Small-scale Tokyo eateries as community spaces: from vigilance to mobilization

Tokyo hosts one of the densest and most complex agglomerations of small businesses of any city in the world, partly due to its legacy human-scale built environment organized around the commuter rail stations. This lecture reports on long-term ethnographic research on the social lives of small eateries in Tokyo as places where a sense of community is created and sustained while social boundaries are also constructed. Neighborhood businesses have long been recognized as a mainstay of the social lives of urban communities. They support lively foot traffic that keeps “eyes on the street,” supporting public safety and a sense of social trust. These small businesses were also spaces in which community boundaries were defined and maintained. At the same time, small businesses serve as “third places” in which people cultivate social ties, have casual fun, and engage in the life of the community in ways that are not possible in work and home settings. In Tokyo, small eating and drinking spots are spaces in which regulars create social networks that operate as a type of social capital sustaining the social infrastructure of the neighborhood. This research provides ethnographic evidence of these social processes of community formation in Tokyo’s small eateries.

Date

Wednesday, 12 February, 12 pm

Locations

Japan-Zentrum
Oettingenstr. 67, room 161

Further Information