The “U.S. Military Town” that flourished together with Yokota Air Base has become a “Multinational Town”…Walking in the Deep Town of Chaos in Fussa City, Tokyo

It wasn’t the sound of a plane. It was the sound of insect wings flying behind my ears.

The young Ryu Murakami begins his debut novel, “Blue as Close to Transparent as Possible,” as follows.

The novel, which depicts the chaos of the city of Fussa, Tokyo, home to the U.S. Yokota Air Base, remains synonymous with the city to this day. At the same time, older residents have criticized the film for its depiction of graphic sex and drugs, which has given the city a decadent image.

Since the 1970s, many artists, including Eiichi Otaki, have been active in the creative process in Fussa. The city certainly had a certain fervor that attracted artists to the area.

Walking around Fussa in Reiwa, 2025, one can sense the obvious changes that have taken place since then. We followed the transformation of Fussa, a city with a total area of more than 7,000 square kilometers and a population of about 11,000, including military personnel and their families, who have spun out a history together with the U.S. military base.

Fussa is sometimes referred to as the “America of Tokyo.

The JR Fussa Station and convenience stores are frequented by Americans, and stores with English and dollar price lists can be seen in the city. Many of the cars in the city have a “Y” license plate number, indicating U.S. military personnel, and car dealerships and insurance agencies catering to Americans are also prominent. The abundance of churches is probably another characteristic of the city.

At the same time, the noise from transport planes flying low over residential areas is startling.’ In 2008, residents living near the base filed a lawsuit against the government for noise damage, and a court ruling ordered the government to pay over 112 million yen in compensation. Many people are still opposed to the base.

Fussa, home to approximately 56,500 people, is symbolized by “Fussa Base Side Street,” a 1-kilometer stretch along National Route 16 facing the Yokota Air Base. It is a shopping street dotted with about 65 stores, and its official name is the Fussa Musashino Shopping Street Promotion Association.

In the past, young people who admired the hippie culture gathered on Base Side Street, and the area boasted a thriving reputation as a center of music and fashion. However, as the hippie culture declined, people gradually moved away, and from the mid-1990s, an increasing number of business owners closed their stores.

Misa Igarashi, 67, a member of the Fussa Musashino Shopping District Promotion Association and a storyteller at the Fussa American House, a community space in a renovated U.S. Army house, explains, “Around the 1970s, the hippie culture was in decline.

Around the ’70s, there were a lot of people who moved to Fussa because they liked the hippie culture. On the other hand, there has always been an opinion that the decadent worldview depicted by Ryu Murakami is detrimental to the image. The founding store owners have been replaced due to old age, and Base Side Street has changed a lot in the last five years or so.”

The people who came to Fussa in the 2020s were young people who were attracted by the atmosphere of Fussa, which reminded them of the West Coast of the United States.

The number of stores run by young people who want to do business in Fussa, which has an American feel, has increased. Perhaps because of this, the number of tourists, mainly in their 20s, from outside the prefecture has really increased, and some stores have long lines on weekends,” Igarashi said.

Today, Base Side Street is being led by a “second generation” of business owners. Walking around the area, one can certainly see young people in their teens and twenties, especially female customers. When we talked to them, they all said, “The atmosphere of this American town, including the restaurants, is interesting because it is unlike any other town.

Construction began around 1950 near this street of one-story, white-walled wooden houses for U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan. In the past, there were as many as 2,000 of these houses, but the number has dwindled to about 150 as the base has improved its on-base dormitories. Today, the U.S. soldiers no longer use them, and civilians who want to enjoy the old American culture renovate and live in them, or, like Mr. Igarashi, reuse them as stores and other facilities. It has become a cultural asset.