History

Ginza that was bursting with energy throughout the Genroku era temporarily fell out of fashion in the Bunka and Bunsei eras. By the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, it had become quite neglected.
Then, following a huge fire in 1872, it was reborn as a Westernized Rengagai, or “Bricktown” built by the Meiji government, designed by a British architect called Thomas James Waters.
The project had two central pillars: (1) rebuild the streets with a focus on increasing the width, and (2) build fireproof Western-style houses mainly of brick. The government spent 1/27 of their budget, an enormous sum, for construction.
At the end of construction, the main street was widened to 27 meters, more than twice as wide as the previous street, and was separated into a vehicle zone and a pedestrian sidewalk. The sidewalks were also laid with brick. Gaslamps were installed and cherry blossom, pine and maple trees were planted along the street. Based on the district block system used until then, the so-called Hachiken street and Goken street were built and became a neat grid. Needless to say, it was the foundation for the current Ginza blocks.
The brick houses were built in the Georgian architectural style. An overhanging balcony on the second floor was supported by circular columns and covered a veranda below. These houses were built in sequence from 1-Chome. Once the brick houses were completed, they were sold off by the government to civilians. Despite the extremely high price of the buildings, the brick was poor quality and quickly became damp from humidity, often causing the houses to become ruined in no time. As a result, the area was full of houses that remained vacant from the very start.

The year of 1872 was also the year that Japan’s first railway, connecting Yokohama and Shimbashi, was completed. Ginza was also the shopping area in front of Shimbashi station, and merchant after merchant opened up shops there to sell the imports and the latest hot products. There were all sorts of shops — western-style restaurants, bakeries, bag vendors, sukiyaki restaurants, clock dealers, western-style furniture shops, western-style clothing shops, and much more. These strongly enterprising merchants set up window displays in their shop fronts. Unlike their pre-Meiji counterparts where vendors sat down in shops floored with tatami mats, these new style of shops were set up so that customers could freely enter and look at the items for sale with their shoes still on.
Ginza began take shape as the town where people could enjoy watching a western-style cityscape and enjoy window shopping — in other words, a town where they could enjoy a nice stroll that would later come to be called “Gin-bura.”

Another distinctive characteristic of Ginza was the foray of newspaper publishers. Journalists that were sensitive to what was hot and new assembled in the fashionable district that gathered all things western. Shimbashi station was also a hub for distributing goods to rural areas. There was even a point in time when newspaper publishers were located on all the Owari-cho intersections (Ginza 4-Chome intersections). The newspaper publishers were followed by magazine publishers, then printing houses, advertising firms and so on, making Ginza a mega information publishing hub.

As the Meiji era passed the halfway point, bazaars began to appear. These bazaars were similar to today’s department stores or multi-tenant commercial buildings. Lining both sides of roughly two and a half meter wide aisles were small shops selling toys, picture books, writing materials, and various other miscellaneous goods. The buildings were constructed so that you would spiral up the gently sloping aisle until you reached the top floor of the building, then begin a gentle descent. In 1902, seven such bazaars were standing on Ginza Chuo-dori.

Ginza thus became a place where many people gathered, but shopping was not the only objective. People began to think it cool to simply walk through Ginza and to consider meeting up in Ginza to be the forefront of the era. The phrase “Gin-bura,” to mean wandering around Ginza, emerged in 1915-16. There are many theories for the word’s origin.
The phrase “wander through Ginza” was of course commonplace, but, in addition to this, there was also the phrase, “Gin-no-bura” that had a negative nuance, referring to hoodlums in Ginza. This phrase may have become modified into the word “Gin-bura” to mean walking through Ginza with no purpose in mind. Another story is that students of Keio University would go to Ginza for a cup of Brazilian coffee, still a novelty at the time, an activity they would refer to as “Ginza de Brazil coffee”, which was shortened to “Gin-bura.”
Either way, the word “Gin-bura” stuck, becoming adopted into regular speech and even coming to appear in the Kojien Japanese Dictionary. Today, the word is essential for describing the allure of the Ginza district.

The event that epitomized Ginza as a place to long for, a place at the cutting edge, and a special place where cultural figures gathered was the opening of Café Printemps. In 1911, when the painter Shozo (or Seiso) Matsuyama returned from Paris, he tried to reproduce the atmosphere of the Parisian cafés. The naming of his café was assisted by Kaoru Osanai (Playwrite) and the interior design by a young Ryusei Kishida (Artist). As many people did not know what a café was, a number of people were solicited as sponsors. Those sponsors included big-time authors like Kafu Nagai and Ogai Mori as well as geisha from Shimbashi and Akasaka. In addition to coffee blended by a shop run by an Italian in Yokohama and whiskey, brandy and other foreign alcohol, the Café also offered various types of liqueurs. It became a thriving social venue where literary figures and painters with experience traveling abroad came to gather. Up until then, there was nowhere in Japan that could act as an easygoing social lounge for holding lively discussions, meeting up with people, or dropping in for a quick cup of tea.
Café Printemps was soon followed one after another by the Café Paulista, Café Lion, Tiger and so on. While each of these cafés had their own distinctive qualities, they all set adrift a desirable western mood. In addition to letting its customers enjoy the taste of feeling fashionable by simply being there, the cafés also acted as social lounges. Every move made by the famous people who gathered in the cafés became the object of admiration and the buzz of the town, and, it goes without saying, largely helped form Ginza’s image.

By the beginning of the Taisho period, Ginza’s Bricktown had become remodeled to look exquisitely Japanese through the creative efforts of its residents who made it livable by their standards. In addition to laying down tatami mat flooring inside for carrying on a Japanese style of living, noren curtains were hung in the facades and extensions were added to many buildings to make them look truly Japanese.
The street side trees were switched from cherry blossom, pine and maple to willows. Willow trees became established as the official street side tree of Ginza, so much to the extent that the thought of Ginza evoked an image of willow trees. Then, a plan was put forth by the city of Tokyo to renovate Ginza-dori t hat included widening the road, removing the willows and planting ginkgo trees in their place, and paving the sidewalks in concrete.

The local residents voiced strong opposition to these plans, and especially to the removal of the willow trees, which led to the establishment in 1919 of the Kyoshin Association as an alliance of shops along Ginza -dori. The removal of willow trees went so far as to become an issue in the city council, but the plan was pushed through by Mayor Shinpei Goto and all the willows were removed in 1921.
Soon after, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck and a movement began to bring back the willow trees. In 1932, willow trees were revived in Ginza as the street side tree.
The Kyoshin Association later changed its name to the Ginza Street Association and was joined by the shops along Harumi-dori following the war. It has continued and still continues to preserve the prosperity and protect the safety and security of the Ginza district.