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MEASURING IDENTITIES OF TRANSIENT
PLACES:
THE CASE OF TOKYO
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La Faculté n’entend donner aucune approbation ouimprobation aux opinions émises dans les Mémoires.Ces opinions doivent être considérées comme propresà leurs auteurs.
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Mémoire préparée en vue de l’obtention du diplôme deMaster II ASPUde l’INSA, Strasbourg
MEASURING IDENTITIES OFTRANSIENT PLACES:
THE CASE OF TOKYO
Présentée par
VERONIKA ANTONIOU
Directeur de Mémoire M. Gaëtan DesmaraisMaître de Conférences, INSA, Strasbourg
Septembre 2011
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POUR MAYA ET RENÉ. . .
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CONTENTS
CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER 1: IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES . . . . . . . . . 71.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2 What is place? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Place-Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 Shifting identities and new meanings of places . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.1 Placelessness and Non-places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.2 Our contemporary world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.5 Urban memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
CHAPTER 2: TOKYO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 Tokyo, an introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Image through urban configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4 Vanishing memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.1 Tokyo on the move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
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CHAPTER 3: REINVENTING IDENTITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.2 Ugliness vs. Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.3 Wakon Yosai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.4 Transience and reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4.1 Buddhist and Shintoism teachings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.4.2 Nature and The City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4.3 Creative chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
CHAPTER 4: THE INTERVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2 Impression and Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2.1 Map Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2.2 Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3 Identification and Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3.1 Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.3.2 Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.3 Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.3.4 Public Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
APPENDIX B: ON INDENTITIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
APPENDIX C: TOKYO FACTS AND FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
viii
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LIST OF FIGURES
1 A street in Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1 Tokyo with Mt Fuji view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 Approach of the question of identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 Tokyo, Narita Airport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1 Tokyo, Satellite view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2 Tokyo view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.3 Yamanote and Shitamachi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312.4 Tokyo train map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.5 Edo Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6 View of Daiba Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.7 Arata Isozaki, unrealized project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.8 T.Ando and K. Tange Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.9 Canals and highways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.10 Kisho Kurokawa, Capsule Tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.11 Toyo Ito’s Tower of Winds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452.12 Love Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.13 Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1 Tokyo’s dual identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.2 Mix use districts in Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.3 Pet size building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.4 Tokyo shrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.5 Sakura blossom in Shibuya, Tokyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
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4.1 Tokyo People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 704.2 Map 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.3 Map 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.4 Map 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.5 Map 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.6 Shibuya train station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.7 Shinjuku underground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.8 Unimportant others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.9 Unimportant others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844.10 Washoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.11 Fashion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.12 Matsuri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.13 People manifesting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.14 Tokyo tower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.15 Department store 109 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Un voyage se passe de motifs. Il ne tarde pas à prouver qu’il se suffit à
lui même. On croit qu’on va faire un voyage, mais bientôt c’est le voyage
qui vous fait, ou vous défait.
— Bouvier, L’usage du monde, 1963.
This thesis is written using the pronoun "we" and not with the first person. The
reason is that this work is the result of a collective process, a long journey that
crossed the path of many individuals. In the few lines that follow, I would like toexpress my gratitude to those who made this thesis much more than it otherwise
might have been.
First, nothing would have been possible without the long-lasting support of
Professor Gaëtan Desmarais. I had the good fortune to work under his direction as
he has been encouraging and open-minded in my endeavors. Particularly I would
like to thank him for the consecutive extensions obtained that made possible this
work to conclude.
I am particularly thankful to my partner Dr. Rene Carraz for being next tome and offering me unconditional support to finish this work. We had countless
fruitful discussions that helped to improve my understanding of the essence of
writing a thesis, as well as how to manipulate it. Thank you for reading and editing
my work and above all for the improvements of the style of the text.
It goes without saying that this work would not have been possible without the
willingness of all the people at that I met randomly in the street, that gave me a lot
of their valuable time in order to answer my questionnaire. Special thanks go to
all the members of the lively team of Yiorgos Hadjichristou Architects, the office
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that I currently work who provided me with long-lasting, never fading supportand their understanding in giving me days off work.
Last but not least, the loved ones, the family, friends and my beautiful Maya,
that without her the thesis would not be such a long and joyful experience. To
them I will be short as no words could show how much they helped me during
this journey. Thank you.
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INTRODUCTION
Traditional representations presume stable objects and fixed subjects.
But the contemporary city is not reducible to an artifact. The city today
is a place where visible and invisible streams of information, capital and
subjects interact in complex formations. They form a dispersed field, a
network of flows.
