I first set foot in Japan in 2007 and I was immediately swept away by a seemingly endless metropolis packed with hidden lanes, decrepit corridors, and a patina of decay splashed with vivid neon light. I know I romanticize it. That can’t be helped—Tokyo is a romantic place! Rationally, I can understand that I may be looking at the Tokyo of my past through rose-tinted glasses, and my early experiences of it are most likely exaggerated in my memories. But I also know Tokyo has changed, losing so much of its charm in the process, and I have photographic evidence to prove it.
Before I go on, I cannot deny that changes were needed. Labyrinthine train stations and run-down alleyways were not conducive to the march of capitalism and explosive growth in tourism. The old has to make way for the new eventually. This is a fact of existence. But I can still lament the passing of an era that once enamored me with visions of a great city seemingly straight from a film like Blade Runner.
A train billows past a station attendant, creating a smear of vivid color.
Today, Tokyo has lost much of the roughness and grit that made it so great to me in the first place. There are still pockets of this retro-Tokyo here and there, but they are quickly disappearing bit by bit, neon by neon. Take even a simple (and of course necessary) change like the addition of safety barriers on the subway platforms. Yes, this is a good thing. But purely from a visual, photographic sense, something has been lost. No longer can I create dynamic images of blurred color behind motionless station attendants. And this strikes at the core of the issue for me. It’s not that Tokyo has changed and will continue to change. What I regret is that I did not work harder to capture these things before they disappeared.
Strangely out of place, the old Harajuku station gave the area an odd eclectic character.
Over the years I’ve seen countless buildings, both extraordinary and run-of-the-mill, get torn down and replaced, more often than not, with bland, characterless commercial spaces. Again, I admit that the changes are often necessary, and mainly wish I had acted sooner to preserve some memory of those things now gone. But some renewals are almost unforgivable, like how Harajuku Station lost its historic building, an icon of the area, and was instead replaced by a soulless monolith to efficiency and nothing more. Yes, the new station is a much-needed practical improvement on the old one, which was clearly not designed to handle the throngs of daily visitors to Harajuku. The change certainly alleviated the extreme congestion at the ticket gates, but still, I miss the old one.
An old tempura shop in Ginza is now simply an empty lot.
Beyond renovations and renewals of major infrastructure, even simple local shops and passages have vanished one by one, often replaced with empty lots of gravel, waiting for a permit or financing before something else can be built to fill the voids. Small decaying restaurants and bars, wire-filled alleyways and passages, and plenty of old houses and structures dating back decades are all gone. Yes, they were decaying and the businesses they hosted may have failed. Or perhaps the owners simply retired or passed away and the next of kin sold off the land. But those things gave the city a character. They fanned the flames of imagination. And I miss them.
These old wire-covered buildings hosting hidden dives are no more. What replaced them is pristine and storyless. Perhaps with time…
The hulking Jumbo neon sign is no more, replaced by a boring unlit flat billboard.
I can imagine some readers scoffing at my fascination with the old and rundown. Of course, the city needs to be renewed and improved. A city cannot just be aesthetic it must also be functional. And anyway, my idea of aesthetic being synonymous with decrepit may not appeal to most. But what about the neon signs? So many beautiful examples of neon artistry have fallen, taken down and replaced with soulless LED signage or as in the case of the old Jumbo Pachinko in Shinjuku, replaced by a simple static billboard. I’m sure the cost of keeping the neon burning was huge and it was not environmentally friendly. Again, I can see how it’s for the better. And yet I feel that something special has been lost, never to be seen again.
The old architecture of Shibuya station, no longer in existence.
Speaking of neon, the iconic red and green signs of the Marugen buildings in Ginza are being snuffed out one by one, either by the elements or by the absence of an owner with a will to maintain them. These decaying old buildings will certainly not last much longer since they have no reason to exist, having served their purpose as nightlife pleasure palaces in an era long past. But when the Ginza streets are no longer graced by the gorgeous red and green glow of their neon, yet again Tokyo will lose something intangible. And few will notice.
One of the many signs of Marugen, not much longer for this world.
This sign has been off for a while now.
One more example is the major changes around Shibuya station. The old station, although needing an upgrade, had charm that the new structures do not. There was a feel of age and history, like a leather coat weathered by years of use, or perhaps like the rind of aged cheese. Shibuya had a rind, and it was stripped away and replaced by something new. I have a silent hope that in time the new buildings will age and develop a rind just like the Tokyo of old, but I can’t help but be skeptical. The new things are just too clinical, too planned, and not organic enough.
The Shibuya River runs through a concrete sluice along rows of old buildings.
On the south side of Shibuya station, a river emerges seemingly from nowhere. Well, it can barely be called a river. It’s more like a concrete sluice with a shallow stream of questionable water running through it. It used to be lined with old buildings housing bars and restaurants but has been replaced by a food court with a towering skyscraper perched on top. The view down the river looks quite different now. I know I sound judgmental of the new places, and also very selfish. Where now throngs of people can use and enjoy the facilities, which are clean and inviting, the old haunts could not be enjoyed quite so easily. It took a special perspective and mindful appreciation of these weathered old spaces.
A view that is no longer possible to photograph.
But now this perspective is possible.
It’s not just about romanticizing a Tokyo that no longer exists. In some cases, the changes lead to practical changes when it comes to photography. Some perspectives are simply not possible anymore. A building with a staircase that could be used as a perch is no more. Or the pedestrian walkways in Shibuya—they have been replaced, and with them some photographic vantage points have become impossible, whereas others have opened up. This state of flux seems to be simply a fact of reality. But it’s not something of which I took notice when I first started photographing Tokyo over a decade ago. The rate of change is slow for the most part, so it’s easy to take things for granted. Only when observing the city carefully on the order of years does one notice the ongoing and inexorable change.
Even the classic taxis are being replaced, and perhaps will someday be extinct.
With that notion in mind, it’s fittingly symbolic that perhaps the most iconic example of the retro-Tokyo era is being snuffed out: the Nakagin Capsule Tower. It was once a symbol of the future. It was a hopeful and naïve early attempt to build a city that can evolve and grow overtime, much like a living organism. This was the ethos of the Metabolism architecture movement, of which Kishio Kurokawa, the architect behind Nakagin, was a member.
A decaying Nakagin looms over the street in darkness as it nears its final days.
The Metabolists wanted to build megastructures that they likened to a biological organism. They envisioned sprawling matts of urban substrate floating upon Tokyo Bay. They dreamed of structures with interchangeable parts that could be replaced and retrofitted as demanded by the needs of the city. The Nakagin Capsule Tower was a prototype of this concept. Its capsule apartments were not meant to last more than a decade or two with the expectation that they would be replaced with more high-tech versions when the time came. But this never happened, and the capsules as well as the tower itself (actually a pair of towers sharing a base), fell into disrepair. In fact, I have seen concepts of many capsule towers dotting the urban landscape built into a network of interconnected walkways. But the dream never came true.
Nakagin is a relic of a time to which we can never return.
And yet, in a strange way, the demise of Nakagin is exactly what the Metabolists envisioned: Tokyo is a megastructure comprised of many replaceable parts, one by one expunged and replaced with newer parts, better suited to meet the needs of the metropolis. Isn’t that metabolism?
And so, where do the photographers fit in all of this? We can use our magic black boxes to record what we can and preserve it. Why? Perhaps because we love this great city and as it moves through epochs in its history, we become enamored in its character—something inscrutable that cannot not be explained with words, only images.
