As the last trains leave the central hubs of Shinjuku and Shibuya for the suburbs, much of the city heads home. However, Tokyo never sleeps. Economics reporter Elizabeth Beattie comes on the show to discuss a story she wrote about the businesses that keep night-time Tokyo buzzing.

Hosted by Shaun McKenna and produced by Dave Cortez.

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Shaun McKenna: Articles | Twitter | Instagram

Elizabeth Beattie: Articles | Twitter

Johan Brooks: Instagram

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Transcript note: Deep Dive is made to be listened to, and we recommend this transcript be used as an accompaniment to the episode. This transcript has been generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcription, and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the episode.

Shaun McKenna 00:03

Welcome to Deep Dive from The Japan Times. I'm Shaun McKenna.

So, in addition to doing this podcast for The Japan Times, this summer I also took over editing duties for the weekend Longform section. That's where we publish longer-than-usual features, most of which end up becoming the topics for this podcast.

When I started this new role, I edited a piece titled “Stakeout Diary” by Alex K.T. Martin, which I recommend checking out if you haven't already. Alex wrote about this stash of photos discovered in Jimbocho of some detectives from postwar Tokyo who were on the hunt for a Japanese serial killer. And the detectives were so stylish, and they end up influencing fashion designers in Europe. Still, Alex wanted to get to the bottom of the actual case that they were working on. So he wrote about that part of the story. Then, just the other week, we published a travel piece titled “My annual pilgrimage to Okinawa,” which was written by photojournalist Lance Henderson. It was heartfelt and introspective, and I think that's one of the best things about the Longform section. It allows writers the space to craft more experiential, experimental and sometimes even emotional stories. One Longform story that took advantage of this space recently was a piece by Japan Times economics reporter Elizabeth Beattie, titled, “After last train in Tokyo, a second city comes to life.” And Elizabeth is joining me today to talk about how this glimpse into Tokyo nightlife came about.

Elizabeth, welcome back to Deep Dive.

Elizabeth Beattie 01:36

Thanks, Shaun.

Shaun McKenna 01:37

So where did you originally get the idea for this story?

Elizabeth Beattie 01:40

So for a little while I wanted to look into Tokyo's night time economy. Tokyo has a very iconic nightlife scene but like every big city in the world this quietened during the pandemic, even though Tokyo didn't impose a harsh lockdown like other cities, like Melbourne or Wellington, where I'm originally from. With tourism starting back up, I thought it was a good opportunity to check in on the state of Tokyo's nightlife.

Shaun McKenna 02:04

Actually, last week, we got some news on how this return of international tourism is affecting the economy, didn't we?

Elizabeth Beattie 02:10

Yes, so Japan's GDP, the gross domestic product, grew by 6%. This was partly due to the weak yen, which boosted demand for Japanese exports. But the weak yen also played a part in tourism recovery, as many visitors from abroad are really benefiting when it comes to cheaper hotels and cheaper prices in Japan overall. So you might have noticed your friends coming from overseas and talking about what a cheap place Tokyo is to travel about at the moment. Right now, Japan is far cheaper than it used to be to travel around.

Shaun McKenna 2:39

Yes, that's very true.

Elizabeth Beattie 02:40

I think these statistics are very important, but sometimes they can be a bit dry when you're simply reporting on them. I really like working on stories that tell that economic story, but also kind of make the issues more relatable to readers by talking about the people behind them. So for this piece on the night economy, I liked the idea of sitting a piece of reportage on the people that are out at night as a chance to capture a different side of Tokyo that many of us living here don't encounter because we're, we're asleep, basically.

Shaun McKenna 03:08

We'll get into the elements that you reported on in more detail later. But, just an overview, you looked at international business — specifically, you spoke with a lawyer who worked with an American firm, so he would sometimes operate according to a different time zone, essentially. Then there was the nightlife industry and very late in the night or very early in the morning, depending on your own sleeping habits, the fish market in Toyosu, did you set out wanting to focus on these areas in particular?

