Wrath Of Gnon Profile picture
Mar 8, 2021 8 tweets 5 min read Read on X
The famous Harmonica Yokocho in Tokyo's Kichijo neighborhood is an interesting study in bottom-up urbanism. On an area of 30,829 ft² or 2,864 m² there are exactly 100 stores, shops, restaurants, and bars, providing the livelihoods of between one and three hundred people. How? -->
In 1944 the area around Kichijoji station was cleared of buildings to protect it from bombing damage. The open ground was quickly turned into an open air black market where local children would ride the trains into undamaged rural areas and buy food from farmers to sell.
The black markets existed around every train station for years after the war ended. In 1958 the local vendors heard rumors of a development on their traditional patch of land. A plan was formed: large quantities of corrugated iron, mortar, tinder blocks and lumber was purchased.
The stockpile was hidden until the summer Obon holiday, when city employees and building inspectors took a week off from work. As dusk fell feverish building started, within a couple of days a whole neighborhood with five streets, five water wells and electricity had sprung up.
When city officials returned from the summer vacation out of town, there wasn't anything they could do. The squatters had even named the streets and started five official merchant associations, each one representing one street. They were not to be moved.
In the beginning the shops sold everything from underwear to salt and iron ware, but by 1969 competition that had air conditioning and heating took most of their business away. However, the drinkers who came for the cozy bars didn't mind the uncomfortable weather.
So the whole neighborhood changed tack and marketed themselves as a nightlife spot: more bars and eateries, fewer dry good merchants. One fishmonger's habit of drying fish on the roof attracted hundreds of stray cats: the media was not long in sniffing out a good story.
These days Harmonica Yokocho (named as such because the row of buildings looked a bit like a harmonica) is wildly popular with local kids and white collar workers. If you look closely you can even spot the old original contraband building materials still in use: corrugated steel.

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More from @wrathofgnon

Apr 1
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A Japanese master plasterer designed boxes built exactly like regular earthen warehouse walls, except he reused wooden wine crates. He sells kits, or you can use your own materials to make your own if you feel up to it.


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These boxes are intended for grain, vegetables and fruit that you would normally keep in a "dark and cool" place. And they work. Here is a comparison with a polystyrene box and three mandarin oranges after 45 days. The blue box is more like what most modern homes are built like.
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Mar 25
The practical skills in thatching can be difficult to acquire by videos or books alone, especially how to find materials and the binding. In Finland there is a traditional thatching technique that uses only easy to find reed and no binding: just spread it out and weigh it down. Image
A bound reed roof is far steeper and thus lasts longer, but it requires more skill to do correctly. Reed is often available for free and in vast quantities anywhere it grows, harvesting it is doing nature a favor. All materials used in a reed roof are compostable, all hand tools.


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For a standard roof of say 100m² you need to harvest about three hectares. You can harvest that by hand in about a month, or in a day if you have a reed harvesting machine. In Finland you harvest in March, April.
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Maybe one of the oddest professions in Japan is that of the bokka (歩荷). Porters who carry supplies to remote mountain guesthouses inaccessible to vehicles. A bokka uses customized wooden ladder frames to carry 100-165kg of supplies on day long marches (walk up, run down).


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The job is popular: not surprisingly veteran bokka routinely tests as fitter and healthier than elite athletes. Both men and women take on the job, the average weight of a bokka is 60-70kg.


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Still not much of a chore compared to what some farmers used to handle.
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Sep 28, 2023
Iriairinya (入会林野) is the Japanese term for "commons". In the West the term "commons" are usually meant as fields for grazing but Japanese commons were traditionally the mixed grass and forest lands between mountains and flatlands usable in agriculture. Image
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Commons were meant to be vital lifelines for rural villages, providing its members with food (forage), feed (for livestock), fertilizer (leaves), fuel (wood, charcoal), building material (roof thatch). When modern lifestyles took over in the 1970s commons were mostly abandoned.


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Aug 24, 2023
The miracle of Usami: at 11:58 A.M. Sept. 1st 1923 a great earthquake struck the Tokyo region. Near the epicenter was Usami village, where no one was killed or injured while neighboring villages each had hundreds dead and wounded. How?
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The villagers of Usami had an exceptionally long memory. Records, monuments and tales of a huge 1703 quake had been preserved and stories of what happened was still in vivid memory. The locals acted unbelievably fast, evacuations started as soon as the trembling stopped.
An 8m tsunami struck the seaside village only 5 min after the quake. Locals were already arrived at and safe within historical evacuation grounds: temples, bamboo thickets, stands of trees, where their ancestors had marked out safe spots centuries before (circle: 1703 tsunami) Image
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Aug 11, 2023
The post town Tsumago-Juku (pop 400) in Japan was founded in 1601. In 1960 it took a unique decision to dedicate itself to its own preservation by three golden rules: "No selling, no letting, no destroying." Every renovation or rebuilding even of private homes is done in common.


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The town's main income is obviously tourism, but in order to preserve the town the locals figured out a method where they build and renovate as much as possible by themselves, together. One ex. is the town's six remaining "ancient style" ishiokiyane: shingle roofs held by rocks. Image
The roofs are made of wood shingles, only the bottom row nailed, the rest held down by horizontal battens and rocks. They are relaid every few years, broken shingles discarded, leaks fixed etc. Work is led by the most skilled townsperson while a team of 5-20 volunteers help out. Image
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