After the war, on waste ground beside the railway, students and vendors assembled radios from black-market parts. That corner became the largest electronics market in the world and later the global capital of anime, manga and video games. Twelve stops between the 1912 brick station, the fire shrine that gave the district its name, the radio arcades, the appliances of the economic miracle, video games, maid cafes, the otaku shrine, the city of books, the publisher of Shonen Jump and the building where the fathers of modern manga lived. Approximate audio duration: 21 minutes.
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Akihabara: de las radios del mercado negro al manga que conquistó el mundo
Después de la guerra, en un descampado junto a las vías, estudiantes y vendedores armaban radios con piezas del mercado negro. Ese rincón se convirtió en el mayor mercado de electrónica del mundo y después en la capital mundial del anime, el manga y los videojuegos. Doce paradas entre la estación de ladrillo de 1912, el santuario contra el fuego que dio nombre al barrio, los pasillos de las radios, los electrodomésticos del milagro económico, los videojuegos, los cafés de criadas, el santuario de los otaku, la ciudad de los libros, la editorial de Shonen Jump y el edificio donde vivieron los padres del manga moderno. Duración aproximada de audio: 21 minutos.
Tour stops
12 stops · ~21 min of audio · 16.33 km on foot (~4 h 5 min walking) · about 4 h 30 min in total
You are beside the Kanda River, facing a long red brick viaduct with arches. Today there are cafes and shops under those arches. A century ago one of Tokyo's most important stations stood here.
Manseibashi station opened in 1912. It was designed by Tatsuno Kingo, the same architect as Tokyo Central Station. It was an elegant brick terminus with a square in front.
The 1923 earthquake destroyed it. It was rebuilt more modestly, and in 1936 part of it became the Transport Museum. The station closed in 1943 and the museum in 2006.
Climb the stairs to the glass platform: Chuo line trains pass in…
2
A Name That Came From Fire
You are at the Electric Town exit of Akihabara station. Giant signs of anime characters, music, people coming and going. But the district's name has nothing to do with electronics.
Edo and Tokyo always lived in fear of fire. In 1869 a great fire swept through this area. The new government decided to leave an empty space as a firebreak and built a small shrine to protect against fire.
People associated it with Akiba, a very popular god against fires. The waste ground came to be called Akiba-no-hara, the field of Akiba. When the railway arrived, the station took that name: Akihabara.
The shri…
3
Radios Made From the Remains of War
Step into these narrow passages under the tracks. Tiny stalls full of cables, resistors, connectors, valves and components of every kind. This is the Radio Center, and the whole of Akihabara looked like this seventy years ago.
In 1945 Japan was devastated, but people were hungry for news, for music, for something other than war. A radio was a luxury, but you could build one.
Near here was an electrical school, today's Tokyo Denki University. Its students began assembling radios from parts of abandoned military equipment and selling them from street stalls.
So a black market in components wa…
4
The Three Sacred Treasures
You are on Chuo-dori, Akihabara's main avenue. Whole buildings of electronics, vertical signs, music blaring from shop speakers.
In the fifties, when Japan began to grow at full speed, families dreamed of three appliances: the television, the washing machine and the refrigerator. They called them the three sacred treasures, like the three symbols of the emperor.
Akihabara was where they were bought. Shops competed with aggressive discounts, and people came from all over the country looking for the best price.
In the sixties the desire changed: the car, the air conditioner and the colour tel…
5
The Family Console
Go up into the retro video game shop. Shelves to the ceiling with cartridges, consoles you thought forgotten, arcade machines where you can still play with coins.
On 15 July 1983 Nintendo, an old playing-card company from Kyoto, launched the Family Computer in Japan, the Famicom. In the West it was called the NES. It changed the entertainment industry.
Akihabara became the place where new games were bought on release day. The queues were legendary.
In February 1988 Dragon Quest III came out. There were queues hundreds of metres long, and the press reported that many children skipped school …
6
Maids, a Train and a Tragic Sunday
Look at the young women dressed as Victorian maids handing out flyers on the pavement. They are inviting you to maid cafes, where waitresses act like servants from an anime and welcome you with the words welcome home, master.
