I'll Be Sad When It Goes' Tokyo's Traditional Arcades Face Losing Battle With Developers

Tsutomu Nishiwaki raises the shutters of his store, the rattle marking the start of a new day at a shopping arcade in Tokyo.

- Justin McCurry

Sutomu 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 of 1926-89 are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and a consumer culture that demands convenience.