Site Interest Riots and the Dark Side of the City: Kabukicho in the Early 1950s

Site Interest Riots and the Dark Side of the City: Kabukicho in the Early 1950s

In the early 1950s, when the turmoil of postwar Japan was still lingering in the air, Kabukicho, a section of Shinjuku in Tokyo, was the scene of an urban friction known as the "site rights riot. The stage was set for a former air-raid shelter and a planned movie theater that had been used as seized land by the U.S. military. After the Occupation Forces withdrew from the area, the land floated in the air, and a conflict of interest erupted involving local residents, real estate agents, and gangsters. In particular, there was a clash between the neighborhood association and the local authorities over the air-raid shelter site, resulting in a temporary roadblock. In this era of rapid economic growth, land became "vacant land = money," and the struggle for it intensified. In Kabukicho, which retains strong memories of the postwar black market, capital and violence intermingled, and resistance by residents was drowned out in the name of urban development. This incident symbolizes
the "urban upheaval" that occurred in the process of Kabukicho's transformation into an entertainment district, and illustrates the memories and contradictions of contemporary urban space.