ADADA2014 in Akihabara

Akihabara

• History of AKIHABARA
• 1) Electrical Parts Market
• 2) Development of Akihabara
• 3) To the city of culture.
• 4) Performance city and culture city Akihabara
• 5) AKIHABARA MAID TOUR

History of AKIHABARA

1) Electronic Parts Market: Before and after WW2

The origin of the "Electronic Market Town Akihabara", may be date back to 1930's. Some of the shops sell radio-kit, which triggered a boom at the time. Akihabara-Kanda area was one of the most convenient places in Tokyo, because of developed railway systems. Thus, people dropped in to Akihabara.

After World War II, Japanese industry was in a devastated condition. It was unable to make any product. Shops had nothing to sale, because there was nothing made. Electronic industry, as well, was in the same situation. Akihabara at that time had black markets near around. Out of necessity, people started to make electronic products by themselves. To do so, people came to purchase electrical parts for making the product to Akihabara. Meanwhile, a number of electrical parts shop was born in Akihabara.

2) Development of Akihabara: from the electronic-town to the cyber-town

After the postwar recovery to the mid-70's, Akihabara has extended its area and developed as an Electrical Products Market, containing a number of large electronics stores, distributers, and wholesalers. The mainstream products which led the market at that time were home electronics (white goods). In these days, Akihabara started a free area on the road for walking people (pedestrian paradise), every weekend.

From the mid 80's to the late 90's, the mainstream products have changed from home electronics to audio-visual equips, followed by IT products (computers). Along, Akihabara has developed as the town of "Audio Visual", and then to the town of “Cyberspace” [Personally, this is why the image of Akihabara differ so largely from generation to generation]. In these days, tenants along the street were occupied by electronic shops or PC shops.

It was about the same time, on the back-alleys of Akihabara, when game-shops, hobby-shops, anime-shops (including fanzine shops) and variety of other "geeky shops" have launched.

Although the mainstream products have shifted from time to time, Akihabara somehow had a tendency of specializing to something (from electronic parts, home electronics, audio-visual, to computers). To say, the town of Akihabara has always been a center of geeks (maniacs) at the time.

3) To the city of culture.

From the 90's, led by change of retailing strategy or shopping strategy in Japan (from rail-side to road-side), general price lowing of PC and by other factors, Akihabara started to lose its shine as an electronics quarter. As Akihabara is a typical place for rail-side sellers, and many stores relied on electronic products or computers, the number of stores in Akihabara started to decrease.

It was the hobby-shops, anime-shops and all other "geeky stores" which took the place of open tenants along the street. Those shops grow steadily while acquiring new customer segment. With the unique maniac attitude from its history, and with a strong cultural push caused by video games, TV-animation or TV dramas at the time, Akihabara developed as the center of Japanese subculture.

4) Performance city and culture city Akihabara

The pedestrian paradise of Akihabara Main Street is collecting many performers, nowadays. Akihabara is now changing from culture city to culture & performance city. While we walk along, we may see maid, costume player, anime characters, figure maker, and so on. Akihabara has always been gathering a variety of people. Thus, such variety of people keeps on making new culture on Akihabara. And yet, Akihabara is still on its development.