What Kyoichi Tsuzuki Sees as the “Majority” of Tokyo

“I don’t really see Tokyo as a single metropolis. It feels more like many small towns scattered across a larger city. Someone who lives in Setagaya probably doesn’t go to Adachi very often, and the reverse is also true. Many people live their lives almost entirely within their own area. So distinctions like ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ don’t seem all that relevant. In fact, surprisingly few people have visited all 23 wards of Tokyo. There are actually many people who don’t know the city all that well.”

“Tokyo is always in flux—it’s constantly changing. I think it’s a city that shifts along with rent prices. Places with lower rents attract people with ideas but not much money. If someone wants to open a new shop, for example, Omotesando might be too expensive now, so they might go somewhere like Mukojima instead.”

“This happens everywhere in the world. Ideas flow into places with lower rents, and once those places begin to generate money, both the people and the energy move elsewhere. If you keep saying, ‘This is the cool place,’ your senses can gradually become dull without you even realizing it, and things start to feel out of sync. That’s why, if you want to find something interesting, it’s more fun not to stay in one place but to go around and explore different areas.”

“At the time, American publishers were putting out a series called ‘○○ Style,’ and it was hugely successful—books like Paris Style and Santa Fe Style. In a similar vein, there was a plan to publish a book called JAPANESE STYLE, introducing beautiful, stylish homes in cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. I helped scout locations for it, but as we worked on the project, I started to feel that calling this ‘style’ didn’t quite make sense.”
 
“So I thought it might be interesting to create a Tokyo version with the same design—one filled only with the rooms of people living on very little. Almost like a small prank, where someone might buy it by mistake.”

“Most people don’t live in architect-designed apartments or houses with tea rooms. The majority live in places like this instead. Smaller rooms mean cheaper rent, and everything is within arm’s reach. You can even crawl home from the bar. If your rent is around 30,000 yen, working part-time two or three days a week is enough to get by. That leaves time to paint, make music, or do whatever you like. It’s a pretty easygoing way of living.”
 
Meeting young people living this way made Tsuzuki realize that there were many different ways to live. “As long as you have a small place to sleep and a city filled with bookstores, cafés, coffee shops, and bars you like, that’s enough. One of the great things about Tokyo is that you can treat the whole city as an extension of your tiny room.”

“At the time, many major Western cities were going through economic downturns and weren’t in very good shape. Japan, meanwhile, was in the middle of the bubble economy. There was plenty of money, and regulations around design and architecture were relatively loose. Zoning restrictions were also less strict, which meant large and expensive projects could easily be realized. But the people appearing in TOKYO STYLE had nothing to do with the bubble economy. They were simply living in apartments that cost around 50,000 yen a month. Right next to people making huge profits—or losing everything—there were people quietly living in rooms that cost 30,000 or 50,000 yen a month, saying, ‘Nothing really changes for us.’ I found it fascinating that both worlds existed side by side in the same city.”

Even today, you can still find old wooden houses that refuse to give way, standing between modern high-rise buildings. Tsuzuki believes this is a sight rarely seen in cities like New York, London, or Paris. “In many Western cities, neighborhoods for the wealthy and neighborhoods for everyone else are clearly separated. Each area has its own distinct character. Tokyo is different. Those boundaries are much more blurred, and everything mixes together. It’s often hard to tell at a glance who is wealthy and who isn’t—and that ambiguity is part of Tokyo’s charm.”

“The idea originally came up when we were talking about making capsule toys based on hihōkan—Japan’s erotic museums. It was around the time of COVID, and all kinds of unusual properties were becoming available—things like entire soapland buildings in Yoshiwara. So we thought, ‘Why not go take a look?’ and visited a few places. Then we found this one, and the rent was surprisingly cheap. So we thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’ I also happened to have some sets from erotic museums, so we figured we could simply make a place where people could have a drink while looking at them.”

“Hihōkan were basically part of the era when group tours were popular. They did deal with erotic themes, but they weren’t places only men visited. In fact, women often stayed longer—laughing together and enjoying the exhibits before buying souvenirs like tenugui hand towels on the way out. They were really more like roadside attractions.” Over time, however, these museums gradually fell out of step with the times, and many closed across Japan. “I don’t necessarily think they all need to be preserved forever. But I did feel that at least their history should be recorded.”

“In many other major cities, regulations are so strict that a place like this couldn’t really exist in public. But the posters and artworks displayed here—things like posters from adult films—were items I collected while reporting on different subjects. Many of them were things I bought during interviews, or objects I obtained while researching places I wanted to write about. As for the materials from the erotic museums, I had hoped that one day they might be taken in by institutions such as local history museums or places like the National Museum of Ethnology. But that hasn’t really happened. Even the sideshow banners we have here were things that were going to be thrown away, so we simply took them in. That’s how the collection gradually grew. And not everything here is what you might call ‘erotic,’ either.”

“I’m interested in expressing the majority, so I’ve never really thought about what ‘deep’ means.
 
There are two things I never do when creating something. One is writing proposals—I’ve never written one in my life. The other is holding editorial meetings. When people sit around sharing ideas and decide, ‘This is good,’ it’s almost always based on something that already exists. If someone says, ‘This is what’s trending right now,’ and shows examples, then it’s already a copy of something else. That’s why I don’t do market research either. The moment you start doing that, it’s over.”
 
“For example, if you’re trying to launch a new magazine and you start thinking, ‘Our target readers are working women in their early thirties with this level of income…’—that’s the moment it’s finished.” At Daido Geijutsukan, visitors range from people in their twenties to people in their eighties, regardless of gender. Marketing doesn’t really persuade anyone. Everyone has different tastes. But if you create something based only on your own instincts, what you make will probably seem like a minority interest to the wider world. That’s why people call it ‘weird.’”

“Sometimes I think it would be wonderful if we could create a branch of Daido Geijutsukan, something like the Louvre Abu Dhabi. At the same time, I also hope younger people will start creating places like this themselves.

People often talk about it and say it’s interesting, but very few actually try to do something similar. When I published TOKYO STYLE, I also thought, ‘It would be great if someone followed that path,’ but in the end, no one really did.”
 
“If you want to open a stylish place, you can hang works by Warhol or Basquiat, and no one will complain. But when it comes to something like a hihōkan, some people will love it while others may feel offended and react against it. There’s always the fear that people might think you’re not intellectual—especially in the age of social media. But unless you can turn even criticism into energy, nothing truly interesting will come out of it. I really believe that.”