Much has been written on the Japanese-ness of making cities. As if Orientalism hasn’t faded away, the West is still fascinated by the uniqueness of Japanese urbanism – Tokyo being the illustrious example for that strange phenomenon. The fascination is understandable: after all, the third of Tokyo is rebuilt every year with an ease beyond compare. Tokyo quickly attracted myths and metaphors from past and current Western romantics and cynics alike. Perhaps the most relevant metaphor given to a city in constant renewal came through Kisho Kurokawa, one of the founding architects of Metabolism. Tokyo is a rhizome, “an interwoven complex of heterogeneous parts which centre-less yet dynamic and forever changing.” If one severs an element of a rhizome both the main body and cut part are likely to thrive – and potentially in all directions. (Shelton, p. 172) In addition and similarly to all Japanese cities, Tokyo has a had a long tradition of temporariness. The rhizome is constantly obliterated or ostracized. The city has somewhat accepted this tradition and developed a culture of temporariness. But the city is never defeated by the adversities of nature and man alike.
The paper first explores the ingredients that shape the temporariness and renewal of Tokyo – from religion, to natural forces, architectural ontology, and cultural traditions. The paper will then propose the consequences of a culture of the temporary and the ephemeral on urbanism, in practice and in form.
The components of Ephemera – an integrated whole
Unlike the Western tradition of shaping cities, and relying heavily on space, the Japanese tradition articulates space as subservient to time. There is heavy dependence on the current happening. Space is only defined by human activities. It would then move with the activity that gave it definition. (Shelton, p. 10) In fact, this notion of interrelationship of time and space is heavily engrained in Buddhism, which came to Japan and has coexisted with Shinto since the sixth century. Space is relative, limited, and illusionary, which is closer to the way in which the Japanese think and record their cities. More importantly, Buddhists believes in life as a series of temporary existences and that “everything in this world is only the temporary coexistence of its composing elements and subject, therefore to decomposition.” (Bognar, p. 5) Life is seen as a constant cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, or growth, decay and re-growth. Moreover, opposite states are not exclusive of each other but naturally coexist. Life is not the opposite of death, but rather they are both natural steps in existence. (Shelton, p. 157)
In conjunction with Buddhism, Shinto – the ‘vernacular’ religion in Japan – promoted a collection of beliefs that manifest itself in a profuse but uneven scatter of diverse natural and man-made forms at many scales and with various degrees of definition. This is why Tokyo is full of many temples and shrines varying in materials, scale, and location. The city is itself a variation on the theme of the Shinto landscape: discontinuous, of autonomous parts, and of disparate scales. Kurokawa’s rhizome metaphor of a fragmented and discontinuous organism that can regenerate would then make complete sense.
It is harmonious combination of Shinto’s attachment to nature (and timber in particular) and the Buddhist belief in the temporary together with the natural hostilities of the Japanese archipelago that shapes the Japanese attitude towards urban building (Shelton, p. 159). In fact, disasters are no strangers to Tokyo (and Japan as a whole). The city has been rampaged with wars and natural disasters ever since its inception. Climate is also hardly conducive to building longevity: it is persistently hot and very humid for one part of the year and cold and damp for the other. However, instead of being defeated, Japanese seem to have accepted the recurrent advent of urban destruction. They embrace nature’s power via their religion. This is particularly apparent in their artistic representations of natural forces and destructions (cf. Hokusai’s The Big Wave).
The consequences of Ephemera – towards resilience
The acceptance of an almost ritualistic destruction is heavily manifested in architecture and urban morphology. The signs are most obvious in traditional Japanese vernacular architecture, which characteristically features wood, paper, and other relatively ephemeral building materials, allowed to weather. It was commonplace that traditional houses would be rebuilt every few decades (McIver Lopes, p. 80). The progression of time did not weather the vernacular practices of architecture away. In Japan, modernism is seen as an extension of the traditional rather than a break from it – a position that is still pervasive in the literature of Japanese architecture to the present day (ibid). The typical example of Japanese modernism in continuum with the vernacular lies with in Metabolism, where the city was analogous to nature and was conceived as a living organism. In conjunction with Buddhism and Shinto, most Metabolist architecture created or conceived at that time focused on the passage of time and life cycles. Of the examples is the “construction of relatively permanent megastructures-cum-infrastructure of services (skeleton and arteries) onto which shorter life buildings (akin to cells) could be grafted and from which they might be cut (growth, decay, and replacement).” (Shelton, p. 167) Other examples include the Tokyo City Hall, designed by Tange, built in 1957 and rebuilt in 1991. Toyo Ito’s Nomad Restaurant is also known for being built only for three years.
The impermanence of Japanese architecture tied to Buddhism also developed a culture of veneration for craftsmanship. It is not surprising that constructing mandalas, destroying them to make the exact new one, is a typical Buddhist tradition prevalent in China. Craftsmanship in Japan infused architecture with an art of making and remaking, giving architecture a dual ontology: “what is old is the type and what is young is its current instance.” (McIver Lopes, p. 82) There is therefore no interest in building maintenance but rather a tradition and culture of collaborating with natural elements to foster gentle decay and periodic regeneration. In fact, a deep aesthecization of potentially lethal natural forces goes in parallel with the awesome power of fire, wind, and water. (Heil, p. 213)
Just as architecture is constantly renewed while staying the same, Tokyo – as a built form of patchworks – constantly changes with the advent of wars and natural disasters. However, while “urban disasters can bring about an opportunity for changes in the built environment, they do not appear to introduce innovation per se” (ibid). In fact, disasters may serve as opportunities for change but they may also provoke the desire to retain the past. It has been noted that Tokyo never witnessed innovative planning after natural disasters. New planning regimes and planning authorities were introduced during major economic, political, and/or societal shifts. Even post-war reconstruction in Japan, a man-made disaster, failed to bring a new radical way of shaping the city.
