The Japanese Street in Space and Time

In traditional Japan, streets were the centres of civic life. Unlike the traditional European fabric where plazas and squares were interspersed within the street grid, formal public spaces were non-existent, anything resembling one was either a semi-private shrine ground or a palace court. How did Japanese streets foster public life and how did they change as Japan modernised? This article examines the formal and spatial characteristics of the traditional Japanese street, traces its evolution and gleans into what makes their identities distinctly ‘Japanese.’

Urban Form

In historic Japanese cities, within a stratified social structure with the emperor at its head, there was no communion in a democratic sense. Consequently, as seen in planned Japanese capital cities like Heijo-kyo (Nara), there was no central formal community space like a Greek agora. The city was a grid of streets punctuated by temples and mansions. The urban form of the 8th century capital of Heian-kyo (Kyoto) for instance, was dominated by the central 280-feet-wide Sujaku avenue with other east-west and north-south streets ranging from 40, 80, 120 and 170 feet in width. Two areas were set aside for the East and West Markets, in either half of the city, and adjacent districts were quartered into neighbourhoods called cho organised around intersecting streets. These streets were the meeting places of the various communities. Traditional Japanese cities were polycentric ensembles with multiple linear cores.

But all traditional Japanese habitats were not rectilinear grids. Towns like Tsumago, in present day Nagano Prefecture, developed organically, but with a consistency in dwelling design. Many jokamachi (castle towns) like Hikone or Tsuyama had a web pattern of concentric streets surrounding a central castle. In the castle town of Edo (now Tokyo), which became the capital of Japan in 1603, major thoroughfares were designed to accord views of the city’s scenic spots such as Mount Fuji, the Masashino Plain, the Sumida River and Mount Tsukuba. Standing on Honcho Avenue and looking southwest, one could see Mount Fuji further away, just as one could glimpse Mount Tsukuba to the northeast from Kyobashi. Mount Fuji – believed to be the abode of the deity Kunitokotache who protected the people – remained a significant reference point, with woodblock artists like Hiroshige frequently using it as a backdrop to their street scenes.

Community

Typical urban streets in traditional Japanese cities and towns were lined with nagaya or machiya (townhouses) abutting one another with little design individuality save the arrangement of openings and facade treatments. In fact, at the end of the Tokugawa Era (1603–1868), each townhouse was designed with uniform dimensions. Heino Engel has written on this standardisation system: the size of rooms and number of structural members were based on the dimensions of tatami mats. All dwelling elements such as sliding doors, window slats and mats were consequently interchangeable with any other house in the town.

Over time, such streets developed concentrations of specific trading activities. In the 17th century castle town of Nagaoka for instance, streets were named according to trades and occupations – Okachi-machi (infantrymen’s street), Doshin-machi (policemen street), Bancho-machi (carpenters’ street), Uo-machi (fishmongers’ street) etc.

Individual houses displayed a spatial fluidity towards the street, because unlike the stasis of the traditional European stone street wall, the Japanese one was malleable, composed of translucent wooden shoji (paper paneled lattice screens) and opaque amado (rain shutters) that could be slid or completely removed. During the day, the shoji remained open allowing the street space to interpenetrate the private space of the households with the threshold between the street and dwelling diffusing domestic and commercial uses. At night, the amado were shut for a secure, private, interior night life.
 

Traditional Japanese cities were polycentric ensembles with multiple linear cores

This diurnal beat was part of larger seasonal patterns celebrating the changing natural cycles. In summer, the shoji remained open, facilitating cross ventilation for the homes, and advertising the various trades by providing glimpses into the interiors. During the day, a curtain or noren would hang at the machiya entrance, marking the shop boundary and bearing the family crest. These curtains varying in size and colour, distinguished one shop from another, marketed its trade and added a soft kinetic element to an otherwise dry streetscape.

Public communion was refreshed during seasonal festivals and religious gatherings. They were kinetic, with people continuously meandering through the wide thoroughfares and narrow alleys. The shoji that formed the street boundary were completely taken down extending the street space deep into the interiors of the house. The private dwelling space decorated with paper lanterns and festive fetishes, now became a semi-public space for sitting, viewing, dining and greeting adults and children continually journeying through the streets with various floats.

