A Master Plan for Redeveloping the Nation: The Symbiosis of Redevelopment and Restoration
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Noneconomic Factors are "Life Factors" in Regional Planning
A Theory of Network Cities for the Age of Homo Movens
An "Event Economy" That Will Expand Regional Economies
Creating Many Cities with High Information-generating Capacities
A Tunnel Connecting Shikoku and Kyushu
The Symbiosis of Three Networks: Regional Urban Federations, Metropolises, and International Finance
A Thirty-Thousand-Hectare Manmade Island in Tokyo Bay
Preserving the Jumble of Tokyo's Rhizome
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Noneconomic Factors are "Life Factors" in Regional Planning
The towns of Vasto and San Salvo in Southern Italy, along the Adriatic coast, are beautiful cities that still look as they did in Roman times. Agriculture is their main industry, and since they have not succeeded in introducing any secondary industries, the per capita income of the town's residents is low compared to that of the inhabitants of the industrialized cities and towns of northern Italy.
During a public meeting on regional planning in the provincial assembly, people from the region declared that the aim of the people of their region was not to attain the high per capita income of northern Italy. They didn't want to bring all sorts of factories into the area and make it like the north. They wanted to preserve their beautiful coastline, their lovely cities, their delicious sea food, and their lifestyle. The sought, accordingly, a plan right for their region, based on a true understanding of these wishes.
I was deeply impressed by this declaration of the people of Vasto and San Salvo. When the day arrives that we hear the same sentiments expressed by the people of various regions in Japan, it will be possible to create regional cities in our country that preserve the unique character of each area. As long as every city aims to match and mimic Tokyo, we are bound to see thousands of mini Tokyo sprout across Japan; but how much more attractive is the image of regional cities that are each distinct and rich in local character.
If the increase of per capita income is the guiding economic principle of regional development, then the distinct local character and lifestyle of each region are decidedly noneconomic principles. "Character" and "life style" are instead are life principles, principles which guarantee that the local residents will be able to live a human life with pride in their surroundings and their history. We cannot afford to treat these life principles in a perfunctory fashion. Today we need a plan for regional development that balances the economic and noneconomic factors.
From the 1960s, Japan's national planning has consistently been linked with the economic policy of achieving a standard per capita income throughout the country. The Ikeda cabinet was the first to make this a national goal. With its "Plan for Doubling Per Capita Income," the Ikeda government was able to spur the Japanese on to greater productivity to realize a goal that could be clearly and easily grasped by anyone. What the Ikeda government actually did was to construct what is new known as the Pacific coast industrial belt. This region was chosen for development because of its excellent harbors, ready supply of labor, and proximity to a large consumer market. In other words, it was very well suited for the development of the secondary industries of processing raw materials, which made up Japan's leading industrial sector at the time. The concentrated development of this region so rich in potential led, in the end, to a concentration of the nation's capital, industrial power, and population in the Pacific coast industrial belt. In response, there arose a cry from other regions of Japan, particularly those along the Japan Sea coast, for a fairer share of the national productivity and a rectification of the gap between per capita income on the Pacific coast and the rest of Japan.
The slogan of the Sato cabinet, which succeeded the Ikeda cabinet, was "Social Development." The Sato government sought to decentralize industry, which had become too concentrated. This policy took form in the planning and construction of new industrial cities throughout Japan. These cities were supposed to stop the flow of labor, especially of young workers, from local areas to Tokyo and the Pacific belt. If that sudden exodus could be stopped, the local economies would revive and tax revenues increase. As the local economic picture improved, public works projects could be undertaken and the local environment improved.
This was the rationale for the new industrial cities. It was the start of decentralization. It seems, on the surface, that this strategy was an ideal plan for the improvement of local life throughout Japan, highly advantageous to the residents of those regions. And, in fact, within certain limits, the "decentralization = standardization of per capita income" equation was effective. The gap between earnings in Tokyo and other regions shrank.