“In Tokyo, the bombs, aided by cities built of building and paper, had obliterated virtually everything, allowing planners the luxury of starting from first principles” (Sorensen, p. 164) The post-war reconstruction master plan led by Ishida was a drastic proposal that would negate the urban culture of shaping Tokyo by introducing green belts and urban growth boundaries – two concepts utterly alien to Japanese urbanism. Though the plan almost passed the approval process, it never saw the light of day. It is as if the city and its residents resisted large superstructures, schemes, and plans that were imposed on it, showing time and again, a true culture of resilience.
Tokyo changes but fundamentally stays the same. Hidenodbu Jinnai sees the continuity of the patterns of the present-day city (roads, activities, lot signs, etc.) powerfully bearing the imprint of previous forms. “The structure of old Edo survives in the substructure of modern Tokyo.” (Shelton p. 14) While, unlike many Western cities, old buildings are obliterated, links with the past are nevertheless strong, especially in the organization of space. There are rare examples of built form that reach back centuries. They are mostly parts of religious complexes and castles. However, most have been reconstructed and/or relocated in Tokyo (the Edo castle being a primary example).
The culture of resilience in Tokyo is then embedded in religion, nature, craftsmanship and has directly impacted the built form of the capital, from the time of its creation until now. It defies disasters by embracing them and submitting itself to them, like a reed in gushing wind. It defies the rigidity of planning schemes and tabula rasa approaches by fixing itself incrementally and sporadically. However, though Ishida’s plan failed, it shows that there are some Japanese architects in favor of a blank slate approach. It might be the easiest way out when dealing with post-traumatic devastated city. A strategy such as this one is quite familiar across the board. Similarly to Ishida’s intentions, post-war reconstruction schemes in Beirut intended for the destruction of more buildings and infrastructure than what the war already caused, in order to create a coherent infrastructural network. Though the task of reconstruction had to start literally from the ground up in both cities, Tokyo luckily avoided the bulldozers, but Beirut didn’t.
Other similarities stem from comparing methods and outcomes of post-war reconstruction in Tokyo and Beirut. The Levantine city is also quite disaster-prone, having been entirely rebuilt seven times due to major earthquakes. It is constantly associated with the myth of the Phoenix, always rising from its ashes. Both cities are deeply rooted in a narrative of resilience, and rightfully so. In both cases, there is a history of a weak centralized government. Therefore, the actual reconstruction of affected districts was not undertaken by the government, but rather left to the private sector. In Beirut, the task was handled by one single real estate company, Solidere while Tokyo handled it on a more individual level between private developers (Heil, p. 214). However, the culture of a neo-liberal city where capital and investments are safe to circulate is present in both cases. Tokyo and Beirut were both reconstructed to become commercial hubs that would attract capital. Little attention was given to the housing shortage and the quality of services. Tokyo is still a city with a shortage of schools; Beirut is becoming more and more exclusive vis-à-vis providing non-luxurious dwellings for Lebanese people. More importantly, there is a slight denial when facing the atrocities of the War. Tokyo and Beirut still have no memorials to commemorate the victims of the war, be it World War II or the Lebanese Civil War. A general discussion about political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of planning in Tokyo was largely absent in the years after World War II. (Heil, p. 227) The same could be said on Beirut, where the importance of a quick recovery superseded the discussion on national priorities for resource distribution. (see Bharne and Skaf) However, though resilient, the Levantine city is heavily entranched in this Western notion of city-making: the importance of meaning through form, hierarchy through axiality and street patterns, etc. Tokyo presents an alternative form of resilience, through constant renewal.
Tokyo is quick to sever, discard, and re-form its past according to new needs of a rapidly changing world and without the Western concern for wider visual context of pattern. Unlike most cities, its resilience is acquired by complying with nature and man rather than going against them. It is a “conquest by surrender”, as Daniel Boorstin once said. Urban resilience is anchored in the resilience of an intangible culture as well as the remnants of the physical urban past.
The big challenge in Tokyo will then be to reconcile a very Western profession – urban planning – with a sense of urbanity completely alien to fixed form and rigid patterns. Is it possible to provide planning schemes that are concomitant with the resilience and constant renewal of Tokyo?
References
Bognar, Botond. 1997. “What goes up must come down: recent urban architecture in Japan” in Harvard Design Magazine Vol. 3, pp. 1 – 8.
Hein, Carola. 2004. “Resilient Tokyo: Disaster and Transformation in the Japanese City” in The Resilient City: how Modern Cities Recover from Disasters. Eds. Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mciver Lopes, Dominic. 2004. “Shikinen Sengu and the Ontology of Architecture in Japan” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 65 (1) pp. 77 – 84.
Nitzschke, Günter. 1993. From Shinto to Ando: Studies in Architectural Anthropology in Japan. New York: Academy Editions
Sarkis, Hashim. 2004. “Vital Void: Reconstructions of Downtown Beirut” in The Resilient City: how Modern Cities Recover from Disasters. Eds. Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shelton, Barrie. 1999. Learning from the Japanese City: Looking East in Urban Design. London: Routledge.
Skaf, Muriel and Vinayak Bharne. 2012. “Between Reform and Dystopia: Trajectories of Modernity in Post-colonial Lebanon”. In Modernity in the Middle East, edited by Ala Mandour (in press)
Sorensen, André. 1996. The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty-first Century. London: Routledge
the urban blueprint 