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Every major city in the world has its iconic bridge. London, of course, is graced by Tower Bridge, Sydney has the Harbour Bridge, and for San Francisco it is the Golden Gate.
Tokyo has its own bridge of graceful design and historic importance—only it is invariably overlooked because it is completely in the shadow of an ugly and overpowering elevated motorway.
But the residents and businesspeople of Nihombashi believe the time has come to put their bridge — and their district — back in the spotlight.
“Nihombashi Bridge is very symbolic as it is considered the centre of Japan, because all road distances to major cities have been measured from this point since Tokyo was known as Edo”, said Toshihiro Mochizuki, leader of the office leasing department at major real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd.
“The motorway was built for the first time that Tokyo hosted the Olympics Games, in 1964, and the planners chose a route that went above the rivers and roads because it was difficult to secure land back then”, Mochizuki said.
“And at that time, people did not really worry too much about what it was doing to the look of the city, because the first priority was still to secure the development of the city and economic growth”.
Attitudes have changed dramatically since then and there is a growing sense that a wrong inflicted on Tokyo’s skyline should be corrected before the city hosts the next Olympic and Paralympic Games, in 2020.
The proposal to dismantle the fly-over and bury it out of sight underground attracted the support of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, although his comments in 2005 were met with reservations by the governor of Tokyo and the transport minister, primarily on the grounds of cost.
With the city’s infrastructure being scrutinised ahead of 2020, supporters of the broader Nihombashi Revitalisation Plan say this is the perfect time to replace an eyesore with an attraction.
“The plan was started by Mitsui Fudosan and many local companies and businesses about 10 years ago after a famous department store in the area closed.
We and our local partners noticed that there had been a shift in shoppers’ preferred destinations”, Mochizuki said. “There is Ginza, of course, but younger people are now spending their money in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Omotesando”.
To inject new life into Nihombashi, Mitsui — which can trace its corporate roots back to the day, in 1673, when Takatoshi Mitsui opened his kimono shop — has teamed up with local businesses large and small, including the Mitsukoshi department store and Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
“This area has been Mitsui’s home for more than 300 years. It was the heart of the city 100 years before then, and we want to recapture that”, said Mochizuki.
On the east side of Chuo Dori, Mitsui has already completed the Coredo projects of retail, office and residential facilities, which are designed to mesh with the more low-rise backstreets that are the traditional sites of small businesses and artisans.
The district already benefits from the Mitsui Memorial Museum, a new Toho Cinemas complex, the Nihombashi Mitsui Hall and a revitalised Fukutoku Shrine, which has been residents’ place of worship for more than a thousand years.
Much more remains to be done, although the firms and individuals behind the regeneration plan have ambitious aims.
Outlining those plans in a corporate statement, Masanobu Komoda, president and CEO of Mitsui Fudosan, said the company is committed to creating neighbourhoods based on three principles.
“The first is to integrate diverse functions and features, which involves promoting mixed use and integrating the tangible, such as building facilities, and the intangible, or building operations”, Komoda said.
“The second is to create communities, which involves connecting the people who reside, gather or visit”, he said. “And the third is [to design] neighbourhoods that mature with age.
“We believe that a virtuous cycle of the above three will lead to the creation of new value”, he added.
Redevelopment projects are giving Nihombashi a new lease of life, but the sign that the district has truly recovered its glory days will come when that famous bridge emerges from the shadow of the past.
© Japan Today
5 Comments
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nath
I hope they revive the plan to bury the expressway. Original studies apparently indicated that while the cost of construction would be high, the cost of land acquisition would be nearly negligible, due to restrictions on land ownership rights below a certain depth (I don't recall the details). It would make an enormous difference in the entire ambiance of the area.
Some of the grand long-term plans Ishihara had for the city's infrastructure--reviving some of its waterways, putting much of the expressway system underground, burying public utilities to remove overhead wires and cables on most major streets--were ambitious, and only some of them have progressed to the execution stage, but Tokyo is in a strong enough financial position to do more if the political will is there.
Unfortunately, the whole mixed-use, residential/commercial/office development trend, driven by Mitsui, Mori Building and others, focuses almost entirely on building communities of the wealthy (I personally don't know anyone who can afford to live in the Roppongi Residences, for example, and most of the stores and restaurants in these developments are too pricey for the average worker, too). This is happening, on a much more extreme scale, in cities like New York and London as well. Despite these developers' altruistic talk of helping people to live where they work, in reality the trains are just as crowded with long-distance commuters as ever, and buying or renting in urban districts such as Nihonbashi or Marunouchi remains a pipe dream for most.
kibousha
Went there for the first time yesterday. My first thought was "Who was the genius with the amazing idea of building a highway on top of the bridge ?"
Meguroman
Are they calling it the "Nihombashi Bridge"? Then we can go to "Mt. Fuji-san", too.
Patricia Yarrow
It's a great idea, and if they can pull it off, fine. Over here in eastern Tokyo, many freeways fly by overhead, obliterating waterways. Much as I would like to see open space above the canals and remaining rivers, they are photogenic.
Oogawa
I miss Nihombashi.