It started out upmarket in 1966; in 1980 it was saved by a second-hand bookshop of two tsubo.
It opens in 1966 as a luxury shopping centre, and even a famous singer, Sawada Kenji, lives there. The crisis comes with the Shinjuku hubs: it is saved, in 1980, by a second-hand bookshop of just two tsubo on the second floor, Mandarake. Today the building has over two hundred subculture shops on five floors.
Opened in 1966 as a luxury shopping centre (the singer Kenji Sawada lived there), it went into crisis when the big Shinjuku hubs took its customers away. It was saved by a second-hand bookshop of just two tsubo, opened on the second floor in 1980: Mandarake. From then on, and above all after the 1991 bubble, the building became the centre of Japanese subculture, what people call ‘the Akihabara of collecting’: over two hundred shops on five floors, from old manga to original animation cels and rare figures, and vintage material linked to countless series.
🚉 Nakano · 6 min walk
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