Freestanding units on wheels dominate the kitchen floor, leaving only the narrowest of walkways to manoeuvre between appliances. Each unit serves a function: storing cups and crockery, keeping laundry baskets within reach, or holding bundled newspapers—it would be mottainai to throw them away¹. The rice cooker and fish grill rest on the freezer while the microwave teeters atop the refrigerator. Cleaning products fill the remaining gaps, and cloths and aprons dangle from handles and hooks, accented by select pieces of Snoopy paraphernalia.
All in all, it’s a pragmatic use of space. At first glance, the kitchen may seem cluttered, but every item is within reach for those who know where to look—a balance of efficiency and individuality. It’s one of over 300 images from Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s seminal documentary photobook, Tokyo Style.
Throughout the book, Tsuzuki chronicles Japanese living spaces from the early 1990s, gathered over two years as he navigated the neighbourhoods on his 50cc scooter. As a collection, the photographs form a distinct image: residents’ personalities manifest through their belongings, which often appear excessive within the confines of their compact homes. Yet, his subjects were not curated; in most cases, he had no knowledge of what lay beyond each door. He photographed each space as he found it—untouched, unstaged.
In the introduction, Tsuzuki comments on neo-zen contemporary architecture and what he perceives as a fixation on minimalist Japanese interiors, writing:
Let’s put an end to this media trickery, giving poor ignorant foreigners only images of the most beautiful Japanese apartments to drool over. Hence this book: I wanted to show you the real Tokyo style, the places where we honestly and truly do spend our days. Call it pathetically overcrowded, call it hopelessly chaotic, but, hey, that’s the reality. And, I might add: a reality that's not nearly as unpleasant as you probably imagine. Take a seat. There’s tangerines and your TV remote control on the kotatsu, piles of books beside your cushion, a waste-paper basket a mere arm’s toss away... Now you get a feel for the ‘cockpit effect’ we love so much.
In a previous newsletter on thrifting in Tokyo¹, I cited Tokyo Style, suggesting that the homes Tsuzuki documented are the origin of much of the abundance seen in the city’s recycle shops. I wrote:
As a teenager, I vividly remember poring over Kyoichi Tsuzuki's 1993 book Tokyo Style, a collection documenting everyday Tokyo apartments. I might have anticipated Zen minimalism or interiors reflecting Harajuku's street fashion. Instead, I was struck by images that felt closer to the home I had grown up in—lived-in spaces where residents occupied cramped quarters amid their clutter: stacks of books and records mingled with TV remotes, loose papers, boxes, and bags.
Tsuzuki’s original mission statement—and its effect on me—suggests he struck his target precisely. His images traveled 6,000 miles from Tokyo to a narrow terraced house in Britain, yet to be connected to the internet. They presented Japanese lifestyles not as something ‘other,’ but as something parallel.
My interest in Japanese aesthetics began while paging through photographic books in search of architectural and streetscape references for drawing practice. As I browsed collections on worldwide cities, Tokyo’s imagery stood out—arrays of vertical neon signage juxtaposed with traditional gabled roofs, naturally. It was as distant as possible from the built environment of Southeast England, a contrast that appealed to my nascent wanderlust. A path through Japanese art & design books and graphic novels led me to Tokyo Style.
My mother’s bedroom exemplified Tsuzuki’s cockpit effect. She was an artist and a self-publisher but spent much of her life bedridden. The room became her world—boxes of art supplies, jewellery-making tools, shelves stacked with magazine clippings and fabric samples, all jumbled together with an open wardrobe and an extensive collection of pill jars and medicines.
Much of our home was like this—the living room lined with shelves of books, Indian ornaments, and VHS tapes; my father’s records and CDs stacked above the dining table, itself scattered with vases, pots of pens, and paperclips. In Tokyo Style, Tsuzuki’s subjects’ furniture and belongings often sit on tatami mats, sometimes framed by fusuma screens, but that was the only real distinction between those images and our home.
Tsuzuki’s work provided a frame of reference for understanding that my own environment was not an anomaly but part of a broader pattern. Growing up in such a richly lived-in home sometimes felt like something to hide, but seeing Tokyo homes depicted similarly affirmed that this mode of living was valid and shared across cultures—one whose aesthetics and sensibilities I was already developing an admiration for.
I never owned the original Japanese edition of Tokyo Style published by Kyoto Shoin². Instead, I had a pocket-sized edition from Chronicle Books, retitled Tokyo: A Certain Style³ and redesigned, presumably to suit Western tastes. While researching for my thrifting piece, I came across Apartamento’s recent reissue⁴, a version much closer to the original—I ordered it immediately. Inside, I found marginalia by Tsuzuki that I hadn’t recalled from the Chronicle Books edition. One note stood out:
Around the beginning of this century, prominent Japanese anarchist Sakae Osugi proclaimed his vision for the essence of Japanese aesthetics: that ‘beauty is to be found in disarray’. Indeed, no matter how confusing a home—or homeland—might be to others, the residents themselves will invariably see a resolute order underscoring all their living conditions. The place isn’t dirty; it’s just the ‘organic randomness’ that gives it such ineffable charm.
Ōsugi lived between 1885 and 1923, yet his ideas on Japanese aesthetics resonate directly with Tsuzuki’s 1990s homes. If you’ve ever tidied or organised someone else’s space to be helpful, only for it to backfire because they could no longer find anything, then you’ve seen theory in action. The resident knew precisely where everything was, buried under papers or not.
