If the United States of America is the supposed perpetrator of the current international recession, Japan could stake claim as one of the biggest victims. (Admittedly, Iceland could certainly put up one hell of a fight in that argument.) But after its “Lost Decade,” in which Japan suffered and was slow to recover from its own collapse brought on by reduction in exports and too easily obtainable credit, there was a very faint light at the end of the tunnel. China’s surge in construction outsourced a great deal of equipment and technology to Japan and manufacturing jobs began to increase again, if in small, scattered numbers.
Then, when America ruined it for the rest of the world, Japan felt especially helpless to the effects. The already exceedingly difficult terrain of the Japanese housing market became downright untenable for some, who had lost their job and could not find any mercy in hunting for an apartment in a city the size of your thumb. In America, when you want something cheaper, you have two options. A) Find something smaller or B) find something further from the city center. Only a very small portion of our land has any real value to it, since there is plenty more just outside of the suburban rim; farmland just waiting to be destroyed and churned into inexpensive spec houses. Japan doesn’t have this ‘luxury.’ The US is 26 times the size of Japan (roughly the size of the state of Montana), but has only 2.4 times more people in it. That means Japan’s person/area density is over 10 times that of America’s. As I said – space is at a premium. So for the Japanese salaryman who just recently lost his job, there isn’t use looking further from the city center. The only option is to go smaller.
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During the boom economy of Tokyo’s 1980′s, the salaryman’s workday was tiring, stressful, and long. Often working until midnight, he would very often head to a local bar with coworkers to unwind before venturing home to his family. Well, as you can imagine, this would get a little too out of hand sometimes, forcing him to either miss the last train of the evening, or feel too shameful to present himself to his wife in current state. Thus, the capsule hotel was born. An inexpensive, convenient alternative to the luxurious and costly Tokyo tourist hotels, this architectural typology exploded in popularity between architecture students and over-inebriated salarymen alike.
Flash-forward to 2010. The global economy is in meltdown. Japan’s export figures are floundering. The job market is faltering. But guess what: The footprint of the island remains the same, and population hasn’t fallen enough to affect real estate prices. (It has, though, actually fallen .2% in 2009.)
Since the only option is to go smaller and the salaryman has less of a reason to spend his increasingly fragile salary on late-night beer binges, but the capsule hotels still remain, there is one obvious solution: Live in Capsule hotels.
Filed under: Architecture
