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Hotel Okura - the face of Tokyo

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By Kohei Usuda

According to the late Donald Richie, the noted American writer on Japanese culture, the most recognizable flaw of Tokyo is its failure to preserve historical buildings. It is true that, unlike, say, New York, Chicago, Paris, or Rome, something is amiss here. The city lacks a coherent overall style of its own.

Richie, who died in 2013, argued that such shortcomings in Tokyo’s urban planning are a reflection of how the Japanese capital evolved in the face of major disasters, from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 to the firebombing raids by U.S. warplanes during the closing stages of World War II. Both those events left large swaths of the capital in ruins.

“What with fires, earthquakes and massive aerial attacks, the city has long been accustomed to being burnt down and built up”, Richie observed in his 1999 book "Tokyo: A View of the City." “Tokyo has few historical buildings and hence lacks a basis for anything so uniform as a style.”

Tokyo’s evolution into a hypermodern metropolis of today must be seen in the historical context of a violent cycle of destruction and reconstruction, of demolishing and rebuilding many times over. This cycle explains the haphazard nature of Tokyo’s urban planning, as if this sprawling city of 13 million were built in a great hurry, and not by design or foresight. For better or for worse, Tokyo is a capital of constant and unceasing “temporality.”

Richie’s observation rings particularly true now that Tokyo has entered yet another transformative period. This time, it’s not a result of some natural calamity or man-made destruction but one prompted by large-scale redevelopment plans forged by real estate and construction conglomerates in the lead-up to the 2020 Olympic Games.

The most obvious example of revitalization in Tokyo is the old National Stadium, which first opened its gates in 1958. For a long time the favored venue for major sporting events, it was recently razed to the ground to make way for a brand-new Olympic stadium designed by Zaha Hadid (the Pritzker prize winner responsible for such complex creations as the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany).

Much ink has been spilt on the decision to scrap Hadid’s defunct project. The new 80,000-capacity arena, originally announced with much fanfare by the Japanese Olympic Committee, was to have been built on the site next to Meiji Shrine. From its initial stage on the drawing board, however, the Iraqi-British architect’s design attracted heavy criticism for its disproportionately gigantic shell-shaped structure. Her signature fluid and futuristic design was derided for being out of context with the adjacent historic "jingu," at one point even earning the nickname of “bike helmet.” The ill-fated venture was scrapped in July by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe once it became clear the construction of the new National Stadium would cost taxpayers to the tune of ¥252 billion – well in excess of an initial estimate projected at ¥130 billion.

The venerable Tsukiji, the biggest fish market in the world dating back to 1935, is another historic site earmarked for demolition in the coming months, this time to make room for a highway that will link downtown Tokyo to the Olympic Village. The fish market is to be relocated to the Toyosu district in late 2016 – itself a controversial move since the new land site is reportedly a badly contaminated artificial land situated in Tokyo Bay.

But no makeover of Tokyo in preparation for the Games has stirred up as much controversy as the imminent closure of another landmark: the Hotel Okura.

Inaugurated two years prior to the last Tokyo Olympics in 1964, the iconic Okura has remained largely unaltered. Entering its famed lobby – furnished with Seiko’s finely crafted retro world timezone map, traditional paper shoji screens, and exquisitely arranged ikebana flowers – is like stepping into a time capsule that preserves the Japan of the 1960s. It was during that decade – after almost two decades of post-war nation-building – that the country came of age. The opening of the Okura coincided with a gleaming hopeful era, as the newly modernized nation announced itself as an economic and industrial powerhouse of Asia-Pacific region. (Little wonder, then, that Haruki Murakami, in whose novel "1Q84" the Okura makes an appearance, compares the hotel’s main lobby to a “huge, stylish cave” that has “absorbed the sound of footsteps into its endless span of accumulated time.”)

Designed by a committee of architects led by Yoshiro Taniguchi, the Okura building is admired today by some of the world’s leading architects as a “masterpiece of modernist architecture” that combines traditional Japanese aesthetics and sensibilities. Monocle’s influential editor Tyler Brûlé described it as “without question one of the most loved modernist hotels in the world.” It is a distinction that has made the Okura the accommodation of choice for high-profile visiting dignitaries, design professionals, and artists alike.

