The traditional shopping street in tokyo as a culturally sustainable and ageing friendly community

The traditional shopping street in Tokyo as a culturally sustainable and ageing-friendly community Kien To and Keng Hua Chong architecture and sustainable Design asD, singapore universit

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Journal of Urban Design

ISSN: 1357-4809 (Print) 1469-9664 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjud20

The traditional shopping street in Tokyo as

a culturally sustainable and ageing-friendly community

Kien To & Keng Hua Chong

To cite this article: Kien To & Keng Hua Chong (2017): The traditional shopping street inTokyo as a culturally sustainable and ageing-friendly community, Journal of Urban Design, DOI:

10.1080/13574809.2017.1281734

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2017.1281734

Published online: 08 May 2017.

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The traditional shopping street in Tokyo as a culturally

sustainable and ageing-friendly community

Kien To and Keng Hua Chong

architecture and sustainable Design (asD), singapore university of Technology and Design, singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the cultural sustainability discourse and discusses

how community culture, community cultural capital and the elderly

play a key role in helping communities sustain themselves over time

It argues that the elderly are resources, transmitters and multipliers

of culture and a key driver in promoting ‘ageing-friendly’ cities In

particular, it investigates how creative, bottom-up urban design and

place-making initiatives by the elderly take shape in diverse urban

contexts It takes two traditional shopping streets (shotengai) in

Tokyo as case studies and seeks to clarify in the highly-developed,

high-density, high-rise, large-scale urban context, how the two

low-rise, small-scale shotengai have been sustainable and thriving over

centuries; and how community culture and the elderly have played

a role in developing and sustaining them Through urban historical

study, site surveys and street interviews, the paper addresses these

enquiries and suggests ways to achieve a more ageing-friendly

community in an Asian context aiming towards social and cultural

sustainability.

Introduction

Background and research interest

Population ageing, coupled with urbanization, has become one of the greatest global lenges in the twenty-irst century This ageing trend1 began in the mid-twentieth century and since then has been intensifying and expanding worldwide It is projected that senior citizens will make up 21.1% of the world population by 2050 (UN DESA 2013) Asian countries are at diferent points in the demographic transition East Asia began earlier and is farther along, foremost Japan, while the trend in South and Southeast Asian countries started later and they are currently at a middle stage (Mason, Lee, and Lee 2010) Figure 1 shows the age-dependency ratio2 in East, Southeast and South Asian countries, which are divided into three groups according to the timing, level and speed of their ageing The fastest ageing group includes Japan, Korea and Singapore, where the ratio of the older population (65 and over) compared with the working-age population (15–64) will be between 58 and 70% by

chal-2050 (Chomik and Piggott 2013)

CONTACT Kien To tokien@sutd.edu.sg, tokien98@yahoo.com

Japan has been the world’s fastest ageing country for a number of years (UN DESA 2013)

As of October 2012, the number of people aged 65 and above was 30.79 million, accounting for 24.1% of the total population Moreover, Japan has a low fertility rate and a relatively small percentage (13%) of juvenile (aged 14 or under) population It is projected that by

2060 the percentage of the ageing population will reach 39.9% Currently, households with elderly people comprise 40% of the total Japanese elders like group activities, with approx-imately 60% ‘actually participating’ and 70% ‘wishing to participate’ (Japanese Cabinet Oice

2013) Japan has taken a nation-scale, top-down approach with a number of measures to address various ageing issues, such as a structural reform of the social security (pension) and tax systems, promotion of more employment, social activities (voluntary work) and the continuing learning opportunities suitable for the elderly (Japanese Cabinet Oice 2012).Given such backdrops, this paper seeks to observe and assess cultural sustainability in urban communities, and explores what role the elderly play in cultural sustainability To answer these questions, besides a comprehensive literature review, evidence will be primarily sought from two selected case studies in Japan

Previous studies have shown that some developed cities in Asia have begun to incorporate

