East-West Center, July 20, 1994 URBANIZATION AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN MODERN JAPAN; THE CASE OF TOKYO Shunya

YOSHIMI INTRODUCTION In this presentation, I will investigate the structural change of urban cult ure in the process of Japanese modernization. My focus will be on the emerging and the developing processes of the four Sakariba in Tokyo; Asakusa, Ginza, Shin juku and Shibuya. "Sakariba" is unique Japanese word which means the place in t he city where people customarily gather and enjoy theatre, movie, exhibitions, s hopping, eating some special kinds of food, drinking, and many other cultural in teractions. It is a centripetal point of the urban culture and a main stage of Japanese urban life. From the etymological point of view, "Sakari" means the si tuation in which people are uplifted psychologically and "Ba" means a place. So "Sakariba" is a place where people gather and become excited as in a festival. Although it is difficult to find a word of the same connotation in western lang uages, "Fair" and "Plaza" have similar elements in some aspects. We can underst and the relationships between urbanization and cultural change by interpreting s ome distinct Sakariba in detail. In prewar Tokyo, there were two major Sakariba which stood above other small commercial centers; Asakusa and Ginza. So first, I will describe the character istics of these Sakariba and make clear their differences. I will maintain that the focal point of urban culture in Tokyo moved from Asakusa to Ginza during th e 1920's. I will also examine the historical development of these Sakariba and their socio-topographical meaning. Based on these points, I will try to extend my analysis to the social construction of people in Sakariba and relate it to th e process of the urbanization. After the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, some terminal stations of suburban trains developed rapidly and became Sakariba. This new type of Sakariba which had first grown around the railway stations became larger and larger after World War II. In the later part of my presentation, I will focus on two of them; Shi njuku and Shibuya. Although both of these Sakariba developed around the termina l stations, their characteristics are very different. And the focal point of ur ban culture, especially for the younger generation in Tokyo, moved from Shinjuku to Shibuya during the 1970's.

My point is that these two changes of Sakariba, from Asakusa to Ginza in the 1920's and from Shinjuku to Shibuya in the 1970's, shared the same structure. We can point out the similarities between Asakusa and Shinjuku, as well as betwe en Ginza and Shibuya in many ways. In the last part, I will try to consider the processes which once supported the prosperities of Asakusa and Shinjuku, and th en which moved the cultural focuses to Ginza and Shibuya. In sum, I will mainta in that the process of urbanization in modern Japan has had two phases. The fir st is the phase of population concentration in the large cities, when Sakariba l ike Asakusa and Shinjuku have expanded. The second is the phase of cultural reo rganization during which the social identities of urban inhabitants were "commer cialized" structurally. Sakariba like Ginza and Shibuya became popular in this phase of the urbanization. FROM ASAKUSA TO GINZA; CHANGE OF URBAN CULTURE IN THE 1920's Although Asakusa had been one of the most popular amusement areas in Edo sin ce the later 18th century, the construction of modern Asakusa, re-developed in t he 1880's under the control of Tokyo's prefectural government, was very differen t from the former one. Asakusa, especially the "Rokku" (the sixth section) whic h grew out of this redevelopment, became the largest center of popular culture i n Tokyo after the 1890's. Many movie theatres, opera houses and other entertain ment facilities were built there by the end of the Meiji era. At its height of popularity, Asakusa contained new elements as well as tradi tional popular elements. Among these, "Asakusa Junikai" (the twelve storied tow er) and "Asakusa Panorama-kan" (the panoramic theater) were the earliest and one of the most important buildings which provided people of the Meiji period with bird's-eye perspective. And during the Taisho period, nearly twenty movie theat res, in which people eagerly appreciated not only Japanese films but also foreig n films, were built one after another. Adding to this, "Asakusa Opera" was the m ost fascinating creation of the popular imagination in Asakusa. And there were many kinds of comic theatres, dance theatres and vulgar shows. So Asakusa was, as Gonda Yasunosuke who conducted a detailed study about the popular amusements of Asakusa in the Taisho period said, a world where a lot of old and new element s combined together. Writers fascinated by Asakusa of the Taisho period made many important obser vations about its attractive features. I will summarize their observations with four points. First, Asakusa was the Sakariba where many heterogeneous elements

