Shibuya Public Hall Closes

Four days later, the theater was shuttered for good in preparation for renovation. A new concert hall will be built as part of a new building complex and completed in 2018. Takanaka was the original guitarist with the Sadistic Mika Band, one of the most popular Japanese rock groups of the ’70s and one of the few that made an impression overseas.

He has played Shibuya Kokaido hundreds of times in various capacities. The closing of Shibuya Kokaido means that Tokyo has a serious dearth of mid-sized auditoriums for concerts. In the past several years a number of other older venues have been closed and torn down, and next year it will be very difficult to find sit-down auditoriums of 1,000-1,500 seats in Tokyo.

The remaining few are already booked. Part of the reason is that developers are quickly taking advantage of the building boom brought about by preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but the city has always been impatient when it comes to older buildings. Shibuya Kokaido has been around since the 1960s, making it practically prehistoric in Tokyo terms. Nevertheless, pop music promoters are going to have a tough time in the next few years booking shows for mid-level artists.