But the complete decentralization of Japan proved to have some major disadvantages for local areas, too. First, it was extremely wasteful in terms of the investment required in public works and facilities. The old ideal of a regional city was a self-sufficient unit that could meet all the needs of its residents, from cradle to grave. People were born, educated, married, raised families, and died in their city. This type of city, admittedly, is effective in promoting a sense of community. A very strong community consciousness, approaching the ties of blood, in cultivated by such a community.
But on the other hand, isolated communities of this sort, with little movement among them, means that all the goods and services of modern life have to be supplied within and to a very limited market. In its most extreme form, this policy would mean that all the facilities of contemporary life, from cinemas and department stores to universities and research centers, Kabuki theaters and opera houses, would have to be constructed and supported in each region, for a limited local population. Every city does not need, however, its own Kabuki theater or opera house; several cities can s hare one. The market, the audience, for these arts in then greatly increased. When we consider all of this, we come to the conclusion that entirely self-supporting cities are economically unfeasible as long as there are different sizes of cities and, particularly, small and medium-sized regional cities.
A Theory of Network Cities for the Age of Homo Movens
The second disadvantage of complete decentralization is that it makes it difficult for people to move between regions. I have written a book titled Homo Movens. By Homo movens I mean, of course, man on the move. I coined this term after the models Homo sapiens, man as thinker, and Homo faber, man as maker, as an attempt to express the importance of mobility as the special characteristic of contemporary humankind. Just as the concept of Homo faber is linked to principles on which industrial society is based, Homo movens is linked to the principle of industrial society.
The mobility that characterizes modern society cannot be explained simply in terms of the development of transportation. The fact is that in our information society, mobility has begun to possess considerable value for its own sake. It is choice that makes movement possible. According to your own inclinations and values you can now choose things that are not found in the place you were born. People today look on the availability of choices as one of the riches of life -- "a wealth of choices." The city of the future, as we continue to evolve into a information society, should be a city that guarantees freedom of choice and taken positive steps to make movement possible.
The third disadvantage of decentralization is that, economically speaking, a small city simply cannot compete with a big one. In the economic competition among cities, the greatest weapon in the arsenal of the large city is the cumulative effect of its size. In other words, there is no way that a small city can match a large one in the amount of available capital, population, or consumer activity. Simple decentralization only leads smaller cities to make fruitless efforts to achieve what they never can.
All in all, a policy of total decentralization has many disadvantages and is really equally had as the opposite policy of total concentration in a single region. A truly ideal plan can never be achieved as long as the dualistic choice is either decentralization or centralization. National planning in Japan has been grappling with this problem, and at last has arrived at the age of a New National General Development Plan. Trends toward a completely new policy of regional development, neither centralization nor decentralization, are at last taking shape as a theory of a network city.
The concept of the local city as an independent and self-sufficient until will be abandoned, and it will be an age of Homo movens, with people always on the move from city to city. Cities will be connected by transportation and information networks that will weave a spider's web of linked cities. This concept of the cities of the future is as a symbiosis of centralization and decentralization.
The network theory of cities is based on two major assumptions. One is that these networks will be formed not in an industrial society but in an information society. The second is that each city in the network will establish its own cultural identity, that is, nurture a distinct culture of its own and pursue its own development based on that culture. If the kind of network we are talking about is formed in industrial society, there is great danger of a "siphon phenomena" occurring between large and small cities. The economies of the smaller cities, which have less accumulated capital and labor, are siphoned off by the larger cities with densely accumulated resources.
This has actually happened along the bullet train lines. The economies of the smaller cities on the train lines have been siphoned off by the larger cities. The leading sector of industrial society, manufacturing finished products from raw materials, depends to a great extent on concentrated capital, productivity, and consumption, so the "siphon phenomena" is very likely to occur.