fused together. Soeda Azemibou, a popular singer who wandered along Asakusa fo r a long time, said that Asakusa was a "foundry" which cast all kinds of things into new patterns. Another writer wrote of Asakusa as a "stomach" of Tokyo. Al though Asakusa swallowed many different kinds of popular elements, it never lost its own rhythm and atmosphere. Secondly, Asakusa was a continuously changing Sakariba whose style was never complete or static. Gonda said that, the most important quality of Asakusa was the fact that there were no fixed and finished elements. Also the famous novel ist Tanizaki Junichirou wrote in his novel "Koujin" that, Asakusa was decisively different from other amusement places in its mobility as well as in its largene ss. Tanizaki continued that a great many kinds of elements were flowing into, r In the third place, people in Asakusa behaved very differently from their ex pected behavior patterns. So Tanizaki wrote in the same novel that, in Asakusa, a craftsman could easily enter coffee houses (where very few craftsman used to go in those days) and a dandy wanted to enter traditional bars (which they usual ly looked down on). In the same way, Ishizumi Harunosuke who also wrote a lot o f descriptions about Sakariba in the 1920's, pointed out that Asakusa was a plac e that anybody could enjoy equally, freely, and without constraint. Therefore pe ople in Asakusa had many faces which were also changing continuously. Kawabata Yasunari's novel "Asakusa Kurenai-dan" exemplified this characteristic of Asakus a cleverly Lastly, Asakusa often created "communitas" (in Victor Turner's word) situati ons through many dense interactions between performers and audiences. For examp le one of the most important mystery writers in this period, Edogawa Ranpo wrote about the "Yasuki-bushi" (a popular folk song and dance which came into fashion in the late Taisho period) in Asakusa that, the charm of the Yasuki-bushi in As akusa was that of the sympathetic sound which resonated all around the theater, including the stage and the audience's seats. He also said that this phenomenon could only be seen in Asakusa, not in other parts of the country. Also Soeda Az emibou pointed out that Asakusa had an unique aura in which performers and the a udience fused into one. After the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, the atmosphere and popular enterta inments of Asakusa drastically changed. For instance Asakusa Juni-kai which had been the symbol of Asakusa collapsed, and a lot of movie and opera theaters wer e reduced to ashes by the earthquake. Asakusa Opera and some other entertainmen unning around, and fermenting inside Asakusa.

t genres went out of fashion accordingly. And also the "Junikai-shita no Makuts u", where so many illegal houses of prostitution had been prevalent until the ea rthquake, was removed from Asakusa. In a word, the overflowing energy of popula r amusement in Asakusa declined after the earthquake. Of course Asakusa remain ed one of the most busy places in Tokyo, but it was no longer the one and the mo st thriving Sakariba. In contrast to the stagnation of Asakusa after the earthquake, Ginza came to the front very rapidly. During the later 1920's, Ginza where three large depar tment stores and many barrooms were built, became the prominent center of urban modernism in Tokyo, and also in Japan. Thus some writers asserted that Ginza ca me to surpass Asakusa as a center for the urban culture. In June 1926, Asahi Sh inbun mentioned that the popularity of Asakusa was being swept away to Ginza. A lso Isoda Kouich referring to popular songs about Asakusa, emphasized that the i mage of Asakusa was changed from the "prosperous" district to the "dapper" distr ict. In this post-earthquake period, as the center of urban consumer culture, Gin za had some distinctive characteristics which I summarize as follows. First, Gin za was the Sakariba especially for window-shopping. The typical behavior which people showed in Ginza was called "Ginbura", which means to go window-shopping a long the streets in Ginza. In Ginza, a great many commodities were exhibited in the windows and people enjoyed seeing them while rambling about the streets. S o "Ginbura" was the special word which meant that a new style of consumer life c omparable to those in western consumer societies was emerging in Japan. As it w as symbolic of behavior in post-earthquake Tokyo, "Ginbura" was adopted in many popular songs and magagine articles. Secondly, Ginza was the Sakariba particularly for younger people. One of th e researches conducted by Kon Wajiro and others in 1929 (which was named "Kogeng aku" or "Modernology") showed that about 60% of the pedestrians were younger peo ple in Ginza while the figure was about 30% in Asakusa. So Ando Kosei wrote in his book "Ginza Saiken" (A detailed guide for Ginza) that, Ginza was the Sakarib a by which younger people were fascinated and that this tendency had appeared on ly after the earthquake. The emerging life style of younger people in Ginza was especially modeled as the "Mobo" (modern boy) and "Moga" (modern girl), who wil lingly rambled about the streets in the fashions of the day. Lastly, Ginza represented a symbolic image of modernity. I have already ment ioned the "Mobo" and the "Moga" styles. But many other things and events in Gin

