After passing through the arches of the Nakano Sunmall shopping street, which starts from the north exit of JR Nakano Station, we arrive at Nakano Broadway, the mecca of the world. otaku. This building, full of shops offering figures of anime and all kinds of related products, it is a dream place that many fans from other countries want to visit at least once in their life.
The old Tōyōichi building
In 2022 Nakano Broadway turned 56 years old. This building, located in a corner adjacent to the Nakano Sunmall shopping street that extends from the north exit of JR Nakano Station, has ten floors above ground and three basements below it. The floors between the fifth and tenth (in Japan the ground floor or floor 0 is the first floor) are reserved for housing, and on the roof residents can enjoy a swimming pool and recreational facilities, as well as a private vegetable garden in a section of the outdoor garden.
The second and third basements are dedicated to machine rooms, while from the first basement to the fourth floor the building is full of shops of all kinds and genres. His number is rumored to be between 300 and 350, but businesses change so often that no one knows for sure.
When the building was inaugurated in 1966, it was baptized with the name of Tōyōichi no birudingu (which could be translated as “the building foremost of the East”). It was considered part of the avant-garde in luxury apartment buildings, and the commercial area had quality clothing stores. Celebrities such as the singer and actor Sawada Kenji or the writer Aoshima Yukio lived on the upper floors. But after about ten years the place was falling into decline. At other points along the JR line, such as Shinjuku, Ogikubo or Kichijōji, malls and shopping areas sprang up one after another, and the Tōyōichi eventually lost its dominance. On the eve of the 1980s, many shops left the area, more and more like an abandoned shopping street with closed shutters.
A synergy born from a small used bookstore
Salvation from this crisis came from the hand of the second floor of Nakano Broadway, in 1980: a used bookstore of just two tsubos (a tsuba is just over three square meters). Mandarake (the name is a play on words between sleeve Y darak, “plagued, covered”) was a specialty manga shop. Its owner, at that time a young man of only thirty years, was Furukawa Masuzō.
Two years after opening that first store, Furukawa rented another store on the third floor of the north wing of the building, and soon after bought another one, which also overlooked the main street from the third floor. He opened the area called redisu khan (The ladies’ wing), where it is offered shoujo manga and posters of bishojoor the section mania khan (The wing of the maniacs), dedicated to fanzines from all over the country and to rare collector’s editions. dayogen (The Great Prophecy) is a section that brings together volumes related to spirituality, while supesharu khan (The special wing) offers figures of anime and heroes, resin models and plastic models, CDs and LDs. Mandarake grew more and more, as if it were filling the empty spaces of the place, until reaching the 35 linked stores that exist today, between the first and fourth floors.
Mandarake’s headquarters, on the third floor of Nakano Broadway, boasts an impressive collection of shonen manga Y seinen manga.
As a result of the success of Mandarake, stores from all over the country that deal in products of the subculture began to gather one after another in the building. Sleeve, anime, idolsfilms, tokusatsu, wrestling, baseball… there are all kinds of genres. The small used bookstore founded in 1980 had become the trigger that created the “subculture mecca” with the arrival of the nineties.
Mandarake Hen’yawhich the author visited on the fourth floor of Nakano Broadway, is entirely devoted to trinkets and retro products from the Shōwa era.
Young owners who compete with character
We can find a reason that made possible that violent revolution. On the eve of the eighties, the rights to this building were in a rather complex situation. At first, the premises could only be bought, but as several properties changed hands, their owners also divided more and more. Each owner rented to new businesses, making it impossible to manage the place as a unit; at that time there was no central control of the situation.
And yet, for young store owners, a moment of crisis could also be an opportunity. Space for premises was very limited, which also meant lower rental prices; the place began to bring together stores with little capital but with young owners with personality, and forming a small and profound world with its stores of strong character.
This is an aspect that greatly differentiates Nakano Broadway from the commercial buildings created by large construction companies in places like Shinjuku or Shibuya. All the owners struggled to survive, and thus, without premeditation of any kind, a totally chaotic commercial space was created. However, it is also true that this situation has remained constant until today, without ever considering the owners a unitary vision of how the building, already very old, can be renewed; projects to replace the place are also moving at a snail’s pace, creating other kinds of chaos…
The land of dreams for otaku of all the world
By the 1990s, Nakano Broadway was gaining prominence as a mecca for otaku, and just by visiting the place one could get all kinds of information. When the world fully entered the age of the Internet, beginning in 2000, Nakano Broadway’s transformation into a true mecca accelerated. Author Watanabe Kōji, who lives in the area, notes:
As the use of the Internet expanded, the idea of Broadway as a mecca in a virtual space also took hold. all over the world there is otaku: in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, in China, in Mexico, in Iran… They all know Nakano Broadway very well thanks to the network, but it is a place that few have visited in person, that they would like to see ever. For them, the fact that this building really exists has taken on a very special meaning, as a dream place.
The truth is that from that time the number of foreign tourists visiting Nakano Broadway began to grow vertiginously.
Changes due to the coronavirus pandemic
As of 2010, galleries and cafes of Kaikai Kiki, a company led by internationally famous contemporary art creator Murakami Takashi, began to open their doors on Nakano Broadway. In May 2016, Murakami’s office was also moved into the building, Office Zingaro Yokocho. In December 2018, the official Murakami Takashi souvenir shop opened its doors Tonari no Zingaro. Unique products in the world, created by Kaikai Kiki, artistic objects such as prints or posters and also a wide range of accessories and objects of all kinds are for sale. That is why there are usually long queues, which go up to the fourth floor from the lower floors, of people waiting to buy newly launched products. Among them, needless to say, there are many foreign tourists.
The official Murakami Takashi souvenir shop on the fourth floor of Nakano Broadway, Tonari no Zingaro.
It was a very favorable time for the place. The foreigners who visited Japan, in 2013 more than ten million, arrived in 2015 at twenty. In 2018 they exceeded 31 million. Although there were already many who came to Nakano Broadway for being the mecca of culture otakutheir number kept growing. The signs and signs of the building were translated into English, Chinese and Korean, and pamphlets for foreigners began to be offered; Nakano Broadway was fully prepared to receive even more tourists from other countries.
However, all that changed with the arrival of the coronavirus. Tourists from abroad, which in 2019 reached 32 million, in 2020 did not add more than 4,115,000, and in 2021 the scarce figure of 245,000. As a result, those tourists who had visited the place with fervor and bought in large quantities and brought back to their countries products of characters from anime and manga almost completely disappeared, and Nakano Broadway began to show a defeated aspect, almost of a ghost town, by which the fact that it was still an aged building, with more than fifty years behind it, could be perfectly noted. .
Today we no longer have states of emergency in the country, and little by little foreign tourists are being seen in the country again. There are new types of commercial developments on Nakano Broadway of late, such as a number of shops selling brand-name wristwatches, but specialty shops of all types and sizes are still alive and kicking. The building will be 56 years old since its foundation, and it has numerous maintenance problems to solve ——reinforcements for earthquakes, pipes, drainage…—— and day by day a new way of subsisting is sought in this time of pandemic . What will happen from now on with Nakano Broadway, the mecca of otaku from all over the world, after more than half a century of history and evolution?
First floor of Nakano Broadway.
Images: Kurosawa Eiki
(Article translated into Spanish from the Japanese original. Header image: Nakano Broadway entrance)