Shibuya, Tokyo · the 1990s
Tap a strip to pull it up.
Photographs: Lee Basford (1999, CC BY 2.0), ratsbeyfus (1998, CC BY-SA 2.0), sodai gomi (1992, CC BY 2.0). Credits in full under each photograph below.
HMV and Tower · the 1990s
The music press first used the name Shibuya-kei for young musicians the mainstream ignored but who sold unusually well at Shibuya’s import shops, HMV and Tower Records.
Turn the card: 1990, Inside 109. HMV opens its first Japanese shop inside the 109 building.
1990
Dōgenzaka, at the fork in front of Shibuya Station
The 109 building went up in 1979, the pioneer of Tokyo’s fashion buildings, and pulled Shibuya’s crowds away from Kōen-dōri.
HMV, the British music chain, opened its first shop in Japan inside 109 in 1990.
A working fashion building, open to all. The HMV shop moved out long ago.
From 109 to Center-gai is about 100 m in a straight line: HMV moved a short walk, not across town.
Udagawachō · 5 strips
The tall strip pack, tanzaku, was made only in Japan: record shops took it up so the small 8cm singles would not be lost behind the stock on the shelf. The format began on 21 February 1988 with 68 titles on one day.
Nothing pulled yet. Tap a strip.
Club Quattro opened four months after the first strip singles went on sale. Its strip is the one that folds.
Pastiche and bricolage
The acts shared no one sound, more a way of working: mixing, matching and lifting from other people’s records. Paste up to three onto the square.
Nothing pasted yet.
Labels called the result Japanese yogaku: Western music made by Japanese artists.
1 September 1993
Keigo Oyamada’s first single as Cornelius reached only No. 15, but it is a key track of the scene: a bossa nova beat under the British 1980s guitar pop Japanese fans called neo-acoustic, with threads of jazz, funk and soul.
By then he had been running his own label, Trattoria, for about a year.
2 of the 5 shops here that sold records in the 1990s are still trading where they stood.
The acts
No free photograph of Pizzicato Five or Flipper’s Guitar from their years exists, so they appear here as type.
Pizzicato Five
Keitarō Takanami and Yasuharu Konishi were students here and met through a club called Better Days. Pizzicato Five made its debut in 1985 with the two of them as its original members.
Maki Nomiya, the third singer, arrived in 1990. Bossa Nova 2001, co-produced by Keigo Oyamada in 1993, went into the Top Ten, and in 1994 Matador introduced the band abroad with two samplers.
Flipper’s Guitar
Keigo Oyamada and Kenji Ozawa made three studio albums between 1989 and 1991, and a live record after they split.
A song of theirs became the theme of a late-night TV drama, and the two became heart-throbs for readers of Olive magazine.
Cornelius
Oyamada’s solo name from 1993, on his own Trattoria label. Fantasma followed in 1997.
Before 1985 · Aoyama
Aoyama campus, on Aoyama-dōri, Shibuya
Keitarō Takanami and Yasuharu Konishi were students here and met through a club called Better Days.
A working university. See the main gate from the street; the campus is not open as an attraction.
1992 to 1998
From the crossing up Kōen-dōri to Tower is about 270 m in a straight line; Yoyogi Park is about 1,190 m further on.
Now
Dōgenzaka-shita, in front of Shibuya Station
Upwards of 1,000 people cross this many-cornered junction at a time, from every side, without colliding.
The Starbucks directly overlooking the crossing gives the view from above.
Free and public, in front of the station. For the view from above, the Starbucks overlooks it.
November 2019
Udagawachō, on Kōen-dōri
Shibuya PARCO opened in June 1973; PART3 followed in September 1981.
It closed for rebuilding in 2016 and reopened in November 2019.
A working shopping building on Kōen-dōri, open to all.
March 1995
1-22-14 Jinnan, on Kōen-dōri
The music press first used the name Shibuya-kei for young musicians the mainstream ignored but who sold unusually well at Shibuya’s import shops, HMV and Tower Records.
Tower moved its Shibuya shop from Udagawachō to Jinnan in March 1995: about 1,500 tsubo of floor and some 700,000 discs, one of the biggest record shops in the world.
The store now gives about 1,550 tsubo and about 800,000 items. Tower Vinyl Shibuya has been on the sixth floor since 2021.
Open 11am to 10pm. About five minutes from the Hachikō exit: cross the crossing and walk up Kōen-dōri.
Jinnan, Shibuya
The 1995 megastore on Kōen-dōri, still trading: about 800,000 items, with Tower Vinyl Shibuya on the sixth floor. Open 11am to 10pm.
Plan a visitJingūmae, Shibuya
A hotel on top of MIYASHITA PARK, a few minutes’ walk from Tower Records and the crossing. Check-in from 5pm, check-out by 2pm; bunk, double, twin and suite rooms, and a rooftop bar on the 18th floor.
See rooms
Now
Yoyogi-Kamizonochō and Jinnan, Shibuya
Punk rockers, martial arts clubs and cosplayers still gather here.
After the war the ground was US military housing, Washington Heights; it was rebuilt for the 1964 Olympics.
Open every day with no closing time; about three minutes from Yoyogi-kōen Station on the Chiyoda Line.