Elizabeth Beattie 03:36

Partially yes, I think pretty early you and I came to the conclusion that Tokyo is a huge city. There's so many things you can write about here. We kind of discussed the food-service industry, karaoke, we discussed manga kissa, which are these all night bookstore slash cafes that a lot of people end up spending the night in

Shaun McKenna 03:55

The people who stay there are often referred to in Japanese as netto kafe nanmin, which translates to internet cafe refugees.

Elizabeth Beattie 04:02

A little bleak, but yeah, everyone has their own experience of that Tokyo nightlife. So there's endless stories that could really represent that. So that's where you came in Shaun, during the brainstorming session, I remember you suggesting maybe we pick these five different scenarios and they would form vignettes which would allow us to present the story as a night in Tokyo and also narrow down what we're looking at and kind of give the piece structure is also a way of having it character driven.

Shaun McKenna 04:30

Yeah, it really seemed overwhelming to try and do everything that we wanted to do. I knew I wanted to capture a summer vibe, specifically Tokyo’s summer vibe — one that would be similar to the summers that I experienced in Tokyo in my 20s and 30s.

Elizabeth Beattie 04:44

You are wearing shorts at the moment. Yeah, another reference I remember you bringing up which served as a bit of an inspiration for this piece was Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth.”

Shaun McKenna 04:59

Yeah, “Night on Earth” is a film from 1991 by the celebrated American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. And it has five different scenes that take place in taxi rides in five different cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. The cab rides all take place at the exact same time. But because of the different time zones, we get entirely different scenarios. And the first one in LA stars Gena Rowlands and a very young Winona Ryder, but the film also stars Roberto Benigni, Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito.

Elizabeth Beattie 05:47

Yeah, I think the Winona Ryder one was my favorite.

Shaun McKenna 05:50

Yeah, she's a legend.

Elizabeth Beattie 05:51

So once we had the structure and the inspiration, we mapped out how we'd cover the piece. And I remember early on you kind of wheeling out this Glen Beck-style whiteboard you had with you. And kind of mapping out the different kind of routes and parts of the city.

Shaun McKenna 06:03

You know, whiteboards are an essential part of any journalist’s toolkit.

Elizabeth Beattie 06:07

And I feel like I have to say you're, you're nothing like Glen Beck. There's similarities in the attachment to the whiteboard.

Shaun McKenna 06:14

Yeah. I mean, the whiteboard helped us decide that we lacked bookends to the piece, right? So we came up with the idea of starting the piece at the call for last train and finishing it with the first train of the morning. Elizabeth, you've been in Japan for a year, you were in Hong Kong before that. Have you had the rush for the last train experience that you described seeing at the start of your piece?

Elizabeth Beattie 06:33

Well, in Hong Kong, it's a little bit different. In Hong Kong, the trains do stop around midnight or 1 a.m. But because taxis are a lot cheaper than they are in Tokyo and the city is much more compact. That rush is far less intense than it is here. OK, the closest thing in Hong Kong is actually the rush to catch the last ferry out to Lamma Island, which is the small outlying Island, because there's really no way home if you miss that ferry. So I've been having drinks with a friend who was kind of pounding the pavement trying to catch that ferry. And, you know, as you're running into other friends, they're trying to entice you to stop and you have these kind of whack-a-mole temptations along the way home.

Shaun McKenna 07:12

No, no!

Elizabeth Beattie 07:13

Yeah exactly, I think that was probably the most similar in Hong Kong. Even though I've been in Tokyo for a year, I have experienced the last train run. I'm not a big partier, am I making myself sound like a big partier? But it just really feels kind of triumphant when you make it onto the train. It's the little wind kind of to end in the night.

Shaun McKenna 07:35

Yeah, I actually think you know, you're a true Tokyoite when you've calculated the route you need to take to get as close as possible to your home with the latest possible combination of trains.

Elizabeth Beattie 07:46

For sure. Even that idea of the last train is kind of interesting. There's all these theories about why it stops when it does. And a little interesting fact that I didn't include in the story is apparently the reason why Tokyo has a last train is so maintenance can be done, the railway system during that time. Japanese trains in general are really renowned for running on time. So that's another part of the night economy that I would have loved to have gone into in a bit more detail, but I guess we can save it for a future article.

