Martijn de Waal

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Tokyo – A First Impression of its Urban Culture

Nov 12th, 2007 by admin

In the summer of 2007 I visited Tokyo and did a short photo research project on urban typologies. I was particularly interested in the contrasts between the contained atrium spaces of new developments like Roppongi Hills and Shiodome on the one hand and the still vey contingent feel of Tokyo’s street – or better: crossings – life on the other. What was the feel of these spaces? How where they appropriated? What was the overall balance between private and public culture? Don’t expect all the definite answers, this was after all a first impression.

Download the PDF for a full report.

Cliche or not, it’s hard not to be impressed with Tokyo’s air of continous movement. As Roland Barthes once stated, in this city everybody continously seems to be on his way to somewhere else. This experience is heigthened by the many tranist spaces scattered around the city: pedestiran tunnels, sky bridges, walkways, underground fora, all dedicated to and functionally designed for the seemless and endless movement of people.

Of course, these transit spaces ultimately lead somehwere. They lead from mass transportation to the many niche cities that together make up Tokyo: to the desginger chique flagship stores of Omotesando for the conforming class or to Yoyogi-koen in neighboring Harajuku for renegade youth. Similarly, they lead the elderly to their own urban turf: the markets of Sugamo a.k.a ‘Old Ladies’ Harajuku’ or to the temple district of Asakusa. They lead to the red light district of Kabukicho, and the CBD’s in Ginza, Marunouchi, and Nihombashi. We could extend this list endlessly (Manga in Akihabara, Sushi in Tsukiji, etc.), each area catering for its own (sub)urban subculture. So what exactly does this Rough Guide Urbanism mean? Are we really seeing an intense spatial specialization, the city as a sorting machine for different subcultural lifestyles? Or are we merely seeing this phenomenon because it has been prescribed to us by our travel guide, a preconceived image through which we fail to understand the more complex subtilities of these places?

Many of Tokyo’s destination sites, either shopping malls or private residences, are turned inwards. They seem more connected to the circuits of transportation than to their actual place in the city.They either lack windows or replace them with navigational signposts: for hairdressers go to the 7th floor, you’ll find camera assecoiries on the 2nd, for lunch take the elevator to the 5th and for Pachinko: walk straight through. Similalry when people travel around Tokyo they also turn inwards; their gaze and mind locked to the 2-inch screens of their mobile handsets, creating mobile intimate communities with absent (or present?) friends. Both trends produce an urbanism of connectivity: Being in the city is not only about where you are, but also about who or what you are connected to.

This does not mean that Tokyo has no street life. On the contrary, its streets are busy and vibrant. Maybe even more so, because Tokyo lacks the piazza’s and agora’s of European cities. People meet not on a central square, but at major intersections of Tokyo’s
roads: Meet me at Shibuya crossing! See you tonight at Roppongi Crossing! Thus in a city that is focused so much on movement, mobility and connectivity, it seems only logic that politicians use their transit vehicles as their mobile public stage.

Of course ultimately, no city can be just about movement. In the end, also Tokyo is about going places and meeting people. It’s all about hanging out at the right place, either with fellow schoolmates, colleague salaryman or members of other urban tribes.
Surprisingly, quite often the city alludes to the European urban culture of public coffehouses and terrace lined boulevards.

For many generations the inward-oriented architecture of the atrium has been a popular urban format in Tokyo. From the modern era department stores like Mitsukoshi to the vernacular Vegas style shopping malls like Venus Fort, and the super- or postmodern power design of Shiodome, Roppongi Hills and Ebisu Garden. The atrium is a contained urban zone (either outside or inside), demarcated by hard borders from the city that it is nested in. It is often themed, neatly organized, meticulously designed and branded according to a central principle. They are usually pleasant places of consumption, yet highly regulated by the many
rules that its visitors have to comply with. Says one sign: ‘Anything that might cause fellow visitors any inconveniance is prohibited’.

Often Tokyo’s atria succeed in escaping the sense that they belong to the ‘society of control’-paradigm. May be it is because even these atria have their own derelict and leftover spaces. Or because people do create their own private and public spaces within these atria, hacking its benches or courtyards as their meeting places. You will find many public moments in these private spaces. Or is it private experiences in public space? May be it is because the design is so clever it even incorporates the city’s ultimate charateristic: its contingency and informality. For instance in Maranouchi, during lunchtime little vans appear from which cheap meals are served. In all probability this is a highly controlled proces, but it feels like the informal foodstalls springing up in many cities. Thus these atria become spaces of formalized informality, creating an urbanism of contained contigency. Taken together, Tokyo can be experienced as a gradient of contingency, ranging from maxium contingency on Roppongi crossing, and a minimum in nearby Roppongi Hills.