Through Birdwatching, Tokyo's Black and Brown Residents Are Finding Community

04.01.2025 - 10:27 / cntraveler.com

The image of Tokyo has always been one of ultra-modernity—it’s a dense, bustling city at the intersection of fashion, culture, and technology. Yet another life, a quieter one, brews in the city’s parks and green spaces.

Those coming to Japan’s capital city will find an array of flora and fauna. You might see the Japanese woodpecker and its daintier pygmy counterpart in its hilly spots for hiking, like Hamura Kusabana Hills Natural Park. There are warblers, finches, and rose-ringed parakeets not actually native to Japan; the latter has notoriously taken over the Institute of Science campus of Meguro Ward. And if you’re lucky, a day in Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park could include a spotting of the common kingfisher, which are otherwise notoriously hard to see in the wild due to their tiny size and general shyness. But an eagle-eyed watcher might pick out its vivid teal back and vibrant orange belly amongst the cherry blossom trees of sakura season.

One of Orion Johnson’s most standout bird sightings was on a group birding walk last summer. “I want to say it was either a heron or egret,” he recalls. The bird was in the middle of devouring a pond snake or an eel, as Johnson and his birding group watched. “It was like a National Geographic sighting, the sort of unique birds that you feel almost blessed to have witnessed.”

Johnson is by no means a typical birdwatcher. He’s in his early 30s, and came to the city of Tokyo from New York in 2016 with dreams of working in fashion (he currently freelances as a creative producer). But Johnson sees an under-appreciated side of the city in Tokyo’s diverse avifauna; he loves to explore the city's serene green spaces, particularly those earmarked for their bird species. “It's this futuristic, technological, crazy city, so I don't think [its fauna] gets the love that it deserves,” he says. “But the birds are there.”

Beneath the hyper-futuristic sheen of cosmopolitan Tokyo is a flourishing community of diverse birds—and of Black and brown residents of Tokyo.

Johnson runs Flock Together Japan (or as members like to call it, Flock), a birdwatching group meant to encourage people of color to spend time outdoors. It’s the third installment of the London-founded community, which was launched in 2020 by Ollie Olanipekun and Nadeem Perera (there is also a New York City branch). Flock aims to bring groups of city-dwellers into often overlooked green spaces, which are commonly seen as the domain of white residents. In Japan, Flock has become a safe space for minority groups in the near ethnically homogenous country.

“When I first moved here, I would often get looks,” Johnson says. “Because I didn't look Japanese, I guess.” He was raised in New York by a Black father and Japanese