Yuyake Dandan: What Happens When a Beloved View Begins to Change

Yuyake Dandan, September 2025.

 

A Shitamachi Street Between Daily Life and Tourism

Yanaka Ginza is one of Tokyo’s best-known shitamachi shopping streets(a traditional downtown neighborhood shaped by everyday life).Sloping roads, old temples tucked between houses, cats wandering unhurriedly through narrow alleys.

 Along the street, prepared food shops and small confectioners sit side by side with stores selling traditional household goods, Asian crafts, and secondhand antiques. 

The Yanaka Antique Market at a local temple, showing how the area’s activity extends beyond the shopping street.

Locals doing their daily shopping naturally mix with tourists. In recent years, the area has attracted growing attention as a place where visitors can experience a sense of “old Tokyo.” Guidebooks and social media have helped turn Yanaka Ginza into a familiar stop for travelers from abroad.

The Gentle Appeal of the “Sunset Steps”

Just before the gate marking the entrance to the shopping street is a short flight of stairs known as Yuyake Dandan—the “Sunset Steps.”
From the top, the street stretches downward, and at dusk the setting sun bathes the entire scene in soft light. It is not a breathtaking panorama. Yet it evokes something deeply familiar, a quiet nostalgia—an evening scene many Japanese people feel they have seen somewhere before.

As evening approaches, people gather almost daily, cameras in hand. Over time, the steps became one of Yanaka’s most recognizable views.
Even the name sounds gentle. Yuyake means sunset, and dandan refers to steps or stairs, but with a slightly childlike, relaxed tone. It feels less like a landmark and more like a nickname.

When a Passageway Became a “View”

That familiarity, however, is relatively recent.
Although people had long remarked on the beauty of the sunset here, the name “Yuyake Dandan” dates only to 1990. It was chosen through a naming contest organized by the local neighborhood association, with the winning entry submitted by a female essayist. As interest in retro streetscapes and shitamachi culture grew, the steps were increasingly framed as part of a “good old Japan.”

A place that had once been merely a passageway became a “view,” shaped by words and stories.
People began projecting onto it the image of “those evenings from long ago,” scenes that once existed everywhere. In the age of social media, the location proved easy to photograph and easy to share. Similar images circulated again and again, reinforcing its status as an iconic spot alongside Yanaka Ginza itself.

A View Interrupted

Yuyake Dandan before construction, c. 2023.

Today, the Sunset Steps are at the center of a debate.
Construction of an apartment building on the left side of the view from the top of the stairs has altered the sense of openness—the visual “breathing space” the scene once had. The sunset is not completely blocked, but because the sun tends to set slightly to the left—depending on the season—a significant portion of it is now partially obscured. The impression of the view has undeniably changed.

Some lament the loss of a beloved scene; others criticize the developer. The discussion has grown into a broader controversy.

After construction, even finding the best camera spot feels like location scouting.

Landscape Value Versus Urban Reality

One major issue is landscape and tourism value. Yuyake Dandan is not a cultural property in any formal sense. Still, people have gathered here for years, taking photographs day after day. Through that repetition, the place became, in effect, a tourist attraction. From this perspective, it is seen as a shared asset—something that should not be casually diminished.

Legally, however, there is no problem.The apartment building complies with zoning regulations and height restrictions. In a densely built city like Tokyo, redevelopment and efficient land use are difficult to avoid. Yanaka is not designated as a strict preservation district, and with the building already well underway, the likelihood of its removal is realistically low.

How Old Is a “Timeless” View?

What further complicates the issue is the nature of the Sunset Steps themselves.
This is a view whose value was relatively recently named, framed, and elevated. Is its beauty something universal, or is it the result of being selected and labeled?

Without its recent reappraisal, few people might have stopped here at all. Yanaka Ginza itself has continued to change as it became a tourist destination. Within such ongoing transformation, at what point does a newly valued view become something that must be protected?

Opinions vary. Some regret what has been lost; others shrug and say it was inevitable. There are also voices arguing that if the view was truly worth preserving, it should have been protected through official measures, or that local organizations should have negotiated rights with landowners. The debate shows no sign of settling.

A Personal Distance—and Attachment

On a more personal note, when I first became aware of the Sunset Steps, my reaction was fairly mild: Yes, I suppose it’s nice, if you’re told it is.
Yet after visiting again and again, it quietly became one of my favorite views. That may simply be going along with the crowd, but it is not unusual for places to acquire meaning through shared feeling and repetition.

The Cat That Moved On

There is also another, quieter story.
Some say that a cat often seen around the Sunset Steps no longer appears. Landscape debates and legal arguments aside, perhaps it reached its own conclusion first—deciding, without ceremony, that it was time to move on.

Yanaka’s quiet stars are its cats—even the lettering at nearby Nippori Station hides a feline shape.

What Should Be Preserved?

Even now, people continue to gather here each evening, raising their cameras at the same hour.
Could the Sunset Steps have been protected?
And more fundamentally, should they have been?

The discussion surrounding Yuyake Dandan is not only about a single sunset view. It gently raises a broader question: how urban scenery is created, how it becomes shared, and how—if at all—it should be preserved in a city that never stops changing.