The yuppification of Akihabara

By Patrick Galbraith TOKYO -- The saying goes that in Akihabara, you can find whatever you desire. Tokyo’s Electric Town is a place where dreams and fantasy become reality, not just for local “otaku,” but for the shoppers and tourists who come to share their world. Yet what the powers that be want now is for the otaku to disappear.

“There are three periods in Akihabara: past, present and future,” says Takaya Kobayashi, a city councillor in Chiyoda Ward. “The past is the history, the present the current pop-culture boom, and the future the development of mega buildings and a contents industry.”

And he means to expedite that process — with police force if necessary.

Kobayashi’s views are emblematic of the political posturing that’s swept Akihabara since the business community had its appetite whetted by the annual $3.5 billion otaku-related industries. In a supreme irony, the very people who did so much to give the area its newfound cool — the small shop-owners, the electronics enthusiasts and, especially, the otaku of all stripes — are the ones with the most to lose as Akihabara goes upscale.

Part of Tokyo’s downtown area, Akihabara gained renown in the 19th century for Akiba Jinja, a shrine dedicated to fire protection. Although Japan Railways leveled the holy site when they built the local train station in 1890, the “Akiba” moniker lives on as an alternative name for the area. In the decades following WWII, the neighborhood became a black market for transistor radio parts pilfered from occupying GI forces (1940s) and then a market for appliances (’50s and ’60s), electronics (’70s) and computers (’80s). By then, Akiba was already the largest electronics shopping mall in the world, a futuristic hub for rare and innovative products.

Otaku started showing up

The media implicated such “deviant youth” in infamous crimes, such as the serial killing of four young girls by "otaku murderer" Tsutomu Miyazaki in the late-1980s. As other neighborhoods became less welcoming of otaku in the 1990s, stores catering to the subculture, such as Shibuya model and figurine emporium Kaiyodo, moved to Akiba, sparking a mass influx of hardcore fans. Normal folk stayed away, thanks to media reports that the Aum Shinrikyo cult harbored “otaku” sociopaths in Akihabara. Anime, manga and video games became the currency of the land; the first high-rise building, the iconic Radio Kaikan erected in 1955, became a shrine to ever-changing fandoms. Fast forward 10 years, and those same otaku who retarded Akiba’s growth became the impetus for its expansion.

“The popular perception of otaku changed in 2005 with 'Densha Otoko' (Train Man),” said Susan J Napier, author of “Anime: from Akira to Princess Mononoke.” “It was the first major television drama that had an otaku hero. The characters went to Akihabara and it seemed fun and bright, not evil and dark.”

The supposedly true story of a lonely otaku who saves a woman being molested on a train, “Densha Otoko” is a modern retelling of the beauty and the beast fable. “Densha” seeks advice from his otaku friends, a pure-hearted bunch who get together online — and in Akihabara. One of their common meeting points, Pinafore, became a tourist magnet and helped inspire the maid cafe craze that persists to this day.

The number of maid cafes in Akiba increased by nearly 2,000% after “Densha Otoko,” and TV shows featuring popular venues such as @home Cafe grew by 685% between 2004 and 2006, according to the website Kissa Navi. These figures have not gone unnoticed by filmmakers and TV producers. Because Akiba has no restrictions on film crews, shooting costs are minimal, and producers are treating the area as a discount alternative to Ginza, Shibuya or Roppongi.

Akihabara tours popular

The numbers illustrate the effect the “otaku boom” has had on Akiba: 10% of visitors come to buy electronics, 25% to buy computers and 30% to pursue otaku hobbies, but the remaining 35% are sightseers, according to an NHK survey. Akihabara ranked among the top five places foreigners wanted to visit in Japan in 2007, causing a fundamental shift in government policy. Rather than shun otaku, Yokoso! Japan now offers weekly “Cool Akihabara” tours, and the JNTO actively markets the “Otaku Mecca.” Other neighborhoods can only look on in envy: longing to reclaim the cachet of “Cool Japan,” Shibuya's mayor announced last year that he wanted his city to be more “like Akiba” and import maids.

The culmination of this came when former Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso "came out" as an otaku in Akiba in 2006. Aso's highly publicized bids for the post of prime minister were heavily salted with references to Japanese pop-cultural supremacy and harnessing the soft power of Japan’s contents industry.

“We invented otaku and should take pride in that fact,” he said in a TV appearance.

