Waratte Iitomo was a groundbreaking variety program, broadcasting for over 8000 episodes for over four decades until its final episode in 2014. Kazuyoshi Morita, known by his stage name Tamori, was also the host for each of these episodes. One unique attribute of the daily variety show was that it broadcast live from a studio inside of Shinjuku ALTA, whose large broadcast screen on the front and looming presence at the entrance of Shinjuku Station made it an iconic meeting spot and location in this business heart of Tokyo.

On February 28th 2025, the building closed its doors for good.

Beyond being a meeting spot and department store that still stood tall despite losing some of its allure while shops including the LUMINE department store opened nearby, its large screen not only broadcast Waratte Iitomo daily during its run but would be used for event and news broadcasts. It would host music screenings throughout the 80s and 90s, and prove a vital source for disseminating information in the immediate aftermath of the 3.11 earthquake in 2011.

It wasn’t even the only iconic department store set to close in the early months of 2025. On the opposite side of Shinjuku Station, Odakyu’s Shinjuku MYLORD similarly announced plans to close on March 16th after 40 years of active service in order to be rebuilt for a planned re-opening later this decade. The store has often been a hub for trendy fashion throughout the years, and even recognized this history through a special memorial video produced to announce the redevelopment that marked the evolution of Tokyo fashion over the decades. It ended with a question: what’s next?

While this question was proposed within the limited framework of fashion, it’s interesting to broaden the scope towards how this city and the broader Tokyo area will evolve from here. What’s next for Shinjuku?

From the moment both of these stores opened in the 1980s, the area around Shinjuku has transformed. Once upon a time it was defined by the red light seediness of Kabukicho, the vast Shinjuku Station from which many commuted into the city, and the izakaya and restaurants that flooded alleyways throughout the city. Always a business hub in post-war Tokyo, Shinjuku has been revitalized as both luxury hub and tourist destination.

Whereas ALTA and MYLORD were some of the first and primary shops targeting youth demographics with a fashion- and culture-focused array of storefronts, the years following attracted new department stores that competed with these like LUMINE, or encouraged major companies like Disney, Gucci, Apple and others to locate prime storefronts into the city. Kabukicho never lost its seedy reputation, but it was cleaned up to some extent. Coupled with the easing of building restrictions that allowed for the construction of the towering skyscrapers associated with the city today, and Shinjuku soon became almost unrecognizable from what it once was.

So did the people who flocked to the city.

Young people who came to the city flocked instead to LUMINE, leaving MYLORD uncomfortably positioned away from the key bustle and unable to differentiate itself. ALTA simply adjusted its stores to cater for an older clientele. And this ignores the younger people who just left the city for the likes of Shibuya, Harajuku or Ikebukuro. Shinjuku became the city of businessmen and tourists, and the latter demographic have become a particular focus of construction efforts in recent years.

The recently-opened Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, a towering hotel and entertainment complex easy to spot from just about anywhere in the city, was made with tourists in mind with its neon food court and arcade, and has become a rallying point for the city to further its effort to clean up the area. This has mixed results, however. Rather than addressing the seedy underbelly or assisting the Toyoko kids who live homeless on the streets and are often exploited as a result of their vulnerable status, attempts to block off areas they typically gather under the guise of event space have felt more like an attempt to move them ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for ease on the eyes of visitors than deal with a genuine problem.

All of this is to say that the city that welcomed ALTA and MYLORD in the 1980s is not the same city that watches their closure in 2025. While many flocked to ALTA to watch it close its doors, sharing their memories on a memorial website, it’s fair to say many saw the building as an iconic landmark, but not a store they would visit on a regular basis. From my own experiences, they felt ragged and aged, and while Alta found some success repurposing the Waratte Iitomo studio into a music venue, it could never bring in the revenue that daily national TV broadcast rental could generate.

MYLORD plans to reopen its doors in 2029, bringing with it a modernized retail unit aimed to win back the audiences it lost. What’s next for ALTA is less certain. You can see its iconic facade in the backgrounds of anime across the years like City Hunter, live action dramas, photos from historical events (the Gundam New Century Declaration took place just over the road from the store). For those who visited Shinjuku in recent years, the recently-operating 3D cat billboard would often interact with its older audiovisual friend across the street by popping over for a visit.

Of the memorials wrote on its website, many recall it as a place they walked past rather than visited for themselves. Perhaps now the 3D sign next door will be the shorthand used for meeting people as opposed to the ALTA storefront. Then again, Shinjuku is currently erecting large construction areas as it redevelops the station and surrounding areas to cater to business, tourists and a new generation as part of a 15-year development plan. Who knows how long that will last, or if it will become as beloved.

It’s certainly sad to see ALTA and MYLORD go, both vestiges of an older time, but it’s fair to say that the city has moved on. While it’s easy to be cynical of change in catering to growing tourist influxes and changing demographics, which has been challenged to mixed extents in Ikebukuro and with the Shibuya TSUTAYA, in this case it is perhaps for the best. It will remain a part of Shinjuku history, and as the manager of the store greeted those who came to pay thanks to the store on its final day, he did so with a smile and a laugh.

This closure closes the door on the old Shinjuku, the end of an era. In 50 years, will we be sharing gratitude to the new city as fondly as we have to the old?