za were also thought to be "modern". So Ando said in his book that Ginza was li ke a stage of modern life in Japan. The symbolic value of Ginza was especially exemplified by the fact that a lot of shopping district in this country wanted t o put the word "Ginza" on their own streets. As Ginza was the symbol of moderni ty, the streets named "Ginza" were expected to bear the "modern" images without any physical change. In short, the focal point of urban culture in Tokyo moved from Asakusa to Gi nza through the 1920's. These two Sakariba were very different in their traits. On the one hand Asakusa was distinguished by its heterogeneous mixing and its "communitas" character. On the other hand Ginza was distinguished by its image o f modernity and consumer behavior. Because this change was probably the result of a more comprehensive change in the urban culture of Tokyo, we must investigat e the socio-topographical context of these Sakariba in more detail. FROM "SACRED" TO "MODERN"; CHANGE IN THE SAKARIBA'S SPATIALITY From a historical point of view, Asakusa and Ginza had very different and un ique spatialities. On the one hand, Asakusa had been one of the most important popular entertainment areas from the Edo period. In those days, Asakusa had som e characteristics also typical of the other Sakariba in Edo. First, all these Sakariba in Edo were connected to the image of the "sacred" and each of them had a temple or a shrine as the core of its activity. For ins tance, "Asakusa Kannon", a very popular temple in Edo, was located at the center of Asakusa, and the most lively place of popular amusements just behind the tem ple was called "Okuyama". Such sacred cores were also the place of performances that depended upon the large urban population of Edo. Especially the "Kaicho" which often took place to reveal the image of Buddhas in the temples were very i mportant moments for the popularity of these Sakariba. Secondly, these Sakariba were connected to the image of "impurity". The pro stitution areas were often behind the sacred areas. In the case of Asakusa, the largest and the only legalized prostitution district, "Yoshiwara" was to the no rth of Okuyama. There was also an enclosed district of Kabuki theatres which ha d been forced to move from the inner city in the late Edo period. As the prosti tutes and the actors enclosed there were regarded as outcast people, the symboli c orders there were in contrast to the dominant orders in Edo. Furthermore, the se Sakariba were related to the image of the "death". In Asakusa, many abandone d children and persons dying in the streets were recorded.

To sum up, Asakusa and the other Sakariba in Edo were places of "liminality" (also in Turner's word) in the pre-modern city, which included images of both t he "sacred" and "impurity". And since this liminal character of the Sakariba co rresponded to their topographical location, all Sakariba in Edo were located on the borders of this city. It was this socio-topographical structure of Sakariba that changed after the Meiji period. In 1873 the Meiji government designated most of the Sakariba sin ce the Edo era as "Parks". So Asakusa around the temple, "Asakusa Kannon", beca me the "Asakusa Park". When the Tokyo prefectural government tried to rearrange the spatial construction of this "park" from 1883, Asakusa Park was divided int o seven sections. Also the small shops and places of entertainment in Okuyama w ere forced to move to the sixth section ("Rokku"), which was created by the recl amation of a marshy area. rn sense. But this governmental project did not succeed completely. As people were un willing to accept such restrictions, Asakusa once seemed to decline. The mercha nts of Asakusa complained to the government that entertainers and audiences were running away from Asakusa after the rearrangement. Finally the Tokyo prefectura l government reluctantly allowed the performance of almost all kinds of entertai nments inside Rokku, and it became the most lively district in Tokyo after the 1 890's. Therefore, although the core of popular amusements was moved from Okuyam a to Rokku, there was a substantial continuity in Asakusa from the pre-modern to the modern era. It was this continuity which made Asakusa such a exciting plac e during the Meiji and Taisho periods. On the other hand, the process of Ginza's emergence was quite different from Asakusa. Ginza in Edo was far away from the commercial center and there was al most no bustle. So Ginza was a completely new invention after the Meiji period. First of all, this invention was initiated by the governmental project that bu ilt the red-brick district there after 1872. As there are already many historic al studies about this project, I only want to explain the socio-topographical me aning of this district and its popular image. The red-brick district of Ginza was important as it signified the change of the socio-topographical structure of Edo in the early Meiji period. In this con text, the building of the red-brick district was especially related to two other changes of the same age. One was the first railway construction in Japan betwe The government tried to put many restrictions on the popular entertainments there, so that Asakusa would become a "park" in the weste

