropolian goverment have relaxed/suspended the old zoning laws etc, hence the fact the new development is all big high rises, and more identitkit than previous development stuff. So is it more of a concern than it was historically
> but for people that are the opposite the loss of culture is more strongly felt.
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.
> Constant change and cities that are no longer recognizable after few decades is japanese culture, from millenia.
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.
Just because you state something it doesn't make it true.
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.
> And every time they have rebuilt and adapted to the new political, cultural and social reality.
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.
The most sacred shrine in the country is rebuilt every 20 years, and has been rebuilt every 20 years for hundreds of years.
Which shrine are you referring to?
singapore