However, the Okura, too, is in danger of falling victim to the perpetually changing cityscape of Tokyo. If the current campaign to halt its imminent demolition does not bear fruit, the main building will be torn down as early as next month, to be remodeled as a pair of 38-story glass façades. The new multi-purpose Okura complex is scheduled to re-open in the spring of 2019 in anticipation of the floods of visitors expected to descend on the Olympic host city.

When the Okura’s impending demise was announced last year, the news made headlines across the globe, triggering nothing short of an international outcry. The Economist called it tantamount to an “architectural crime” while the New York Times ran an impassioned editorial decrying “the end of an era” for a Japan as we know it.

Alongside Brûlé (who kickstarted an online petition known as “Save the Okura”, or savetheokura.com), German designer Tomas Maier is the leading voice in advocating for the protection of this half-century-old institution. During his recent trip to Japan, the creative director of Bottega Veneta lamented that whereas ancient temples and shrines dotting the Japanese archipelago are officially designated as spiritual and cultural heritages, and as such preserved with care, “similar measures are not in place for the Okura” and many other postwar modernist buildings that are likewise unique to Japan.

“I think architecture is the face of a city,” Maier reflected in an interview with the interior and lifestyle magazine Casa Brutus. “For example, we foreigners feel the Okura is a building that serves as the ‘face of Tokyo.’”

The glaring shortsightedness of permanently erasing such an irreplaceable piece of architecture – for the sake of a sporting event that lasts for a mere few weeks – is epitomized by the scheme to elect yet another bland high-rise in its stead: Tokyo already boasts such opulent glass towers in abundance, symbolized today by the extravagant Roppongi Hills mega-complex built by real estate tycoon Minoru Mori in 2003.

If the Japanese government is truly committed to its “Cool Japan” policy in exporting the country’s culture industry – to posture itself as the world’s pre-eminent soft power – then safeguarding cultural assets such as the Okura should take precedence over the vested interests of Olympic-related redevelopment projects.

“We have to act right away against this danger,” Maier warned in the Casa Brutus interview, “so we don’t cry after all is lost.”

There is growing concern that the constructions of Olympic facilities and infrastructure in and around the capital will have the effect of diverting materials, manpower, and resources away from rebuilding efforts that are actually required elsewhere in Japan: the Tohoku region devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There, more than four years on, an ongoing nuclear crisis still unfolds at Fukushima Daiichi: at least 300 tons of radioactive groundwater continue to leak daily into the Pacific Ocean from the damaged power plant struck by a triple-meltdown. The latest reports coming out of the site is that TEPCO, the plant’s operator, is facing a severe shortage in securing enough skilled laborers for its cleanup operation.

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

7 Comments
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Nice piece that summarizes the situation well. Lets hope more people become interested in this construction dilemma all over Tokyo.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I agree with the general thrust of the article but let's be adults about this; time was up for the Okura. The only good thing about it was the lobby but unfortunately, you had to go up to one of the dingy perma-smoke smelling rooms once you downed your last drink of the evening.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

No photos?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

ISIS in Palmyra: Japanese town planners and "developers" all over the country, even, should reminders be needed, in places that were never bombed. Both are utterly philistine in their outlook.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Is it just me or is that building just a total eyesore? To me it's a typically 1960s version of what the "future" looks like - loads of ugly tiles and brick. Architecture from that period and genre seldom ages well at all.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

"There is growing concern that the constructions of Olympic facilities and infrastructure in and around the capital will have the effect of diverting materials, manpower, and resources away from rebuilding efforts that are actually required elsewhere in Japan: the Tohoku region devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There, more than four years on, an ongoing nuclear crisis still unfolds at Fukushima Daiichi: at least 300 tons of radioactive groundwater continue to leak daily into the Pacific Ocean from the damaged power plant struck by a triple-meltdown. The latest reports coming out of the site is that TEPCO, the plant’s operator, is facing a severe shortage in securing enough skilled laborers for its cleanup operation." - Kohei Usuda

A powerful statement that places a pall over the 2020 Olympics. When and where is this Hobson's choice being encountered? Shame about the hotel. This serves as another prompt for regional Olympic sites. These individual stories of Olympic camp creation is just too expensive and makes too handy an excuse that accepts the destruction of the Okura.

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