“I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
― Diane Arbus
On May 27th, I joined a meetup group to explore nostalgic residential areas of Tokyo with the last remaining streetcar train in the city: Toden Arakawa Line. The 12km-long line spans from Minowabashi to the Toden Waseda Station, which takes 53 minutes in total. Since the Arakawa Line has as many as 30 stations, one day is not enough to visit all the attractions along the line.
Unlike the previous posts that showcased you the photographs of ever-growing districts, such as Shinjuku and Shibuya, this post lets you have a glimpse into districts whose population is aging and shrinking faster than ever before, including Koto, Arakawa, and Sumida. They are nothing like the Tokyo that you might have seen in viral YouTube videos.
Along the trip, what I saw was a problem Japan has: worlds’ fastest-aging society. The majority of passengers of the trains were the elderly. Due to the lack of priority seat, some of them struggled to stand and looked painful. Despite the fact that those districts belong to Tokyo, there is the pronounced gap between the increasing districts and declining. Here, you can get a glimpse into the districts of the city left behind by social growth.
