Black cover plate with white serif title: Nakano Broadway: A Luxury Mall That Became a Library of Obsessions

Nakano Broadway: A Luxury Mall That Became a Library of Obsessions

The most reliable engine of cultural change in a city is a building that failed at its original purpose. Nakano Broadway was designed in the 1960s as a luxury shopping complex with apartments above it, lost its shoppers within about a decade, and was filled by people who could afford the rents the failure had produced. What they built in the empty units, over the following forty years, is a library of obsessions: manga, toys, cards, watches, records, figures, and the art of one of Japan’s best-known contemporary artists. This chapter belongs to The Tokyo Atlas: A Reader’s Guide to the Capital and Its Counterpoint. It follows the building from a promise to a reputation.

Built to Be the Greatest

Nakano Broadway opened in 1966. Nippon.com records that it was once touted as the greatest building in Asia; Wikipedia calls it a luxury shopping complex of 13 floors, three below ground and ten above, with about 27,000 square metres of floor area and about 300 stores. Nippon.com counts as many as 350 tiny shops on the basement and the first four floors, and says the exact number is unknowable because turnover is constant. The upper floors, from the fifth to the tenth, were apartments, with a rooftop pool, a playground and a garden plot. The singer Kenji Sawada and the actor-turned-politician Yukio Aoshima are named as early residents. A covered shopping street, Sun Mall, runs for 225 metres between the building and the station.

The Empty Years

The luxury never quite stayed. Nippon.com says that about ten years after opening, newer shopping centres in Shinjuku, Ogikubo and Kichijoji drew tenants away, and by the early 1980s many units stood empty. Wikipedia names a different pair of rivals, Shibuya and Roppongi, for the same decline; the pages agree on the timing and the result and not on the competitors. The consequence for what followed is spelled out by Nippon.com: ownership of the units was divided among many small owners, which made any common management nearly impossible, and low rents attracted young entrepreneurs with little capital.

Seven Square Metres

In 1980 Masuzo Furukawa, then thirty and himself a manga artist, opened a used-manga shop of about seven square metres in the building. It was the first Mandarake. The pages disagree on the floor, with one saying the second and another the third, so we do not give one. Specialist shops followed, among them Ladies Kan for girls’ manga, Mania Kan for self-published works and rare books, Daiyogen for the occult and paranormal, and Special Kan for toys, garage kits, CDs and laserdiscs. Nippon.com counts 35 affiliated shops on the first to fourth floors today, while Wikipedia counts 27 branded annexes; either way, the shop that began as a closet has become, in the pages’ own terms, a district inside a building. Wikipedia adds that Mandarake opened in Shibuya in 1994 and in Akihabara in April 2008.

A Library of Obsessions

Mandarake’s success drew other specialists. By the 1990s, Nippon.com records, there were shops for idols, tokusatsu heroes, professional wrestling and baseball, and a pop-culture boom had begun. The internet, which spread widely around 2000, brought collectors from other countries, and the number of foreign faces in the building grew sharply. The same article calls the atmosphere “controlled chaos”. A shopping guide describes a basement with restaurants, hand-rolled udon and an eight-colour ice cream, market-style clothing on the first floor, collectibles including antiques, cards and otaku gear above it, a shop dealing only in sukajan jackets and anime and manga shops run by private collectors. For the objects themselves, see Shōwa Tin Plate and Soft Vinyl, Tokusatsu Heroes, Anime Production Cels and the toy and anime archives.

Murakami’s Annex

Takashi Murakami’s company Kaikai Kiki opened galleries and cafés in the building in the 2010s. Wikipedia lists his Hidari Zingaro gallery, Bar Zingaro and the Tonari No Zingaro shop. Nippon.com records that he moved his business operations to Office Zingaro Yokocho in May 2016, and that in 2018 he opened Tonari no Zingaro, an official retail shop on the fourth floor, where queues often form for new releases. The detail that matters to a collector is that an artist who collaborated with Louis Vuitton from 2003 to 2015 also keeps a small shop in a building otherwise known for used manga, which is a fair statement of what the building does. See Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami, Collecting Takashi Murakami and Murakami’s Flowers, or browse the Murakami and Kaikai Kiki rooms.

Watches and the Next Chapter

Nippon.com says luxury watch shops are a growing trend in the building, and a shopping guide mentions vintage luxury watches priced in the millions of yen. The change has an irony that we find hard to improve on: a complex that began as a luxury destination, was emptied, and became a library of obsessions is, in part, becoming a luxury destination again. For the same references on our side, see Collectible Watches from Japan and the collectible watches room.

A Building at Risk

In March 2018, Wikipedia records, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government designated the building as at risk in a large earthquake, because it was built to a pre-1981 standard and has not been retrofitted. Nippon.com says there is no consensus on renovation and that plans have been proposed and postponed repeatedly, alongside ongoing wiring, plumbing and maintenance problems. We have not found a confirmed decision, and a visitor should treat the building as it stands today as a historical condition that may change.

Reading the Building

  • Approach: from Nakano Station along Sun Mall, the 225-metre covered street that leads to the entrance.
  • The first visit: start in the basement for the food, then work upward; the shop floors end at the fourth floor, and the floors above are residential.
  • Neighbours: Nakano and Koenji are adjacent stations on the Chuo Line; see Koenji: Punk, Patchwork and the Long Dance of August.
  • Check before you go: opening hours differ shop by shop, and the pages do not give them.

Our Reading: Fragmented Ownership as Cultural Technology

Almost every fact in this chapter points to the same cause. Because the building’s units had many owners, nobody could reorganise it; because the failure of the luxury idea had lowered the rents, those who arrived had little money and a great deal of interest. In our reading, this is why Nakano Broadway produced a library and not a mall: an enthusiast’s shop can survive on a few hundred loyal customers, a building owned by hundreds of landlords cannot be redeveloped on a single owner’s timetable, and a place that cannot be redeveloped keeps the tenants who found it. The building became a rare thing, a commercial ecosystem protected by its own disorder. That is the process we have in mind when we call collecting a cultural engine, as in Japan’s Collectible Culture Engine.

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Questions and answers

When did Nakano Broadway open?

In 1966, as a luxury shopping complex with apartments above it.

What is Nakano Broadway known for?

Specialist shops for manga, toys, collectibles, anime goods and, increasingly, vintage watches, with Mandarake, which began there in 1980, at the centre.

How many shops are there?

Wikipedia says about 300; Nippon.com says as many as 350 on the basement and first four floors, and notes that the exact count is unknown because of constant turnover.

Is it safe?

Wikipedia reports that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government designated the building as at risk in a large earthquake in March 2018. Renovation plans have been postponed repeatedly, according to Nippon.com.

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: nakano broadway · nakano sun mall · mandarake · masuzo furukawa · takashi murakami tonari no zingaro · kaikai kiki nakano · tokyo otaku shopping · vintage watches nakano · tokyo subculture · nakano shopping complex · nakano tokyo

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