en Yokohama (the first international port) and Tokyo. These two cities were con nected by this railway in less than an hour, so that every kind of good, people and information that came into Yokohama was transported directly to the terminal station of this line, Shinbashi, which was the southernmost part of Ginza area. The other change was the development of the foreign concession in Tsukiji loca ted on the east of Ginza. Since the last days of the Tokugawa regime, many fore ign people began to live in Tsukiji, where a hotel, a hospital, churches and sch ools were built one after another. Because Ginza lay between Tsukiji and Shinbashi, it was thought to be import ant for the government to build a western style district in this mediating area. In other words, the Shinbashi station, the Tsukiji concession and the Ginza re d-brick district were the first areas in Tokyo where western urban spatiality wa s inserted. They were accepted by the people as a kind of the "gateway" toward western civilization. In fact, when the construction was almost completed in 18 74, the spectacular appearance of the red-brick district was featured in newspap ers all over the country. Those papers often compared the district to "Bessekai " (another world) and to foreign cities. Also since a lot of colored woodblock prints depicted views of Ginza, the image of the red-brick district became well known throughout the country. While Asakusa and other Sakariba in Edo had attracted people by their images of the "sacred" and "impurity", Ginza drew people by its image of western civil ization. This contrast is important because it means that there emerged a new t ype of cultural topography structurally different from that of Edo. In the case of the Sakariba in Edo, the socio-spatial logic of the "inward/outward", or in other words, the logic of the "secular/sacred" had been always acting on the cit y. But the magnetic force of Ginza had nothing to do with such an "inward/outwa rd" logic. Instead of such a logic, the basic socio-spatial structure acting on Ginza required only its relation to the western image, that was also the image of the "civilization" and of the "future". So now, the Sakariba no longer has t o be located on the border of the city. Regardless of its location, any place c ould acquire a magnetic force like Ginza if it had a strong imaginary relation t o western civilization or the "future". PEOPLE IN ASAKUSA AND GINZA; CHANGING TOKYO IN THE 1920's Although Ginza had been well known as a symbol of westernization since the e arly Meiji period, it was only after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 that Gin

za surpassed even Asakusa in popularity. This means that Ginza had been not so much a Sakariba as an exotic and fashionable district until the earthquake. So we have to consider why Ginza could not become such a bustling area as Asakusa i n the Meiji era, and also why Asakusa could draw so many kinds of people in the same period. In order to pursue these points, it is not enough to examine the p erformances and the spatial changes in the Sakariba itself. We have to extend o ur viewpoint to the social background on of the Sakariba goers and the process o f urbanization which shaped the features of the Sakariba. Regarding the Asakusa goers, Gonda Yasunosuke made a most detail investigati on in the Taisho era. He maintained that Asakusa was a place where the laboring class was creating its own culture. He called this culture "Minshu Goraku", wh ich meant a culture created by and for the laboring class. Gonda also maintaine d that the conditions for such culture were prepared by the emergence of a large number of people without money and time as well as the concentration of the cap ital which provided the industrialized amusement. So, if we accept his point of view, the main goers to Asakusa in the Taisho period might characterized as the laboring class of people. Certainly one of the most important segments of the Asakusa goers were from the laboring class. me era. But the cultural diversity of Asakusa can not be explained We must consider at least two other factors in the sa only by this observation. iji period.

The first is the concentration of population to Tokyo from the later Me The population of Tokyo increased rapidly since the 1890's and even

more under conditions after World War I. But the majority of the poor people w ho migrated to Tokyo usually engaged in many kinds of miscellaneous services. A ccording to a study of 1911-12 about the urban poor who lived in the downtown ar ea, the major part of the urban poor consisted of ricksha men, day laborers and so on. So there was a large number of the urban poor who cannot be considered o nly as factory laborers. The second point we have to consider is the concentration of poor citizens i nto the areas surrounding Asakusa. Nakagawa Kiyoshi elucidated in his study abo ut the urban poor in modern Japan that the poor people's residences in Tokyo beg an to concentrate especially in Asakusa-ku and Shitaya-ku (west of the Sumida Ri ver) since the 1890's and to Honjo-ku and Fukagawa-ku (east of the Sumida River) since the 1910's. All of these areas surrounded Asakusa. Also Gonda once poin ted out that many poor street performers who had been in Shiba and other places in Tokyo began to move near Asakusa from the later Meiji period. Accordingly we