Today, it is not so much the few remaining traditional streets, but various medieval art sources that provide valuable information in this regard. The Nenchu gyoji emaki (Picture Scroll of Annual Rites and Ceremonies) originally painted in circa 1173, the Ippen Shonin eden (Picture Scroll of the Monk Ippen) painted in 1299 and the pair of Rakuchu rakugai zu (Scenes in and around the Capital) dated between 1530–78, depict this street plasticity as a distinct cultural trait of the Japanese public realm in contrast to the formal idea of the European plaza.

Cultural Transitions

In 1868, the Tokugawa Era met its end in the Meiji Restoration, and Japan opened its doors to Western influences. Ginza’s (a silversmith district established in the 17th century) evolution from a traditional wooden street to the glitzy neon cityscape, was one of the first dramatic transformations in Japanese post-war urbanism. In 1872, a zealously Westernising Meiji Government entrusted British architect Thomas Walters the task of redesigning Ginza’s fire-ravaged maze of wooden buildings. Walters redesigned it as a western oddity, with brick buildings and wide tree-lined boulevards. But that figment of the British suburb met its end in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and was rebuilt as a shopping and entertainment district. It survived World War II remaining a commercial centre in the 1940s and transforming into one of the most expensive places in the world during Japan’s bubble economy in the ’80s.

Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, the American Occupation insinuated democracy in Japan, making it the first non-Western industrialised democracy in the world. This brought newer policies and ideas of community and Westernisation transforming the traditional meanings of the street. High inheritance taxes disincentivised the preservation of traditional houses and streetscapes. New concepts of home ownership preferred not to share adjacent dwelling walls. The idea of the transparent traditional row house got increasingly interiorised as the idea of privacy began to get more defined, while segregated land use and increasing automobile dependence created exclusively residential zones.
 

As many as 3,000 people walk across the Shibuiya Scramble when the green light operates every 2 minutes

Between 1984–94, more than 40,000 traditional machiya were destroyed in Kyoto’s downtown alone, forcing the relocation of more than 100,000 residents. Today, conserved historic streetscapes like Ponto-cho in Kyoto accord a whiff of nostalgia. Ponto-cho centres on a long, narrow, cobbled alley running from Shiju-dori to Sanju-dori, a block west of the Kamo River. Here, sudare (horizontal reed blinds) still flutter in the wind and noren display their crest marks in the soft light of paper lanterns. Ponto-cho stands out in comparison to most other older parts of Kyoto, like the vicinity of the Kiyomizu Temple, where one observes stark adjacencies of modern buildings and historic machiya. The traditional transparency between dwelling and street is replaced by an opaque building wall that, if multiplied, makes the street little more than a conduit for vehicles.

New Identities

This said, street life in Japan now thrives in new post-industrial forms. On the whole, Japanese streets today are an ad hoc accumulation of modern buildings of various heights, types and frontages defying any cogent classification. But within this accumulation, one finds streets that stand out, not necessarily as designed rooms, but places that display new identities stemming from Japan’s contemporary urban condition. The following narrative describes five such places in Japan’s densest city, Tokyo.

Takeshita-dori – Located opposite the Harajuku Station in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Takeshita-dori is an intimate 400-metre-long pedestrian-only street that caters to Japan’s contemporary youth fashions selling Gothic Lolita, visual kei, rockabilly, hip-hop and punk outfits. With the street dropping down gently from the entry, a visitor’s first view through its arched gated entry is a dramatic frame of young, hip shoppers crowded in an intimate two-storey spine dominated by pop art. In many of its adjacent back streets, one can pass by numerous clothing and accessory shops and beauty salons, before emerging into the formality of Omotesando.