In contrast, the leading sector of the economy of an information society is comprised of such tertiary industries as broadcasting, publishing, education, and the service industries. These depend mostly on accumulated culture, and so the economies of small cities do not fall victim to the "siphon phenomenon." It is even possible for small cities to take an enormous lead over large cities.
Kyoto, for example, cannot be compared economically with Tokyo or Osaka, but its accumulated cultural wealth is one of the highest in the world. In the twenty-first century, the information value of cultural treasures, skills, and scholarship will be greater and greater. As a source of information, Kyoto is far superior to Tokyo, and this will be a powerful weapon for Kyoto and cities like it in the information age.
An "Event Economy" That Will Expand Regional Economies
In the information age, the character of each regional city, no matter how small, will be a source of economic strength. At the same time, the evolution from industrial society to information society will be a move from an age of economic priority to one of the priority of knowledge and expertise. Already it is becoming possible to enlarge regional economies, which have been sharply limited up to now, through the power of knowledge.
The "event economy" that I propose is an example. By holding various events, the local economic pie can be expanded considerably. The economic scope of tourism and resort industries, for example, is completely unrelated to the size of the local population. The greater the increase in visitors from outside the region, the larger the region's economic pie becomes. Tourism and resorts are what I mean by "events" to expand local economies.
Another example is the sweet-potato liquor dubbed "Downtown Napoleon," which has expanded its market to encompass the nation through the "event" of its name. The governor of Oita Prefecture, Morihiko Hiramatsu, has led a successful "village product" campaign, for which many events have been held. When local groups hold different exhibitions and fairs, international conferences and cinema festivals, and encourage local festivals, they can sell their agricultural and other local products on a nationwide scale. The age has come when regional efforts to expand local markets achieve success through these kinds of event.
Local tax revenues have until now been determined by certain set, almost impossible to adjust figures: the taxes on forestry, farming, and the local population. In the future, however, local governments will start offering financial support for ideas. The conduct of regional government itself will change as it turns to supporting ideas for events that will get the region's economy moving.
In an information age, an age of ideas, the network between big cities and small cites will not create a one-way siphon phenomenon. At any rate, with a little effort, that problem can be avoided. The symbiosis of cities will become possible. As this state of symbiosis continues to develop, small cities will increase their own information-generating capacity and achieve tremendous development while exploiting the markets of the large cities. This is one reason that regional planning based on the concept of the network should be most strongly emphasized.
Creating Many Cities with High Information-generating Capacities
In the forth Comprehensive National Development Plan (Daiyonkai Senkoku Sogo Kaihatsu Keikaku), there is much emphasis on the Tokyo metropolitan zone, and many have criticized the plan as another attempt to centralize Japan around the capital. Let us look at a portion of the plan's intermediary report that has stirred considerable controversy. It was subtitled "Tokyo as an International Center":
Tokyo is not only the capital of our country but, in such respects as international finance, for example, an international center. It also provides information of international scope to other cities of Japan, and with its highly developed capacities contributes to the development of the economies of Japan and the world. To insure that the entire Tokyo area can function as an international center, we recommend the general development of the Tokyo Bay area, for which high-use demand continues to increase, and the adjacent coastal areas, while encouraging at the same time the selective decentralization of various functions to other business centers and the reform of regional structures. We also recommend the development of access by regional cities to Tokyo, so that Tokyo's highly developed capacities may eventually be carried out across the nation. We especially recommend the creation of a data base of high-priority government and business information, now concentrated in Tokyo, together with a lowering of communication costs, so that other regions will have easy access to his information.
This section of the report caused a great stir among regional governments. The newspapers' reaction is indicative of the reactions the intermediary report aroused. "The Flames of Discontent Spread: Fourth National Plan Favors Tokyo" (Asahi Shimbun, January 6, 1987); "Many Problems Remain with the Fourth National Plan" (Asahi Shimbun, January 9, 1987); "The Regional Argument Against the Fourth National Plan: Mere Terminals of the Main Computer? (Asahi Shimbun, January 16, 1987); and "An Outdated National Plan @@ Concentration on Tokyo, and End to Regional Development and Support" (Asahi Shimbun, March 15, 1987).
