Cleaning the City: Graffiti, Permission and the Politics of Surface in Shibuya
Written by Elena Calderón Aláez
Published on April 23rd, 2026
While volunteer groups work to erase tags and stickers, the city simultaneously commissions and promotes creative public art. Projects like the Shibuya Arrow Project, SHIBUYA +FUN, and DIG SHIBUYA celebrate art in public spaces, but with permission and institutional support. This shows that Tokyo’s relationship with street creativity is not a rejection of art, but a negotiation over control, context, and authorship in the urban environment.
In 2025, that negotiation became increasingly visible.
Shibuya (long associated with youth culture, nightlife, music, and subcultural expression) has found itself at the center of renewed conversations about graffiti.
Shibuya (long associated with youth culture, nightlife, music, and subcultural expression) has found itself at the center of renewed conversations about graffiti. Stickers accumulate on traffic signs. Marker tags appear on vending machines. Construction boards are repeatedly marked and repainted. And as these traces multiply, so do the efforts to remove them.
The Rise of Anti-Graffiti Volunteerism
Japan has long cultivated a culture of civic cleaning. But in recent years, graffiti removal, not just litter, has become a more visible focus in Shibuya.
Two initiatives frequently mentioned are CLEAN & ART and what is often referred to as the Shibuya Rakugaki Project.
CLEAN & ART operates as a volunteer-driven initiative coordinating with property owners and ward authorities to remove illegal graffiti and stickers. Walls are often repainted in uniform grey, restoring a sense of visual neutrality.
The Shibuya Rakugaki Project, meanwhile, represents a broader anti-graffiti framework connected to ward-level beautification campaigns. “Rakugaki” (落書き) literally means scribbling or graffiti, and the project focuses on organized removal and prevention efforts across the district.
Volunteers involved in these initiatives report that graffiti reappears quickly.
Volunteers involved in these initiatives report that graffiti reappears quickly. Despite hours of scraping stickers and repainting walls, they “barely make a dent.” The language surrounding these campaigns often frames graffiti as a threat to Tokyo’s reputation for cleanliness and civic respect.
But what makes CLEAN & ART particularly intriguing is what sometimes follows the grey paint.
Grey Paint and Authorized Stencils
After repainting tagged surfaces, volunteers occasionally add decorative stencils: Hachikō silhouettes, small flowers, or “Shibuya City” branding motifs.
After repainting tagged surfaces, volunteers occasionally add decorative stencils: Hachikō silhouettes, small flowers, or “Shibuya City” branding motifs. The rationale is preventative: curated surfaces are less likely to attract new tags.
Yet this introduces a striking irony.
The same wall, once stripped of unauthorized markings, becomes a site for stencil intervention, just not by anonymous artists. When the stencil depicts a “family-friendly” dog or flower and carries institutional approval, it is welcomed. When a street artist uses identical spray paint and stencil technique on the same surface without permission, it becomes criminal vandalism, punishable under Japanese law by fines or even imprisonment.
The difference is not aesthetic. It is administrative. Tokyo does not reject visual intervention in public space. It regulates authorship.
Commissioned Murals and Institutional Art
At the same time, Shibuya actively promotes large-scale public art.
The Shibuya Arrow Project installs officially commissioned murals in underpasses and pedestrian corridors, often involving internationally recognized artists.
The Shibuya Arrow Project installs officially commissioned murals in underpasses and pedestrian corridors, often involving internationally recognized artists. SHIBUYA +FUN, an area-management initiative linked to Shibuya’s redevelopment, integrates creative installations into public squares as part of placemaking strategy. DIG SHIBUYA transforms urban spaces into platforms for digital and contemporary art festivals. Public art is not only permitted, it is celebrated but always within frameworks of permission and institutional oversight.
“Worse Than Ever?” The Surge Narrative
In late 2025, social media conversations intensified around claims that Shibuya’s graffiti levels were “worse than ever.” Influencers and residents shared images of sticker-covered signage and newly tagged surfaces, comparing the situation to a decade earlier.
