Urban Studies Seminar Series: Event Three - Tokyo

Urban Studies Seminar Series Event Three: Tokyo 

Last month we arrived in a sweltering Tokyo for the final (IRL) leg of our Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series. The seminar and related events there were co-organised with Dr Yasushi Sukenari, Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo. 

The fascinating set of events kicked off with a workshop that brought together scholars researching shrinking domesticities in a range of contexts across East and South-East Asia. 

Presentations covered issues including: the architectural histories of shrinking domesticities in the Japanese context (Professor Toshio Otsuki, University of Tokyo); subdivision and deteriorating living space in Hong Kong (Dr Geerhardt Kornatowski, Kyushu University; Maurice Yip, University of Lausanne) and Dhaka (Afsana Afrin Esha, Durham University; Anika Sharmila Shose, United International University, Bangladesh) and shared accommodation for vulnerable people in urban Japan (Dr Lisa Kuzunishi, Otemon Gakuin University; Dr Nao Kasi,National Institute of Population and Social Security Research; Dr Yasushi Sukenari). 

On day two, Dr Sukenari and Dr Kuzunishi kindly arranged a field trip day, and we visited a range of shared and small housing schemes providing supported living. This included: Wakuwaku Home, a community space and short-stay accommodation for children; Ikebukuro-honcho House, shared housing for single mother households, and Furusato-no-Kai, a non-profit organisation providing support for homeless people, who have renovated former workers’ accommodations to provide housing for people in receipt of welfare. 

On our final day we had the privilege of learning about innovative new small housing developments being developed by the Public Corporation for Housing Improvement and Development (HID) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Housing Supply Corporation. This event was co-organised with Mari Matsumoto, Chief of the Housing and Community Research Institute at HID. Some of the stand-out developments we heard about included: intergenerational co-living developments, which offer young people reduced rent on the condition that they check on and hold regular tea parties with their elderly neighbours; and micro-apartments specifically designed (and sound-proofed) for musicians and music lovers. 

The themes emerging from the events had overlap, but also departures from our findings on the first two legs covering research in Africa and the Middle East (hosted in Johannesburg) and in South America (Hosted in Buenos Aires). Key themes included:

• Relationships between small housing and the challenges of an ageing population, including the need for housing that can be adapted for different life stages (e.g. Professor Otsuki’s project designing housing that includes sections specifically meant to be turned into rental accommodation to provide income during retirement).
• The branding of increasingly subdivided and cramped housing as aspirational. For example, Maurice Yip’s presentation highlighted the ‘nano-isation’ of housing in Hong Kong in part as a response to rising rents, with extreme small spaces, including capsule hotel-style accommodation, being marketed as ‘co-living’ spaces. 
• Precarious labour as a driving force for people living in small spaces. For example, Dr Kasai highlighted the phenomenon of casual hourly paid workers in Japan staying in internet cafe cubicles between shifts, and Dr Kornatowski and Maurice Yip’s presentation discussed precariously employed workers in Hong Kong living in hyper subdivided of ‘coffin flats.’
• The repurposing of small and shared housing to provide supported accommodation for low-income and vulnerable groups who often face stigma in Japanese society, for example single mothers (Dr Kuzunishi), people with mental health conditions, and elderly single people in receipt of welfare (Dr Sukenari). 
• The importance of having collective living spaces in the city if housing itself is small, including public living rooms, public bath houses, parks and communal areas of housing blocks. This was particularly highlighted in Jun Matsumara’s work on the re-emergence of public bath house culture in Japan as a key facet of an increasing trend towards co-living. 

The last event in this series will be an online workshop taking place in October. The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants from across all three seminars to discuss key findings and plan out next steps for the project. Watch this (small!) space!