ABSTRACT
This chapter draws from the business policies of both major department stores and the small local shops sustained in the backstreets and key theories of urban studies, especially those premised on fieldwork, to argue that understanding Shibuya's space is crucial to knowing the development of Tokyo's popular culture. Scholars of urban sociology, such as Yoshimi Shun'ya and Kitada Akihiro, recognize the transformation of Tokyo's Shibuya district during the 1970s and 1980s as a symbolizing how the city has been designed as a place of consumption and how neighborhoods have been changed into media-oriented entertainment spaces. Tsutsumi Seiji applied Kobayashi Takaya's methods, in addition to what he had learned in the United States, to develop a new suburban residential culture along the Seibu Railway from Ikebukuro Station. Tsutsumi and Masuda's Shibuya developments were intrinsically linked to 1970s discussions in Japanese urban studies.