Some blamed tourism. Others cited specific tagging incidents involving foreign graffiti writers. Online discourse became polarized, with some warning of urban decline and others dismissing the alarm as exaggerated. Then the debate escalated.
The YouTube Controversy
A Japan-based content creator known online as Oriental Pearl published a video suggesting that areas such as Nakameguro and Shinjuku had become noticeably dirtier in recent years, citing graffiti as visual evidence. The video gained significant traction, amplifying concerns that Tokyo’s famously clean image was deteriorating.
Soon after, another prominent Japan-based YouTuber, Chris Broad of Abroad in Japan, released a response criticizing the video. Broad accused the content of being sensationalized and misleading. Online viewers began analyzing the original footage and thumbnails, with some alleging that certain graffiti elements appeared digitally enhanced, suggesting that additional tags may have been added during editing to intensify the visual narrative.
The dispute spilled onto platforms like Reddit, where users debated whether the graffiti problem was being exaggerated for engagement. Some Tokyo residents argued that while graffiti exists, the portrayal was disproportionate to reality. Others focused less on the volume of graffiti and more on the ethics of manipulating imagery to support a narrative.
Whether every allegation was definitively proven or not, the controversy highlighted a central issue: in the age of algorithm-driven content, perception can be engineered.
A moderately tagged wall can be framed as urban decay. A cluster of stickers can become symbolic crisis. And once such imagery circulates globally, it reshapes how millions imagine Tokyo.
Another reel, posted only few weeks by the same Tokyo based creator together with her Japanese husband, documented a volunteer cleanup activity removing stickers and minor forms of vandalism near the famous Shibuya Crossing. Rather than generating unanimous praise, the video sparked a lively discussion in the comment section about the meaning of urban cleanliness in contemporary Japan. While many viewers supported the initiative — writing comments such as “Thanks for caring about your community” or asking “How can we help in Tokyo?” — others challenged the common narrative that tourists or foreigners are primarily responsible, noting that “it’s mostly younger Japanese doing this” and that “tourists aren’t flying in and buying cans of paint just to tag walls.” Some responses went further, questioning whether total cleanliness should be the ultimate goal of public space. One widely liked comment argued that removing stickers risked making the city feel “sterile,” suggesting that these small interventions also carry memories, creativity, and local identity. The discussion illustrates how a simple cleanup effort opened a broader debate reflecting current tensions in Tokyo between public order, mass tourism, urban identity, and the role of street culture within a city globally associated with cleanliness and social discipline.
Cleanliness as Cultural Identity
Japan’s international reputation for cleanliness is deeply embedded in its cultural image. Public order is not just aesthetic, it is moralized.
Graffiti, within this context, becomes more than paint. It is interpreted by some as disrespect, a breach of harmony.
Japanese law treats vandalism seriously, with potential penalties including fines and imprisonment. Yet the rise of volunteer removal suggests that the response is not only legal but symbolic. Cleaning becomes ritual reaffirmation. Grey paint becomes reassurance.
A City in Negotiation
Shibuya today exists in a visible negotiation:
– Volunteers scraping away anonymous tags.
– Institutions commissioning curated murals.
– Influencers amplifying surface change.
– Residents defending civic identity.
The difference between criminal stencil and civic stencil lies not in technique, but in authorization.
Is graffiti truly surging? Perhaps incrementally in nightlife corridors. Or perhaps it is simply more photographed, more circulated, more politicized. Tokyo remains remarkably clean by global standards. But in a hyper-documented city, even small changes can feel magnified. The current moment is less about collapse and more about control, about who has the right to inscribe the city’s surface. Shibuya is not descending into disorder. Nor is it frozen in perfection. It is negotiating its image: layer by layer, stencil by stencil, scrub by scrub.
And in that negotiation, the question remains:
Who gets to write on the wall?
Elena Calderón Aláez is an independent researcher of Graffiti and Street Art and a flaneur nomad from Madrid. She graduated in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from Complutense University of Madrid and is an active member of the group StreetArtConservators. She is part of the Street Art Cities community, and a member of an urban art & graffiti researchers group in Spain. She has been based in Tokyo since 2020 and is the Chief curator of TOTEMO street art NFT marketplace since 2021.