I wish I had written this article 10 years ago: On the charm of Village Vanguard street-level stores

To put it dramatically, Village Vanguard street-level stores are a historical cultural heritage of subculture.
Dramatically, that is.

The reason I wanted to write this article 10 years ago is that
street-level stores are now an endangered species. There is almost no point in talking about their charm anymore.

I never imagined that street-level stores would disappear to this extent.

By the way, a street-level store refers to an independent shop facing the road.
Tenant-type stores located inside commercial facilities were called in-shops.

The Osaka Amerikamura store where I worked also closed in 2022.
The Kyoto Shinkyogoku store, where I once helped out locally, is also closing this month.

In Tokyo, the Ochanomizu store closed in 2020.
The Jiyugaoka and Sangenjaya stores also closed that same year.
I never expected that the street-level stores, which were so abundant in the 2010s, would decrease this much...

Even in Nagoya, the birthplace of Village Vanguard,
the Nagoya Chuo and East stores have closed.
The Okazaki store and even the main store are scheduled to close.

*For closing information, I referred to the following site.
Village Vanguard Closing Information Summary
(Looking at it this way, in-shops are also decreasing significantly...)

As for the reasons for the closures, they have already been discussed in various places, so I will not touch upon them here.

Rather, for me, the fact that I was allowed to do whatever I wanted in that place, even for a short time, was more significant.

Street-level stores were "subculture museums"

To put it dramatically, Village Vanguard street-level stores weresubculture history museums.

Their charm was, above all, that they had "things you've never seen before."

Look at this, a KISS sign this huge,
do they have this at an Aeon store?It would be strange if they did!

Such "things you've never seen before"
were placed there as actual items, not as images or clippings from the internet.

There was a sense of freedom that you don't find in in-shop locations, or perhaps,
an atmosphere from an era that hadn't yet been sanitized.

At the entrance, there was,for some reason, a bromide photo of a young Shingo Yanagisawa.
There were skeletons on the ceiling.
On the bookshelves, there were miscellaneous goods that made you wonder, “How many decades have these been sitting here?”
And books you would never see in any other bookstore. (Like those shady herbal books titled something like “XXX. OX”.)

The genre categorization was vague, and ideologies were mixed on the shelves.
You couldn't tell if it was a variety store, a bookstore, or a CD shop.

But that was exactly why it was interesting.

Village Vanguard was a gateway to culture

My first experience with Village Vanguard was at the Kitayama store in Kyoto.

At the time, I didn't even know the name “Village Vanguard,” and I just wandered in, but the space was truly bizarre.

It had a basement level, and the deeper you went, the more intense the atmosphere became.

As a high school student, that entire space was culture itself to me.

Movies I learned about for the first time there.
Miscellaneous goods I saw for the first time there.
Music I encountered for the first time there.

Just as it's said that the music you listen to in your teens influences your whole life,
I feel that the culture I encountered in that place has largely shaped who I am today.

The Kitayama store closed in 2014.

After that, I often frequented the Kyoto Sanjo store.
(The one that was in ShinPuhKan, not the one on Shinkyogoku.)

That was where I discovered toy cameras like the HOLGA, bought incense, purchased travelogues by Kaori Manabe, and read them on the outdoor terrace.

Thinking back, I believe that store was less of a “place to buy things” and more of a place to discover my own hobbies and sensibilities.

The Sanjo store closed in 2016.
I believe it closed due to the renovation of ShinPuhKan.

I often like to look at the Twitter accounts of the various stores that have closed,
but thinking that these might also become unviewable due to X's specifications...

I almost want someone to collect photos from all over the country and publish a book about these street-level stores.
Thinking that each X account will also disappear, it will soon exist only in everyone's memories.
It's sad.

Street-level stores were places for "people with no purpose."

We live in an era where algorithms automatically present "things that suit you."

But Village Vanguard's street-level stores were the exact opposite,
a place where people with no purpose could have their lives changed by coincidence.

You wander through the store without knowing what you want,
and by the time you leave, you've bought some knick-knacks you don't even understand yourself.
It's like the feeling of buying a candied apple at a festival even though you don't really want to eat it.

But that "waste" was incredibly important.

It was a place to encounter culture through detours, not efficiency.

That is perhaps why I feel a sadness that goes beyond mere store closures
as these street-level stores disappear.

I thought the main store would always be kept around, as the chairman intended, but
it's no longer guaranteed to be there forever...

That is why you should visit the main store and the Shinkyogoku store, which are closing soon,
and even though they probably won't close yet, please visit the Shimokitazawa and Koenji stores too.

What I want you to see isn't just the product shelves,
but the exterior of the store, the playful ceilings, the cluttered area in front of the register,
the creaky floors, and the products shoved away as if to hide them at the bottom.

Those scenes won't be around forever.

Don't assume
your parents or street-level stores
will be there forever.

I don't think things would have changed if I had written this 10 years ago, but I have one sentiment.
Street-level stores are wonderful.