The artwork in the motif of AKIRA was painted on the temporary enclosure

Artwork on wall — Shot in the city of Shibuya, Tokyo

Going up Koen Street in Shibuya, I ended up at Shibuya Parco. When I visited, it was in the middle of rebuilding and the site was covered with a temporary fence. In most cases, the temporary fence of a construction site is completely bare and blank. But Shibuya PARCO's was a little different. The walls were covered with artwork. The artwork was a collaboration between collage artist Kawamura Kosuke and manga artist Otomo Katsuhiro. On the wall in front of me, where I stopped, there was also a piece of art that appeared to be a scene from Katsuhiro Otomo's masterpiece, AKIRA.

AKIRA, which began serialization in 1982, is highly suggestive. It is set in Tokyo in 2019, which is set to host the Olympics the following year. It's exactly this year's Tokyo. It's almost as if the future was foreseen. But fortunately, in the real world, there is no nuclear war, and Tokyo hasn't become a neo-Tokyo, it's still Tokyo. For better or worse, the future we imagined 40 years ago may have been much more of a future than reality.

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