As these headlines show, the reaction against the Fourth national Plan grew and spread. Of course, We cannot fail to recognize various problems with the present implementation of the plan. My own suggestion for the plan is that, since it has spotlighted Tokyo as an international center, it must also offer methods to the other regions of Japan for resisting Tokyo's dominance. Concretely speaking, it is time to rethink the traditional system of distributing investment in public works projects in a thin, even layer across the country. Instead, the national government should make a concerted, uneven investment in regional cities that have already achieved a certain degree of concentration and accumulation of resources, capital, and population: Osaka, Nagoya, and Kyoto of course, as well as Sapporo, Sendai, Kanazawa, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, Oita, and Kumatomt. these cities must be allowed to develop an attractiveness as living and working environment that can rival Tokyo.
An attractive city, in other words, a city with a strong information-generating capacity, contributes enormously to establishing a regional identity. And it is linked also to the economic development of the region. One of the reasons regional cities are not as attractive as Tokyo is their relative poverty of choices, of selection. They simply offer far too little to choose from. People are drawn to a city that has more than one department store, more than one university. A city with at least two department stores begins to show a cumulative effect. City development plans that bring in that extra department store or build a local shopping area with strong drawing power increase a city's attractiveness several times over.
The relocation of the universities from Tokyo is a good idea. Because it would be confusing for various reasons to move universities with place names, such as Tokyo and Kyoto universities, to other towns, positive steps should be taken to get around this, such as renaming the universities with numbers, as their equivalents were known in the previous century: First University, Second University, and so forth.
Some will protest these suggestions as well and ask why we should further strengthen already economically powerful regional centers. What must be recognized is that when these major regional cities attain the functions of information centers they will lead the development of the entire region in an information society.
My second suggestion to the Fourth National Plan is to look for large-scale projects to undertake in other regions.
A Tunnel Connecting Shikoku and Kyushu
In 1988, the bridge connecting Honshu and Shikoku was completed, and right now the New Osaka International Airport project is underway. We need to continue to look for this type of project as we approach the twenty-first century.
Those projects, in addition, must be linked to the creation of a network of regional cities. Unless the investment is in projects that link regional cities into a federation that can rival Tokyo, or contribute to the further development of major regional cities which will then provide leverage to the surrounding cities, it will be of little meaning. One of the first projects that comes to mind is expansion of the bullet train lines. This is indispensable for linking regional cities and the creation of a network of major regional cities. Another project that I have been promoting for years in a tunnel linking Kyushu and Shikoku. This would play a major part in forming the network of regional cities.
Today all of Japan, with the exception of Okinawa, is linked. Hokkaido and Honshu are joined by the undersea tunnel from Aomori to Hakodate. The Seikan undersea tunnel connects Honshu to Kyushu, and three bridges span the sea between Honshu and Shikoku. Yet there are no plans to join Kyushu and Shikiku. If those islands were linked by a tunnel, a network comprising Kyushu, Shikoku, and the Chubu region of Japan would be created. This would be an enormous economic zone, an enormous urban federation.
The privatized Shikoku Railway Company is regarded as being in nearly as bad economic condition as the Hokkaido Railway Company. This is because at present Shikiku is a dead end. Even the link to Honshu can have only limited economic effect on a dead end. One of the bridges joining it to Honshu is constructed so that a bullet train line can travel over it. If that bullet train line passed through Shikoku to Kyushu, the fortunes of the Shikoku Railway Company would be revived in a single stroke. If the highway under construction in Shikoku now -- also said to be very uneconomical -- were linked to a Honshu-Shikoku bridge on one end and to Kyushu on the other, it would become a major national artery and an economically justifiable one at that.
