Tokyo Notes
A spur-of-the-moment visit brought on by the travel window opened by Chinese New Year celebrations and me realizing the only two times I’d been to Tokyo since 1993 were one student trip in 2013 and one conference trip in 2019, neither of which left me much time to have a look around.
When revisiting a place, one is always more sensitive to what’s changed rather than what’s stayed the same. It’s a trite thing to say after 40 years. But I am glad train access to and from Narita Airport is finally sorted with the main line of the Narita Express stopping at Chiba, Tokyo, Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ikebururo Stations. Infrastructure improvements such as this were no doubt prompted by the 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics. I don’t know when the service began but this line must have been a nightmare to build. Some track is shared with other lines but it arrives into Tokyo Station on Level B5 I don’t remember it having. Metro lines I never heard of were disconcerting.
Tokyo Station
A fine building in the German style by Tatsuno Kingo. 1914. The map below only shows the ground level entrances and exits from the station building proper, and not the network of underground passageways and shops linking it to Yurakucho Station to the south and Otemachi station to the north. Parts of Otemachi are now indistinguishable from the Marunouchi District that is Tokyo’s CBD. Every building was never exceptional, but much recent development is bland, as if it were designed to not make us get attached to it. It’s probably a good thing. I still feel a sense of loss over Tōgō Murano’s 1973 Industrial Bank of Japan (later, the Mizuho Bank Headquarters) being demolished to make way for a new metro line underground and some anodyne office building above. [c.f. Architecture Misfit #21: Tōgō Murano] Back to Tokyo Station, this can’t have been the first time I’d seen the main cupola from below, but it was the first time I’d ever paused to have a good look at it.
Renewal
Any large city is in a constant state of renewal. This too is obvious. Large cities don’t have undeveloped land. They only have under-developed land and whether or not land is under-developed is something that changes over time. I wouldn’t have thought the area around Shibuya Station was underdeveloped but some consortium did and buildings are being demolished and replaced and significant yet temporary walkways being constructed to minimize disruption for what’s going to take a few years. The photograph on the right is Shubuya’s famous “scramble” crossing (a.k.a. The Shibuya Crossing) where traffic in all directions is stopped to let pedestrians go whichever way they want. I learn they first began in the U.S. in the 1940s but quickly fell out of favor. They were a non-starter in heavily gridded cities such as New York, but cities in many other countries have since adopted them. The Shibuya one remains the most heavily trafficked with as many as one thousand persons crossing each time.
Architectural Sightseeing
Kenzo Tange’s 1964 Yoyogi National Olympics Stadia and I go back a long way but, when I lived in Tokyo 1980-1993, this was all I saw of them from the Yamoanote Line (Tokyo’s Japan Railways’ overground ring line) as I didn’t want to be disappointed. In 2013 when I was in Tokyo with students so we couldn’t not visit and, although we only went into the basketball gymnasium, I wasn’t disappointed. But nor was I sorry I waited. It’s nice to know they’re still there, the smaller one still doing what it was designed to do. I did however buy a book by Saikoku Toyokawa, titled Yoyogi National Gymnasium and Kenzo Tange (“Disclosed here are the secrets of Yoyogi Stadium”). I shall get back to you on this, probably in a future post titled Misfits’ Guide to Tokyo.
Finding myself in Shimbashi, I thought I’d go check out what’s left of Kurokawa’s Nakagin as it’d been covered in bird netting the last time I saw it in 2013. I couldn’t find it, or even a place where it might once have been. I may have been mistaken but I gave up as I wasn’t quite sure what the point of me looking for it was anyway. Whether or not it was there made no difference. I’m not even sure it made that much difference then. Ultimately, it seems the main point of the building was to illustrate how it never really grew or altered over the years. Buildings, it turned out, weren’t metabolisms after all. I did however see Tange’s Shizuoka Press building and took this next photo anyway. No change there either. Ducks. If there is such a thing as a protected building in Tokyo, then this would be one but, out of respect for the tenets of Metabolism, I’d like to see this building embrace change with a few strategic infills and 25% more office space..
