Preserving the Scenic Features in the Kagurazaka Alley District

   The Wakana Inn along the Hyogo Alley stopped operation, and the property right may be transferred. The Kagurazaka 3-4-5 Chome District Plan was enforced in 2007 by the Shinjuku Local Government, partially amended in 2011. Now the plan is facing a challenge - is this plan effective to preserve the special historic townscape?

   The Kagurazaka Machizukuri (Community Design) Koryukai formed a special committee to make a better and more effective district plan to preserve the district. Six years have passed since the residents and local government officials discussed on the issue, and the plan has not been authorized yet. In such condition, to preserve the special historic features of the district, we believe it essential to speak out, get more residents and Kagurazaka supporters involved, and have more wisdom concentrated to make it a stronger movement.

  The Wakana Inn was an important symbol of historic and cultural feature of Kagurazaka. We sincerely hope it will not be lost, and ask those whom concerned and the local government to follow the manner of land use in the context of community development and management done in the past 25+ years.

  It is the very basic thing, that the townscape of the district, which is the treasure of Kagurazaka, is preserved by the residents’ actions. We will broaden our actions through “Save the Kagurazaka” movement. We sincerely appreciate your support.

                             Yokichi ISHII (Master of Sukeroku)                           

Kagurazaka Pattern Language Workshop

On  Friday Jan 13, a seminar-workshop to deeply understand and analyse the characters of Kagurazaka" was held by the NPO Ikimachi Club.

 It started by a lecture on the Pattern Language, followed by a workshop to understand and edit the key words to patterns - description of environments in Kagurazka. Some 20 participants worked on the task, in three groups of "District", "Main Streets", "Alley Neighborhood". 

 A pattern language cannot be made in a day, but it is important that citizens work on it and raise the awareness to the fragile and precious environment to be succeeded over generations.

Why “Save the Kagurazaka ?”

Last time I wrote about the closing of Wakana Inn, which was known as the novelist’s place located in a historic district in Kagurazaka. I have to let you know another disappointing thing today. The widening of Okubo Street, which was decided in 1946, has started and because of that, two shops on the street corner, Kawai Earthenware Shop and Yamashita Japan (lacquer ware) Shop were closed at the end of last year. In a district facing to the street 1/4 of the community members will have to move out, all in another.

What we mostly concern is that Kagurazaka will be divided by the widening of the street.

In 1991 The Kagurazaka Community Development (Machizukuri) Organization was formed by the residents. Its main function has been succeeded to The Kagurazaka Machizukuri Koryukai, and we have been working on community development over 25 years with the local government Shinjuku Ward.
Kagurazaka’s flourishing features today is the result and fruit of the long years of activities. We very much worry about deeper and wider division of Kagurazaka by the widening the Okubo Street, from 18 to 30 meters and double the traffic lanes.
We have respected our historic street-scape, and want to keep “human scale”, “richness in culture” and “good sense of tradition” of Kagurazaka. We sincerely hope that the Okubo Street widening will not give severe damages to the vulnerable value of the place. We will continue our activities so that “Kagurazaka will not lose the special sense of the place and stay as The Kagurazaka for long”.
We named the facebook site “Save the Kagurazaka” to fight and preserve the sense of Kagurazaka which now is in serious danger.
Yokichi Ishii (Master of Sukeroku)

Historic alley of Kagurazaka where Wakana Inn is located.

Okubo Street, now 18 meters wide but is planned to be 30 meters wide.