Shaun McKenna 08:26

OK, starting with the piece, we talked a little about last trains before the break, from there we head to the Marunouchi business district, and you spoke with a lawyer named Michiro Nishi.

Elizabeth Beattie 08:37

Yes. So Mitch works for international firms and he's reported to offices in both New York and London. In summer when it's 10 p.m. in Tokyo, it's 2 p.m. in London and 9 a.m. in New York, so quite a significant difference to that time difference means that he sometimes needs to stay out past the point of the last train.

Shaun McKenna 08:56

Are there many other businesses operating in this way in Tokyo?

Elizabeth Beattie 08:59

Well, the rise of video meetings during the pandemic made it a little less necessary. We saw more people working from home during that time, but Japanese businesses have since from what I've heard and whatever it largely returned back to the office. Still, there's that culture of video meetings that remains. So when people do have an after hours commitment or a late night work commitment, they don't necessarily have to stay in the office to do that.

Shaun McKenna 09:23

Yeah, that's one good thing that came out of the pandemic. Of course, this means that there needs to be some kind of economy to help support these people who are working past last train, right? Like they can't all live off Family Mart's fried chicken all the time ... or can they?

Elizabeth Beattie 09:40

I mean, it’s a challenge I wouldn't mind. But interestingly enough, Mitch had said he has to entertain more visiting clients and colleagues, you know, since the borders are opening, we're seeing that flow of international travel a lot more. And that means for Mitch that he is taking them out to restaurants or izakaya pubs. I mentioned before that there weren't those harsh lockdowns in Tokyo, but still restaurants were abiding by requests to close early and stop serving alcohol late in the night. So even though there weren't those strict lockdowns, the number of izakayas dropped quite drastically from around 7,200 in December of 2019 to I believe it's 5,844 by the end of 2021. And this is despite government assistance.

Shaun McKenna 10:25

So Mitch has less options when it comes to izakaya. What about restaurants?

Elizabeth Beattie 10:30

Well, they Tokyo Shoku Research found that there were 842 restaurant bankruptcies across Japan in 2020, which eclipsed the number of bankruptcies there were in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

Shaun McKenna 10:44

So the pandemic really took a toll on the food service industry.

Elizabeth Beattie 10:48

It did, but it really just exacerbated a trend that was already underway. There were these two issues that had started long before the pandemic. And they’re the high cost of rent in Tokyo and staffing shortages. So we've seen staffing shortages also hit the hotel industry, for example.

Shaun McKenna 11:04

At around 2 a.m. you find yourself in Shinjuku Ni-chome, which is known as Tokyo's LGBTQ neighborhood, and you're speaking to some people out for the night.

Elizabeth Beattie 11:15

Yeah, so I met this very friendly group of young people who were kind of deciding what club to go to. And they very kindly agreed to talk to me, they were very keen for me to come and join them on their night out. But they also offered kind of a little snapshot of the nightlife and the night scene there. So yeah, it was a fun interview for sure, even though I was completely sober.

Shaun McKenna 11:37

Good, very professional. And then as part of this section, you also spoke to the Japan Nighttime Economy Association. What does that group do?

Elizabeth Beattie 11:45

The JNEA promotes the nighttime economy and speaks to other cities around the world looking for ideas about how to best actualize a thriving night economy. For instance, they spoke to me a little about the Kabukicho Tower, which opened in April. It's a 48-storey building, which includes restaurants, cinemas and a nightclub.

Shaun McKenna 12:04

A nightclub?

Elizabeth Beattie 12:06

Well, yes, nightclubs were hit as hard as restaurants and izakaya were during the pandemic, so the JNEA is hoping to bring that aspect of Tokyo back to life. I spoke to Director Tak Umezawa, and he talked about how the group is trying to fight back against this evil reputation the nighttime economy got during the pandemic.

Shaun McKenna 12:23

Evil?