can suppose that there were many poor people drifting into the neighborhood of Asakusa. These two kinds of population gravitation had strong effects on the cultural prosperity of Asakusa. After the 1890's, the areas around Asakusa (Asakusa-ku, Shitaya-ku, Honjo-ku and Fukagawa-ku) became more and more densely populated. And this great population growth consisted especially of poor people who had mig rated from the countryside. It is easy to suppose that such urban immigrants li ving near Asakusa often willingly came to Asakusa as audiences and performers. Because Asakusa was a very cheap amusement place, even a man with only a little money could enjoy it fully. Of course some of those poor audiences might have b een factory laborers created in the process of industrialization. But the most important characteristic of the Asakusa is more accurately related to the proces s of urbanization in which a large amount of poor people flowed into and concent rated in Tokyo. Therefore the change of urban culture after the Great Kanto Earthquake that was exemplified by the transition of popularity from Asakusa to Ginza, could be explained in some respects by changes in the distribution pattern of the populat ion in Tokyo. The densely populated areas around Asakusa were most badly damage d by the earthquake. And after the earthquake a lot of people began to move tow ard the southwest areas in Tokyo where many residential districts for the middle class were being developed. At the same time those areas east of the Sumida Ri ver (Honjo-ku and Fukagawa-ku) were designated as industrial and commercial zone s and were re-developed as such. But in addition to changes in demographic patterns, it is also important to consider in the socio-spatial construction of Tokyo. From this point of view, t he development of the mass transportation and communication system during the 19 20's was most important. On the one hand, many railways were built between the suburbs and the terminal stations, by which residents of the southwestern areas could commute to their offices easily. Moreover the mass media forms such as mag azines, records and the radio were spreading very widely. It was in this socio-spatial context that Ginza appeared as the most magneti c center of urban culture after the earthquake. Because Ginza had been a place where the mass-mediated image of western modernity dominated its spatiality, it was inevitable that Ginza became the focal point of urban culture when the cultu ral values of urban life were completely mass-mediated. In fact the penetration of the mass media into ordinary citizens lives which occurred during the 1920's

, was especially important for the rapid rise of Ginza after the earthquake. Af ter the earthquake, Ginza became not only the dominant Sakariba but also the rep resentation of dominant values for urban consciousness. On the other hand, Asak usa could not become such a mediated space because its magnetic force had been c reated from the gathering of the people themselves. FROM SHINJUKU TO SHIBUYA; CHANGE OF URBAN CULTURE IN THE 1970's So far, I have contrasted two main Sakariba in prewar Tokyo and emphasized t he structural change in urban culture during the 1920's. But this change was ty pical of the construction of urban culture that has changed in the process of ur banization. his change. There have been some other transformations of Sakariba similar to t One example is the shift from Shinjuku to Shibuya in the 1970's. A

lthough Shinjuku had been the outstanding center of youth culture through the 19 60's, younger people after the 1970's came to prefer Shibuya to Shinjuku. In oth er words, the arrangement of urban youth culture changed during the 1970's in a way which is similar to the change of the 1920's. On the one hand, Shinjuku had developed as the first post town on the road f rom Edo to Kyoto after the 18th century. Like other first post towns, it had ma ny prostitutes and developed as a prostitution area around Edo city. As this el ement continued after the Meiji period, Shinjuku was the notorious "red line" zo ne (prostitution areas) even after World War II. Adding to this, Shinjuku was o ne of the largest "Yami Ichi" (black market) areas in Tokyo just after World War II, when many open-air stall quarters were formed around Shinjuku station. At the same time, Shinjuku has been the largest terminal station of suburban trains in Tokyo. The suburbs in southwest Tokyo developed rapidly after the Gr eat Kanto Earthquake. Shinjuku, like Shibuya and Ikebukuro, came to flourish as a commercial center for those areas. There were already some department stores , movie theatres and a lot of coffee shops around the station, and the streets w ere alive with especially many housewives and students living in the suburbs. S o from its beginnings Shinjuku has had two different faces which might be though t of as contradictory. During the 1960's Shinjuku became the cultural focus for all kinds of people in the younger generation who had come to Tokyo. Especially in the later 1960' s, almost every cultural and political event by the young occurred in Shinjuku. For example, in 1968, the student movement embroiling the crowd collided agains t the riot police on the street in Shinjuku. At the same time, a lot of avant-ga