— Allen and Agrest, (2000, p.40)
In this thesis, we are going to enquire on the identity of the city, as a complexand perplex place of our contemporary era, contradicting and unstable engender-
ing situations of transience and transformation (Graham, 1998). Cities under the
shadow of global world markets, exchangeable cultures, and rapid urbanization
are “no more one single entity in space and time” (Wadwekar and Kobayashi, 2009,
p.1). Koolhaas in his book S,M,L,XL questions whether the classical model of the
city and professional practices such as urbanism and architecture still have a role
to play in dealing with urbanization processes that characterize the 21st Century
cities (Koolhaas, Mau, Sigler, et al., 1998, p. 959-971). As the new places emergingin cities are marked by urban features that make them hard to identify, we have to
look for new methods at representing the city besides the traditional use of cartog-
raphy and analysis of urban organization (Sepe, 2010). In this work, we are going
to demonstrate how and why the contemporary city is not only an artificial con-
struct, but identified by a set of habits, customs and life styles. All these elements
that portray the city are inter-related and are to be viewed as a holistic element in
order to consider the identity of place and the identification of the city (Castells,
1997).
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Particularly under the light of rapid urbanization and fast changing societies,we are facing the threat of erasure, vanishing memories and creation of new collec-
tive memories. Given these occurrences, the concepts of place, identity and mem-
ory are worthy of discussion, investigation and debate. In developing countries
around the world and especially in Asia, the fast changing societies are transform-
ing fundamental and even everyday life meanings, collective memories are being
revised as new places arise. Chang (2005, p.247) in his article about “New Asia”
wrote:
The nexus of place, memory and identity finds particular resonance in Asiawhere changes in society, economics, politics and culture, since the 1990s, haveengendered much discourse on the so-called ‘Pacific century’, ‘Asian renais-sance’ and the rise of a ‘New Asia’.
The reason why it is appealing to look through these ideas is the fact that in
our contemporary era notions of the postmodern place are entering a new phase.
Massey said that we are living in a place that Marx once called “the annihilation
of space by time” and what modern theorists like David Harvey call “time-space
compression” (Massey, 1994, p.146). Places attain new meanings; they do not havepermanent or fixed values (Twigger-Ross, Bonaiuto and Breakwell, 2003), but are
processes that change over time (Massey, 1994). In this thesis we will question the
identities that result in such places, and above all, we will investigate how a place
succeeds in maintaining a sense of particularity in an ever-changing world.
The research will be directed from discursive talks of what are the related mean-
ings of place identity, the role of memory in the contemporary urban fabric where
‘place’ is viewed under a different context. Moreover, questions regarding the
identity of the city find justification under the processes of rapid urbanization andfast changing societies. Our concerns are epitomized through the case of Tokyo,
because enduring continuous constructions constantly transform its urban struc-
ture. Tokyo was chosen because its distinctive features of complexity, liquidity and
impermanence that make it a suitable city to conduct such a study. Furthermore,
Tokyo is an appropriate example of the contemporary city because of the very fact
that it belongs to a very special category of “world city” (Sassen, 2001). This percep-
tion of the world as a whole place, as a place-product of a system that is beyond
the power of the habitant to control is especially understood in big cities or mega
2
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cities. World cities are places that one can observe this melting pot of cultures, thecirculation of capital, the inflow of the “others”, the speed of advanced technology,
the intense circulation of information, and the transnationalization of architecture;
all these are aspects that generate homogenous places around the globe. These are
all novel features if we compare with the traditional notion of the city, and on this
ground we have to question the new emerging identity of places.
Tokyo has been defined as a world city by Saskia Sassen and ranked third in
the 2010 Global city Index that measures the influence that a city has outside its own
borders, like in global markets, culture, and innovation. Tokyo is exposed to globaltrends that alone could be a factor menacing its urban identity, but moreover it is
a city where enormous transformations have altered the city’s urban fabric repeat-
edly. These mutations were brought about by natural catastrophes, bombings of
the world war; however the latest and biggest transformation has occurred in the
post 60’s period where Japan underwent through a big economic growth. In this
thesis we propose to investigate the urban identity of Tokyo as a way to view con-
temporary concerns of fast changing societies that are altering notions of place, the
emerging of non-places and the creation of a new urban memory.
In the first chapter, we will explore the concept of place across various disci-
plines, from geography to environmental psychology, as an attempt to affirm the
importance of the study of place in its totality as a new way of exploring a city.
Particularly we will look into the concept of non-places that are generated by new
conditions of our technologically advanced world and transform the appearance
of our cities. The city as a “place” encourages us to investigate attributes essential
for a city that reach out beyond the city’s physical environment, an appropriate re-search methodology considering the unstable physical structure of today’s cities.
In the second chapter, there will be a general introduction and description of
the main attributes of Tokyo city, which will lead us to the debate of the problem
of vanishing memories and changing in identities in the city. We will look into the
various ways the city has been transformed across time with a particular attention
on the latest transformation in the urban fabric of the city during the economic
boom. The inquiry of the built environment of Tokyo is a tool to look into the
tangible values of a place.
