Sakariba: Linking Space and Time

Shinjuku Yokocho (Drinking Alley)

Tokyo is a highly varied city from night to day. The urban, commercial and business centred spaces give way to a world of pleasure, intimacy and leisure as work ends. Sakariba is a concept that links these two timeframes in space, as part of a larger phenomenon of post-work Japanese socialising. 'Sakaru' means to prosper, to flourish and 'ba' means place. These places consist of drinking alleys, entertainment districts and amusement quarters that make up much of the urban fabric. Sakariba in its Edo period formation was centred around the gates of prominent temples whilst in contemporary Japan, these sites have proliferated around the train station (Kowalczy, 2011). 

Map of Ogikubo and Asagaya. Pink areas highlight the built up of Sakariba around the station

When walking the city, or indeed travelling by train or metro, the pleasure districts emanate from the station and slowly lose significance until reaching the next station on the line. These spaces are often a product of the lifestyle of cities where department stores, restaurants and bars become deeply integrated into the everyday commuter experience for convenience. 

The temporal nature of sakariba denotes the transition of time between work and play, as ‘an interval of space and time’ (Kowalczyk, 2011). This blurring between space and time, mirrors the blurring between the boundaries of work and personal life where a ‘workaholic culture’ often bleeds into non-working life (Horne, 1998). As a consequence of the concentration on the after-work life, these spaces become highly gendered spaces as places mostly for men (Lindhurst, 1986). However, these spaces negate class hierarchies, providing a somewhat classless capitalist experience (Slater, 2011).

Ueno Shopping District

References

Covatta, A. (2017) Tokyo Playground: The Interplay between Infrastructure and Collective Space, UIA Seoul World Architects Congress, 1-7.

Horne, J. (1998) Understanding leisure time and leisure space in contemporary Japanese society, Leisure Studies, 17, 1: 37-52.

Kowalczyk, B. M (2011) Invisible (Tokyo Station) City of Transformation: Social Change and Its Spatial Expression in Modern Japan, Asian and African Studies, 15, 3, 23-38.

Linhart, S. (1986) ‘Sakariba: zone of ‘evaporation’ between work and home? Interpreting Japanese Society-Anthropological Approaches’ in J.Hendry and J.Webber (eds) Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO) Occasional Papers, Oxford, 198–210.

Slater, D., H. (2011) Social Class and Identity in Postwar Japan. In Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society, edited by Bestor, V., L., Bestor, T., C., and Yamagata, A., 103–116. New York and Oxford: Routledge.