‘age-friendly city’ ideals and approaches in their urban planning and design (World Health Organization (WHO) 2007) However, it is argued that institutional implementation based

on globally mobilized policies and discourses might not have fully captured how each city interprets and deals with ageing issues at the local level It is essential to consider the role

of small-scale, socio-culturally and spatially contextualized urban design and place-making initiatives at the grassroots level, particularly those taken by the elderly to adapt to their changing needs There has been a common opinion that the elderly are generally unpro-ductive and thus are considered as a great dependency, a challenge or even a ‘burden’ in an ageing society (see e.g Cutler et al 1990) Nevertheless, recent perspectives have shifted towards ‘productive ageing’ in which the elderly can actually be a supportive force for society, and the elderly living together with younger generations in the community can be an advan-tage (Morrow-Howell, Hinterlong, and Sherraden 2001) Beyond social sustainability, this

Figure 1. age-dependency ratio in asian countries source: Chomik and Piggott (2013)

paper posits the importance of culture that arises from a strong network of community ‒ the community culture and the special role of the elderly in sustaining the traditional environ-ment that ultimately contributes to the cultural sustainability of the city.

More insightfully, two traditional shopping streets ‒ or shotengai (also spelled as gai, 商店街) ‒ in Tokyo, Japan, will serve as case studies to observe and assess cultural sus-tainability and the role of their senior residents Shotengai have been chosen in respect of their articular function as the Japanese traditional old town centre, and the two sites have been selected based on their popularity in Tokyo.3 The study aims to investigate how these low-rise, small-scale, traditional shopping streets could present a culturally sustainable model that has continued for centuries amidst the high-density, high-rise, large-scale urban devel-opment of Tokyo Speciically, it looks at how community culture and the elderly could have contributed to such cultural sustainability, which could also provide a more localized, ‘age-ing-friendly’ environment that enables the elderly community to thrive From the case stud-ies, it is expected that useful lessons can be drawn and adopted in other urban contexts towards a more ageing-friendly and culturally sustainable environment in Asia Before look-ing into the case studies, it is useful to review and understand related key terms, concepts and arguments that serve as background for this research

shouten-Literature review

Community and ‘community cultural capital’

Community (Latin: communitas) is a ‘group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common’, or ‘the people of a district or country considered col-lectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities’ (Oxford Dictionaries

2017a) Over time, the geo-physical environment can change, yet what a community typically retains over generations is its ‘culture’, deined as ‘the ideas, customs and social behaviour

of a particular people or society’ (Oxford Dictionaries 2017b) Together with culture, a munity sustains its cultural values and norms, which can also be conceived as ‘community cultural capital’ It is a particular term derived from the ‘cultural capital’ concept ‘Cultural capital’ was irst used by Bourdieu and Jean-Claude in 1973, and it traditionally targets an individualized, personal possession of cultural wealth, particularly the ‘embodied type’ (Bourdieu 1986) It does not extend to a group of people or a community This is the limitation that some scholars have recognized and avoided when they wanted to focus on more com-munal forms of cultural capital.4 The authors call this concept ‘community cultural capital’,

com-an increasingly signiiccom-ant type of cultural capital at the community level com-and yet is little studied Community cultural capital can be conceived as forms of knowledge, wisdom, know-how, skills, education, advantages, characteristics, tastes, preferences, creativity and adapt-ability (to changes) that a community collectively has, which underpin the community’s status and position in the society, and creates its identity Similar to social capital and unlike some other forms of capital such as economic, human and physical capital, cultural capital

is not depleted by use, but by non-use (see e.g Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1993) For example, knowledge, wisdom, skills or customs will fade away if they are not used Thus, it

is vital that a community can make most use of its cultural capital to sustain its status as well

as identity in society Most previous studies have shown that cultural capital reproduces through inter-generational transmission Community cultural capital acts similarly,5 in what

is called here the ‘vertical’ way However, it is argued that there is an additional means of transmission: the intra-generational or the ‘horizontal’ way, such as peer-to-peer cultural inluences among friends, schoolmates, colleagues or neighbours of the same generation

As such, a community can best retain and advance its cultural capital if it has a erational and interacting populace of diferent age groups, promoting both vertical and horizontal transmissions By retaining its cultural capital over generations, it gradually creates cultural sustainability

multi-gen-Today, as the majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, the ways people have been constructing buildings and making places and communities in many contexts over time can relate to their local culture and community cultural capital A good under-standing of these ways can better inform future urban design processes towards more cul-turally sustainable communities

