Paper short abstract:

This paper explores melancholia as an affect in aging neighbourhoods, focusing on two shopping arcades in different parts of the city of Osaka. One appears to be slowly declining, the shops awaiting abandonment. In the other, artists move in and inhabit the melancholic space.

Paper long abstract:

In an aging society many people are affected by age, both directly and indirectly. This paper explores melancholia as an affect in aging neighbourhoods of Osaka, focusing on two shopping arcades (shōtengai) in different parts of the city. In one, the shops are known to be under threat of becoming vacant or abandoned as their proprietors age. The old times of hustle and bustle remain a vivid if melancholic memory. New shops are sometimes opened in place of older ones, often very nice and happily used by the neighbours, and yet a sense of melancholia is palpable even when they say: they cleaned it up, they made it nice (kirei ni natta). In the other arcade, the vacant spaces are being taken over by artists, in a move which does not aim simply to enliven the neighbourhood. If melancholic spaces attract the artists, they do not merely seek to transform the space, but to inhabit it. Their often very modest and discreet interventions seem not to be an attempt at recreating the vibrancy and countering the melancholy, but rather to carve out a space for dwelling within it, for quietly growing among the olive greens, light browns and darkened yellows of the aesthetic of the bygone boom years.