One morning I had to go to Ikebukuro so I decided to get off the metro at Edogawabashi Station and check out Tange’s 1967 St. Mary’s Cathedral. In 14 years I’d never felt the need to visit but it wasn’t because I was afraid I might be disappointed. It was more like I never much liked it. I went anyway, just to see what I felt. It certainly looked like it did in photos but I was unmoved. And nor was I miffed when I found the main entrance locked. But then I noticed the general entrance that I entered and, once again, was strangely unmoved. If we’re talking representations of life on Earth, the concrete was expressively oppressive I suppose, and the ambient lighting sufficiently gloomy. I couldn’t see the point of the transept. Its windows provided little illumination and even visually, the intersection – the “crossing”, I believe it’s called – was difficult to distinguish. There were signs saying photography was prohibited. I didn’t see any security cameras but, being an observant architectural tourist, I didn’t take any photographs of the interior. You you can see what I mean from the one below [taken by By Shinjuku1 at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain]. To its credit, the building hasn’t aged much for its 60 years. I’m not sure why the roof structure had to be hyperbolic paraboloids but they were in vogue at the time and the slanted formwork joins in the apse do add a certain upward swooshiness.
There were many other buildings I saw in passing, especially along hotspots like Omotseando and Ginza’s Chuo Dori. In passing, I noticed that the 1963 Mitsubishi Dream Center was being demolished. I won’t even entertain the hope it will be rebuilt exactly the same but better.
Tokyo Toilets
I still haven’t seen the movie but I did buy and study the book. You won’t find these three in it. They’re nothing special. They’re just ones I saw while walking around but the thought that has gone into them shows where the premise for the book came from. Nobody has gone so far as to claim “Toilets are Art!” and I hope nobody ever does.
Bookstores
Some stores had special sections on the works of Yukio Mishima as 2025 is 100 years since the year of his birth. One store had a (#75/100) print of Shin Takamatsu’s 1988 Syntax building (demolished) in Kyoto for JP¥100,000 that seemed a bargain. My purchases are in the photo on the right. Architecture in the left pile, novels and short stories (mostly Mishima ones I haven’t read) in the middle and (mainly immediate post-WWII) Japanese murder/detective mysteries on the right. The Japanese are passionate readers.
Housing
I was just checking out of habit. I saw these apartments advertised in a store near Hiroo in Nishi-Azabu so they’re most likely the upper end of the market for this price bracket as Naka-Meguro is on the same metro line. JP¥300,000 is about US$2,000. I heard that wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of housing.
Exchange Rate
Immediately after I left in 1993 was the beginning of what’s called Japan’s “lost decade” but many say Japan’s now in its third lost decade. Given the period of time since I last used JP¥ on a daily basis, inflation is bound to have occurred but I still had a psychological barrier about paying ¥1,000 (almost US$7) for a cup of coffee. Generally though, food and drink weren’t expensive. I had the impression that times are hard. Bars have signs advertising all-you-can-drink deals, and the restaurant at the hotel I stayed had a sign saying that entry might have to be restricted if there weren’t sufficient staff that night. The Uchikanda area I was in is midway between a commercial district and a busy mainline station so there were many cheap and good bars and restaurants. There was also a disproportionate number of convenience stores such as Family Mark, Seven-Eleven and Lawsons all of which were staffed but had money-handling machines. Not seeing the same faces twice suggests zero-hours contracts. However, there is food to be had and saké to be drunk and places with friendly and knowledgeable staff where you’re happy to leave a generous tip.
Money
Traditionally, the passing of money from hand to hand was seen as vulgar rather than unsanitary. Using cash to buy something still involves you placing your money in a small tray that you then push towards the shopkeeper who will return your change the same way. Now, various types of non-contact payment systems coexist but cash transactions take place alongside them and there seems little encouragement to eliminate them. It felt good to have a pocketful of change for a change and to feed drop a few coins into a station ticket machine. Any banknote you receive will feel as if it’s been freshly printed just for you. Released last year, these new designs are the first in 20 years. Hokisai’s 1831 ukiyo-e “The Great Wave off Kanegawa” is everywhere these days. The people on the front side have no relationship to the designs on the rear.
Mt. Fuji
There’s no end to this post but, as a closing thought, it’s always the same with Mt. Fuji. You scan the sky looking for it and, when you finally do, it’s always a shock to see it much bigger and closer than you expected.
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