These projects would not only increase Shikoku's economic performance but would have a major economic impact on the Chugoku region of Honshu, on Kyushu, and even on the Kinki area of Honshu, contributing to the formation of a regional urban federation.
Encouraging concerted disproportionate investment in the major regional cities and undertaking projects outside Tokyo will establish and enrich the network of regional cities needed in an information society, and these are highly effective strategies for fostering the ability of other regions to rival Tokyo in activity and attractiveness. Only when regional cities have acquired this power can there be a symbiosis of centralization and decentralization. These are my suggestions with regard to the Fourth Comprehensive National Development Plan.
I do not think that the plan's emphasis on Tokyo is mistaken. Tokyo must seek the capabilities outlined in the report with great urgency as we move toward a new international age. Japan's national development plans up to now were concerned entirely with the Japanese population and had an exclusively domestic perspective. The debate over centralization or decentralization is a domestic issue; as an alternative, I offer a theory of network cities that will allow a symbiosis of centralization and decentralization.
And now, the time of symbiosis with yet another network is upon us.
The Symbiosis of Three Networks: Regional Urban Federations, Metropolises, and International Finance
A third network is the network of international capitals of finance. This is now approaching the Japanese archipelago.
With the deregulation of finance, Japan's short-term money market is growing at a rapid pace. When the total from trade in foreign currencies and interbank transitions, excluding reciprocal trading, is added to that of the open market, Japan's short-term money market reaches 206 billion dollars. This is the figure for 1985, converted to dollars at the 1985 rate. The Japanese market has already surpassed that of West Germany and Great Britain and is second only to the United States.
The Japanese money market will continue to grow. As the financial sector is completely deregulated, companies that have been investing overseas because they were unhappy with Japan's regulations are likely to return to domestic bonds. More than anything, Japan's low interest rates, making Japan's money market extremely attractive to companies and countries that seek international investments. The low interest rates are a result of Japan's huge economic surplus. The surplus for 1987 was ninety billion dollars. This is an amount roughly equal to the highest combined annual earnings of all the OPEC countries ever recorded. This enormous amount of money sits in the Japanese financial market. Of course interest rates are low.
With its excess of money, Japan is investing in bonds and real estate in other countries, and buying up companies as well. Today, Japan's purely foreign investment capital totals more than one hundred billion dollars, and it is predicted that within five years it will reach five hundred billion dollars. This is the enormous amount of capital that Japan is investing overseas. The more extensive this relationship with other countries becomes, the more important Japan's money market becomes. Whether we like it or not, we are a part of the network of the international financial markets.
The major American commercial bank, Banker's Trust, has recently moved the general manager of capital markets division from New York to Tokyo. When IBM transferred the headquarters of its Pacific Group from New York to Tokyo, it made quite a splash in the weekly newsmagazines. Dupont Japan and Japan Texas Instruments have established research facilities in Japan. All of these are further demonstrations of the Tokyo's importance in the eyes of the international financial market.
Another reason that Tokyo finds itself in the center of the international financial network is geographical. The world of finance is in the age of twenty-four-hour dealing. Making use of the time differences among different markets across the globe, twenty-four-hour trading has become possible by moving on to Tokyo after New York closes, and then to London after Tokyo. Lately, there are lights on all night in the offices of the major trading companies and banks. To keep up with twenty-four-hour dealing, an eye has to be kept on the yen and the dollar and the international markets around the clock, in shifts.
The international money market needed an opening someplace between New York and London in time, somewhere in Asia. Hong Kong and Singapore have been regarded as promising, but Tokyo, with its far superior investment capability, has taken the lead. Tokyo now exists in symbiosis with three networks -- one of a federation of regional cities in Japan; another of the three major Japanese urban centers, that is, Nagoya and Osaka together with Tokyo; and an international money market network of an entirely different dimension.
