I met Tanaka-san on a narrow sidestreet behind Kabukicho's main intersection, November 1997. He was bent over a glass tube, heating it with a hand torch, bending the curve of the character 居 for an izakaya that hadn't opened yet. The street was thick with competing light — pachinko parlor greens bleeding into hostess-bar pink, taxi headlights smeared across wet pavement.
A City Written in Light
Tokyo's neon signage began with economics, not aesthetics. In the postwar boom, Shinjuku shop owners discovered that a single tube bent into katakana could draw foot traffic from fifty meters. By the 1970s, the towers east of the station had become accidental architecture — sign stacked on sign, three stories high, each fighting for the same sliver of night sky.
Neon is not decoration. It is a conversation between street and building, between night and eye. When a sign goes dark, a sentence disappears from the city.