No more skyscrapers

The remnant residents of this tiny neighborhood of small houses in the center - that is, one of the centers - of Tokyo at a stone throw of Iidabashi station are opposing the sprouting of skyscrapers. It's a lost war already. The makeshift slogan reads chôkôsoku no more. The first word stands for skyscraper, the second is English rendered in Japanese phonetical scripting. What the residents want are the roji, that is the plain or crooked, mostly devoid of cars back alleys. Roji can be residential and cosy, but the true one shall be poor and derelict or crammed with tiny bars, eateries and the promise or commerce of sex.

The roji is the idealized topographical artifact of the good old urban days and a good reason enough to walk around Tokyo searching for such places that still exist, even drown in a sea of skyscrapers. There is a whole literature of nostalgia around the roji which can make for some fine picture books like this one.



The roji where the message calling for resistance is hanged looks like this on the following picture. An oddity in one center of central Tokyo.