Tsutomu Nishiwaki raises the shutters of his store, the rattle marking the start of a new day at a shopping arcade in Tokyo. He wheels a display case into the foreground and stands behind the counter, framed by a sign proclaiming that this is a family-run noodle store.
It is a ritual Nishiwaki has been performing almost daily for 60 years. But like the fresh noodles its owner makes every morning, the store has a limited shelf life: in a few years from now, the 80-year-old will pull down the shutters for the last time.
Dozens of shops, restaurants and bars lining the streets of Tateishi Nakamise, a covered shopping arcade – or shotengai – in the capital’s eastern suburbs will make way for a new development. It will transform the skyline, but also change beyond recognition an entire community whose roots lie in the destruction caused by the second world war.
Across Tokyo and other Japanese cities, shotengai that sprung up during the Showa era [1926-1989] are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and a consumer culture that demands convenience.
On one side of the local railway station, a tall screen partially hides cranes preparing the ground for apartment blocks, shops and a multi-storey local government office. On the other, families that have run shops, bars and restaurants for two or three generations are bracing for the inevitable arrival of the wrecking balls.
View image in fullscreen Ads for noodles at Tsutomu Nishiwaki’s shop in Tateishi Nakamise shopping arcade, Tokyo. Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian
“It is a shame that the shotengai will disappear,” says Nishiwaki, who is also head of a local association of business owners. “Half of me is hopeful about the future, but the other half regrets what is happening to the neighbourhood. I think people around here just want to get it over and done with.”
They include Koichi Ozaki, whose family run an izakaya pub they accept will probably not survive the redevelopment. The threats of powerful earthquakes, fires and, in this part of eastern Tokyo, catastrophic flooding have convinced him that the destruction of the arcade’s dilapidated buildings is inevitable.
“In any case, people don’t shop in the same way any more,” Ozaki says. “We live in the age of the supermarket, and family-run stores are on their way out.”
The Tateishi redevelopment has divided locals, about two-thirds of whom see it as an opportunity to sell up and acquire a nest egg to see them through their twilight years. The rest say they will reopen elsewhere.
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