3
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Moving onto the third chapter, there will be an investigation of those elementsphysical and conceptual that compile the contemporary urban identity of Tokyo.
Since the spatial structures are as evanescent as time fleets, we will extend our
search beyond the limits that the physicality of Tokyo restrains. We will demon-
strate the importance of people and nature in deciphering the identity of such a
complex city. We will proceed through an examination and translation of nature,
culture and heritage into the urban fabric as a way to understand the complex city.
Through this method we are exploring the intangible values of a place.
Figure 1: A street in Tokyo
On the final and fourth chapter there would be a detailed analysis of 27 inter-
views conducted with Tokyo residents relating to the perception their city, focusing
on questions such as orientation and identity. This chapter strengthens the hypoth-
esis that urban identity is not necessarily linked to physical structures. We will
demonstrate how daily rituals of the Tokyoites are also a way to recognize Tokyo’s
contemporary identity. This part of the work will be processed by an exploration
4
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of peoples’ habitudes, peoples’ spatial perception and peoples’ understanding of modern living in Tokyo.
Finally we want to remind the reader that this research is to be viewed from
urban as well as cultural perspectives that address concerns of the developmental
trajectories of cities across the world. The contemporary city is characterized by
complexity and contradiction, increased mobility, all factors that change the notion
of the city as a deeply rooted and fixed place with clear boundaries and with a
sedentary identity.
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CHAPTER 1
IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
I often use the word ‘floating’ not only to describe a lightness I want
to achieve in architecture, but also to express a belief that our lives are
losing touch with reality. All of life is becoming a pseudo-experience.
This trend is being encouraged by the consumer society, and architecture
itself is rapidly becoming more image — or consumption — oriented.
This is a matter of grave concern to the architect yet, at the same time,
architecture today must be made to relate to this situation. This is the
contradiction we are confronted with.
— Ito (1991, p.51)
1.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we are going to take a deep insight of the interchanging relation-
ship between place and identity, and the mechanisms at stake for the advocacy of
this relation. Understanding the different definitions and concepts of place is vital
as a first step to explain the importance of both social and physical settings when
exploring the identity of cities. In this context, we will examine in this chapterplace-related identity concerns that will lead us in the next chapter where the dis-
cussions will take a concrete form by an insight of the physical attributes of Tokyo.
We are first going to enquire on the different notions of place as perceived
across different disciplines. Through an investigation of the notion of place we
will demonstrate how the consideration of place adds a more experiential ap-
proach which can help us in the study of cities, that are acquiring new forms of
“[...] dispersed mass of ‘enclave’ identities where heterogeneities interact to form urbanism
of multiple and contested cultures.” (Wadwekar and Kobayashi, 2009, p.1)
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
Additionally, we will prove the particular effect of place on personal and col-lective identity. Of the plethora of studies that were conducted about place and
peoples’ relations with place two concepts have proven particularly popular: place
identity and place attachment (Lewicka, 2008); ideas that would be discussed fur-
ther on.
In the first section, we are going to explain what is place as opposed to space
through an account of diverse readings ranging from various fields. In this way
we will draw a clear picture of what are the elements, tangible and intangible, that
compose the identity of place. In Section 1.2, we are going to look at the concept of place-identity, which is understood as the identities created through human inter-
action with place. We will in this section examine in detail the processes and mech-
anisms that should be explored when inquiring about place identity. Section 1.3,
deals with the changing meanings of place and the emergence of non-places as our
world is traversing a supermodern era characterized by global flows of culture,
technology and symbols. Advanced use of technology and the industrialization
process has shifted the meaning of place originally defined by its sedentary values
into a non-historic, non-identifiable place, a non-place distinct for its mobile fea-tures. Finally, Section 1.4 will contemplate on the role of memories as a basic layer
for understanding the urban place.
1.2 What is place?
To start with, we are going to differentiate between the concepts of space and
place as this will help us to understand why we choose to deal with the idea of a
city under the notion of place. Space can be envisioned as the abstract form of astructural, geometrical body of a physical environment. Place on the other hand,
comprises the lived experience of the space and the people interactions within.
Space refers to physical, tangible elements of a place revealing the ‘where’ that is
the position and the physicality of a place. The sense of place, on the other hand
is “[. . . ] nebulous meanings associated with a place: the feelings and emotions that a place
evokes” (Cresswell, 2009, p.1). A factor differentiating space from place, is that place
is experienced, that means places are practiced. Michel de Certeau, describes place
as a system of signs, while space is composed by the “tactical” engagement with
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1.2. WHAT IS PLACE?
the system of signs; this is how he addresses as the “ practiced place” (Certeau, 1984,p.117).
