Nakano

This site covers a single building in Nakano — but that one building stands for the ward. Completed in 1966 as a mixed commercial and residential block, it holds shops from the first basement to the fourth floor and actual homes above. It is called a subculture landmark, and people live upstairs.

It began with one shop of about six square metres. In 1980 a second-hand manga dealer opened in a unit subdivided out of a second-floor lot, then widened its range until it had changed the character of the whole building. Today shops under the same name are scattered across the floors, each specialising differently — figures, dolls, vintage toys — so walking in on the strength of the name alone may not get you what you came for.

Timing matters. On the fourth floor especially, most shops open between eleven and noon, so a morning visit looks like a street of closed shutters. Travellers have been known to conclude the building is empty and leave.