Every October, Koenji's shopping streets stop being just shopping streets. In 2024, the Suginami ward's own site says, 222,000 people came over two days, and each street ran its own events at the same time. The festival began with a newcomer the neighbourhood did not much like.

The outsider

Sakuma Hiroko grew up in Itabashi, another part of Tokyo. In 1995 she opened a vintage clothing shop in Koenji, when the town had only a handful of them (Chuo-line area project; Hotosena News). Later she started a free town magazine, SHOW-OFF, to put the town's shops on a map.

She told Hotosena News that locals did not like people like her: "I honestly think the locals disliked us. We were outsiders." She told another interview that shopkeepers on the streets scolded her for turning Koenji into a vintage town.

A rock festival with nowhere to play

She wanted an outdoor event with the spirit of the Fuji Rock music festival. "Fuji Rock in Koenji" was her motto, she told the Chuo-line project and Hotosena. The trouble was space. She says the neighbours would not lend any, and the Suginami ward's site notes that the organisers had a hard time finding venues and helpers at the start.

So she turned the problem around. Instead of one field, the festival would use the town. Seventy-six shops on both sides of the railway line took part in the first one in 2007 (Chuo-line project), with small gigs and street comedy in between (Hotosena News).

The gate of Junjo Shotengai, one of Koenji's shopping streets

The queue

The first crowds were bigger than anyone planned. By her telling, one shopping street was furious about the long queue, and she assumed there would be no second festival. Then, she says, another street invited her in.

By 2009 the festival covered the whole of Koenji. Its 20th edition ran on 24 and 25 October 2026, with about 300 shops signed up, according to local news.

See it yourself

  • The two big streets. Your tour walks PAL Shotengai, the covered arcade by the south exit, and Junjo Shotengai on the north side. During the festival each runs its own events alongside the shop stamp rally.
  • The shops. Vintage shops of the kind she started are what the festival sends people into.

Hear it on the tour

Sources