00:00:01 John Daub: This is one of many Marugen buildings here in Ginza, Tokyo that has been abandoned and sold off and is ready for demolition. It's going really quickly. Kawamoto-san, who's a billionaire real estate developer from the bubble era and before, he passed away in February 2024. The properties have been sold. There's a couple of them down in this direction. Some of them have already been demolished.

00:00:31 John Daub: For me, as someone who's been living in Japan for half my life, this is something of history. I thought that before these are all completely gone, we'd get a chance to look. We can't go inside, but this is going to absolutely change. I think this is Sotobori-dori (Outer Moat Avenue), the avenue here in Ginza over the course of the next 5-10 years as they build something new in its place.

00:01:01 John Daub: This building, I think it's been abandoned for like a decade or more, maybe more than that. It really does look the part. If you look at the lights above, well, they used to be lights. It's a throwback to the 1980s. Even look at this. You can kind of see going all the way to the cement and the structure of it. You can't see inside, but just a little bit of the building. This kind of fake marble to it, the gaudy 1980s entertainment Ginza look. This is all going to be torn down probably in the next couple of months. This building is ready for demolition.

00:01:51 John Daub: There's another one down the street. I want to tell you the story though of Kawamoto-san. And if you're Hawaiian, you already know this story, or at least most of it. Up on the top of it, you have the Marugen symbol, which is I believe the Gen or the Marugen. Marugen means circle (maru) and Gen from his name.

00:02:19 John Daub: The Marugen buildings in Tokyo's Ginza district are distinct, part of the city's urban landscape, known for that numbered signage and association with nightlife. These buildings were developed by Genshiro Kawamoto. There you see the Gen in the Marugen. A real estate magnate from Kitakyushu (where Fukuoka is down in Kyushu Island), who rose to prominence during Japan's post-war economic boom. Kawamoto was born in 1932 into a kimono merchant family in Kokura, now part of Kitakyushu. After leaving Keio University here in Tokyo, he took over the family business and transitioned into real estate in the 1960s. He began construction of multi-tenant buildings, often equipped and furnished spaces for bars and clubs in entertainment districts like Kokura and Fukuoka's Nakasu (big entertainment area there). These buildings were branded Marugen, combining maru (circle) and Gen from his own name. Pretty creative.

00:03:33 John Daub: By the 1970s, Kawamoto expanded to Tokyo buildings, his first Ginza property in 1974. Hey, I remember that year. And at the height of his success in the 1980s, he owned approximately 60 buildings in major nightlife hubs such as Ginza, Akasaka, Roppongi, and over 5,900 tenants. These properties were easily identified by the bold Marugen signage often illuminated in neon and red neon, becoming iconic pictures in Tokyo's cityscape, especially at night.

00:04:11 John Daub: Despite his wealth estimated at over $2.6 billion in the 1990s, Kawamoto was known for his frugality, particularly regarding property maintenance. Many of his buildings, including those in Ginza, fell into disrepair. Some tenants reported issues like malfunctioning elevators and neglected facilities. In 2013, Kawamoto was arrested for concealing approximately 2.8 billion yen in income and evading over 800 million yen in taxes. He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2018. He was pretty old by then.

00:04:49 John Daub: His properties abroad attracted attention. In Hawaii, he purchased luxury homes and controversially rented them out to low-income families, leading to disputes with neighbors and local authorities. Kawamoto passed away last year, February 2024, at the age of 91. Following his death, his remaining properties, including several Marugen buildings in Ginza, were sold off, including this one. Reports indicated that seven of these buildings were valued at approximately 37 billion yen. Today, some Marugen buildings still stand. They serve as a reminder of a bygone era in Tokyo's real estate and nightlife history, reflecting both the ambition and the controversies of their creator.

00:05:47 John Daub: It's like when you know the history and all these tourists are walking by and they just don't know what they're walking by. This is the last of the buildings, I believe.

