Akihabara

It's a wired, wired world

Text and photos by ERIC PRIDEAUX

If you were among the hordes of shoppers itching to spend summer bonuses last weekend, perhaps you got caught up in the frenzy in Akihabara. Everywhere in Tokyo's "Electric Town," the hunt was on for air conditioners, computers, MD players, stereos and the latest flat-screen TVs.

Spiraling national debt, painful restruct-
uring, near-record unemploy-
ment; bah! No one seemed troubled by such trifles. The tens of thousands of people milling up and down Chuo-dori, the area's main strip, wanted to slap their yen down on a counter and nothing could get in their way.

I was in Akihabara, too. You might nave passed me lurking around Laox, Akihabara's largest electronics retailer, tapping computer keyboards or flicking the scroll wheel on a mouse. Or maybe you were alongside me at a PC do-it-yourself shop as I admired orange and blue CPU cooler fans, the kind with ball-bearings to silence their whir.

Let me say it: I am a technology junkie. I own not one but two desktop computers, plus a laptop. My cellular phone is always by my side and it's always turned on. I have a personal digital assistant and don't know how to survive my daily train commute without it. I am loaded with circuitry; I'm wired.

That's not a boast: I list these items more as a confession. Everything in my arsenal serves a purpose -- but with computer crashes, waves of unwanted e-mail and the incessant beeping of my PDA, I'm often left feeling every bit as oppressed by technology as I am blessed by it. Despite my doubts, though, I continue to buy, buy, buy.

Recently I began to wonder what makes me a slave to technology. What, I asked myself, is the mysterious lure of microprocessors encased in plastic? This is no trifling matter. For me, it is a question about my very relationship with modernity.

I had an idea. I would explore the issue by writing a story about it. This way, I could confront my demons head-on even as I carried out my reporting on the ground.

I could discover whether the world was divided into pro- and anti-tech camps. Or, as I hoped, to find that I had company in enjoying technology's merits while resenting its intrusions.

(And while I was at it, I could also pick up some blank CDs and maybe a new keyboard to plug into my laptop.)

I hopped on a train and headed, naturally, straight to Akihabara.

There is arguably no better place in the world than Akihabara to find the latest in high-tech wizardry or to meet the people who know how it works.

With the outlets of huge discount chains like Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera springing up around JR-station exits everywhere, Akihabara may be fast losing its reputation as the place to get electronics on the cheap. Nonetheless, Electric Town's enormous selection of products -- from capacitors and circuit boards to desktop computers and global-positioning devices -- still lures visitors and shoppers from across Japan and around the globe. The selection of sophisticated hardware is so comprehensive that military operatives from North Korea and the Middle East are widely rumored to have procured communications technology from these shelves in recent years.

Located in Chiyoda Ward, where the Yamanote and Sobu lines cross, Akihabara dwarfs Japan's other major electronics retailing districts -- those in Osaka's Nipponbashi, Fukuoka's Tenjin and Nagoya's Osu -- in terms of the sheer number and density of shops. "If it can't be found in Akihabara, it can't be found," was how one Akihabara regular put it. It was the obvious place to begin my quest and try to lay my demons to rest.

To distinguish themselves from outside competitors, neighborhood stores have shifted their emphasis somewhat from finished products to components for techies who assemble their own computers. I wandered yearningly through the neon-lit streets and among the stacks of computer hard drives packaged in blue bubble-wrap like rectangular fruit. At Radio Center, a holdover from Akihabara's great postwar boom, I looked over stalls jammed with every shape of electronic component. Giant bulbs glowed and blinked; shiny objects twirled. I was in a dream.

I was not only bedazzled by the technology, though: I was also confounded by it. Things started going wrong when I visited the offices of the Akihabara Electrical Town Organization, three floors up from a sushi restaurant, to glean some basics about the area. Office chief Ryoji Watanabe motioned me toward a seat across from him at his desk. To keep an accurate record of our discussion, I pulled out my Sony MZ-R55 minidisc recorder and placed the mike in front of Watanabe. He pushed it away. It was still within recording range but I worried we'd got off to a bad start.