rde theatre and movie movements were emerged from Shinjuku. As for music, open air concerts took place every week in the underground plaza of Shinjuku station. Younger people used to gather around the station, on the streets, in the coffe e shops and everywhere else. Youth culture in Shinjuku at this time was so over flowing that magazines made up special editions titled "Shinjuku, big amoeba", " Shinjuku, jungle", "Shinjuku just before explosion", "Shinjuku, free space today ", and so on. According to these articles and other writings by contemporaries, I can summ arize the characteristics of Shinjuku in the same way as I already have about As akusa in the Taisho period. First, Shinjuku was a Sakariba where many heterogen eous elements fused together. Okadome Yasunori, who came to Tokyo in the middle of the 1960's said that, in spite of the lack of elegance and delicacy as in Gi nza, Shinjuku had an atmosphere something like a "stomach" where countryfolk, ou tsiders, radicals, gang members, vagabonds, homeless people, prostitutes and all kinds of younger people could easily feel free. Secondly, Shinjuku was a continuously changing Sakariba whose style was neve r complete or static. Fukasaku Mitusada wrote that in Shinjuku, while there eme rged every new kind of movement, they soon disappeared. Shinjuku was always in the vanguard of the era, or in other words, it was a town of the present tense, not a town of the past tense. In the third and fourth place, people in Shinjuku behaved very differently f rom their ordinary behavior patterns. And here, "communitas" situations were so metimes created through many dense interactions between performers and audiences . I have already mentioned the open-air concerts in the underground plaza of Sh injuku station, some theatre performances on the streets and other public spaces , the collision between the student movement and the riot police, and many unpre dictable crowd behaviors. In Shinjuku of the 1960's, there existed large throng s of younger people who could easily explode at any time or place. Thus Shinjuku of the 1960's had some characteristics similar to Asakusa of t he Meiji and Taisho periods. Sekine Hiroshi, a poet, noted that the vanguard at mosphere of Shinjuku, in which many avant-garde movements emerged, had something in common with Asakusa of former times. Kara Jurou who produced an avant-garde theater in those days, compared the relationship between culture and space in S hinjuku to that of Asakusa. But we also must notice the differences as well as similarities between Asak usa and Shinjuku. According to Kara, unlike Asakusa Shinjuku lacked the "backgr

ound" for its culture. In other words, in Shinjuku, the development of the urba n space to construct one of the largest commercial and business centers in Tokyo after the 1970's did not promote the culture of the younger generation. To the contrary, the rapid development of Shinjuku as a business center effectively su ppressed Shinjuku's culture of the 1960's. In fact, in spite of the development of Shinjuku as a business center, its energetic atmosphere was lost after the 1 970's. The younger people who had gathered there began to disperse to the subur ban areas. But in the same period another Sakariba whose characteristics were very diff erent from Shinjuku gained popularity during the 1970's; that was Shibuya. Like Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, Shibuya has been the terminal station of the suburban r ailways since the post earthquake era. After the later 1920's, a department sto re, movie theaters, coffee houses and other shops were built around the station and many students and housewives living in the suburb began to go to Shibuya for shopping. But in spite of its activity, Shibuya did not have any special impor tance as a Sakariba until the 1970's, when compared with Shinjuku or Ikebukuro. Far from that, a sociological survey carried out by Isomura Eiichi in 1954 said that Shibuya was no more than a market place where people bought daily commodit ies. Isomura also pointed out that Shibuya had no cultural significance and wou ld be a mere passing point in the near future. This was not true. After the later 1970's, Shibuya became one of the most f ashionable places in Tokyo, and many younger people preferred to go there more t han Shinjuku, which lost its cultural centrality for younger people. This chang e was initiated by the re-development of the "Park Street" district by the Seibu , a very large commercial company in Japan. In 1973 Seibu built a new type of c ommercial building called "Parco" on "Park Street", which was on the way from Sh ibuya to Harajuku. After that, Seibu created the new image of Shibuya around "P ark Street" through many kinds of mass media. Especially since the advertisemen ts for "Parco" produced by Ishioka Eiko and others blended commercial culture wi th the avant-garde culture of the 1960's, such a "commercial avant-gardism" of P arco appealed to the younger people in the 1970's. As a result, the main street in Shibuya changed from "Dougen Zaka" to "Park Street" during the 1970's and Shibuya, now connected to Harajuku trough "Park St reet", became very fashionable. In this period, Shibuya as a Sakariba came to h ave some distinctive characteristics. First, Shibuya became a place for browsing, especially for window-shopping a