Elizabeth Beattie 12:24

Yeah, so when people were flouting the antivirus precautions, there was a perception that that's when COVID-19 was really aggressively kind of spreading in all sorts of places. Umezawa pointed out that developers have been starting to come around with the idea to the high-class office spaces aren't enough to draw people into the city center, that you also need some kind of cultural appeal, too.

Shaun McKenna 12:44

OK, so like some areas of Tokyo, like the business districts, they kind of risk this reputation of being considered cold and uninviting, while the places with like nightlife areas or kind of some sort of life at night are seen as charming.

Elizabeth Beattie 13:00

Yeah, and to bring it back to those four people I spoke to in Ni-chome, Umezawa noted that it was also an important aspect of the nightlife industry, bringing together the LGBTQ community to congregate. Otherwise, he pointed out if you're LGBTQ and you're in an office, you might not be out to your colleagues. So this kind of safe space allows ideas to form, allows people to kind of be their real selves. It also leads to broader changes in culture, whether it's through the formation of bands, media, activist groups — which then go on to change laws in the country too.

Shaun McKenna 13:33

Right, OK, finally, we end your night at the Toyosu fish market. What is the night economy that's happening here?

Elizabeth Beattie 13:40

This is a little blurry, because to some it's more of a very, very early morning economy. Fishing is an industry that's largely male, but still counts women amongst them, the fishing industry is actually trying to attract more women into the space as well. But this kind of is a segment that sits out to sea early, like maybe 1 or 2 a.m. And it's important to note that the workforce itself is dwindling, which goes back to that point I mentioned about them trying to encourage greater inclusivity is in part to combat this dwindling workforce. In 2020 workers from the sector were down 6.3%, according to government numbers, but at the same time, the demand for Japanese seafood still remains really high. So once they get there catch of the day, they bring it back to Toyosu fish market, which is close to Tokyo Bay, it’s then sold on to the city's restaurants at the 5 a.m. auction.

Shaun McKenna 14:40

You know, you talk a lot about the tourism effect here, too.

Elizabeth Beattie 14:44

Yes, I've heard the story looking at the fishing industry itself would eat up all my words. It's a very fascinating part of Japan's economy in itself. So instead, I looked at the context of this and a night out in Tokyo. And the fish market is part of that for many tourists. These fish come back to Toyosu and they're auctioned off and the public can gather to watch this auction. So I spoke to some travelers who were visiting Tokyo and for them watching the auction gave them a chance to see a little snapshot of Tokyo life.

Shaun McKenna 15:11

And the fishers we're dealing with here. They're out south of Japan, I think. And they aren't the fishers that have been hit hard on Japan's east coast since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, we actually spoke to Mara Budgen about them and the expected release of wastewater from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant last month prior to the announcement that the water would be released today.

Elizabeth Beattie 15:33

Right. So it's a tough industry for many reasons, but it's also a very important segment of Japan's economy. And in order to kind of get a little piece of that, or witness a little piece of that, some tourists will stay up all night, or get up very early in the morning to catch the auction, and then have a meal. An experience I definitely recommend.

Elizabeth Beattie 16:02

So when I'm working on a feature story, naturally, I begin to think about the kinds of images that will go along with it. And for this piece, Shaun, you managed to get Johan Brooks to take the pictures for us, which is awesome.

Johan Brooks 16:13

My name is Johan Brooks, and I'm a photojournalist based out of Tokyo. I'm a contributing photographer for The Japan Times, and I've lived in Japan for about 14 years now.

Shaun McKenna 16:23

Yeah, I've been following Johan’s work for a while on Instagram, and he specializes in street photography. I thought that might be best for this style of story. I mean, you're grabbing stories from the street, so it makes sense that you would grab visuals from the streets, too.

Johan Brooks 16:38

So this article, it has all these different people, right? We did like a photo shoot of a lawyer working late in his office in Otemachi. So that's like one part — very, very different from the rest. The rest is more street photography, right. So I would be out in Shibuya quite late at night up until the last train, trying to look for people working or just people enjoying the night, and just the contrast between the two really. I think there's one image that was used and it has — on the left side — it has a young woman, I think she's waiting for her friend just in front of a bar, and on the right side, there's an older gentleman working inside what I believe is an izakaya and he's waiting for customers. We have two people at very different stages of their lives, waiting for something, very different things. I think it brings the article together in that way, you know, different lives being lived so close together.

