Academic Articles Based on Nishiogiology
西荻町学に基づく学術記事
Paul J. Kramer, Gabriele Vogt, and James Farrer. 2026. “COVID-19 and the Restaurant Business in Japan: The Social and Economic Dimensions of Public Health Self-Governance.” Contemporary Japan, 1-21.
In this paper, we examine the diverging incentives for cooperation within Japan’s “self-restraint” (jishuku)-based infection control regime by focusing on restaurants’ economic burdens, their role as social infrastructure, and their interactions with the legally non-binding governance framework. We ask: What shaped local neighborhood restaurants’ patterns of cooperation with the infection control regime?
James Farrer. 2026. “Commerce and Commoning: Small Businesses and Grassroots Politics in Tokyo’s Nishi-Ogikubo.” Peace and Democracy, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 120-140.
This article argues that small independent businesses — izakayas, cafés, and restaurants— constitute a form of civic infrastructure sustaining grassroots urban democracy in a Tokyo neighborhood. It connects the local civic ecology to the municipalist politics of Suginami Ward Mayor Satoko Kishimoto.
James Farrer (2023) Urban foodways and social sustainability: neighborhood restaurants as social infrastructure, Food, Culture & Society, DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2023.2262191
Based on an ethnographic study of restaurants in a single Tokyo neighborhood, this research focuses on how commercial restaurant scenes in a busy area of Tokyo serve as social infrastructure, supporting community life.
Sustainable neighbourhood gastronomy: Tokyo independent restaurants facing crises
James Farrer. 2022. “Sustainable Neighborhood Gastronomy: Tokyo Urban Foodways Facing Crises,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint. https://doi.org/10.1111/apv.12339.
Independent restaurants in Tokyo contribute to community life by supporting grassroots creative industries, small business opportunities, meaningful artisanal work, convivial social spaces, local cultural heritage, and a human-scale built environment.
Commonplace and out-of-place diversities in London and Tokyo: migrant-run eateries as intercultural third places
Wessendorf, Susanne and James Farrer. Commonplace and out-of-place diversities in London and Tokyo: migrant-run eateries as intercultural third places. Comparative Migration Studies 9, 28 (2021).
Migrant eateries bridge people and communities but in different configurations and in different ways.
The space-time compression of Tokyo street drinking
Recently there has been a widespread revival of Tokyo's vintage yokochō. As spaces for drinking and eating, the forced intimacy in these cramped interstitial spaces fosters sociability and association among strangers.
A Tokyo Restaurant Community Faces COVID-19
James Farrer. 2020. “A Tokyo Restaurant Community Faces COVID-19” Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 2020 (2); 245-54.
Independent restaurants are threatened both by COVID-19 and the social distancing measures necessary to contain the pandemic. In one Tokyo community, restaurant patrons have organized to support local eateries.
With fewer resources than corporate chains, small independent restaurants are particularly vulnerable to an extended economic downturn. This paper looks at how independent restaurant owners in Tokyo have coped with the pandemic both individually and as members of larger communities.
Grimy Heritage: Organic Bar Streets in Shanghai and Tokyo
A comparative study of Shanghai and Tokyo emphasizing the importance of preserving vernacular drinking streets and the challenges of doing so.
The Decline of the Neighborhood Chinese Restaurant in Urban Japan
Why is the Chinese restaurant disappearing from neighborhood Tokyo?
"Japan's Migrant Foodways and Culinary Mobilities" is Nishiogiology's sister project. Japan is becoming an immigrant nation, and its foodways are increasingly shaped by migrants. But these migrant foodways in Japan are also shaped by much deeper patterns of colonialism and global capitalism.
"Global Japanese Cuisine" is Nishiogiology's sister project. It researches Japanese food around the world through fieldwork and interviews across five continents. The project has resulted in the publication in numerous articles and a book The Global Japanese Restaurant: Mobilities, Imaginaries and Politics.