Black cover plate with white serif title: The Tokyo Atlas: A Reader’s Guide to the Capital and Its Counterpoint

The Tokyo Atlas: A Reader’s Guide to the Capital and Its Counterpoint

A city is read the way a book is read: by chapters, in an order the reader chooses, and never all at once. Tokyo is read by neighbourhoods. Each of the six places in this atlas is a small country with its own founding, its own shopkeepers, its own idea of what a person should be allowed to collect, wear, watch or listen to, and each can be reached from the others by an ordinary train. This hub is the map. It gives the order in which we would read them, the dated facts on which every chapter stands, and one reading of what they have in common.

The atlas belongs to the same enterprise as The Japonista Thesis and The Manifesto: Japonista Revisited: to curate Japan one piece at a time, and to treat the places where pieces come from as part of the piece. Everything below is drawn from the pages listed under References. Where they disagree, the chapters say so. Where we are interpreting, they say that too.

The Six Chapters and One Counterpoint

Place Stations named by the pages Known for, in the pages’ words Chapter
Harajuku JR Harajuku (Yamanote); Meiji-jingumae (Chiyoda, Fukutoshin); Omotesando (Ginza, Hanzomon, Chiyoda) A wooded shrine, a station, a youth street, a zelkova avenue lined with architects’ flagships and back lanes of independent shops Harajuku: A Forest, a Station and the Invention of Youth
Shimokitazawa Keio Inokashira Line and Odakyu Line Small theatres, dozens of live houses, vintage clothing, cafés and bars Shimokitazawa: The Town That Kept Its Small Theatres
Koenji JR Chuo Line Used clothing, live houses, record shops and the August Awa Odori Koenji: Punk, Patchwork and the Long Dance of August
Nakano JR Chuo Line, next to Koenji; Sun Mall covered street A 1966 complex of tiny specialist shops, Mandarake and the Murakami shop Nakano Broadway: A Luxury Mall That Became a Library of Obsessions
Ueno Ueno and Okachimachi stations; Nippori for Yanaka Museums, a park laid out in 1873, a zoo and the Ameyoko market under the tracks Ueno: Museums on the Hill and a Market Beneath the Tracks
Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura (Osaka) Shinsaibashi (Midosuji) or Yotsubashi A covered shopping street named for a canal bridge and an American village of imported clothes and records Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura: Osaka’s Bridge and Its American Village

Two companions complete the set. Five Walks Through Tokyo and One Beyond It turns the chapters into days, and The Kominka Café: A Reader’s Atlas of Old Houses and New Coffee follows a second thread through the same city: old wooden houses that now serve coffee.

A Dated Ledger

The diagram places the milestones the chapters rely on in order. Read left to right, it is a history of how one metropolis acquired its neighbourhoods: first temples and parks, then railway stations, then the shops and stages that made the stations worth leaving.

Dated milestones across the neighbourhoods of the Tokyo Atlas Fourteen dated milestones, from the founding of Koenji temple in 1555 to the opening of the new Harajuku Station building in 2020. Spacing is by order, not to scale. 1555 Koenji temple founded Koenji 1625 Kan’ei-ji founded Ueno 1873 Ueno Park created Ueno 1906 Harajuku Station opens Harajuku 1920 Meiji Shrine dedicated Harajuku 1927 Shimokitazawa Station opens Shimokitazawa 1957 Koenji Awa Odori begins Koenji 1966 Nakano Broadway opens Nakano 1978 Laforet Harajuku opens Harajuku 1980 Mandarake’s first shop Nakano 1981 Suzunari Theater Shimokitazawa 1993 Nowhere, Ura-Harajuku Harajuku 2009 Kayaba Coffee reopens Yanaka 2020 New Harajuku Station Harajuku Spacing is by order, not to scale. Dates as given by the pages listed under References.
  • 1555. Shukuhozan Koenji, the temple that gives Koenji its name, is founded.
  • 1625. Kan’ei-ji is founded in what is now Ueno; most of its buildings were destroyed in the Battle of Ueno on 4 July 1868.
  • 1873. Ueno Park is created on 19 October.
  • 30 October 1906. Harajuku Station opens on the Yamanote line.
  • 1920. Meiji Shrine is dedicated; accounts give 1 or 3 November, and the grounds were finished in the following years.
  • 1927. Shimokitazawa Station opens.
  • 1957. The Koenji Awa Odori begins; a tourism page records 38 dancers in the first year.
  • 1966. Nakano Broadway opens.
  • 1978. Laforet Harajuku opens, and the Parata Theater sets up in Shimokitazawa.
  • 1980. Mandarake opens its first shop in Nakano Broadway.
  • 1981 and 1982. Kazuo Honda opens the Suzunari Theater, then the Honda Theater.
  • 1 April 1993. Nowhere opens in Ura-Harajuku, the shop from which A Bathing Ape grew.
  • 2009. Kayaba Coffee in Yanaka reopens after restoration.
  • 21 March 2020. A new Harajuku Station building opens at the Meiji-Jingu entrance.

How to Read the Atlas

Our Reading: Six Answers to One Question

Each neighbourhood in this atlas answers the same question differently: what do people do when they gather in numbers and have no reason to be anywhere else? In our reading, Harajuku answers with youth, and with the discovery that a street can be a stage. Shimokitazawa answers with small stages in the literal sense, theatres built for audiences of a few hundred. Koenji answers with noise and patchwork, with music venues beside used clothing. Nakano answers with obsession, organised floor by floor. Ueno answers with institutions, and with the market that grew in their shadow. Amerikamura answers with import: a district assembled from clothes and records brought from elsewhere and, in time, turned into something local.

This is interpretation, not record. The pages do not say that the districts share a purpose. What they do record, repeatedly, is a pattern we find hard to ignore: a cheap place, a handful of people with an enthusiasm, a trade that followed them, and a reputation that arrived later. Nakano Broadway began in 1966 as a luxury shopping complex and became a destination for something no planner intended; Shimokitazawa drew students in the mid-1970s because it was cheaper than Shinjuku; Ameyoko began as a place for sweets and diverted military goods. The Japonista lens is a habit of noticing this pattern and of treating the objects it leaves behind as worth keeping.

After a particular piece from the places in this atlas? Our Hunting Salon™ searches across Japan's private collector circles on your behalf.

Questions and answers

Which Tokyo neighbourhood is best for used clothing?

Wikipedia calls Koenji, after Harajuku and Shimokitazawa, the best-known used-clothing area, with most of its stores south of the JR station near Look Shotengai. A tourism guide to Shimokitazawa says most of its vintage shops are north of the station. Our chapters on each give the streets the pages name.

Can the neighbourhoods be combined in a day?

Yes, in pairs. Nakano and Koenji are neighbouring stations on the Chuo Line, and Shimokitazawa is three minutes from Shibuya by express on the Keio Inokashira Line, according to a visitor guide. The walks chapter sets out five itineraries.

Why include Osaka in a Tokyo atlas?

As a counterpoint. Amerikamura is nicknamed the Harajuku of the West, and its story, imported clothing and records turning into a local youth district, shows what Tokyo’s neighbourhoods have in common with another city’s.

What is the Japonista lens?

A way of reading Japan through its makers, collectors and gathering places at once. The idea is set out in The Japonista Thesis.

References

Dates and figures in this chapter were checked against these pages. Where accounts differ, the text says so.

Continue reading

Index terms: tokyo atlas · tokyo neighbourhood guide · harajuku · shimokitazawa · koenji · nakano broadway · ueno · yanaka · shinsaibashi · amerikamura · tokyo vintage districts · tokyo subculture · japonista lens · curated japan

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