The first cafe of this kind opened in Akihabara in 2001. Within a few years there were dozens. They were the sign of change: the electronics district had become the district of the otaku, the fans of anime, manga and video games.
In 2004 a user of an internet forum told how he had defended a woman on a train and started dating her with the help of the forum's advice. It…
7
The Industry Behind the Drawings
You are in front of Akihabara UDX, a glass office tower with a large raised plaza. Exhibitions, series launches and anime events are held here almost every week.
When the appliance stores began to close, the Tokyo government and companies bet on renewing the district with buildings like this. The idea was to turn Akihabara into a technology hub. The public decided otherwise: it turned it into a pop culture hub.
Japanese anime now generates billions of dollars a year, and a growing share of that money comes from abroad. Series premiere almost simultaneously in Japan and the rest of the world.…
8
A Shrine for the Otaku
You are at Kanda Myojin, the shrine that protects Akihabara. It has almost thirteen hundred years of history, but look at the wooden tablets where people write their wishes, the ema.
Many are drawn with anime characters, in impressive detail. They are called ita-ema. Fans from all over the world leave their requests here: to pass an exam, to find a job, for their favourite series to get another season.
The shrine appeared in the series Love Live!, and since then it has become a place of pilgrimage. The shrine itself has done official collaborations with series and sells charms featuring char…
9
The City of Books
You are in Jimbocho. Along this avenue there are more than a hundred second-hand bookshops, many with carts of cheap books on the pavement. It is one of the largest bookshop districts in the world.
It all began in the late nineteenth century, when several law schools that would later become major universities settled nearby. The students needed books, and sold them when they finished.
Many publishers were born here. One of the most prestigious in Japan started in 1913 as a small second-hand bookshop in this district.
Notice the specialisation: there are shops just for history, just for art,…
10
Friendship, Effort, Victory
You are in front of the buildings of two of Japan's biggest manga publishers, Shueisha and Shogakukan, a few metres apart. Many of the characters you saw on the Akihabara billboards came from here.
In 1968 Shueisha launched a weekly magazine for boys: Shonen Jump. A thick issue on cheap paper with several serialised stories. Its motto was three words: friendship, effort, victory.
In the eighties and nineties it published Dragon Ball, Slam Dunk and Naruto, among many others. In 1995 it sold more than six million copies a week. In 1997 One Piece began, one of the best-selling comics in history…
11
The Building Where Modern Manga Was Born
You are in front of a plain two-storey wooden building, painted pale yellow, in the middle of a neighbourhood park. It is a replica of Tokiwa-so, a block of cheap flats that stood on this spot between 1952 and 1982.
In 1953 a young doctor who had decided to devote himself to drawing moved in: Osamu Tezuka. He was already famous for Astro Boy. He is called the god of manga.
Tezuka left soon after, but passed his room on to other young artists. In the years that followed, the two authors who signed as Fujiko Fujio, later creators of Doraemon, lived in this building, along with Shotaro Ishinomo…
12
The Other Akihabara
To finish, an optional stop a few stations from Tokiwa-so: Nakano Broadway. From the outside it is a 1966 apartment building, grey and rather ugly. Inside, the lower floors are a maze of small shops.
When it opened it was a luxury complex: a shopping centre with expensive homes above, where artists and celebrities lived. Over the years it lost its shine.
In the eighties a second-hand manga shop arrived, Mandarake. Then another, and another. Today the second, third and fourth floors are packed with shops selling figures, vintage toys, trading cards, watches and old magazines.
Many collectors…
How long does the "Akihabara: From Black-Market Radios to the Manga That Conquered the World" audio tour take?
It has about 21 minutes of audio across 12 stops and a 16.33 km walking route (~4 h 5 min on foot). Plan roughly 4 h 30 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Station That Disappeared" (coordinates 35.6974, 139.7699). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open Tokyo and pick "Akihabara: From Black-Market Radios to the Manga That Conquered the World". No account required to start.
