Shops demolished for Okubo Street Widening

Several shops and restaurant facing to the Kagurazaka-Ue crossing have mostly been demolished. More demolishing is planned (shown in yellow).　The widened space should be used for pedestrians, not for through traffic. The community is worried about divided by the wide road with more through traffic.

Before demolished, there were two shops and a restaurant facing to the crossing.

Now the shops are gone.

The street will be widened to 30 meters, even though traffic volume is decreasing.

Historic Alley District Preservation Committee Meeting on March 21

Today, the 6th "Historic Alley District Preservation Committee Meeting" was held in Kagurazaka. The committee is placed under the Kagurazaka Machidukuri Koryukai, a local community development organization. The local government announced the policy to preserve the historic townscape and also improve the safety measures, and basically approved. Survey and discussion to reach to agreement with each stakeholders will be started. The minimum width of alley will be 2.7m and district plan will be made.

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.

Kagurazaka, a town of Master Artisans

It is an important character of Kagurazaka that various cultural and commercial activities have been done based upon the history. But there are many problems in the genre. So we, the Not-for-Profit Organization (NPO) Ikimachi Club started a new action “Kagurazaka: A Town of Master Artisans” and support their activities. We started the talk and performance series by master artisans as a part of monthly “Machizukuri (Community Development) Seminars”, and let the audience know their skill, tradition, social system that support their activities and challenges.

              In October and November 20 16, we invited Ms. Masako Tada, an master artisan of Yuzen (coloring and drawing by hand on cloth) and a pattern designer Mr. Hiroshi Kudo of Cloth Coloring Association of Shinjuku for the seminar, and had their talks and performances of their world and current tasks. Yuzen was a local industry in the area for several centuries and still alive, but facing serious problems of shrink of market and decrease of workers. Their performance, showing the process of making pattern/design and coloring and was magnificent. 

              We are hoping to make opportunities where many people know and touch the works of Yuzen, and started to think it necessary to have a shared workspace for those local artisans in our community.

Problems with Okubo Street Widening -1

In Kagurazaka, widening of Okubo Street (Radial Road No. 25) is in progress. The widening plan was authorized in 1946 as a part of restoration plan after the war, when this area was almost totally burnt down. The street runs through the middle of Kagurazaka shopping and residential area. Current width is 18 meters (two traffic lanes) and the widened width will be 30 meters (four traffic lanes, 6 meter sidewalk on each side). The road section plan by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) is shown below. Now TMG is negotiating with land owners about the purchase of the properties.

If the road is constructed as planned, wide four-lane road will go through the middle of Kagurazaka Street and divide the flourishing and continuing town into two. And the sides, not fronts of building will face the new road, which will discourage rich street life and activities.

The road construction project can take many years, and if the purchased properties are just surrounded by bare wired fence for long, it will damage the shopping street and hurt the street-scape as well.

The social condition, traffic condition (which is decreasing now), land use and urban development policy are very different in 1946 and now. It is difficult to justify the construction of the road for automobiles as planned by TMG.

It is probably unrealistic to try to stop the road widening now, because quite a few land was already purchased by TMG, and many residents are planning their future under the assumption that their property will be purchased sooner or later. But it is significant if the widened space is used for pedestrians, not for automobiles.

(to be continued)