The concept of place is as old as geography herself nonetheless it has been con-
ceptualized and given meaning since the 1970’s (Cresswell, 2009). Place as a to-
tal phenomenon that encompasses dimensions of human experience and human
cognition was brought to light under the concept of phenomenology1. The first
scientific theories on the field of phenomenology and philosophy2 have pointed
out the human dimensions that places carry and the subsequent bonds that were
developed. Heidegger who has struggled through his career with the notion of “being”, he related “being” with the idea of “being somewhere”, or rather “being
in the world” in which he eventually found meaning in the conception of dwelling
(Cresswell, 2009, p.3). Following the texts of Heidegger, Norberg-Schulz (1980)
was one of the prominent theorists to bring ‘place’ in the cadre of phenomenologi-
cal research. His concept of the “ genius loci” meaning the ‘the spirit of the place’ is
explained as follows:
Man dwells when he can orientate himself within and identify himself with
an environment, or, in short, when he experiences the environment as mean-ingful. Dwelling therefore [...] implies that the spaces where life occurs are’places’, in the true sense of the word. A place is a space that has character.Since ancient times the genius loci, or ’spirit of place’ has been recognized asthe concrete reality man has to face and come to terms with in his daily life(1980, p.5).
Places can be then defined as qualitative totalities where events ’take place’ and
where different mechanisms relate to each other in a meaningful manner. Place
embraces the holistic experience as more important than the individual elements
that constitute it. As Norberg-Schulz said: " A place is therefore a qualitative, ’total’
phenomenon, which we cannot reduce to any of its properties, such as spatial relationships,
without losing its concrete nature out of sight" (1980, p.8). Looking at cities as places
rather than spaces opens up the perspective in examining not only the one-sided
study of the city as an urban model or a physical structure, but rather encour-
ages to include along with the spatial structure, the city as an experiential space.
1Phenomenology is derived from the Greek word ‘fainomenon’ which means what appears to be. It deals primarily with the study of conscious experience in understanding the world.
2Heidegger, 1971, Poetry, Language, Thought, and Bachelard, 1964, The Poetics of Space.
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
Figure 1.1: Tokyo with Mt Fuji view.Photo by : William Penvice
To explore the city as a holistic experience, people’s interaction and perception of
their lived environment should be taken into account; elements that I will call the
intangible values of a place throughout this thesis.
Edward Relph (1976) in the domain of human geography3 was primarily con-
cerned with the human experience in the place. He was unsatisfied with the defi-
nition of place in the early seventies and sought to explore the deeper meaning of place. To comprehend the notion of place, he suggests for a deep insight to how
space is experienced and used by people. He identified different spatial experi-
ences (pragmatic space, existential space) and contrasted it with concepts of space
that are more abstract (cognitive space, planning a space, etc). Even though the
different spatial modes lead to a different human experience, Relph, like Norberg-
Schulz argues that all is experienced as an integral whole. To explore place in
its depth, Relph started talking about place in terms of identity; the identity of
and with place. He describes the identity of place as “ persistent sameness and unity
which allows that [place] to be differentiated from others” (1976, p.45). However he em-
phasizes that to entirely understand the notion of place one has to speak of the
identity with place, by observing the intensity of the meaning and intentions that
one holds for a place. He expresses place as “significant centres of our immediate ex-
3A humanistic geographer is someone that explores place as important element in human ex-perience. Human geography examined the place though the perspective of human activity andits interrelationships of the physical environment. Johnston, Ron (2000). "Human Geography". In
Johnston, Ron; Gregory, Derek; Pratt, Geraldine et al. The Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford:
Blackwell. p. 353–360.
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1.2. WHAT IS PLACE?
periences of the world” (1976, p.141). His bigger contribution to the understandingof place was his concept of Insideness and Outsideness. He refers to Insideness as
the exact meaning that a place has for a person, associated to the degree that the
person feels inside a place and what are the particular meanings like attachment,
and involvement of that place. Relph implied that the more is a person involved or
‘inside’ a place, the eventual identity with the place will be more powerful. Relph’s
concept of Insideness and Outsideness requires a reinterpretation considering the
place’s condition in our contemporary era. Looking at Tokyo, or other big cities in
which people are not involved in the proceedings that construct the place (such asdesign process or decision making) making them inactive in the chronic changes in
the city. Does this mean that finally we will have two different and/or contrasting
identities (people and city) that evolve? Or does identity of the people in Tokyo
remain unaltered as the people have a minimum involvement with the city they
live in? These are concerns that are going to be examined in detailed in the final
chapter of this work.
