A 30-second introduction

Shōtengai: shops sharing a street

商店街

A shōtengai is a concentration of shops, restaurants and services along a street or within a district. The word can also refer to an association of local businesses. A roof, pedestrian-only access and exclusively independent shops are not necessary features.

A commercial place and a traders’ organisation are distinct.
Local shopping streets and metropolitan destinations serve different catchments.
Cleaning, lighting and events can involve joint management.

The work beyond each shop

Nearby businesses share passing customers, street conditions and a district’s public image. Running an individual shop is different from organising cleaning, lighting or a festival. Joint work may also involve public roads and neighbours.

Shop, street and public space

Individual businesses
Run their own shops, goods and services.
Merchants’ organisation
Coordinates shared work such as cleaning, lighting and events.
Authorities and neighbours
Public-road matters require further coordination.

A shared roof does not mean that all shops have one operator.

Who comes to shop, and how the district is laid out

Japanese surveys distinguish neighbourhood, regional, wide-area and very wide-area shopping districts according to their customers and retail mix. Covered or open, linear or clustered, and pedestrian or vehicle-accessible describe other features. A local shopping district serves routine purchases; a wider-area destination draws customers from farther away.

Ginza as one historical case

Ginza had commercial activity in the Edo period. After the 1872 fire, the government rebuilt it as a bricktown, changing its streetscape. Merchants formed the predecessor of the Ginza Street Association in 1919 to oppose removal of the willows. Shops reopened in November after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Reconstruction followed the 1945 air raids, with willows, lighting and pavements restored in 1948.

Ginza Street in the 1920s. Ginza Street Association.

Ginza Street after the Great Kantō Earthquake, 1923. Ginza Street Association.

An association is not the street itself

Legal forms for traders

The Shopping Street Promotion Association Act of 1962 provided a form for collective business activity. Other organisational forms and voluntary associations also operate. The emergence of a cluster, formation of a group and acquisition of a particular legal status can belong to different dates.

Large stores and urban policy

Large-store expansion also changed the policy setting. The 1973 Large-Scale Retail Store Law extended business adjustment beyond department stores to large supermarkets; regulation was progressively relaxed in the 1990s. Three laws adopted in 1998 addressed city-centre revitalisation, land use and the surroundings of large stores. When the new store-location law took effect in 2000, its focus was the living environment, including traffic and noise.

Changing customers and shared services

Changing circumstances

Population, transport, shopping habits and competing facilities affect visitor patterns. Succession, the age of proprietors and the use of premises matter too. Some districts face vacant shops, while others add new businesses or shared services.

Mutual help in Miyanokawa

Japan’s 2010 Annual Report on the Ageing Society records one local response in Chichibu’s Miyanokawa shopping district. With prefectural and city cooperation, the traders’ association established a volunteer help scheme in 2007. Older residents who assisted others received vouchers usable in local shops. The scheme grew from everyday needs encountered through earlier shopping assistance. The vouchers connected residents’ mutual help with spending in local shops.

Check your understanding

Must a shōtengai have a roof?

No. A covered arcade is one possible form.

Is the district identical to its promotion association?

No. One describes a place, while the other is an organisational form.

Why did Ginza merchants form an association in 1919?

They organised to oppose the removal of the street’s willows.

How did the Miyanokawa scheme connect residents’ help with shops?

A traders’ association worked with local government, and participants received vouchers for local shops after assisting others.

Sources and images