Akihabara Is Burning...Again?

Photo by Toshihiro Oimatsu

By looking at this blog in its current state, you'd probably easily forget that the original intent of the Otastorian project was to document and research the history of otaku culture, its people, its traditions, and its holy texts. And right now a part of otaku culture seems to be in dire straits... again.

Last night, an article from Akiba PC Hotline made its way onto my Twitter feed. Titled "変わる秋葉原 ～ 急増した空き店舗 ～" (which Google translates as "Changing Akihabara ~ Rapidly increasing vacant stores ~"), the article shortly asserts that Akihabara has seen a wave of store closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. The author backs his claim with pictures of seventeen shuttered stores in the district. This article really distressed me, as while I knew of the closure of Akiba's famous Sega Akihabara Building No. 2 from late last year, I had hoped (somewhat naively) that this was a single unfortunate loss due to the ever-present financial troubles of SEGA. Now, to be frank, not all of the shutterings are permanent closures. The article lists that Akiba U-SHOP ② is simply closed for renovations, and that Techno House Toei had moved to a new building. And if I'm being truly frank, I think Akihabara will be able to recover in time. Most of the Akihabara shops I follow on Twitter seem to be doing well enough, and YouTube channels like Around Akiba and Active Otaku Channel show that the area is plenty active. So I can see a day in the hear future where the maid cafes are full of honored guests, and the underground idol venues are packed full of sweaty wotas cheering their hearts out for their favorite girls. 

From "Densha Otoko DX"

However, the pessimist in me does fear for the future. Akihabara has a somewhat long history with gentrification and "normiefication." Back in the early aughts, there was discussion about remodeling Akihabara to make it more accessible to the ever useful scapegoat of women and children. And in the wake of the tragic Akihabara Massacre in 2008, Akihabara's street festival atmosphere was entirely dismantled, with the traditional pedestrian-only zone on Sundays only being reinstated a few years later. Little by little, street festival culture has returned to Akihabara, with arcade games on the sidewalks coming back, and a very limited amount of musicians and idols returning to street performance. But my worry is that these shutterings will reignite those old discussions about gentrifying Akihabara again. What if Sega Building No. 2 is replaced by a trendy new mall? Will Tsukumo Akihabara Ekimae give way to some strange new contraption that brings in even more tourists, pushing the otaku "locals" further underground? These may seem like extremely out there conspiracies, and to be frank, these are absolute "worst case scenario" kind of imaginings. But ultimately, it really is my fear that Akihabara might start to fall victim to those talks that were happening nearly twenty years ago. Like I said, these fears are nothing new, and the discussion of the slow decline of Akihabara culture (as well as Shibuya culture) has been circulating here in the west for the past few years now. Even in something as old as the Densha Otoko TV drama, the fears of a normiefied Akiba are present, as seen in the 2006 special "Densha Otoko DX." So I'm not really bringing anything to the table but more speculation and panic. Only time will tell what all the closed Akiba shops will be replaced by, and we can only hope that more specialty shops will come in their wake, and that the otaku population will support them for many years to come. 

[Editor's Corner] The piece of media that really inspired me to make the Otastorian project was a documentary from 2005 called Akihabara Geeks. I used to watch it pretty frequently, sort of as a way to remind myself of my "mission statement." It's been a while since I've done that. From here on out, I'm going to try to get back to the main point of things, which is, like I said in the title, is "to document and research the history of otaku culture, its people, its traditions, and its holy texts." Look forward to what I put out next. [Editing pass completed at 4:26am, 2/17/21.]