00:06:12 John Daub: Genshiro Kawamoto's Hawaii story is one of the most bizarre and controversial chapters in his real estate empire. In the late '80s to the 2010s, in Kahala neighborhood in Honolulu, one of the most affluent places, he began buying up luxurious homes during the Japanese asset bubble. He reportedly paid cash, sometimes over market value. Locals called him a land hoarder due to the sheer volume. He let the mansions rot despite their value, intentionally letting many sit vacant and deteriorate, sometimes gutting the interior, refusing to maintain them, leaving broken windows, overgrown yards, and visible damage. Neighbors were furious, saying it lowered their property values and made the area blighted.

00:07:10 John Daub: To fix his image, in 2006 he started housing low-income Hawaiians, letting them move in without a contract, then evicting them a couple months later. Neighbors saw it as a stunt, a manipulative social experiment. He was quite an interesting media persona. I've seen him on the news. Seemed like a very interesting guy to get to know.

00:07:48 John Daub: One of the things you're going to see on YouTube is this abandoned billionaire's mansion in Atami. YouTubers are still going down there and making videos. They shouldn't because they could be fined and penalized. It is an act of nuisance, which Japan is cracking down on. It's been in the news. It was basically like the bad guy lair, a grand structure reflecting his penchant for opulence, designed with a blend of traditional Japanese and Western architectural elements. The property featured expensive gardens, intricate woodwork, and panoramic views of the bay. Despite its grandeur, the mansion was left unoccupied for years, leading to gradual deterioration. It looks like a 1970s James Bond movie. The once-manicured gardens became overgrown.

00:09:01 John Daub: Just four days ago a YouTuber went in there illegally and made a video. I'm not going to say whether it's bad or good, but it's illegal. So you're not going to see it on this channel. You can see by Googling "Atami abandoned billionaire's mansion." I would be very careful, especially with the locals. It's abandoned and the police know about it. That mansion won't be there for much longer.

00:10:05 John Daub: Let's cross the street and see if we can catch a little bit more of this. I want to show you one more building that's apparently still there, in a way. This is Tsukiji-bashi intersection, famous for Tsukiji-bashi Jiro, the sushi chef in that documentary. It's now a tourist trap, sadly. I think he must be like a hundred years old by now. It's mostly foreigners that go in there, usually people that saw the documentary and don't know much about sushi. They removed the sign. That's a shame. It has that distinctive 1980s look, groovy even. I think there's a lot of entertainment in there because the windows were shielded for hostess clubs or nightclubs that wanted ultra privacy.

00:11:29 John Daub: Looks like they took down the Marugen sign on the top of it. But I don't think that this is going to be on the Tokyo landscape for much longer.

00:11:57 John Daub: Among the streets of Ginza you're going to see a lot of these old buildings from the 1970s and '80s. And this is a good time to do it because they're not going to be here much longer. All of Tokyo is very much under construction. A lot of these old buildings from the 1970s and '80s are going bye-bye. And at the end of the street I'm going to show you one in particular.

00:12:38 John Daub: We get a little bit of a treat as we take a look at the Porsches. Wow, that car looks really nice. Look at that. That's a Lambo. The things you see in Ginza. Sometimes you'll see the car carrier truck loading up the cars for display at that building. I've seen it maybe a dozen times. They change them pretty frequently. This is my backyard so I get to see a lot of weird stuff in Ginza quite often.

00:13:32 John Daub: There's a building that's been boarded up and that's another of the Marugen buildings. But a lot of the new buildings on the street here are brand new or have been seriously renovated to look like it's from this millennium. I do love the mix of the bubble era buildings and I hate to see it go, but there's not a lot that you can do about it. Alright, this is the building here that's been boarded up. We're going to cross the street so you can get a better look. As you can see, this one definitely is a bubble era building. Look at the design to it. Pretty funky. Usually there'll be some entertainment there.

00:14:38 John Daub: Now you can see that boarded up building right there, this one with the brown. I'm going to take you from the corner here and then you'll get a better view as I pull up an archived photo of what it looked like before. You can see the Marugen on the top. Usually there was a number involved with it, but now it looks like they finally started to bring this building down. Is it a shame? I don't know. There's so many changes happening so fast in Tokyo. So you can't see it anymore, but that used to be a Marugen building. It's going to be gone. I'm curious to see what's going to be in its place.