In the sociological domain, Thomas Gieryn portrays place as a discrete geo-
graphic location, that has a physical form (giving examples of buildings and to-pography), and enriched with meanings and values (Gieryn, 2000). He underlines
that place is more than a backdrop for social phenomena; instead it is a media-
tor, it is a social construct because it aids in creating human interactions and is an
important actor in social processes4. Environmental psychologist Irwin Altman
which has extensively worked with the relationship between environment and so-
cial psychology, defined place as “a space that has been given meaning through per-
sonal, group, or cultural processes” (Altman and Low,1992, p.5). Furthermore, they
argue that “space” is transformed into “ place” by the idea of “ place attachment”,which is the affective bond that people carry for a physical location that provides
for them a setting for experience. Other scholars argue that place attachment is
not a process related to “ place qua place ”5 (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003, p.7),
but often based on other attributes such as interpersonal, community and cultural
relationships. Riley even added: “It may not be attachment to a particular place that is
central; rather, it may be affective attachments to ideas, people, psychological states, past
4Gieryin, A space for place in sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, 2000, p. 463-496.5Definition = place as being place.
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
experiences, and culture that is crucial” (as cited in Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003,p.10). Furthermore Cuba and Hummon (1993) define “place attachment” outside
the boundaries of social constructs adding that people not only construct places
but places also affect the behavior of people.
In contrast with the more emotional understanding of place for the geogra-
phers, psychologists have researched place using quantitative methods. In the
field of environmental psychology, place has been described as “behaviour set-
tings" that are defined by Wicker (1979) as patterns of human and non human ac-
tivities that develop social productions over time. While most of the connoisseursof place look for meaning and experience in place, they do not talk about the mech-
anisms for place construction or the powers implicated in place meanings. David
Harvey has observed: “The first step down the road is to insist that place in whatever
guise, is like space and time, a social construct. The only interesting question that can
be asked is, by what social process(es) is place constructed?” Within the same frame of
investigating processes of social constructs the work of Keith Michael and Steve
(1993) who concentrate on the politics of place, wherein places are the neutralizers
of conflicts and contradictions. The politics of place refer to the power strugglesthat need to be identified in order to understand the different meanings of place
that are questioned at a particular moment. Place represents according to them, a
particular political mobilization at a given time at a given space.
1.3 Place-Identity
Questions addressing the concepts of space and place are also noticeable in
the field of cultural geography, and notably through the work Doreen Massey.Massey (1994) explains space as a timeless, absolute dimension, while place might
be thought of as space integrally entwined with time. She states that place is a
positioned practice assembled out of social relations. Place is thus alive because
it is consisted of living beings’ activities that create the place, that in turns creates
them. Particularly, we find in Massey’s conception that a place allows the creation
of identities that are associated with it. Like other identity theories, social relations
are important in their role of creating the subject, but place is included as a criti-
cal, additional element in shaping identities. Thus we have to be lucid that, in one
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1.3. PLACE-IDENTITY
hand we have talked about the identity of place as those distinct qualities physicalor abstract that characterize a place, and on the other hand place-identity as the
resulting social identity emerging from a place.
Identity is generally regarded as a concept considered mainly by psychologists,
though it is widely argued that for identity construction, the place with its phys-
ical settings have been largely ignored in the field of psychology (Hauge, 2007).
Psychologist theories tend to distinguish between “identity”, “self” and “person-
ality”, while others perceive them as synonymous terms. As our focus in this thesis
is the place, we will use the explanation of Casey (2001) that positions identity bothinside the mind and body, where the body as a tool for interaction and communi-
cation with the world outside the mind. As he pronounced “there is no place without
self and no self without place” (Casey, 2001, p.406).
Consequently, a further dimension can be added to the understanding of place,
as it is argued that within spatial boundaries and the reciprocal social interactions,
identity is constructed. In the field of urban affairs, human geographers Knox and
Marston define identity as the sense that people make of themselves through their
subjective feelings based on their everyday experiences and wider social relations
(2004, p.508). Brian Osborne also argues that identity is constructed by human
behavior in reaction to the places and he adds that identity is not inherited but
constructed gradually based on our live experiences across time (Osborne, 2001).
Actually, the term place identity has been used initially by Proshansky who has
put place and the individual’s involvement in a place as part of oneself, explain-
ing the term as a " potpourri of memories, conceptions, interpretations, ideas, and related
feelings about specific physical settings, as well as types of settings" (Proshansky, Fabianand Kaminoff, 1987, p.60). He segregates the perceptions of place into two cate-
gories; one is related with the perceptions, memories, thoughts and values and the
second is with the interaction in the different spatial settings. Hence the nature of
place, or a city is defined by a set of values, physical, social or abstract like feel-
ings and ideas, that we do not usually come across in the urban studies. Osborne
(2001) explains the elements that are affiliated with place identity construction, that
is mechanisms adopted for the creation of identities. Osborne explains that people
live in places that they can identify and where tradition, heritage and symbols are
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
essential elements in forming some sort of identity:places [...] that are mnemonic devices for national narratives, shared values,and putative hopes for the future. The imaginative use of symbols and myths,and of monuments, commemorations, and performances, have become thestuff of history, tradition, and heritage, all directed towards nurturing someform of identity. (Osborne, 2001, p.3)
A more remarkable approach and central to this work is the concept of Place-
Identity as elaborated further by anthropologist Cohen (2000) who agrees that
place is a social construction, extensively pointing out that place is a constructorof identity and that identity is itself a result of the human interaction that “takes
place” in a certain place. But what he initiates is a discussion that identity is not
associated with tradition. The role of place or context as he argues is to provide
meeting places for social interactions to happen. He points out that interactions
are not limited to people but objects and rituals are as important in creating inter-
actions, hence identities. For our case of study, as we will further point out, the
non-human interactions in a city, the objects, the rituals form an important part
of the peoples’ daily routines. These elements become ideological map referencesand are in fact important indicators for people of the place they belong. The fol-
lowing table illustrates the way that we will approach the different questions of
identity in this work.
