As I walk along Kobikochōnaka-dōri, moving from Kyōbashi to Higashi Ginza, a narrow, three-story building catches my attention. Its upper floors are clad in uniform brown brick, where two pairs of wood-framed sash windows, each adorned with a simple metal balconette, rest beneath a projecting cornice. These modest ornamental details are mildly darkened by the passage of time.

At ground level, the building offers a contradiction: its original brick siding is covered by vertically ridged, white-painted fibreboard. Beneath a vivid orange sign, two plain doors sit either side of an unframed window, their functionality entirely unembellished. Now housing an acupuncturist's studio, the shopfront’s improvised, contemporary clinical aesthetic seems intended as an advertisement.

It's just another late Shōwa-era prefabricated building in Tokyo, adapting to the realities of 2025. Yet, passing by and glancing back, an unexpected sight reveals itself. Where an adjacent structure must once have stood, there is now a coin-operated parking lot. The gap it leaves in the streetscape inadvertently exposes the hidden flank of the brown brick building. Through this opening, its structural truth is laid bare, and any illusion of genuine brick masonry swiftly crumbles.

The structure extends deeply into its plot, revealing itself as a kind of anatomical cross-section. It is a patchwork of corroded sheet metals in rust-brown, with surreal slabs of oxidised blue hammered and bolted in place. What stands here is a building at odds with the promise of its brick frontage, now understood to be merely a thin layer of pressed tile, masking the street-facing façade. It is an architectural expression of honne and tatemae.