Shoplifters: The Real-Life Film Locations Around Tokyo

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s original film Shoplifters 万引き家族 was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018. It portrays a motley handful of individuals who scrape by in various ways, while living together as a family in an old-fashioned house in Tokyo’s northeastern suburbs. Although the story is ostensibly set in the present, the characters seem to be operating in a more analog, low-tech world of a nostalgic past.

Shoplifters was primarily shot in Adachi-ku, a modest residential ward bordered to the east by the quiet Nakagawa River, with Tokyo Skytree on its southern horizon across the Arakawa. Other scenes include the supermarket shoplifting prelude shot further north in Saitama and a family outing across Chiba to Ohara Beach. Here are ten of the film’s most memorable locations.

Joyful Minowa Shopping Street ジョイフル三の輪商店街

This retro shopping arcade, culminating in Niku no Fujiya 肉の富士屋 butcher shop’s distinctive red-kanji storefront, is where the young protagonist Shota (Kairi Jo), his big blue backpack full of shoplifted goods, and his paternal partner in crime Osamu (Lily Franky) casually buy five hot croquettes on the way home. (The croquettes are actually sold at the neighboring Tori Fuji shop.) Later in the film, the shopping street is also where Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), walking next to Shota drinking Ramune on a hot summer day, is rather tickled when a merchant calls out to her, “Hey, Mom!”

Joyful Minowa sets the tone for much of the film, with its timeless Showa-era vibe of local produce, food merchants, and other sundry shops lining the local pedestrian strip. The real-life vintage arcade is more of a commercial outlier by day, shuttered ghost town by sunset. It was originally established in 1919, when the nearby end-of-the-line Minowa tram station opened in Arakawa, just south of the Sumida River. Around the corner, the equally retro Kohikan café by the tracks is a prime viewing spot from below platform level for nostalgic tramspotters.

Yuri’s Balcony

About a 15-minute walk away from Joyful Minowa, Shota and Osamu wander past dimly lit housing estates on a freezing winter night. This is where they find, peeking through the slit of a ground-floor outside balcony, a little girl dressed in thin clothes. It’s the beginning of their adventure with 5-year-old Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), whom they unscrupulously adopt into their makeshift family.

Grandma’s House

The modest traditional house where they all live belongs to “Grandma” Hatsue Shibata (Kirin Kiki), recognizable from the outside by its blue-tiled rooftop. With only a few small tatami-floor rooms for five people, Shota sleeps inside a large closet, where he often wears a headlamp to read books.

Kore-eda is known for his sensitive and empathetic portrayal of children, especially within family relationships. It’s no coincidence that Shoplifters is told mainly from Shota’s perspective — a boy with big eyes and overgrown hair who has never been to school, on the verge of puberty, curious about the world and increasingly skeptical of his adoptive family’s shady lifestyle.

The scenes inside the house are beautifully shot, often with low angles and skillfully controlled framing and lighting. They were also shot in a professional film studio in another part of town. The real-life house in Adachi was used for some of the outdoor scenes, set in a residential neighborhood surrounded by modern apartment buildings.

Yamatoya やまとや

The old-fashioned candy shop located on a quiet street corner is where Shota brings Yuri to shoplift for the first time. They almost get away clean, but the owner, who probably saw what they were doing in the surveillance mirrors, tosses them a few more goodies, mimics their hand signal, and tells Shota, “Don’t make your little sister do it.”

The real-life shop is called Zebura ゼブラ, run by a friendly elderly couple, and actually occupies the ground floor of a two-story residential building, divided into the storefront and an adjacent private room. The inside is densely filled with cheap Japanese brand sweets and plastic toys, albeit neatly arranged. Outside, vending machines sell capsule toys, cigarettes and bottled drinks, all cash-only. Despite Zebura’s retro atmosphere and very narrow space, the shop seems to be quite popular with neighborhood kids on weekends.

Kadoya かどや

Another nostalgically retro shop, Kadoya is the traditional Japanese café where Hatsue and her teenaged granddaughter — bound by tenderness, if not by blood — Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) have an intimate chat, all the while enjoying their sweet red-bean soup and cream anmitsu 餡蜜. It’s a touching moment, when Aki candidly explains to a weathered Hatsue what exactly her job involves (soft porn peepshow performance).

Kadoya is located right across the street from the main entrance to the vast Nishiarai Daishi Temple grounds. Tourists seem content to snack on fresh-grilled imagawayaki 今川焼 pancakes from the take-out window, although the shop also serves hot noodles and sweets to customers sitting inside — and its cream anmitsu is just as tasty as it looks.

Nakagawa Riverside 中川

The golden grassy riverbanks of the Nakagawa often appear in interludes between scenes and locations, where Shota and Osamu are seen walking, fishing, or where Nobuyo and Yuri hang out together in the warm sunshine.

That section recently underwent construction work, so the road is newly paved over. The Nakagawa riverside paths offer a scenic bicycle ride, snaking gently all the way down to Tokyo Bay.

Shopping Sakae ショッピング サカエ

Shota and Yuri go to shoplift at this “mini super” on another quiet street corner of Adachi across from a small park, when Shota decides to flagrantly grab a bag of oranges and dash out the store. He flees along the riverside and through the streets of Ayase, all the way to…

Itoya Bridge 伊藤谷橋

Shota runs across this local overpass with its distinctive Art Deco railing, which is intersected by Highway 6, the elevated Joban train line, and the narrow Ayase River below. It’s where he finds himself cornered by the police, before he resolves to climb over the cement wall, and jump.

It’s a pivotal scene in the film, because even though (spoiler alert) he survives the fall, his relationship with his “family” will never be the same again.

Kominato Railway 小湊鐵道

Around halfway through the film, a wide shot shows a small red-striped train crossing a rural landscape of bright yellow rice fields against a green forest. Inside the rattling train car, all six members of the Shibata household are seated across the aisle, casually dressed in beachwear, drinking various beverages.

This is the famously vintage and convivial Kominato Railway, which departs from Goi Station in Chiba Prefecture, crossing the Boso Peninsula to Kazusa-Nakano Station, where it normally relays to the connecting Isumi Railway and its iconic bright yellow train, to continue through the countryside to Ohara on the eastern coastline. The beach is about a 20-minute walk from Ohara Station.

Ohara Beach 大原海水浴場

The weather is bright and warm when they arrive at the seaside. Far out in the water, Osamu has a playful man-to-man talk with Shota. Aki and Yuri dodge the rising foam on the beach. Sitting on the sand, Nobuyo snacks on grilled corn-on-the-cob, as Hatsue reflects on life. Grandma smiles as she watches them all playing together on the shore. The rear shot of the five of them holding hands, jumping in mid-air, was used for the international poster of Shoplifters.

Ohara Beach is also a popular spot for casual surfers (the Olympic Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach is just a bit further up the coast), relatively undeveloped and remote enough to avoid overcrowding. If you’ve made the over 4-hour journey to get here via the vintage railway lines, rest assured that there are also bullet trains that speed back from Ohara Station to central Tokyo in almost half the time.

Shoplifters shows us a more ordinary, less spectacular side of modern Tokyo, as much under-the-radar as its characters seem to slip through the cracks of respectable Japanese society. Yet, through the ever-questioning eyes of Shota, who finally breaks free from his mandated low life of petty crime, we also see a way forward, out of the retro past and into a hopeful future.

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