Figure 1.2: Approach of the question of identity
Place-Identity, thus, in this context is not a fixed or permanent value, even if
it is rooted on tradition. It is a variable characteristic composed of different inter-
twining layers of social, physical or mental values add up together in a time-based
order. What is also important to remember is that places do not carry the same
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1.4. SHIFTING IDENTITIES AND NEW MEANINGS OF PLACES
meanings across time. They do not have a permanent meaning, but rather valuesthat are renegotiated perpetually and therefore the contribution to identity varies
accordingly (Twigger-Ross, Bonaiuto and Breakwell, 2003)
1.4 Shifting identities and new meanings of places
In this section, I will introduce various phenomena that are regarded as a threat
to a place’s identity as they produce conditions of perpetual change and fading of
existing realities. While we have talked extensively of the concept of place, wewill in the first section consider the opposite term of place, the non-places as Marc
Auge called them or the concept of placelessness as Edward Relph first pointed out
in the seventies. In the second section we are going to discuss in detail different
conditions of our supermodern era, like globalization, time-space compression in
order to observe how the globalized and highly technological era attributed to the
changing notions of place. And finally in the last part of this section we are going
to discuss the role of memories in the city that is under constant development and
change, given that it is the tool for recording events and constructing identities.
1.4.1 Placelessness and Non-places
Edward Relph, with his work in the 70’s indicates how places are becoming
placeless and associates the loss of place and place diversity to a larger loss of
meaning. He argues that the ‘authentic’ attitude which characterized pre-industrial
and handicraft cultures creating a ‘sense of place’ have been largely lost and re-
placed with an ‘inauthentic’ attitude. He describes placelessness as the existenceof relatively homogenous and standardized landscapes which diminish the local
specificity and variety of places that characterized pre-industrial societies. Exam-
ples of inauthentic places and conditions that generate them include: mass pro-
duction housing, Disneyland, the culture of McDonaldization, tourist landscapes,
commercial strips, new towns, suburbs and the international style in architecture.
Relph suggests that, in general, placelessness arises from firstly the kitsch, ex-
plained as the uncritical acceptance of mass values and secondly, the technique,
that sets efficiency as the primary concern. Kitsch and technique are manifested
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
through practices like mass communication, mass culture, and central authority,those being the “undermining of place for both individuals and cultures, and the casual
replacement of the diverse and significant places of the world with anonymous spaces and
exchangeable environments” (Relph, 1976, p. 143).
Figure 1.3: Tokyo, Narita Airport. Photo by
the author.
The more recent work by French
anthropologist Marc Auge, has used
the term non-place to refer to similar
sites as Relph, but it is more specificin reference to our contemporary era.
Auge refers mostly to places of transit
like airports or motorway stations that
are static themselves but carry transient
meanings or refer to other places di-
rectly. Cresswell (2009, p.6) interprets
that Auge does not see that "‘non-places’
are inauthentic but simply a condition of the way we lead our lives now”. Non-
places reflect conditions of the era of
supermodernity that are different from
the conventional view of place as some-
thing static, bounded and linked to
the traditional view of dwelling as pre-
sented historically. Auge suggests view-
ing these places under a new conditionthat of an anthropology of a non-place
that is mediated by the current cultural state of supermodernity. Supermodernity,
argues Auge (1992), is a condition marked by three characteristics, all apparent in
non-places. The first one is the advanced communications and information flows
that lead to an overflow of images of spaces and times, different to those that the
person is situated at a moment. Secondly he talks about the acceleration of his-
tory that led to the phenomenon of ‘time-space compression. The physical dis-
tances between places are reduced with the means of planes or electronic media
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1.4. SHIFTING IDENTITIES AND NEW MEANINGS OF PLACES
in a way that you can fit everything a room, or using electronic media one could be present mentally or verbally in a different place from the one he is found phys-
ically. The third characteristic of the supermodern era is increased individualism
which in turn brings about a weakening of social relationships. The condition of
supermodernity produces non-places that he describes as follows: “Si un lieu peut
se définir comme identitaire, relationnel et historique, un espace qui ne peut se
définir ni comme identitaire, ni comme relationnel, ni comme historique définira
un non-lieu."6, (Auge, 1992, p.100).