Watanabe began: "Nowadays more than half of Akihabara's sales are in information technologies. We've put our hopes in IT."

Right-o. Something told me he was about to shift from generalities into sticky details, so I checked the battery level on my MD. It'd suddenly dropped to half power.

"Some 60 percent of Akihabara's sales are now of IT equipment."

Sticky details, here we come!

The batteries plunged to quarter power.

"There are about 250 shops in our organization, but the total number of stores in the area is about 550. The others deal in game software, electronic components and used equipment."

Had I brought extra batteries? I had. I fumbled with the pack of double-As and popped two into my faltering MD. Glancing at Watanabe, I found him staring at the recorder. Had I disrupted his flow? Was he suspicious of something? There was an awkward pause. I felt the interview had gone terribly wrong.

Evidently it had. Before long he looked at the clock and asked me if I had any other questions. Humiliated by my MD debacle, I answered no, packed up my gear and slipped out the door.

Standing in front of the sushi restaurant under cloudy skies, I realized I'd made scant headway in deconstructing Akihabara's ambiguous appeal. People passing by me with bulging shopping bags seemed so content. None of them, I felt, would understand my misgivings.

To comprehend Akihabara, I realized I would have to hit the history books. Reading the literature, I discovered that the area had been a center for electronic parts as early as the 1920s, after national media organ NHK's inaugural radio broadcasts sparked wild demand for radio sets that amateurs could assemble.

Most businesses -- electrical, electronic or otherwise -- were obliterated by American bombs in the late days of World War II. Like buds sprouting after a brush fire, however, street merchants dealing in radio components appeared in a neighborhood that had survived the air raid just west of today's Akihabara Station. When rebuilding made it possible, many of these enterprises relocated to what is now Electric Town.

But how did these entrepreneurs survive the lean postwar years? According to "Assembled in Japan," historian Simon Partner's 1999 book on Japan's demand for electronic goods, government planners determined that consumer spending should be a primary engine of economic recovery. They set about stimulating the domestic electric appliances and electronics industries -- an essential step, they judged, toward reaching economic parity with the West.

For this, manufacturers needed a new breed of super-consumers -- and they chose women. It proved a sound strategy. On the one hand, it took into account Japanese wives' increasing role as managers of the family budget, and consequently their sway over how much was spent on big-ticket items. Also, housework then was far more physically draining than it is today. Manufacturers hoped to convince women to spend money on appliances that would lighten their burden.

But in those days, drudgery was considered a woman's lot. So manufacturers barraged the populace with advertisements whose central message was that women deserved an easier life. Women needed Matsushita Electric washing machines. Women had earned the right to Toshiba rice cookers.

And Akihabara was, by all accounts, the best place to purchase them. In the decades following World War II, the nation's manufacturers used Akihabara as a proving ground, not only for appliances but also for transistor radios, personal cassette players and video consoles, before unleashing their products on world markets. As it had from the start, advertising continued to fuel the fires of consumerism, equating ownership of all this stuff with happiness.

A s my eyes skimmed along the lines of text, I remembered a poster in Akihabara portraying a man leaping through the air clutching a laptop, his eyes squeezed nearly shut in ecstasy. Why the elation? His computer had been equipped with an Air H" wireless modem.

With the leaping laptop guy in mind, I rustled up some advertising statistics from the Internet and was surprised to learn that computer- and communications-related companies in Japan last year spent a whopping 293.7 billion yen to promote their wares and services, according to advertising giant Dentsu Inc. That was more than twice the figure a decade earlier and topped ad spending by even the automobile and pharmaceutical industries. Only food and beverage, tobacco and cosmetic companies spent more.

The underlying cause of my infatuation with technology was coming into focus. Apparently, I was being conditioned to accumulate technology -- as was everybody else, for that matter. Of course, nobody should be condemned for splurging a little on a pretty see-through blue floppy drive. It is, after all, one of the tools of the modern worker and there's no harm if it looks nice. Still, there is room in a person's life for only so many peripherals. At last count, I possessed three keyboards and have lost count of my mice. My money could be spent in much more worthy ways.