This multilayered network has resulted in the following conditions in the city. According to the estimates of the Fourth Comprehensive National Development Plan, by 2025 the number of non-Japanese residing in Japan will have reached 2.3 million. This is an extremely conservative estimate, and I believe that 2.5 million is closer to the mark. This is as if a city the size of Osaka has suddenly materialized, and it will have a great influence on the country. The "internationalization" that had been little more than a vague slogan will have taken concrete form before our eyes.
The majority of those non-Japanese residents will be living in the international financial capital, Tokyo. Just as today New York has become a thoroughly international, global city, Tokyo will support its end of the international network. As a city, it will no longer belong completely to Japan.
While some will insist that the other regions of Japan should also internationalize and that all of this is only hastening the process of the concentration of human and economic resources in Tokyo, Tokyo's development is a requisite for the development of the regions it is linked with just as the development of another prefecture only occurs when it has a major city -- an Osaka, a Nagoya, a Hiroshima -- with its own concentration of people and information. We need simultaneous decentralization and centralization; we need, in other words, core urban centers.
France, for example, is now carrying out a decentralization policy, and the way the French are doing this offers an interesting contrast with the Japanese. A communications and liaisons committee of all government departments for the "Grand Project" has been formed, and, with President Mitterand in the lead, they are at work on the redevelopment of Paris. Great energy is being devoted to increasing the cultural facilities of Paris: an opera house is being built in the Place de la Bastill, scheduled for completion in July 1979; the largest museum of science in the world and unique music center are being construed in Parc de La Villette; Orsay station has been restored and the Musee D'Orsay built; the Institute of the Arab World has been built on the Seine; an international competition (of which I was one of the judges) was held for the design of an international communications center (La Tete Defense) to be built in the newly developed Defense area. Major additions are being made to the Louvre, and plans to move the Ministry of the Treasury, which occupied part of the Louvre's space, are proceeding on schedule. These new cultural facilities will commemorate the second centennial of the revolution, just as the Eiffel Tower commemorated the first.
What's interesting is that there has been no resistance from other parts of the country to the further concentration of cultural facilities in Paris, already so richly blessed with them. As long as Paris continues as one of the leaders in the international network of global cities, the rest of France will have access to the same level of information through its domestic networks. The other regions of France are confident that they will prosper, their unique local cultures intact, by remaining linked with Paris.
In the 1920s, Berlin created a unique cultural environment often labeled "cabaret culture." Berlin was a world capital of cinema and theater, and of architecture as well. It was the center of the world and it pulled the rest of Germany along with it. In 1987, the seven hundred fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the city, an international architectural exhibition, the International Bauausstellung, was held. Some fifty distinguished architects from around the world were invited to participate. Each was given a site and asked to design a plan for its redevelopment, which would be left as architectural exhibits for the twenty-first century. I represented Japan in this ambitious project. The purpose of the Internationale Bauausstellung was to restore the divided city, long out of the international limelight, to a new glory equal to that of the 1920s, when it led all of Germany in its wake.
My idea that centralization and decentralization must exist in symbiosis is essentially the same as the idea behind the Berlin project. Tokyo must be developed and, through its participation in the network of international cities, all of Japan will be linked to the rest of the world, allowing Japan's regional society to follow.
A Thirty-Thousand-Hectare Manmade Island in Tokyo Bay
A major redevelopment of Tokyo is required to provide it with the capacities to function as it must to serve as an opening to the network of international cities. This redevelopment is not undertaken solely for Tokyo's sake; it is no more than the preparation of the access route through which one of the networks of a world on an entirely different, much higher level, a network that will create a new age in every region of Japan, will enter.
Millions of non-Japanese will pour into the city, and already Tokyo does not have sufficient housing. The coastal areas are being recommended for new developments, but it is not sound ecologically to continue to increase landfill along the shore, and this method also drives up land prices in adjacent areas and makes the construction of public works difficult.
