Building blues

By James Hadfield

In a moment of morbid humor that’s been lost with each subsequent retelling, earth scientist and professional doom-monger Bill McGuire once described Tokyo as “the city waiting to die.” It was a melodramatic way of putting a point that’s well understood by most residents: this is a metropolis whose days are numbered.

“There are few cities in the world as well schooled in the concept of destruction as part of the cycle of rebirth,” writes Stephen Mansfield in the introduction to “Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History.” “Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, epidemics, floods, the eerily beautiful fires known as the ‘flowers of Edo,’ the bombing of tightly compacted civilian areas in the war — these and many other calamities have been periodically visited upon it… Tokyo’s insecurities, its impermanence, the conviction that it could all be gone at any given moment, lend this city of dark premonitions and bright lights an intensity unlike any other capital in the modern world.”

Centuries tottering on the existential brink have bred a city with little truck for enduring gestures, where reminders of the past are chucked away with the same nonchalance you might show last week’s newspaper. Anybody who’s lived here for more than a few months will be familiar with the way that buildings can seem to appear and vanish almost overnight, or the near impossibility of walking more than a few hundred meters without coming across some sort of construction site. If the latest demolition is noted at all, it’s normally shrugged off with a “shoganai” — the closest Japanese analog to “shit happens,” though one deployed with far greater frequency.

And is that such a bad thing? Writes Mansfield: “In submitting itself to repeated sessions of radical urban surgery and implanting, allowing the scalpel to slice away and dispose of loose tissue, Tokyo’s remodeled surfaces always seem youthful, to have somehow escaped the rigor mortis of older capitals.”

The implication here is that those who rail against the constant cycle of scrap-and-rebuild are missing the point. Tokyo is the endless process of change, the never-ending tweaks to the cityscape, the wanton disregard for its own aesthetic harmony and history. The people who survive its travails best are the ones who don’t form too many attachments or invest too much emotion in their physical surroundings. Enjoy it today; forget it when it’s gone tomorrow.

All the same, there are times when Tokyo seems to go too far. Passengers riding the Odakyu line recently might have noticed a poster featuring an artist’s impression of the proposed new Shimokitazawa station. The current building — a cramped, dirty maze of corridors and vertiginous staircases — is to be replaced by a shimmering glass atrium that’s futuristic in an Ikea kind of way. The PR blurb gushes about “a unique and multifaceted design that is appropriate to the lively cultural hotbed of Shimokitazawa,” though they might as well have said “we thought we were designing a shopping mall in Saitama.” It’s a blight, a monstrosity, an insult. It’s pure Tokyo.

The station is, of course, part of a far more comprehensive redevelopment that will see the Odakyu line diverted underground by 2013 and — as the pièce de resistance — a 26-meter-wide highway bulldozed through the center of the neighborhood. This will in turn negate zoning laws that have so far restricted the height of buildings in the area, effectively giving developers free rein to sling up high-rise apartments. There’s an illustration of how it will all look available on the Setagaya Ward website; it looks a bit like Ikebukuro.

The postmodernist in me wants to applaud these changes, or at least to laugh them off as another example of Tokyo being Tokyo. Instead, they leave me slightly nauseous. It’s a model of development that might work somewhere else — say, Marunouchi, which has been greatly improved by the glitzy towers that have gone up there. But Shimokitazawa isn’t Marunouchi: its charms are contingent on its winding streets and tightly-packed buildings. This latest round of civic improvement is more akin to a lobotomy, in that there’s no way the area can continue to be itself once the construction has happened.

But cheer up: the Big One might hit before they finish.

James Hadfield is the editor of Metropolis.

This commentary originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp).

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8 Comments

Junnama at 09:51 AM JST - 20th November

Oh, change bad....old good.

Seriously Shimokita won't change because of some new building.
Altria at 09:57 AM JST - 20th November

Am I the only one who likes these redevelopment projects?

Marunouchi/Yurakucho is much nicer now, same for Roppongi.

Shimokitazawa has some pretty cool shops and bars, but the station is ugly and due for a revamp.

Drill baby drill!!!
jason6 at 01:48 PM JST - 20th November

The writer said Tokyo is interesting because it's always changing, but Shimokitazawa shouldn't change. I guess he lives there?
shinjukuboy at 02:19 PM JST - 20th November

You know it is the result of Buddhism. The world is in constant flux (無常), and you suffer by trying to grasp and hang on to anything because nothing is permanent. Go with the flow! On the other hand, construction can be a bit noisy.
Yelnats at 02:27 PM JST - 20th November

Shimokitazawa station...leave it alone as it is great as it is now.
Ranger_Miffy at 07:33 PM JST - 20th November

Altria, After a five year absence from Tokyo, I returned to Yurakucho to find my absolute favorite udon stand up place GONE. I was really sad about it. Sure, what is there is fine and all, but the personal service is gone, the sense of people deeply invested in their job, the sheer joy of the syncopated service from customer to bowl of hot steaming udon is GONE forever. And, I miss it. It had validity. I wish it had been spared. So, that is part of "Tokyo is Tokyo" too, y'know?
sydenham at 07:40 PM JST - 20th November

That's what I like about Tokyo. The constant change, and the ability of residents to live with impermanence.

That's life. And that's exactly what makes life worth living.
30061015 at 02:33 AM JST - 22nd November

Old or new, Godzilla doesn't care. He just loves to smash Tokyo.