fter the 1970's. While a survey by Isomura in 1954 showed that an average pedes trian stayed only about 10 minutes (male= 7min, female= 14min) in Shibuya, the s urvey by Asahi Shinbun in 1979 showed that a pedestrian stayed almost 4 hours an d walked more than 1 km in Shibuya, on the average. As the number of theaters, concert halls, movie theaters and fashionable boutiques increased rapidly, peopl e can easily spend a lot of time in Shibuya. Secondly, Shibuya is a Sakariba especially for younger people. According to the Asahi Shinbun's 1979 survey, nearly 70% of Shibuya's walkers are in their t eens and twenties. Adding to this survey the majority of pedestrians in Shibuya are people who come with their friends. For example about 70% of Sunday visito rs are in couples or groups, Also 70% of these come with friends (14% are with family). Thirdly, younger people come to Shibuya to show their fashionable "self" on the streets, and this "self" is thought to be related to the image of "Now". Af ter the 1970's, a Japanized word, "Now", became very popular among the younger g eneration. Compared with the word "Modern", which prevailed from the later 1920 's and referred to western civilization, "Now" has no such special reference. A lthough the younger people want to be "Now" at any moment, that only means not t o be out of date. So many ephemeral styles of "Now" were produced by the mass m edia and commercial companies after the later 1970's. And Shibuya has come to b e considered as the place where new consumable styles of "Now" are to be present ed by pedestrians. As we have seen, Shibuya after the 1970's has characteristics similar to Gin za after the 1920's. But we can not overlook the important difference between t hese two types of Sakariba. On the one hand, Ginza after the 1920's was the uni quely privileged place where "Modern" styles were presented by such people as "M obo" and "Moga", so a lot of shopping districts in Japan wanted to name their st reet after "Ginza". Japan. In 1976, it was said that there were 487 "Ginza" streets in On the other hand, as Shibuya after the 1970's is only one of the many

places where new types of the consumer attitudes have appeared, many shopping di strict which applied strategies similar to Shibuya on their streets do not want to be named after "Shibuya". Unlike Ginza which has been a symbol of modernity in Japan, it can be said that Shibuya is a well designed commodity which can be easily consumed. PEOPLE IN SHINJUKU AND SHIBUYA; CHANGING TOKYO IN THE 1970's

The shift in popularity from Shinjuku to Shibuya and other commercial spaces during the 1970's, which represented a structural change in urban consciousness in the same period can not be attributed to one cause. Of course, the explosio n of youth culture in the 1960's was a phenomena common to the entire contempora ry world and we can easily analyze the cultural change in the 1970's from an eco nomic point of view. But in reference to urbanization, this change in the 1970' s includes aspects similar to the change in the 1920's, not only in the sense of spatiality but also in terms of socio-topographical background and the people w ho gathered there. It is important to note that the golden age of Shinjuku's youth culture occu red at the same time that the younger population was very rapidly concentrating in Tokyo. Japanese society had experienced rapid economic growth since the late r 1950's and the population increase in the capital was very highly advanced. M oreover this was the period when those of the "baby boom" generation who had bee n born between 1946 and 1949 became adolescents and came to big cities like Toky o to enter unversities or to get jobs. And Shinjuku of that time had a lot of a ttractive elements for those people who had just come to Tokyo and were eager to find activities in this city. Also another reason why younger people in the 19 60's were so used to gathering there, was that many large universities were loca ted in the proximity of Shinjuku. As there was a great number of cheap apartmen ts then, younger people could easily live and play in Shinjuku. So many descrip tions of Shinjuku in the 1960's pointed out that the large proportion of youth t here were those who had just come from outside Tokyo and were fascinated by the sub-cultures in Tokyo. After the 1970's, this situation changed because the large urban redevelopme nt projects in Shinjuku made it very difficult for the younger poor to live, gat her and create their own culture there. Especially as west Shinjuku became the large office area like Marunouchi, the largest business district in Tokyo, those in east Shinjuku where most commercial facilities in this area were centered, b egan to be anxious that their town should be even more elegant and fashionable t han Ginza. For example, in 1971 when the land value of Shinjuku surpassed Ginza and became the most expensive in Japan, one shop owner said that Shinjuku shoul d never remain in such a squalid situation because it was a town that should be the pride of new Japan. After the 1970's, Shinjuku left little room for younger people to act as freely as they did in the 1960's. It was no longer the "big a moeba", the "jungle" or the "free space of today". At the same time, Japanese r