Additionally, I would argue that our supermodern era and the appearance of non-places has shifted meanings of identity too, both the place’s and the individ-
ual’s. On one hand the person’s identity is constructed through an imitation of the
environment that is now traversing into a new time, raising the need for reassess-
ment of both the place and the individual involvement within. On the other hand,
the fact that sense of place is attaining new meanings is intriguing to investigate,
and many questions are to be raised. Massey (1994) who specialises on issues of
globalisation and the re-conceptualisation of place suggests that there is a “ [ . . . ]
an increasing uncertainty about what we mean by ‘places’ and how we relate to them. Howin the face of all this movement and intermixing can we retain any sense of local place and
its particularity?” (Massey, 1994, p.146). Our query about Tokyo in the next chapter
will precede in identifying elements that demonstrate identity through present-
ing features of locality and culture that are present despite their apparent absence,
when looking into the places’ physical attributes.
1.4.2 Our contemporary world
The emergence of new places is notably considered as a product of the super-
modern era we are living at the moment where the notion of place differs greatly
from the notion of place in the modernity. Modernity was the moment where the
old and the new intertwine together to form an identical space to be viewed as a co-
herent whole. Yet, the concrete euphoria put forward by postmodernism has some-
how reprieved the utopian projects put forward by Modernists. Postmodernism
6Translation by the author : If a place carries meanings of identity and is defined as a relationaland historical space then a non-place can be defined as an identicalness, un-relational and un-
historical place.
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
presents a rupture in the rationalisation of the modernist norms and has put em-phasis on individual expression. This often leads in generating a fragmented view
of the world. Contrary to the general disintegration that postmodernism brought
about, the era of supermodernity presents an acceleration of history that induces
an excess and duality of all things. Successively this renders acceleration in the
transformation of spaces and places7.
Concepts of placelessness and non-places have implied that place has been a
static concept, as augmented mobility alters the sense of place (Cresswell 2009,
p.7). Within this perspective, increased mobility within the place’s extents (interms of people, ideas, and spatial structures) threatens the rootedness of a place,
hence its identities. Increased mobility can be also applied to the constant mobility
of people, either through choice or by compulsion is another factor that is consider
a threat to place. Cresswell (2009, p.8) explains by giving examples of “the homeless,
refugees, gypsy, travelers, traveling salesmen, and others who are perceived as mobile are
labeled as a threat to place and the moral values associated with it.”
Subsequently, the notion of globalization also illustrates ideas of increased mo-
bility and in turn manipulates basic conceptions of a given place, by allowing thecreation of homogenised places, worldwide symbols and ad hoc cultures. It can
be argued that there is a loss in the connection between geographical place and
cultural experience arising from the fact that the local, autonomous and distinct
place is now produced extensively in other parts of the globe, a result of an in-
creasingly mobile world. Likewise, Gieryn (2000) argues that there is no ‘space
for place’ in sociology as the postmodern theories define space within a network
(flows of goods, capital and information) that reduce the importance of place. He
also argues that in our cosmopolitan and modern society, where retail and foodgiant become omnipresent everywhere, places are becoming more alike. He urges
sociologists to have a more place sensitive approach, as they often leave the matter
of place to geographers.
While some assume that globalization has homogenous effects, reducing the
particularity of places and increasing placelessness, others point to its uneven ef-
7Definition of modernity, postmodernity and hypermodernity are based on teachings of sociol-ogist Gilles Lipovetsky, so did the readings of Paul Virilio : From Modernism to Hypermodernism and
Beyond.
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1.4. SHIFTING IDENTITIES AND NEW MEANINGS OF PLACES
fects across the globe and the defensive reaction which seeks to maintain or recoverplace differences . Additionally many researchers have proved cultural identities
are not destroyed, and there is rather a proliferation of cultural identity through
the process of globalisation (Tomlinson, 2003). The idea that homogenisation is a
product of globalisation is though greatly debated between scholars. Several au-
thors have pointed out that globalisation advances parallel with localisation, as the
effects of increased mobility and homogenised places create the need for differen-
tiation. Swyngedouw (2004) has called this effect glocalisation and argues that the
effect of globalization has created a proliferation of identities. Likewise, Robertson(1995) employs the term glocalisation to overcome the shortcomings of the notion
of globalization because it has “[. . . ] involved and increasingly involves the creation
and incorporation of locality [. . . ]”, (Robertson, 1995, p.40).