Cultural sustainability and the role of the elderly

Cultural sustainability can be deined as ‘the ability to retain cultural identity and to allow change to be guided in ways that are consistent with the cultural values of a people’ (SDRI

1998) The cultural sustainability discourse reveals an emerging opinion that culture is one

of the four pillars of sustainability (Yencken and Wilkinson 2000; Hawkes 2001) ‘Culture is gradually emerging out of the realm of social sustainability and being recognized as having

a separate, distinct, and integral role in sustainable development’ (UNESCO 1995) Although this idea has been pervasive in the literature and increasingly recognized by governments, NGOs and local bodies, culture was not institutionalized as a self-standing dimension of sustainability, but was rather examined as part of the social aspect or simply ignored (Chiu

2004; Throsby 2008) In 2013, the irst International Congress on the linkages between culture and sustainable development was held by UNESCO, producing a declaration titled ‘Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies’ The University of Jyväskylä in Finland has set up a dedicated website6 to investigate cultural sustainability, in which culture

is regarded as ‘a fundamental issue, even a precondition to be met on the path towards Sustainable Development’

The authors believe that culture is not only a driver but also a catalyst and an enabler for Sustainable Development economically, socially and environmentally.7 Moreover, it is argued here that the elderly are the key resources and transmitters for cultural continuity and sus-tainability It is hypothesized that culture reproduces the passing of cultural values and norms ‘vertically’ from generation to generation and ‘horizontally’ from person to person in the family or community through education, narratives, observation, exposure, interaction, group activities, etc In addition, the elderly can be seen not only as cultural ‘transmitters’ but also as ‘multipliers’, because they can reproduce ‘human capital’ exponentially over gen-erations in their respective clans To a large extent, the elderly in the community can also be considered as a form of community cultural capital Therefore, they should be seen as an essential source of community culture and community cultural capital, which leads towards cultural continuity and sustainability

‘Age-friendly city’ approaches and the concept of ‘ageing-friendly’

Along with the institutional approach involving key initiatives such as the WHO’s Global Age-friendly Cities Guide (2007) and the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, there have been initiatives by local municipalities or communities, particularly the elderly themselves, to make their areas more age-friendly This emerging ground-up and participatory approach is essential for the sustainable future of cities and communities and complementary to the institutional one These improvements are small scale, yet adaptive, and can have great impacts on the local living environments because they are initiated and

mounted by the communities and for themselves, and connected directly to their own

chang-ing needs and demands Community participation can help strengthen the residents’ ‘sense

of belonging’8 or ‘place attachment’,9 and enhance the communities’ genius loci (spirit of

place).10

The emerging concept of ‘ageing-friendly’ is substantially diferent from ‘age-friendly’ or

‘elder-friendly’, and has recently received increasing attention from researchers, practitioners and policy makers Take ‘ageing-friendly community’ as an example An ageing-friendly com-munity must be able to adapt to the residents’ changes of needs and demands11 (Murata

2010) It is essential that its older residents can continue to engage in lifelong interests and activities, and enjoy opportunities to develop new foci and sources of fulilment (Lehning, Chun, and Scharlach 2007) Its social infrastructure is also designed to foster community participation and integration as residents age (Scharlach 2012) The rising importance of ageing-friendliness is acknowledged, and the authors believe it is essential to consider the entire ageing process throughout the lifespan of a person, rather than just the ‘aged status’ itself Herein lies a rationale for urban development polices, such as promoting places for all age groups The next section will explore the case studies of two shotengai in Tokyo, which demonstrate age-friendly or ageing-friendly communities and the role of the elderly in cul-tural sustainability

Historical background of the case studies

Shotengai in Japan and research problem

Shotengai is a type of traditional shopping street in Japanese towns and cities, which took shape from the late 1500s, when merchants were permitted to operate rakuichi-rakuza.12