12 places you can visit, all but Aoyama Gakuin within a short walk of Shibuya Station. RECOfan’s floor in the BEAM building is gone; the building stands.
Pins mark public places; private homes are named but not pinned.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: area · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Public streets up the hill north-west of Shibuya Station. Each shop keeps its own hours.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Open to everyone; about ten minutes on foot from Shibuya Station.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. The BEAM building still stands at the Udagawachō end of the shopping streets; the record floor has gone.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Open 11am to 9pm. New CDs are sold at HMV&BOOKS SHIBUYA nearby.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. A working live house. Tickets are sold per show through the club’s own site.
Udagawachō, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0042
In 1981 Tower Records opened its second shop in Japan, and its first in Tokyo, here in Udagawachō.
Public streets up the hill north-west of Shibuya Station. Each shop keeps its own hours.
Kibune Building, 10-1 Udagawachō, Shibuya
Manhattan Records opened in 1980 in a small flat behind Shibuya Police Station and moved to its present site in Udagawachō around 1993.
Open to everyone; about ten minutes on foot from Shibuya Station.
Fourth floor, Shibuya BEAM, Udagawachō: the shop is gone
RECOfan opened on the fourth floor of the BEAM building in 1994: a windowless floor of about 300,000 records and as many CDs, mostly used.
The BEAM building still stands at the Udagawachō end of the shopping streets; the record floor has gone.
Ground floor, NOA Shibuya, 36-2 Udagawachō
HMV runs this record shop in Udagawachō, a district once hailed as the mecca of records.
Open 11am to 9pm. New CDs are sold at HMV&BOOKS SHIBUYA nearby.
Fourth floor, 32-13 Udagawachō, Shibuya
PARCO opened Shibuya Club Quattro in Udagawachō on 28 June 1988, the first of its Club Quattro live houses.
A working live house. Tickets are sold per show through the club’s own site.
Stay
sequence MIYASHITA PARK, a few minutes from Tower Records and the crossing.
Jingūmae, Shibuya
A hotel on top of MIYASHITA PARK, a few minutes’ walk from Tower Records and the crossing. Check-in from 5pm, check-out by 2pm; bunk, double, twin and suite rooms, and a rooftop bar on the 18th floor.
See roomsGo there
Tower Records, the Udagawachō record shops, and Shibuya walks on the marketplace.
Jinnan, Shibuya
The 1995 megastore on Kōen-dōri, still trading: about 800,000 items, with Tower Vinyl Shibuya on the sixth floor. Open 11am to 10pm.
Plan a visitUdagawachō, Shibuya
Start at the HMV record shop in Udagawachō, about 80,000 records over two floors, open 11am to 9pm, then walk on to Manhattan Records.
Shop detailsShibuya, Tokyo
Live marketplace results for guided walks round Shibuya. Check each itinerary for Center-gai and Udagawachō.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWhat’s on
Cornelius plays the Barbican Centre on 19 June 2027.
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Take it home
Flipper’s Guitar, Pizzicato Five and Cornelius from 1990 to 1997, and W. David Marx’s Ametora. No original posters for this scene are in our store.
Flipper’s Guitar · CD, Polystar PSCR-1008, 1990
From 1990, one of the three studio albums the duo made between 1989 and 1991.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyPizzicato Five · CD, Triad COCA-10837, 1993
Co-produced by Keigo Oyamada; it went into the Top Ten.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyPizzicato Five · 12-inch, Matador OLE 099-1, 1994
One of the two 1994 Matador samplers that introduced the band abroad.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyCornelius · CD, Polystar / Trattoria PSCR-9107, 1997
The 1997 album on his own Trattoria label.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyW. David Marx
How Japan took up American style, by W. David Marx, who wrote the Japan Times’s 2006 piece on Shibuya-kei.
Find the bookDates, prices, rooms and stock change: confirm with the provider before you travel or buy. A stay or tour is described as a filming location only where the card says so.
Every place and moment behind this page, with sources.
12 of 12 places · 11 of 11 Moments
Udagawachō, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0042
Tower Records opens its first Tokyo shop in Udagawachō.
Kibune Building, 10-1 Udagawachō, Shibuya
Manhattan Records moves to Udagawachō.
Fourth floor, Shibuya BEAM, Udagawachō: the shop is gone
RECOfan opens in the BEAM building.
RECOfan Shibuya BEAM closes for the last time.
Ground floor, NOA Shibuya, 36-2 Udagawachō
Fourth floor, 32-13 Udagawachō, Shibuya
PARCO opens Shibuya Club Quattro.
Dōgenzaka, at the fork in front of Shibuya Station
HMV opens its first Japanese shop inside the 109 building.
Center-gai, Udagawachō, across from the crossing
HMV Shibuya moves from 109 to Center-gai.
HMV Shibuya closes.
Dōgenzaka-shita, in front of Shibuya Station
1-22-14 Jinnan, on Kōen-dōri
Tower Records moves to Jinnan, one of the biggest record shops in the world.
Udagawachō, on Kōen-dōri
Shibuya PARCO reopens after rebuilding.
Yoyogi-Kamizonochō and Jinnan, Shibuya
Aoyama campus, on Aoyama-dōri, Shibuya
Takanami and Konishi meet as students at Aoyama Gakuin.
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