I believe it is much wiser to preserve the shoreline more or less as it is and build a manmade island off of it, like Portopia in Kobe. Let us assume we are building an island of thirty thousand hectares in Tokyo Bay. At its deepest, the bay is twenty meters, and it is estimated that the sludge on the bay bottom is another seven meters deep, so if you planned to build an island five meters above sea level, you would need landfill to a depth of thirty-two meters. The amount of landfill to create an island of thirty thousand hectares -- approximately tow-thirds the size of the present twenty-three wards if Tokyo -- would be nine billion cubic yards. This is equivalent to two-thirds of Mount Fuji. Where could this amount of landfill come from?
First, from the dredging of Tokyo Bay itself. This would produce 4.5 billion cubic meters of soil. The other half of the total needed would be provided by excavating a Boso Canal -- a canal five hundred meters across, connecting Tokyo Bay with the Pacific Ocean through the Boso Peninsula.
If the Boso Canal were built, the difference in the tides would mean that three or four meters of water would come rushing in and out of Tokyo Bay daily. This would cleanse the bay and increase the marine life in it, in a symbiosis with development.
At present, several hundreds of thousands of boats ply the waters of Tokyo Bay annually. The creation of a manmade island would disrupt their traffic, so the port of Tokyo would have to be moved to the tip of the island. At the same time, an outer Tokyo Port would be constructed at the Pacific mouth of the Boso Canal. Products that did not have to be unloaded in Tokyo Bay could be shipped from there by pipeline.
The cost of constructing this thirty-thousand-hectare manmade island would be about eighty trillion yen. Computing the net land cost from this, 3.3 square meters would cost about two million yen. If we suppose a land-use ratio of four hundred percent, that is reduced to five hundred thousand yen, a cost that would permit the average white-collar worker to buy a condominium. In that projected cost of two million yen per 3.3 square meters, all construction and support facility costs are included: subways, bridges, roads, parks, water, and energy plants. A pleasant, livable apartment from which you could commute by subway, by car, or even by boat need not be an impossible dream.
The intent of this project does not contradict the larger policy of decentralizing population and technological capacity across the archipelago. It is merely a plan to improve the appalling living circumstances of Tokyo's working class, to meet the needs of the rising foreign population, and to improve the business efficiency of Tokyo as an international financial center.
The projected population for this manmade island is five million. Of that total, 1.5 million will be non-Japanese. The projected population increase for the native Tokyo population by 2025 is another 1.5 million. The remaining two million will be previous residents of "mainland" Tokyo, lessening its population density. The completion of the manmade island will not intensify the concentration of population in Tokyo.
As far as the eighty-trillion-yen construction fee is concerned, we can easily see that, with the enormous amount of Japanese money invested overseas, this is far from an impossible figure. Further, there is a clear and certain demand for this new island. Land sell for about 12.7 million yen per 3.3 square meters today, so the profit to be had from this project is approximately two hundred trillion yen. If this project was carried out by private enterprise, the capital that is now floating around in the domestic stock market and foreign bonds could be easily attracted by this potential profit. The tax revenues from this two hundred trillion yen could be used for further redevelopment of Tokyo and the major regional cities. In other parts of Japan, the same pattern could be followed: pursuing projects based on private enterprise, and using the profits to initiate yet other projects. This would be a method to bring the funds that float like disembodies spirits through the stock market and foreign investments down to earth, in Japan.
For the Japanese government, facing the challenges of institutional re form and the restoration of government finances, large-scale regional projects and the redevelopment of Tokyo are burdens to heavy to bear. It is in the country's best interests to push the surplus funds from profitable enterprises into increased circulation and pursue regional development on the private level. In the future, this new method will attract considerable attention.
Preserving the Jumble of Tokyo's Rhizome
The new island in Tokyo Bay will provide the elbow room necessary for the redevelopment and resuscitation of Tokyo. The recent leap in land costs has made the redevelopment of the present city increasingly difficult. The new land of the manmade island will come in handy in this regard, providing land of the same value in exchange for land in mainland Tokyo.