Omotesando – Literally meaning ‘the front approach’, is the most formal street in Tokyo today, a kilometre-long avenue in the Western sense,  particularly since it is referred to as the ‘Champs Elysees’ of Japan. Originally built in 1920 as the main access to the Meiji Shrine from Aoyama Street, one can still see the historic stone lanterns marking its entrance. Today, Omotesando leads straight down to Kotto-Dori (Curio Street) offering luxury brands like Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada housed in some very expensive and dramatic buildings designed by some of the world’s most famous architects – from OMA to Toyo Ito.
 

Unlike the stasis of the traditional European stone street wall, the Japanese one was malleable, composed of translucent wooden shoji and opaque amado that could be slid or completely removed

Shinjuku-dori – The psychedelic neon streetscape of Shinjuku-dori embodies what has now become a signature of contemporary Japanese urbanism. Here, buildings are not defined by architectural elements as much as a riot of stacked and accumulated commercial signage that is most vivid at night. Shinjuku-dori exaggerates the idea of street signage into a socio-political art, turning urban life into a consumerist gallery. One also observes here a consistently narrow lot or building width as a result of Tokyo land scarcity and development pressure. Buildings can be as less as 10 feet wide and more than ten storeys high, giving parts of this street a distinctly thin vertical texture.

Gorudengai – In Shinjuku’s Kabukicho area there is a compact low-rise urban ensemble called Gorudengai. It is structured on six alleys, each less than 2.5-metres wide, barely enough for two people to walk by. In what was formerly Tokyo’s red-light district, historic arrays of one-room-wide, two-storey townhouses have been converted into more than 200 mini bars and restaurants, where people huddle to dine. Here, one can see first-hand the Japanese sense of individual space and a quirky contemporary form of communal life born from extreme urban densities that defy anything the contemporary Western world has seen.

Shibuya Crossing – In direct contrast to the intimacy and scale of Gorudengai is one of the world’s largest and busiest pedestrian crossings located in front of the Shibuya Station’s Hachijo exit. The diagonal walking distance across Shibuya Crossing is about 44 metres. According to a 2016 Shibuya Centre Street survey, as many as 3,000 people walk across this scramble when the green light operates every 2 minutes. Per a 2014 survey by the Shibuya Redevelopment Association, anywhere between 260,000 to 390,000 pedestrians use it on working and non-working days. The Shibuya Crossing defies the conventional parameters of both street and plaza, embodying a unique mutated form of Japanese urban life.

Cultural Resilience and Prospect

While the forms and guises of Japanese streets have dramatically shifted over time, the cultural resilience of its traditional patterns is still vivid during festivals. Each year during Gion Matsuri on July 17, 32 tall wooden floats, belonging to different neighbourhoods are paraded through the streets of downtown Kyoto. They are pulled by hundreds of locals, with others perched on the floats to provide directions and musical accompaniment. The juxtaposition of these historic, symbolically-charged constructs moving through wide, asphalted, sealed-off modern thoroughfares, against the backdrop of high-tech consumer-oriented stores may look out of place, yet the age-old expression of the festival as a ‘moving museum’ still holds true. Numerous such events – Kanda Matsuri in Tokyo, Takayama Matsuri in Takayama, Nebuta Matsuri in Aomori city – affirm the continuing rigour of traditional street life in the contemporary Japanese city.

This article endeavoured to explore the evolving identity of the Japanese street and, by extension, the Japanese city in a time when globalisation along with easy access to information has brought in numerous new cultural expectations. One can say this identity is neither wholly Japanese, nor wholly Western – tracing back to the idea of Japan as a culture of imports beginning with ancient Chinese influences. On the one hand, democracy, industrialisation, westernisation and modernisation, all of which have had transformative effects on Japanese public space, must be recognised as part of this cultural trajectory. On the other, in Japan today, maiko (traditional dancers) dressed in kimonos still greet traveling businessmen arriving on Shinkansen bullet trains and the sublime Cha-no-yu (Tea Ceremony ritual) continues to be performed in high-rise enclaves. The new identities of Japan’s streets must therefore be understood as an ongoing cultural negotiation between Japan’s aspirations for modernisation and its traditional patterns. As such, the future of Japanese cities will emerge from how successfully they embrace and acknowledge their desires for globalisation along with the resilience of their historic traditions.