In Tokyo, the cockpit effect extends beyond homes, shaping the city’s most inviting independent shops, bars, and eateries. Consider last week’s exploration of Kanda Jinbōchō⁵, where I described specialist retailers crammed with books, posters, collector’s pamphlets, and assorted curios. A pristine, minimalist shop floor—though beautiful in its own right—simply wouldn’t evoke the same sense of abundance, of stepping into someone’s personal world. And you can be sure that Jinbōchō‘s shopkeepers know exactly where to find any item within.
Two crucial words—“or homeland”—appear between em dashes in Tsuzuki's commentary on Ōsugi's quote, broadening its scope beyond interiors to the nation at large. When I consider Tokyo’s most layered urban spaces—yokochō alleys beneath the train tracks, packed with micro-establishments, lanterns, and crates; mile-long shōtengai shopping arcades stretching through the shitamachi, lined with small businesses and side streets—I have no doubt it holds true for the city.
Tokyo Style isn’t really about clutter, and Tsuzuki dismisses the idea of “cramped quarters,” a term frequently applied to Japanese spaces by outside observers. I used it myself in the quote near the top of this newsletter. But for Tsuzuki, this is a perspective that most Japanese people wouldn’t share. I posit that the same is true of the intrigue surrounding Tokyo’s densest spaces, where every inch is put to use.
In Made in Tokyo, Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow describe their feelings on the matter:
I'm often surprised when returning to Tokyo, especially when returning from Europe. Roads and trainlines run over buildings, expressways wind themselves over rivers, cars can drive up ramps to the rooftop of a 6-storey building, the huge volume of a golf practice net billows over a tiny residential district.
They then go on to question it:
What is it about this city of Tokyo, which can allow such unthinkable productions? How have we managed to arrive at such a different place to European modernity despite being equipped with the same building technology?
And eventually return to equilibrium:
But one week later, these sorts of questions disappear from my mind, together with the feeling that something is wrong.
I’ve revisited this passage often over the years, considering the experience of moving between London and Tokyo. For Atelier Bow-Wow, the sense that something is amiss in Tokyo’s spatial logic fades within a week. I’d argue that, just as a Jinbōchō shopkeeper can unearth any book in their labyrinthine store, the experienced Tokyoite easily moves through the urban sprawl, unbothered by the sheer density that might obscure it to an outsider.
Newcomers, of course, should allow themselves time to adjust. If Atelier Bow-Wow—a firm that helps build Tokyo—can return from a short business trip to Europe and find their own city momentarily disorienting, then you can expect its relentless novelty to heighten your senses, flood your brain with stimuli, and demand constant cognitive recalibration—whether it’s your first visit or your fifteenth.
At the back of the latest edition of Tokyo Style, Tsuzuki offers an updated reflection on contemporary living spaces:
If I were to photograph a young person today living in a similar place with a similar rent, I would get a much lighter image, or one with less of a sense of life because what they wear, what they read, what they listen to, what they cook and eat—all these facets of their personality wouldn't be evident from their room…What kind of individuality can a room take on when people are streaming music and movies and reading e-books all on a single smartphone, buying fast fashion that they throw away after a few wears, and having meals delivered to their doorstep?
This week, I happened upon a YouTube channel by a salaryman named Usui, who documents his life in a 9-square-meter Tokyo micro apartment. His room is a stark white cube—so blank you could host an art exhibition on its walls. This is exactly as Tsuzuki observed—many other YouTubers, in equally sterile apartments, present their carefully curated lives in the same manner.
Nevertheless, Usui enjoys his life in Tokyo. He makes full use of the city’s third places—cafés, parks, and public spaces that extend both home and work. Tsuzuki noted this very aspect of urban living in Tokyo Style’s original 1990s introduction:
Why not get yourself a one-room pad close to your favourite bookstores and boutiques and restaurants and watering holes? You can use your neighbourhood as your extended living room. At least in this city, there’s plenty of happy folks who think that’s really the life!
Today, the city keeps changing. A real-time narrative is told across social media: Shōwa-era architectural heritage is dismantled, and neighbourhood shopping districts on the outskirts languish. Meanwhile, new commercial complexes, shaped by the global aesthetic, continue to rise. If the worst were to happen—if Tokyo were ever reduced to these alone—you wouldn’t need this newsletter; there would be nothing left to explain.
Still, I have hope for the city’s side streets. While keeping a micro-apartment uncluttered may now be the more practical choice, and young Tokyoites will inevitably store more of themselves digitally in data warehouses than in their physical spaces, the impulse to manifest one’s identity in the physical world remains a deep human impulse.
If one’s home is reduced to a white cube, then demand for third spaces that feel like home will surely remain—eateries, cafés, watering holes, and workspaces that embody individuality and amplify what their customers wish to express. Tokyo dwellers will need it—they will need the visual density of the shōtengai to thrive and the micro-establishments of the yokochō to remain alive.
And though Tsuzuki’s observations on digitalised life may hold true, I am certain that Tokyo Style apartments still endure across the city, richly lived in.
Until we meet in cramped quarters,
AJ
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Footnotes
¹ Tokyotheque #45: Tokyo Thrift
² Tokyo Style (Kyoto Shoin)
³ Tokyo: A Certain Style (Chronicle Books)
⁴ Tokyo Style (Apartamento)
⁵ Tokyotheque #51: Book Town