2024.9.9 Yonglin Ke + Kunzhi Jinag + Linxi Chen The brightness (luminance) of signage lighting is key to shape the overall lighting of a city. This survey conducted in Akihabara, a globally famous district, focused on the renowned Akihabara Electric Town (Chuo-dori), analyzing the evolution of the city’s lighting composition by comparing it to the survey from 19 years ago. ■Akihabara Electric TownAkihabara is the heart of electronics in Tokyo and a globally famous hub for otaku culture. While it is bustling with tourists daily, the colors of the signs, filled with anime and game culture, are much more diverse compared to upscale commercial areas like Ginza or other shopping districts. In 2020, Chiyoda Ward released guidelines for outdoor advertising and urban development, leading to changes in Akihabara’s streetscape. This survey investigates the current night view of Akihabara Electric Town, comparing it to a survey conducted 19 years ago. (Kunzhi Jiang) ■What kind of lights shape Akihabara?The main lighting elements in Akihabara’s key districts include streetlights, signage lighting, building façade lighting, and lighting from store entrances and spillover light.Compared to the picture from 19 years ago, the most noticeable green and red lights from EDION were not illuminated due to the store’s closure. The ONODEN sign is now an LED screen, and the surrounding lighting has a more subdued feel. Previously, the area behind the bridge was completely dark, but now, with the bright lighting from a drugstore’s interior and…

Shimokitazawa is a neighborhood of small shopping streets and alleyways, projecting a strange, but comfortable atmosphere, as people crowd the backstreets until late in the night. However, plans to replace this quaint neighborhood with arterial roads and high-rises are underway. The detectives took what maybe a last chance to survey this area before it is “defaced.” The top half and rooftops of most buildings do not have any luminous signage. As a result, a bird’s eye view of this neighborhood is actually fairly dark. The station front plaza is filled with people listening to music from sidewalk acts or looking at street art. The crowds of people naturally overflow into a nearby street. If an arterial road is planned for this area, this atmosphere will be lost forever. Two streets back-to-back, but built to two different scales and with two different demeanors. On the left is Shimokitazawa`s main south entrance shopping street. With many interior decor shops, the lighting is bright and color temperature is high. One street inside and the atmosphere and lighting are more relaxed. Low color temperature, incandescent lamps from restaurants, cafes, and bars are the main source of light.

A city for the young and young at heart, Shibuya. The area is composed of a mess of streets all with a different atmosphere, including a few main streets connected by narrower alleyways. Each street has developed its own personality and role, including lighting conditions to create the Shibuya night. From the scramble intersection in front of Shibuya Station, 3 distinctive roads, Dogenzaka, Center Gai, and Koen Dori radiate. After dusk, the lights come on and the personality of each street is even more clearly defined. As the title implies, Center Gai is the center of Shibuya geographically and caters to the young as the center for shopping and entertainment. This street is full of light. Each shop seems to be competing for the brightest facade with infinite amounts of luminous signage and advertising, creating a 3-dimensional playground. Dogenzaka is a festive street with a steady flow of pedestrians, but turn down one of the narrow side streets and the atmosphere changes immensely. The facades of many love hotels packed into the area are saturated with color creating a seedy blend of light and young couples prowling the Maruyama-cho area.

Bangkok, a city in a swirl of on-going change. In our previous survey of Tokyo’s Kanda River, we discover that the backs of buildings face the river creating and area of dark contrast in the middle of the city. But here along the Chaopraya River the opposite is true with the front facades lining the waterfront. Open-air restaurants and bars occupy the rooftops, as the spectacle of the city spreads out below. The Millennium Hilton, Bangkok, opened in May of 2006, is the first major hotel brand to open a hotel in the country in 20 years. The hotel boasts 543 riverfront rooms. With a UFO-like disk on top of the building, the cool-modern design stands tall among the neighboring structures. Along the riverfront, a private pier is provided for guests and dinners at the restaurant and bar. As river taxis come and go, the warm spots of light along the river reflect and shimmer on the water surface. Scirocco, one of many open-air restaurants, is approximately the same height as the special observation room at Tokyo Tower, 246 meters above ground, but without the glass barrier!. Without a glass window the lights of the city below seems so much more clear and real!! At the next table sat an older coupe that came to watch the sunset. The woman was surprised when presented with a big bouquet of flowers, undoubtedly a romantic gesture from her husband. A single candle…

2022.11.4-5 Sachiko Segawa Surprisingly, this survey of the Sawara district marks the first time the Lighting Detectives have conducted an investigation within Chiba Prefecture. The team focused on an area designated both as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings and as a Landscape Formation District. Here, the townscape of merchant houses, which flourished from the Edo period thanks to river transport on the Tone River, still remains. Located about 70 km from Tokyo Station and slightly inland from the Tone River, the Sawara district of Katori City once thrived as a merchant town, to the point it was said to rival Edo itself. However, the town declined during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth. Following a townscape survey in 1974, the value of its historic scenery was reappraised. Today, leveraging its convenient location—just two hours from Tokyo and one hour by train from Narita Airport—the area is being redeveloped as a tourist destination. For this survey, the team limited their scope to the townscape along the Ono River and conducted a nightscape survey. ■Uniquely Designed Lighting Fixtures From JR Narita Line Sawara Station, as we walked toward the Ono River, we were greeted by a bollard topped with a monkey. “Why a monkey…?” we wondered, but as we continued upstream along the river, we encountered bollards adorned with all sorts of figures: rabbits, carp, children, frogs, Ebisu, and more—each one different, with no two alike. These uniquely…