Black cover plate with white serif title: Harajuku: A Forest, a Station and the Invention of Youth

Harajuku: A Forest, a Station and the Invention of Youth

There are neighbourhoods that grew and neighbourhoods that were invented, and Harajuku is the rare one that was invented twice. First a forest was planted by hand for an emperor and a station was built to reach it. Then, decades later, teenagers walked into the space between the two and made it the most imitated youth quarter on earth. The pages describe the first act in dates and tonnage; the second they describe in a few nouns and a nickname. This chapter belongs to The Tokyo Atlas: A Reader’s Guide to the Capital and Its Counterpoint and sets the two acts side by side.

A Post Town Before the Forest

Before the Edo period, Harajuku was a post town on the Kamakura Highway, a village called Harajuku-mura. The address on the maps was renamed Jingumae in 1965, but the station kept the old name. A visitor guide adds that in the Edo period the area held samurai residences; after the Second World War, it says, the American military presence brought Western influences, and the 1970s and 1980s made the district a fashion hub known beyond Japan.

The Forest and the Avenue

Meiji Shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. Wikipedia’s infobox gives the date of establishment as 1 November 1920, while the article’s text says it was dedicated on 3 November 1920 and completed in 1921, with the grounds finished in 1926; this chapter says only “1920”. The present shrine was rebuilt after the war and completed in October 1958, funded by public subscription. The surrounding forest covers about 70 hectares and holds some 120,000 trees of 365 species, donated from all parts of Japan. In other words, the woodland that makes the neighbourhood feel like a clearing in a city is a gift made of other people’s trees.

The shrine needed an approach. Omotesando, the zelkova-lined avenue, was created in the Taisho era (1912 to 1926) for that purpose; the Harajuku article says it was widened and reordered in 1919. A shopping guide describes it as about a kilometre long, running from Harajuku towards Aoyama. It is now lined with the flagships of luxury houses, and the pages list the architects who built them: Louis Vuitton by Jun Aoki (2002), Tod’s by Toyo Ito (2004), Dior by SANAA (2004), Omotesando Hills by Tadao Ando (2005 on one page and 2006 on another, so we say “the mid-2000s”) and The Gyre by MVRDV (2007). For what one of those houses later did with a Tokyo artist, see Collecting Takashi Murakami.

A Station Rebuilt Twice

Harajuku Station opened on 30 October 1906 as an infill station on the Yamanote line. The building was rebuilt in 1924, after the earthquake of 1923, and Wikipedia calls it the oldest wooden station building in Tokyo. The Takeshita entrance was demolished following a decision announced in November 2019; a new building opened at the Meiji-Jingu entrance on 21 March 2020. JR East announced in 2024, the same page says, that the 1924 building would return as part of a new development, with construction in 2026 and the commercial facility scheduled for winter 2026. We have not checked the progress of that work, and the dates are as announced.

From Washington Heights to the Park

Yoyogi Park occupies land that began its second life as Washington Heights, housing for American officers from September 1945. The 1964 Olympic Village stood on the same ground, and Yoyogi Park was created in 1967; it covers 54.1 hectares. Kenzo Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium, built for the 1964 swimming and diving events, stands beside it. The sequence of occupant, athlete and public is the neighbourhood in miniature: the ground keeps changing hands, and each tenant leaves something the next one uses.

Sundays, Laforet and the Takenoko Dancers

In 1977 the local roads around Yoyogi Park began to be closed on Sundays to create a pedestrian precinct, the Hokoten. It was abolished in 1998; at its peak, Wikipedia records, as many as 10,000 people gathered near the park entrances. Laforet Harajuku opened in 1978 and, a tourism page says, holds about 140 shops today. Through the 1980s the Takenoko-zoku, teenage street-dance groups, performed on Takeshita Street. The street itself is short: about 350 metres with roughly 130 shops by one count, about 400 metres by another. Most shops open around 11:00 and close near 20:00. A guide dates the paper-wrapped crepe stand Marion Crepes to 1976; it is the only page that does so, so treat the year as a claim rather than a fact. The wider story of what the dancers, and later the magazines, did to Japanese fashion is told in The Pop Cool-ture Timeline and Play as Power: Harajuku, Irony and Japanese Streetwear.

