Designing the Night: Ishikawa Hideaki and Shopping Districts in Nagoya, Japan, 1920–1933

Abstract

From the 1920s onwards, nights in Japanese industrial cities became increasingly resplendent and bright. This was attributed not only to an expanding urban economy, but also to the emergence of shopping districts, called shōtengai, within which small independent stores united and organised according to neighbourhood. These stores collectively participated in the installation of novel architectural elements: display windows, glass cases, and electric billboards, popularised by the concurrent, nationwide movement of commercial art — shōgyō bijutsu. The case of Nagoya indicated that formation of shōtengai and the shōgyō bijutsu movement affected each other, both promoted by calls for the modernisation of retailing and retail design. This article explicates the logic behind city planner Ishikawa Hideaki’s endeavours to create peoples’ spaces for ease and relaxation in Nagoya amid the ongoing rationalisation of small independent stores’ businesses — in shōtengai and by shōgyō bijutsu. These led him to conceptualise his notable methodology, which he called ‘City Planning for the Night’. This was a strategy to create the formula by which the essential brilliance and liveliness of recreational nightlife in shōtengai were systematically created through integration of the design and management of small independent stores and the shōtengai themselves. Ishikawa’s City Planning for the Night methodology encapsulated his commitment to enhancing the emerging cultural role of shōtengai. While urban quarters, called sakariba — referring to entertainment districts — historically comprised theatres and teahouses surrounding temples and shrines, Ishikawa’s work served to define and design shōtengai as the modern iteration of sakariba.