With so much economic, social and political momentum, leaders accelerated decade-old plans to redevelop Akihabara into a contents-industry showcase and a “Japanese Silicon Valley." NTT Urban Development, Daibiru and Kajima Corporations received heavy subsidies to push the project to completion.

The iconic Daibiru tower sprung up on the north side of Akihabara station in 2005, the same year the Tsukuba Express to Ibaraki made northeast Akiba a commuting stop for middle-class suburbanites, and Japan’s largest Yodobashi Camera set up shop next door.

When the massive UDX and Crossfield complexes were completed in 2006 behind the main Chuo Dori drag, joined in 2007 by the Fujisoft tower midway between the Akiba-side and Tsukuba-side developments, the redevelopment trifecta was effectively complete. As a headline in the Nikkei newspaper had it: “Otaku Ceding Domination of Famous Electric Town as Development Lures IT firms.”

Inflating land prices show the sharp effect of Akiba’s growth. The value of property near the station's Electric Town exit increased 20.4% between 2006 and 2007. On the back streets near where the first maid café was founded in 2001, land prices have risen by 10% a year over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport.

Despite talk of long-time residents being muscled out by cutthroat taxes and competition, Kobayashi and other figures take pride in the changes they in part orchestrated.

“There is already a salaryman culture here,” he said. “Families, women with children, will come to Akihabara as the Tsukuba Express becomes more affordable.”

Around 5,000 people live inside the limits of the Soto-Kanda district, which contains Akihabara Electric Town. Many have already raised concerns about rowdy weekend gatherings when the streets are closed to vehicular traffic and otaku can freely “cross-play,” or costume as an anime character of the opposite sex, and perform otagei, the otaku art of dancing and chanting before an idol singer. These concerns have only been exacerbated by the arrival of families touring Akiba or coming in on the Tsukuba Express.

“The things that are out of the ordinary for those who visit here to play are ordinary for the people who live here,” said Kobayashi, who also tracks commercial and otaku activity in his free magazine Akibatsu. “These are the people that file complaints, and we have to respond with police. If you are dancing or having a photo shoot in the street, people can’t get by and are upset about that.”

Police break up street performances

Now when Chuo Dori is closed to cars, the police patrol on foot to break up idol-singer performances and photo shoots, otagei circles and cross-playing otaku dance routines. Officials say otaku are loitering, littering and disturbing the peace. Forget their bringing in the tourists — that, obviously, is the past.

The heavy-handed response by law enforcement is in part a result of conflating the issue of rising crime with complaints against otaku. Alarming media reports claim maid services are being taken over by gangs who flout the official limit on yakuza activity and enter Akiba proper to force girls into “compensated dating.” Shoplifters posing as otaku carrying the stereotypical daypack are drawing scrutiny, as are prominent pirate software dealers from China.

Confrontations between police and otaku have been increasingly heated, and Kobayashi among others have vowed to instill control. The situation came to a head when Liberate Akihabara, a mass otaku cooperative, staged an unprecedented 500-fan march in June 2007 after weeks of protests.

“The police have been out harassing the cosplayers,” said Syuu-chan, the group's 28-year-old leader. “We want to make a paradise for otaku. Recently, that isn’t Akihabara.”

While otaku struggles seldom make it into the mainstream media, local news sources are increasingly chronicling the goings-on. And there are signs that the attention is having an effect. Plans are being hastily drafted to curb the building frenzy in Akiba.

“There is a new law in the works for Akihabara that will limit the height of new buildings,” explained Kobayashi. “However, that law cannot go into effect until 2009, so rapid growth will increase in 2008 as contractors rush to get buildings up.”

Will the otaku persevere that long? Patrick Macias, author of Cruising the Anime City, has suggested they will instead emigrate to other, less visible corners of Tokyo where society won’t bother them. He summed up an April 2007 article in The Japan Times by saying “the true face of otaku culture is hardly ready for prime time.”

Experts say that for the very sake of the neighborhood’s vitality, policymakers must reconsider the contradictory course of developing a playground of “Cool Japan” that runs off the otaku that enlivened Akiba and brought the global and media interest in the first place.

“You have figures being sold in a store right next to high-tech parts, and that coexistence of the industrial and creative is one of the special characteristics of Akihabara,” said Ichiya Nakamura, a member of Keio University’s Research Institute for Digital Media and Content. ”It is precisely because that hard element is complemented by the creative hobby element that incredible developments occur here.”

This article originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp).

© Japan Today