Over time, this ancient free-market system has spontaneously and gradually evolved into the linear shopping streets with 30 or more commercial establishments lined up on both sides, often with arches at either or both ends, and the shotengai system was born These many shotengai are the bustling centres of countless communities in Japan, and have long been deeply connected to their localities Shotengai are often for pedestrians only, catering for almost everything people need for daily life They also host numerous community activ-ities, cultural festivals and traditional trade fairs throughout the year They play other impor-tant roles such as welfare and security, and help create and support a sense of community They are great places to visit to catch a snapshot of ‘authentic’ and original ordinary Japanese life in a cozy and distinct atmosphere, and they represent special or unique cultural identities

of their areas over generations (Figure 2) As of 2005, there were approximately 15,000 tengai in Japan (Hani 2005)

sho-Figure 3 shows a typical small and medium-sized Japanese city The downtown was irst developed along an old main route (shotengai), in the era of pedestrian transport After the World War II, Japan went through an era of high economic growth and urbanization, so a railway station and a supermarket in front of it was opened Soon after, another shotengai

Figure 2. image of the shotengai in central Tsuyama City during the Meiji era source: http://kinyodo.moe-nifty.com/blog/2010/09/post-fad.html

Figure 3. schematic plan of a typical small and medium-sized city in Japan through pedestrian, railway and motorization eras source: authors, adopted and developed from Takahashi (2009a)

was formed in front of the station (or the existing shotengai was extended to it), attracting people coming from nearby towns Then came the motorization era with a bypass route in the suburbs, along which shopping malls were developed (Takahashi 2009b) People grad-ually became accustomed to going shopping there by car and making purchases econom-ically in bulk, particularly at weekends.13 Therefore, shotengai have been struggling with the competition and consequently declining steadily for decades (Hani 2005) A survey (2004)

by the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Agency found out that approximately 95% of the

3500 surveyed shotengai were stagnant or declining

Despite the diiculties, many shotengai have been trying to lever a ‘community business’ model and have taken actions to sustain themselves There are signs that customers have begun to rediscover the value of community businesses and have returned to shop at sho-tengai (Hani 2005) Community business is conceived as a type of business based in a locality where community members trade together permanently based on shared cultural capital,

a social network and co-operative eforts towards common goals beneicial to all members

as well as the community Shoppers and storekeepers naturally get to know each other well and come to develop a sense of intimacy and neighbourliness

As the world’s most populous metropolis (United Nations 2014) and the capital of Japan with a long history, Tokyo showcases modern, high-rise, large-scale complexes as well as a number of traditional shotengai.14 In the context of the reported decline of most shotengai,

it is interesting to see how some shotengai with their traditional way of life15 and urban forms continue to lourish.16 The following cases will throw some light on this phenomenon

Sugamo shotengai

Sugamo shotengai (巣鴨商店街) or Sugamo Jizo Street in Toshima Ward evolved over erations around the Koganji Temple, a popular visitor spot17 easily accessed by public trans-port (Figure 4) It draws approximately 20,000 visitors daily, the majority of whom are elderly women who stroll around the nearly 200 shops (Kikkoman.com 2014) Therefore, Sugamo

gen-is commonly known as ‘Harajuku for grandmas’.18 The business community here organized

Figure 4. sugamo shotengai with three nearby train stations (left), and an administrative map showing street morphology source: authors

an association with a self-governing system19 as well as a co-governing mechanism in laboration with the local authorities, such as the maintenance of sidewalks and urban fur-niture as well as pedestrianization at designated hours.

col-During the Edo Period (1603‒1868), Sugamo shotengai was the irst resting place on the Nakasendo Road if one departed from the road’s starting point, Nihonbashi.20 As such, a town was gradually founded in-between the Edo Rokujizo Shinshouji Temple and Sugamo Koshinzuka, another resting place with a teahouse In the Meiji 24th year (1891), the Togenuki Goddess-Koganji Temple was relocated from Ueno to Sugamo Together with the existing Edo Rokujizo statue and Sugamo Koshinzuka stone statue, Sugamo Jizo Street nowadays caters famously not only for the elderly but also for the younger generation as a commercial and religious centre cum resting spot (Sugamo Shotengai Website 2017)

