A small, little place

"It's just a small, little place."

"It's just a teensy place."

"You'd hardly notice it walking by."

"I found it by chance, it's so small."

These comments are the highest of compliments amidst the massive sprawl of Tokyo. While the vast scale of Tokyo can overwhelm, the interior of the city thrives in small, little places. Japanese have always had a predilection for smallness as an essential quality of cuteness -- another obsession, but small in Tokyo need not always end up being cute. Just as often, it's brilliantly alive.

Small in Tokyo feels different than in other cities. The hugeness of this city becomes a grandiose, unattractive backdrop that can awe even the most concrete-hardened city lovers. The outside surfaces of Tokyo often feel forced, even false, against the simple, direct honesty of small interior spaces. Clubs, eateries, stalls, boutiques abound in the nooks and crannies of a city that at first glance appears to be spreading awkwardly and selfishly in all directions.

Smallness becomes a way to ensure that the human element is not lost. It becomes a safeguard against the vanity of the big perspective. The small size of a place, whether for food, clothing, or specialty goods, is by and large a guarantee of quality. Large places tend to hedge their bets against large rents by dispensing the comfortingly commercial, the easy money-maker. They cater to the insecure. Small places invite the culturally and urbanely confident.

This association of smallness with quality comes out of a well-developed, and still flourishing tradition of craft. The small, focused attention to detail that is the core of craft values is impossible to produce consistently in large places. Too many hands in the kitchen or at the counter mean that production tasks are divided differently. In large establishments one person has to either perform too many different tasks, pay attention to too many details at once, or cover too broad a series of unrelated activities. The tradition of craft demands that one step is handled at one time by one person with singular care. Small places continue that tradition.

Small places have a different view of motion, time and space. They rely on efficiency and practiced motion. No motion is wasted, but all are innately human. The motions are aesthetically pleasing in themselves. The thrust of the knife, the handing over of an item, even the placement of plates, glasses or bottles is well-considered and performed with a practiced attention to form. The atmosphere of small places also comes from the efficient use of space rather than from the grandiose production or exhibition of quantities of objects to falsely contrive a "feeling."

Small spaces run on a human sense of timing. Dishes are not handed over when finished in some distant kitchen. Their delivery is timed by watching the customers to see when they are ready. The external Tokyo sense of urgency is in this way carefully de-boned.

To enter a small space demands an entering into the entire flow of events inside. From the moment one steps inside a small eating spot, the "master" is looking around, imagining what kind and how many dishes the entering customer will order, recalculating how energy must be re-distributed and how the entire space will become newly organized to fit all the humans inside. A customer is not there regardless, and is not interchangeable, but creates a unique metaphysical ripple in the organic flow of people, objects and energy.

Small spaces rely on visual contact, but also on an intuitive sense of being in the same space. They demand an attention to other people that is not direct in its gaze, but is based on feeling. Actions are focused and narrowed in a carefully nonchalant way. The dwarfing, tiring unpredictability that makes the outside of Tokyo its own kind of anonymous pleasure is replaced in small places by a comfortable recognition of the relaxing integration to the organic whole of individuals.

The small spaces of Tokyo create a cellular vitality that is the essential counterpart of its overarching size and immense scope. They resuscitate the city and its inhabitants.

-- Michael Pronko