Shibuya Scramble Crossing (渋谷スクランブル交差点, Shibuya sukuranburu kōsaten), commonly known as Shibuya Crossing, is a popular pedestrian scramble crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.[1] It is located in front of the Shibuya Station Hachikō exit and stops vehicles in all directions to allow pedestrians to inundate the entire intersection. The statue of Hachikō, between the station and the intersection, is a common meeting place, which is almost always crowded.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (December 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,783 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:渋谷スクランブル交差点]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|渋谷スクランブル交差点}} to the talk page.
Three large video screens mounted on nearby buildings overlook the crossing such as the landmark QFRONT, as well as many static advertising signs. Given its heavy traffic and amount of advertising, it is compared to Times Square in New York City.
Shibuya Crossing is the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing at a time.[2][3][4] Tokyo-based architecture professor Shane Flynn has said Shibuya Crossing is "a great example of what Tokyo does best when it's not trying."[5]
Foot traffic
This intersection is frequently recognized as "the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world"[2][3] with almost no loss of foot traffic at midnight or early morning.[6] Road traffic jams rarely occur here even during rush hours.[3]
According to the Shibuya Center Street in 2016, the number of pedestrians crossing the intersection was as much as 3,000[2] per green light (every 2 minutes).[7] A 2014 flow measurement survey by the Shibuya Redevelopment Association estimated 260,000 pedestrians per day on week days, and 390,000 pedestrians on non-working days.[2] Others estimate as much as 500,000 people on the busiest days.[8] The 2012 SOTO Outdoor Media Survey estimated 1.5 million pedestrians per week.[9]
Since the late 2010s it has become a popular place for young people to gather at Halloween, some in cosplay. Increasingly large and chaotic crowds led to Shibuya Ward adopting an ordinance in 2019 banning alcohol consumption in the area during the end of October.[13]
Cultural depictions and media usage
Shibuya Crossing is often featured in films and television shows which take place in Tokyo, such as Lost in Translation,[15][16]The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Alice in Borderland, and Resident Evil: Afterlife, as well as on domestic and international news broadcasts. The iconic video screen featured in the above films, in particular Lost in Translation with its 'walking dinosaur' scene, was taken down for a period of time and replaced with static advertising, although it resumed operation in July 2013.[17]
Contemporary British painter Carl Randall (who spent 10 years living in Tokyo as an artist) depicted the area in his large artwork 'Shibuya', exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London 2013.[18][19][20]
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Shibuya_Crossing, and is written by contributors.
Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.