The aims of Tokyo's redevelopment will be to make the city safer in the case of a natural disaster on the scale of the Great kanto earthquake; to provide more space per person in Tokyo's housing, currently far smaller than national average; and to increase the city's greenery. If two or three million people can be drawn away from Tokyo to the new island, two loop-shaped canals can be excavated in the land that they vacate. A belt of high-rise buildings can then be constructed along both sides of these canals. These loop cities (along the loop canals) will be effective firebreaks in case of a natural disaster.
Aside from the construction of the canals and their high-rise loop cities, Tokyo can be left as it is. The mazelike, jumbled chaos of Tokyo is a natural rhizome that possesses the potential for becoming a city of night, a Postmodern city of symbiosis. Tokyo today seems chaotic, without order. If order means the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris, where the buildings on both sides of the avenue are standard in height and consistent in design, then indeed Tokyo is chaotic. But as I have said before, we are living in a new age, with a new value system and sensibility that transcends Modernism. Anyone would prefer to walk the back streets of Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Harajuku over the broad avenues of Kasumigaseki, lined with the same square Modern boxes. While there's nothing wrong with broad boulevards and high-rise buildings, we also want cluttered mazelike districts to explore.
Tokyo's attraction is in its complexity, its variety, and its wide range of choices. Its constant transformation is also enjoyable. It is a city that doesn't distinguish between the wealthy, the middle class, and poor students; a city that is fun and interesting to walk through (there is no walking to speak of in Los Angeles, for example); it also has buses and subways and taxis; this wide range of choice is what makes Tokyo attractive and human.
Modern Tokyo is a city in which old things and places are preserved, even if they lack historical value, and at the same time a city that is being rebuilt with the most advanced technology, the most pioneering designs, the most avant-garde architecture. We must not lose this source of Tokyo's attraction through redevelopment. If we supplement Tokyo with the elements it lacks and proceed pragmatically with the required changes, it may well become the most attractive and interesting city in the world by the twenty-first century. Aside from doubling the amount of park land and greenery and increasing the size of living space, the city should be left alone. Leaving it as it is, we can proceed slowly, taking out time with Tokyo's revitalization.
The development of the loop cities along the canals and the preservation of the present city are a package. We could call them the symbiosis of development and preservation (revitalization). There is also a need to pour funds into the suburban areas outside the present belt highway number eight to foster the development of an urban network there. We should also restore the Musashino Forest, creating a ten-thousand-hectare deciduous forest that is a combination of castle forest and sacred forest.
Contemporary Tokyo has three important, overlapping meanings for the Japanese people: it their greatest metropolis, the capital, and the home of the emperor, who is symbolic of the nation. This degree of concentration is unnatural. The nation's capital should be transferred to the new island in the bay, which will then become a special administrative district. Kyoto will soon celebrate its twelfth centennial. Why not mark the occasion by building a new imperial palace in Kyoto? It could be designated the first imperial palace and the present palace in Tokyo could be a second palace. Couldn't we have the emperor spend half the year in Kyoto?
A linear motor car that would connect Tokyo with Osaka in only an hour should be built, and the functions of the nation's capital split among Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Even now several ministries -- the Imperial Palace Agency, the Ministry of Education, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Science and Technology Agency -- have relocated one or another of their divisions, and the belt from Tokyo to Osaka can already be regarded as a "capital corridor." One way of invigorating Hokkaido and the Tohoku region would be to run the bullet train through the Seikan tunnel, build a "super port" in Hakodate and relocate the Supreme Court in Sapporo.
It is widely held that Japan's current huge surplus can only last another three decades. Now is our one and only chance to build a new Japan for future generations. Nor do I think that Japan will end its age in the sun as no more or less than an economic giant. In the new age that is dawning across the world Japan will for the first time make its own creative contributions to world thought and culture.
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