Was it possible to resist the seduction of unnecessary purchases? Like Odysseus facing the sirens, I screwed up my nerve and returned to Akihabara to expose myself to the full range of treats on display.

I was already familiar with Akihabara's run-of-the-mill home-entertainment equipment and appliances, so I set off to explore the exotic niche markets of which I'd heard so much talk.

At one tiny shop specializing in miniature cameras, the amiable proprietor sat me down, closed the shutters and turned off the lights. As I waited in the pitch dark, trying to guess what was going on, the man switched on a bank of TV monitors and pointed a pinhole box my way. Seeing my own image on the screens, I realized I was being filmed with infrared light. Fascinating doodad he's got there, I thought -- but I can survive without one of those (for now).

I crossed Chuo-dori and visited a shop that caters to fans of anime films. I saw a man in his 20s fork out 5,000 yen for a DVD movie whose heroine was a little girl in a big puffy dress. I would pass on that, too (for good).

Finally, in yet another store, I found myself at a counter stacked with electronic eavesdropping equipment. Here was an innocuous-looking ballpoint pen, a nondescript electric extension cord and a plain old desktop calculator -- each installed with a minuscule sound transmitter and each completely legal. A man with slicked-back hair wearing a double-breasted suit came over to peer into the case as his comrade -- with buzz cut and manicured eyebrows -- hovered nearby. "We're buying in bulk," the man in the suit barked at a clerk, "so cut us a deal."

I left them to their negotiations and thought about the day's tour. It dawned upon me: I didn't want any of these gadgets! In my meanderings I had bought nothing. Well, nothing I didn't need. I do buy a lot of stuff, I reflected, but it's mainly stuff for making a living.

I felt so much lighter. And yet, I still needed to find someone who could make sense of it for me -- and my deadline loomed.

Back at the office, I started working all my available leads. I e-mailed a city historian, but he was out of town. I called local Akihabara bureaucrats. They sent me on a wild goose chase. Other trails led nowhere. Everybody knew of Akihabara but nobody had an opinion on its role as an engine of consumerism.

I'll give this one more try before I call it quits, I said to myself, and dialed Tomoyuki Goto, a professor of electronic engineering at Tokyo Denki University, the very technical school whose students had eagerly patronized Akihabara's parts shops in the early postwar days. Goto, I had heard, was also researching the history of Electric Town.

"Come on over!" Goto chirped over the phone when I explained my purpose. No sooner had I set eyes on the professor than a surge of optimism came over me. He was a slender man with a shock of gray, curly hair. Three guitars, a bass guitar and a trio of Hawaiian ukuleles were sandwiched in his office between boxes of computer equipment and technical volumes. We exchanged business cards. He performed a quick demonstration on his ukulele. We sat down and talked technology.

As we chatted I learned that Goto, 59, had made his earliest forays into Akihabara half a century ago in search of amateur radio parts. His eyes sparkled with nostalgia when recounting the debut of Sony-made transistors at the stalls of Radio Center.

But nowadays there is a limit to his enthusiasm. He complained about having to change his e-mail address after a hacker maliciously invaded his earlier account. And, to this day, he refuses to buy a cellular phone. "It would make me feel like I'm being watched, and I'm not up to anything bad," he said.

Now I was getting somewhere! I finally asked his opinion on today's runaway demand for gadgetry, asking as much out of personal interest as for the purposes of my story. Goto leaned back in his chair as if I'd just popped the question of the millennium.

"I was trained as an engineer. I live the technological life. But even I wonder if development is going in the right direction," he said. "We are heading toward self-destruction at an exponential rate . . . and it seems there's nothing we can do about it."

I smiled and lay my pen beside my notebook. My overworked MD was making strange clicking noises, but I didn't even bother to look. I was happy. Here was a technician who had embraced all that Akihabara once represented, who had witnessed the great transition from vacuum-tube radios to personal computers and held it in awe.

And yet he saw the bigger picture, and let me feel my own reservations weren't so off the mark. And he gave me some good quotes, to boot!

I had found the man I was looking for.

This story originally appeared in a Japan Times package on Akihabara:

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