Behind the Avenue

North of Omotesando lies Ura-Harajuku, the back lanes. According to Wikipedia, independent fashion shops spread into residential Jingumae 3 and 4 chome mainly in the 1990s and 2000s. Cat Street, which runs roughly parallel to the main action and connects Harajuku to Shibuya on foot in about fifteen minutes, is where a tourism guide lists BAPE, Stüssy, adidas and a large RAGTAG; the same guide places BerBerJin, Flamingo and Kinji in the back lanes.

The lanes have a documented beginning. A Bathing Ape was founded by Nigo in 1993, and its first shop, Nowhere, opened on 1 April 1993 with Jun Takahashi of Undercover. Wikipedia records Nigo saying he borrowed four million yen to open it; the accounts of Nowhere’s funding do not all agree, and Ura-Harajuku: A Reader’s Guide to the Back Lanes sets them out. The company was sold to I.T Group of Hong Kong, announced on 1 February 2011, and Nigo left in 2013. The rest of the circle, Goodenough, AFFA, Neighborhood, WTAPS and the others, is in The Fujiwara Orbit and the chapters that follow it.

Reading the Neighbourhood

  • By train: JR Harajuku Station is opposite the Takeshita Street entrance and about two minutes from Shibuya and four or five from Shinjuku on the Yamanote line. Meiji-jingumae Station (Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines) is at the corner of Takeshita Street and Meiji-dori. Omotesando Station (Ginza, Hanzomon and Chiyoda lines) is at the Aoyama end.
  • On foot: the whole stretch from the JR station to the Aoyama end of Omotesando is about a 15-minute walk, according to a tourism guide.
  • In order: shrine forest first, before the shops open; then Takeshita Street; then Omotesando; then the back lanes north of it, ending on Cat Street.

Our Reading: A Street That Invented an Audience

The pages record a place whose most famous inhabitants were, by definition, visitors: Sunday walkers, dancers, shoppers, and the young people who came to be looked at. In our reading, that is the district’s one real invention. A shrine forest, a wide avenue and an American housing estate had made an unusually open space in the middle of a dense city, and the open space asked a question that the city had not asked before: what would young people do with a place that belonged to nobody in particular? Their answer was to treat clothing as speech and the street as a room to speak in. Every later label in the back lanes, from the shop that opened on 1 April 1993 onward, works inside that room.

The related collecting areas are the DOG Harajuku room, A Bathing Ape, Goodenough, Stüssy and the 2000s pop-coolture archive.

After a Harajuku piece, a back-lane label or a season from the 1990s? Our Hunting Salon™ searches across Japan's private collector circles on your behalf.

Questions and answers

Where is Harajuku?

Around JR Harajuku Station on the Yamanote line, about two minutes from Shibuya Station and four or five from Shinjuku, according to tourism guides.

What is Ura-Harajuku?

The residential back lanes north of Omotesando, where independent fashion shops opened mainly in the 1990s and 2000s, and where A Bathing Ape’s first shop opened in 1993.

How long is Takeshita Street?

Guides give about 350 metres and about 400 metres, with roughly 130 shops by one count. Accounts differ, so treat the length as approximate.

Is the old Harajuku Station still standing?

The 1924 building was demolished at the Takeshita entrance, following a decision announced in November 2019. A new building opened on 21 March 2020, and JR East has announced that the 1924 building will return in a new development. Check the current position before you travel.

References

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

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Index terms: harajuku · takeshita street · cat street · omotesando · meiji shrine · yoyogi park · ura-harajuku · harajuku station · takenoko-zoku · hokoten · laforet harajuku · washington heights · tokyo youth fashion · a bathing ape · nowhere

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