Nakano Broadway
Feb. 18th, 2026 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingAround this time last year, I was asked to contribute a 300-word essay to a photography collection focusing on "undead" malls, meaning dead malls that have reinvented themselves as public spaces in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It appears that this project may have become something of a dead mall itself, so I want to share the essay I wrote about Nakano Broadway in Tokyo.
Nakano Broadway is an indoor mall that opened in 1966 outside Nakano Station, which is several train stops west of Tokyo’s largest transportation hub in Shinjuku. The mall and its associated shopping arcade, Nakano Sunmall, were developed alongside the nearby Nakano Sunplaza, a skyscraper that once hosted a hotel and an internationally famous concert hall. Like the Sunplaza building, Nakano Broadway was originally intended to be a target of luxury spending during the heady years of Japan’s postwar prosperity, but the prolonged economic downturn of the 1990s resulted in many stores becoming untenanted. Nakano Sunplaza suffered the same fate and eventually closed to all occupancy in 2023, though the building still stands.
During the early 2000s, the Sunplaza shopping arcade reinvented itself as a retro-styled haven for discount retailers, especially clothing and housewares stores. At the terminating end of the arcade, the Nakano Broadway mall managed to avoid closure by offering steeply discounted rent to prospective tenants, and a healthy number of single-proprietor businesses opened in its vacant spaces. These businesses notably included many coffeeshops and artist ateliers, as well as tarot readers, palm readers, numerologists, and other divination practitioners.
Nakano Broadway’s most famous tenant is Mandarake, a chain of secondhand stores dealing in otaku collector goods of interest to fans of anime, manga, and video games. Mandarake has opened multiple outlets in Nakano Broadway, each offering a certain type of highly specialized merchandise. These specialties include vintage toys, anime production cels, vinyl anime character figurines, anime soundtrack CDs, and complete sets of classic manga. Several Mandarake outlets specialize in different genres of self-published dōjinshi fancomics, making Nakano Broadway a frequent destination for amateur and aspiring artists. As a result, the mall is now home to the headquarters of roughly half a dozen print-on-demand publishing services that are employed by artists throughout East Asia.
And also! What I didn't have space to include in this short essay is that Nakano Broadway was designed according to the Metabolist school of architecture, which holds that floorplans should flow organically (as opposed to the rectangle-grid rationality of postwar Brutalism). The combination of the confusing layout + the dinginess of the old building + the clutter of the stores overflowing into the corridors makes the space feel more than a bit labyrinthine. Nakano Broadway is like walking through a hoarder house, except it's an entire mall. It's an extremely unique experience; there's really nothing like it.
I'm not sure what tag to use for this post btw. Probably "Dark Souls" is close enough.
Nakano Broadway is an indoor mall that opened in 1966 outside Nakano Station, which is several train stops west of Tokyo’s largest transportation hub in Shinjuku. The mall and its associated shopping arcade, Nakano Sunmall, were developed alongside the nearby Nakano Sunplaza, a skyscraper that once hosted a hotel and an internationally famous concert hall. Like the Sunplaza building, Nakano Broadway was originally intended to be a target of luxury spending during the heady years of Japan’s postwar prosperity, but the prolonged economic downturn of the 1990s resulted in many stores becoming untenanted. Nakano Sunplaza suffered the same fate and eventually closed to all occupancy in 2023, though the building still stands.
During the early 2000s, the Sunplaza shopping arcade reinvented itself as a retro-styled haven for discount retailers, especially clothing and housewares stores. At the terminating end of the arcade, the Nakano Broadway mall managed to avoid closure by offering steeply discounted rent to prospective tenants, and a healthy number of single-proprietor businesses opened in its vacant spaces. These businesses notably included many coffeeshops and artist ateliers, as well as tarot readers, palm readers, numerologists, and other divination practitioners.
Nakano Broadway’s most famous tenant is Mandarake, a chain of secondhand stores dealing in otaku collector goods of interest to fans of anime, manga, and video games. Mandarake has opened multiple outlets in Nakano Broadway, each offering a certain type of highly specialized merchandise. These specialties include vintage toys, anime production cels, vinyl anime character figurines, anime soundtrack CDs, and complete sets of classic manga. Several Mandarake outlets specialize in different genres of self-published dōjinshi fancomics, making Nakano Broadway a frequent destination for amateur and aspiring artists. As a result, the mall is now home to the headquarters of roughly half a dozen print-on-demand publishing services that are employed by artists throughout East Asia.
And also! What I didn't have space to include in this short essay is that Nakano Broadway was designed according to the Metabolist school of architecture, which holds that floorplans should flow organically (as opposed to the rectangle-grid rationality of postwar Brutalism). The combination of the confusing layout + the dinginess of the old building + the clutter of the stores overflowing into the corridors makes the space feel more than a bit labyrinthine. Nakano Broadway is like walking through a hoarder house, except it's an entire mall. It's an extremely unique experience; there's really nothing like it.
I'm not sure what tag to use for this post btw. Probably "Dark Souls" is close enough.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-20 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-21 11:35 am (UTC)Anyway let me share some lore about myself: Nakano Broadway is where I used to buy all my retro handheld console games, and the first game I played fully in Japanese was the GBA version of Final Fantasy IV that I got there. I must have sunk at least a hundred hours into playing that game alongside a dictionary, but I have no regrets. (And no regrets about doing the same with the DS version of FFIV immediately after.)