So far, Sugamo shotengai has been only moderately studied Most of the previous studies have been undertaken by Japanese research teams and published in Japanese For example, Oshima, Amano, and Taniguchi (2006) observed the sitting space usage by visitors and con-cluded that not only those who visited the Koganji Temple but also other visitors use the temple’s sitting spaces to rest during their shopping stroll Kakinuma and Shoshiroda (2008) researched behavioural characteristics of elderly visitors and found that the elderly them-selves try to ind or create ‘sitting spaces’ where no sitting facilities are formally set up Many are organized by individual shops spontaneously based on a demand-supply principle Iwata and Ito (2010) studied communication-inducing open spaces in the shotengai and found that many visitors, particularly the elderly who sat there alone, started a conversation with each other This review shows an increasing interest in visitors’ behaviours in small-scale open public spaces in the shotengai

Figure 5. Togoshiginza shotengai and train station (left), and a map showing the shotengai’s street and land parcel patterns source: authors; base map: google

the business community here organized an association with self-governance systems,21 and has collaborated with local authorities regarding some co-governing eforts.

According to Togoshiginza Promotion Association, Togoshiginza ‒ original name Togoshi22

– was also established in Edo Period After the Kanto Earthquake in 1923 (Taisho 12th Year), Togoshi Shopping District and its Promotion Association were established in July 1927 (Showa 2nd Year) The district sufered from regular loods, so the residents there were given bricks left over from the construction site in Ginza Road to build drainage and sewerage systems Hence, the area was named Togoshi Ginza The district was then destroyed during the World War II and inally fully restored by 1950 (Showa 25th Year) This history has shown people’s resilience and unity to overcome diiculties to sustain and promote their community for many decades

Togoshiginza shotengai has been sparsely studied (mostly by Japanese researchers and

in the Japanese language) For example, Watanabe et al (2004) studied the inluence of sitting behaviour on the length of stay in the shotengai, while Saijyo et al (2009) considered the role of local resources towards a ‘ubiquitous network society’, speciically the adoption

of ICT-based town-making to vitalize the shotengai’s central part

Research methodology

This paper adopts qualitative methods, including historical study and physical site surveys

to understand the urban design of these shotengai, as well as interviews to gain mentary insights from people regarding their views, social networks, interactions, individual narratives and oral history Three ield studies were conducted in November 2013, April 2014 and May 2014, including both physical site surveys and street interviews with 46 respondents

comple-in total (23 at each site) The physical survey comple-included temporal site observations,

photo-graphic documentation, mapping and sketches of some selected small areas Speciically chosen sites were observed and photographed during diferent times of the day or days of

a week (temporal observation) in order to understand atmospheres, crowding, type of visitors and their activities, temporary events or phenomena, etc Urban mapping was also under-taken by analyzing diferent maps (such as administrative, commercial and real estate) in

order to relate spatial patterns with people’s activities The semi-structured street interviews

asked about the shotengai’s spatial urban environment and design, social interactions and activities The answers were intended to be primarily qualitative

Findings

The research indings are subsequently categorized under two main headings, namely, (1) creative ground-up initiatives and (2) community cultural capital

Creative ground-up initiatives towards an ageing-friendly environment

The case studies have uncovered numerous creative, ageing-friendly, place-making initiatives undertaken primarily by the elderly, which relate to the research question on how the sho-

tengai have been sustainable and thriving over centuries Both have a human-scale cozy

streetscape with 3–4 storey shops and houses lined up (Figure 6), and are pedestrianized

during designated hours.23 Since the pavement and carriageway are on the same level, the street can be considered as barrier free and relatively safe to all pedestrians, including those

in wheelchairs (Figure 7) The street pattern is relatively hierarchical and organic The

con-nection between the main street and the side and back lanes (often called roji - 路地 in Japanese)

is seamless in most parts The expansion of the service area into the roji is not only a good way of utilizing small space, but also helps invite visitors to walk in the roji and discover more areas Both shotengai ofer a diversity of products and services as well as activities, and there

are many elderly who run those businesses

Figure 6. Cross section of the main street in sugamo (left), and Togoshiginza source: authors

Figure 7. Views of the main street in sugamo (left), and a side alley source: authors

Figure 8. open space at the gateway (left), and by the main street in in sugamo source: authors