（Top Photo：Ginza Chuo Ward“Shoe-fit” Image courtesy of TYO）
Contemporary Tokyo is a sometimes-bewildering mix of traditional and modern cultures, where old-fashioned art forms coexist with anime goods and cutting-edge technology. Recently, however, a new phenomenon has taken the capital by storm. As the city once again becomes a focus of global attention in the buildup to the 2020 Olympics, its signature districts have suddenly find themselves overrun by daydreaming giantesses.
On a busy shopping street in Shibuya, a 100-foot schoolgirl leans against the Tower Records building and flips absentmindedly through her phone. In Higashi-Shinjuku, a gigantic dancer does leg extensions on the roof of a skyscraper, while in Otsuka a giantess in a maid costume reaches longingly as a streetcar pulls away from her. Nowhere in Tokyo is safe—from Shibuya to Shinjuku, Otsuka to Akihabara, the gigantic girls are showing up everywhere.
Jinnan Shibuya Ward“JK”
Otsuka Sta.“Maid”
Since launching its website ( http://piece.tokyo/) in June, the TOKYO GIGANTIC GIRLS project has become a popular topic in both Japanese and foreign media. But what message lurks behind this distinctive, haunting collection of videos and images? We asked Yaz Okamura and Hiroaki Matsu of TYO, the creative agency behind the project, to tell us the story.
Blowing Up the Girls Who Make Tokyo What It IsOn Capturing the City’s “Imaginary Landscape”
According to Matsu and Okamura, TOKYO GIGANTIC GIRLS began as a continuation of TYO’s PIECE OF TOKYO project. The production company, which takes its name from the city’s airport code, is on a mission to transmit the appeal of the Japanese capital around the world, by collecting fragments of daily life and making them available online.
Okamura served as creative director of the project, and was in charge of developing and promoting the gigantic girl concept. Matsu, who has worked as a shooting director and creator of TV commercials, was responsible for directing footage of the girls and the streets where they appear.
“By making giant women the subjects of these pieces and vividly portraying their emotions, we wanted to convey an ‘imaginary landscape’ (jōkei) that wove the moods of people in Tokyo into the street scenery where the girls appear,” says Okamura. “We believe we can expand people’s perceptions and make them feel Tokyo, just by recording the behavior of the gigantic girls and the situations they appear in.”
The project, he continues, aspires to “communicate something anybody from any country can understand,” and for that reason it keeps verbal exposition to a minimum. “We want people to be able to lose themselves in the simple creativity of these visual worlds.”
According to Okamura, TYO spent “almost nothing” on advertising for the project. So far, the strongest response has come from within Asia, where Japanese subcultures are already well-known.
Tokyo: A City Fit for a Giantess
Matsu, who directed all the video footage, says the project makes a strong effort to incorporate a “tokusatsu feel.” Tokusatsu, or “special-effects films,” are a genre of Japanese movie most famously associated with the Ultraman and Godzilla franchises. Many popular tokusatsu films have been remade in Hollywood.
Akihabara“Make-up”
“People who understand tokusatsu will get what I mean. This is a very tokusatsu-like piece,” says Matsu of this video of a giant schoolgirl putting on makeup in the window of an Akihabara skyscraper.
“This could be because I’m part of the generation that grew up watching tokusatsu, but I’ve always felt like Tokyo’s chaotic cityscape is exceptionally well suited to a tokusatsu cinematic style,” he says of the development process. “If this were New York, the streets would be too beautiful for this sort of thing, and the effect would have been totally different.”
But Tokyo’s tokusatsu-friendly appearance can also be “enough to make a director cry,” Matsu explains. With thick power lines hanging over all the backstreets and signposts and sandwich boards posted all over the place in no recognizable pattern, the city is full of clutter and obstructed views. How, then, do you create an organized scene without losing Toyko’s “thisness”? All of the company’s video artists, who usually work on TV commercials, worked as one to complete a project that, in the end, required all of their determination. TOKYO GIGANTIC GIRLS only came about, Matsu says, because of the “pro spirit” the group fostered among each other every day. Finishing the scenes took every ounce of creative energy they had.
At the same time, however, Matsu insisted on limiting the repertoire to scenes that capture “the dizzying changes in Tokyo’s urban landscape.” The final project includes footage from the hectic shopping areas in Shibuya and Shinjuku, the rapid redevelopment going on in Otsuka, and the old-fashioned backstreets of Asakusa with its tableau of izakaya that have been in business for centuries. One of the project’s goals, Matsu says, has been to build an archive of “the Tokyo that exists only in this instant.”
TYO plans to commission additional contributions from many different artists, all based on the “Tokyo giantess” concept. As more and more locations are archived, the project’s value will undoubtedly keep increasing for years to come. The day may not be far away when these gigantic girls become Tokyo’s leading tour guides.
TOKYO GIGANTIC GIRLS web site: http://piece.tokyo/