apid economic growth came to a halt in 1973 when the "Oil Shock" hit the economy and the process of population concentration reached a saturation point. Unlike Shinjuku, the youth culture of Shibuya became prominent after the end of Japanese rapid economic growth. The younger people who preferred to gather in Shibuya since the later 1970's were not those who had just come up to Tokyo f rom the countryside. The majority of them were those who had grown up in the su burban areas of Tokyo. With regard to this, the geographical characteristics of Shibuya are different from those of Shinjuku. Shibuya is a narrow valley surro unded by Aoyama, Daikanyama, Nanpeidai and other hills, where a lot of high clas s residences are built. So it has been very difficult for Shibuya to extend the commercial and cheap apartment areas to its surrounding districts. This is one of the reasons why Shibuya could not prosper as Shinjuku did in the 1960's. But it is also the reason why Shibuya was enabled to obtain a high class image much more than Shinjuku after the 1970's. Shibuya has attracted people not by the i mage of "free space" in which to creat something, but by the image of "fashionab le space" to consume something. In relation to cultural change after the 1970's, one of the most important f actors was the segmentalized development of the mass media, especially of magazi nes. Throughout the 1970's, many new commercial magazines with a large amount o f space devoted to advertisements were published, and the fashionable image of S hibuya was constructed by them. This situation was congruent with the strategie s employed by the Seibu company which I mentioned before, because they presumed urban space to be a kind of "media" where the logic of advertizing was available . For example, they put the names of foreign images on the streets, like "Park surrounding areas. And then they segmented the population according to their " Street", "Spain Street" and so on, in order to separate the districts from other tastes" for commodities and produced urban spaces analogous to the image of "sta ges" where each consumer performed his consumable "taste". Thus Shibuya is a Sakariba that was developed as a "pseud-event" (in Daniel Boorstin's expression), which occurs as a result of the mass media. According t o the research of Asahi Shinbun in 1979, 31 % of female pedestrians in Shibuya w ere reading "Nonno" (a fashion journal for young women), 23 % of the male pedest rians "Popye" (a fashion journal for young men), and 24 % of both read "Pia" (a journal about movies and theaters in Tokyo). Therefore most Shibuya visitors al ready know in advance about where they have to go, what they must wear, and how they can behave in Shibuya. Unlike Shinjuku, where younger people gathered with

out a scenario, Shibuya after the 1970's has a variety of scenarios produced by the mass media and commercial companies. To go to the Sakariba is an act of ali bi, an act of confirmation about the information that people have received from the mass media. CONCLUSION Throughout my paper, I have emphasized that there have been two different ty pes of Sakariba in the process of Japanese modern urbanization. The first type is exemplified by Asakusa in the later Meiji and Taisho periods and Shinjuku in the 1960's, where many kinds of the heterogeneous elements fused together and ch anged continuously, and where "communitas" situations emerged and people behaved very differently from in their everyday lives. On the other hand, the second t ype is exemplified by Ginza after the 1920's and by Shibuya after the 1970's, wh ere middle class younger consumers, e.g. "Mobo" and "Moga" in Ginza, have enjoye d swaggering on the streets while relating their behavior to symbolic images of the "Modern" and the "Now". I also maintained that the first type of Sakariba became prominent when a la rge number of people stramed into Tokyo through rapid industrialization. The ma in actors in these Sakariba were those who had come to Tokyo recently. In other words, this type of Sakariba developed in the process of population concentrati on which I call the first phase of the urbanization. On the other hand, the sec ond type became prominent when the spatial system of the city was sufficiently p repared, e.g. by the re-development of urban space, and the mass media referring to the city became fully developed. As I already mentioned, the popular images of both Ginza and Shibuya were strongly influenced by the media. I maintain th at this type of Sakariba developed in the process of cultural reorganization in which the social identities of urban inhabitants were forced to conform to those of consumer society. The cultural changes in Tokyo in both the 1920's and the 1970's correspond to the move from the first to the second phase of urbanization . It may be possible to think that this kind of cultural change has occurred m any times in modern Japan. But owing to the fact that the whole process of Japa nese modern urbanization was divided by World War II, it is not a mere accident that the transformation from the first phase to the second phase has occurred tw ice: in the 1920's and in the 1970's. In the 1920's, the Japanese popular consc iousness changed remarkably in metropolitan areas like Tokyo and Osaka, and Ginz

a was the special place where the newly emerging culture of consumption came int o sight. In the 1970's, such changes occurred all over the nation because Japan had been almost completely urbanized by then, and a lot of urban spaces like Sh ibuya could be produced. So the whole process of Japanese modern urbanization c an be understood, from the cultural point of view, as a changing process in whic h the cultural centers of the city have shifted from Sakariba like Asakusa, whic h was similar to many other Sakariba in Edo, to Sakariba like Shibuya, which is similar to many other Sakariba in contemporary Japan. I think that this hypothe sis should be examined in some other Japanese cities and also in some other coun tries.