(James Brown/Stars and Stripes)

Tokyo, July 1964: Two men and a boy watch as a store clerk demonstrates a reel-to-reel tape recorder to them. The arcade shop was one of several shops at the Sanno Hotel. The hotel was once the most famous and prominent building on Sotobori-dori, a wide, busy boulevard that winds through the scenic heart of Tokyo. Now it is surrounded and dwarfed by modernistic giants like the Okura and New Japan Hotels.