Elizabeth Beattie 17:41

He had one photo in particular that I really loved. It was of these two women dressed in evening gowns running across the Shibuya scramble to catch the last train. And it felt very cinematic too, which is why I really love this image.

Shaun McKenna 17:54

He had another one of this guy exhaling smoke from a cigarette outside a Family Mart Shibuya. I really liked that one.

Johan Brooks 18:01

I kind of think of street photography as photojournalism's little brother. Whereas photojournalism is more structured and commonly ventures more into the extremes of life and diversity, street photography attempts to capture the normal, the everyday, in visually appealing ways. I've lived in various towns and places in England. I grew up in New York City, right. But Tokyo is just ... I just love it. Despite how homogeneous it is there's so much diversity here, in a visual way.

Shaun McKenna 18:31

Now, finally, the last section of your article dealt with the first train. I have to say this may have been my favorite part of the article because you made some interesting observations. What is first train in Tokyo like?

Elizabeth Beattie 18:44

Thanks, Shaun. Yeah, the first train is almost like the yin to the last train yang, if that makes sense. At the time of last train, things are noisy and chaotic and there's kind of this mad dash for the station, but people who take the first trains, either those who have been out all night, they're usually very tired and sleepy, or they’re early birds looking to hit out into the mountains and get started on a day of hiking.

Shaun McKenna 19:09

Yeah, you wrote about the signs of life starting to stir at the train stations as they open up and so you get these sounds from the ticket gates like these electronic dings. And Tokyo also has this thing that if a child walks through the ticket gate, it'll sound like a bird chirp, and then they have bird sounds for general ambiance in the actual station — actually I think they’re to prevent people from killing themselves but yeah, it but it's it sounds like a forest anyway. And I really liked that you likened these electronic sounds to the sounds of a forest coming to life in the morning. I like that image.

Elizabeth Beattie 19:45

There's such an interesting moment of calm as the to kind of Tokyo's meet each other that 5 a.m. morning. The trains are really quiet, the city is really quiet, but it doesn't stay that way for long because if it's a weekday there'll be a chaotic morning rush hour. But at that moment, everything's kind of peaceful and a little bit dreamy. And there's these, like you said all these little chirps and ambient sounds.

Shaun McKenna 20:08

And in 18 hours the cycle will repeat itself.

Elizabeth Beattie 20:12

The cycle will repeat itself, yeah.

Shaun McKenna 20:14

Elizabeth, thanks very much for coming back on Deep Dive to talk about this story with us.

Elizabeth Beattie 20:19

Thanks for having me, Shaun.

Shaun McKenna 20:24

My thanks again to Elizabeth, be sure to check out her piece titled “After last train in Tokyo, a second city comes to life” at japantimes.co.jp. She also wrote an interesting piece on Elon Musk's Starlink system. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, too.

Elsewhere in the news, starting at 1:03 p.m. On Thursday, Japan began the controversial discharge of treated tritium laced water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a major step in the decommissioning process for the plants reactors, which were hit by a triple meltdown following the March 2011 earthquake-triggered tsunami. Between 200 and 210 cubic meters of water will be released on Thursday, but Tepco is aiming to raise the daily discharge volume to approximately 460 cubic meters. Japan's neighbors have remained mixed in their reaction to the release of the water. China has remained firmly opposed to the plan while the Philippines has expressed understanding. South Korean Prime Minister Han Duk-soo called on Japan on Thursday to transparently disclose information about the discharge of contaminated water over the next 30 years. And after announcing that it would attempt to launch a spy satellite within an eight-day timeframe on Tuesday, North Korea failed in its attempt to do so on Thursday morning. It was the reclusive nation's second attempt in less than three months. The North's official Korean Central News Agency reported it would try again in October.

Deep Dive from The Japan Times is produced by Dave Cortez. The outgoing track is by Oscar Boyd and our theme music is by the Japanese artist LLLL. I'm Shaun McKenna, podtsukaresama.