00:15:39 John Daub: The reason I don't cross on a red light is because one of my neighbors might see me and I don't want to be known as a rule breaker. A Japanese friend told me about this expression: "the sun is always watching you." Meaning, let's say you see a wallet and pick it up, now you're responsible for it. Somebody probably saw you, or even if you looked around and didn't see anybody, probably somebody saw you because there's always old ladies looking out the windows. And if they did, sometimes they'll follow up with the police: "John picked up a wallet. Did he return it?" So there's this guilt: the sun is always watching you. They'll return it because if they didn't and somebody saw, they'd get in trouble or their reputation would be ruined. Reputation is more valuable than money here. That's one reason why Japanese are so honest, according to one Japanese friend. You can confirm or deny that.

00:17:34 John Daub: If you drop your wallet, somebody might pick it up and hand it right back. It's the right thing to do. And if you didn't do it, somebody might see you and say why didn't you. People are very judgmental. You can feel it. And the longer you stay here, you can feel people silently judging you. That's how you know you've turned to the other side.

00:18:05 John Daub: Such a mix of buildings. This one looks like it came in the 1980s as well. So it looks like there's some curtains and some entertainment up there or somebody's house.

00:18:28 John Daub: This building on the right side here is the old Shizuoka Shimbun building. Very interesting, this triangle here. That could have been another Marugen building that's already been torn down. Tokyo's like this everywhere. Very famous architect designed this one, with this bizarre pole and the offices attached to the pole. It goes back to that era like the Nakagin Capsule Tower, when there was some bizarre architecture in Tokyo.

00:19:35 John Daub: Apparently the guy who has the best Mexican tacos in Japan, who lived in Mexico for a couple decades, has his truck positioned here once a week, I think Thursdays. He's got an Instagram with his schedule. Three Hermanos. Super cool guy. We've done some back and forth on Instagram. This old Shizuoka Shimbun building was painted white about seven or eight years ago. Bizarre.

00:20:41 John Daub: There's still a lot of these buildings remaining. This looks like it's from the 1980s-'90s because of the smaller windows and lack of design. There's some wacky stuff here. In Shimbashi, you guys know the nightlife there. I did an episode on it not too long ago. The nightlife there is really interesting.

00:21:46 John Daub: Those are only two that I could find that are remaining. There used to be like 60 of them. A lot are gone. If you are in Ginza you know a little bit now the history of it. Maybe for the next couple months this building might be here. It's kind of neat to walk by and get a picture of the Marugen and the history going back from the '70s to the '90s before everything started to fall apart. But you can hear the construction all around Tokyo. It's not 1970 anymore. It really does feel like the '20s and there's a lot of changes happening here.

00:22:56 John Daub: The toy store is there. I'm actually here for a reason. I got the battery changed on this iPhone 14 Pro at the Apple store. It cost me 16,000 yen, more than $100, so they kind of inflated a little bit. But I got 100% battery again. My battery health was down to 80%. Now I can have longer battery life and stream a lot longer.

00:23:41 John Daub: I'll be going to Osaka next Monday for the expo with Yuriko. If you're in Osaka, I'll be at the expo. I'll be taking the postcards, and this month's is the Osaka Expo. I'm going to hand-deliver it from the expo to get a special stamp. We've gotten about 30-plus new sign-ups from this campaign. And if you stick with the postcard club in July, I'm planning to send postcards from the top of Mount Fuji. I'll take a few hundred to the top of Fujisan and mail them from there. That's the cool thing about having such a supportive group.

00:25:07 John Daub: Shout out to Molly, who is four months old. Her grandmother wrote to me on Patreon. Thank you so much, family from the UK. You're great.

00:26:15 John Daub: All right, everybody, take care. I'm going to get on my bike and go back home, do some editing, get ready because on Monday we're heading off to Guam. I'm hoping to finish up a video on strawberries and upload that. I've already released more videos on the main channel than I did all of last year. I will be doing tons of streaming in Guam. I received over 30 messages from people there, and many are going to come to the Wednesday night market and see Kaniya. Leo and I are going to get some coconuts. That's all Leo wants to do. He's a coconut boy. But they got coconut crabs in Guam. Google it. These things are massive armored crabs. You see one, you don't want to climb a tree anymore. All right, guys, take care. I'll see you tomorrow in another livestream as I take you to another area of Tokyo or maybe beyond. See you.