Another contemporary concern that adds to the fluidity of a place, attributing
its fixed characteristics is time-space compression. Time space compression refers
to the perception of space across all geographical dimensions at one single time
frame. It describes the condition where spatial and geographical boundaries dis-solve and where customs or cultures can flow freely in a no time. “Time-space
compression” is a concept developed by geographer Harvey (1989) as a condition
of Post modernity. He explains that this is an era that spatial and temporal dis-
tances are reduced due to the outcome of the technologies of communication, air
travel and the economics of open markets. Under the light of the above phenom-
ena, we can argue that cities become more equal the urban identity is weakened
as contemporary cultures merge. Moreover, with the increase flow of information,
the societal liberalization and globalized flows, Virilio (1995) argues that we areheading towards a " fundamental loss of orientation and of a duplication of sensible real-
ity". We are now living in global time. History was once very rich because it was
local; because spatial boundary times existed. Now history will happen in uni-
versal time, as an outcome of instantaneity. Global time, as Paul Virilio argues, is
dominating the local time-frame of our cities making what is local into global and
what is global into local. He goes on to argue that this deconstruction of the world
comes along consequences for the relationships amongst citizens. How human
interactions are possible in the emerging places of global times will be a concern
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
address in the last chapter of this thesis.
1.5 Urban memories
Memories are an important tool for identity construction as it is the means that
all information is processed and passed on from one generation to the next. Reg-
istering memories is the subconscious tool engaged by people to accumulate their
environment, the events related to their daily lives, the recalling of history, the
remembrance of myths and legacies. By listing the various aspects of place asmemories, people are constructing a mental image map of what a place means to
them. Memories thus become a tool for social or collective identity construction.
Spaces are strongly connected with history and memories; memories of places,
memories of the community, memories of individuals, memories of events, and
memories of changing landscape, memories of loved ones. The preservation of
history via the sustainment of memories is also a political tool used to enhance
the identity of place by preserving or creating structures such as national sym-
bols that demonstrate the power and rigor of a place (Hayden, 1995). Memoriessymbolizing national power are usually transmitted in places through structures
such as monuments, while memories that demonstrate the identity of a place or
the cultural inheritance are seen through the preservation of historic buildings.
Memories are not a device that aids in recalling solely the past but it is also
used to record current tendencies that will successively be the memories of the fu-
ture. We could argue that a threat for the identity of a place occurs when there is
an urban memory loss considered as a menace for the collective memory. Collec-
tive memory is when all individual memories are put together forming a commonmemory for the urban fabric. Crinson (2005) explains that collective memories of
urban landscapes lasts for generations and allow people to understand themselves
and hence to create an identity. He says that the “city as a physical landscape and col-
lection of objects and practices that enable recollections of the past and that embody the past
through traces of the city’s sequential building and rebuilding.”
Memories in this work requires special attention as we are looking at cities that
change at fast rhythms, and where mobility creates a rather disturb and uneven
image of one’s environment. Urban memory loss can occur at times that there is
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1.5. URBAN MEMORIES
a major transformation in the social or physical environment (Ikbal, Aysegül andEren, 2006). The mutations of the physical environment are more common today in
Asia and other developing countries where urbanism on the fast lane is underway
and where urban memories are at stake of vanishing. This relatively fast pace
that the city change possibly creates a new sense of place that although it reflects
the pace of contemporary life, it does not provide huge possibilities of immediate
transactions, communication, or the time needed for the residents to register these
places in the mind as memories or construct definite identities. The social changes
affecting the urban memory could be related to economic investments, politicalchanges like immigration policies, cultural activities and so on.
Studies in other cities in Europe and America have often questioned place in
relation to these urban regenerations and have proved how urban mutations can
affect the lives of the habitants. Any urban transformation directly implies a break
in memory, which can overwhelm or even disorientate the habitants. Graaf (2009a)
has extensively studied emotions of habitants during urban regenerations and has
questioned the feeling at home during these times. He noted that during thesetimes, the residents have evoked strong feelings as they see their neighborhoods
demolished and regenerated.
While in many countries in Europe there is often a strong sense of preservation
as an attempt to keep the memory of the city alive, this is critiqued by many as a
preservationist approach and historical memorialisation (Gospodini, 2002). With
historic leftovers and with the alibi of nostalgia, preservationists tend to create fake
traditional environments that do not at all represent the contemporary era or thenew memories we want to create to represent our time in a given place. Using
Tokyo for our case study we will present an alternative approach of evaluating
memories in the urban tissue. Tokyo is a city where the memory is linked with
movement; it is rather a city of amnesia; instead of preservation; it is constantly
accumulating new events creating a layering of memories one on top of the other,
that eventually fade away. Barthes (1982, p.42) writes about Tokyo: “This sound of
the place is that of history; for the signifying name here is not a memory but an anamne-
sis... ”
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
1.6 Conclusion
We have elucidated on the different concepts of places and non-places and the
identity concerns that are involved within. Lastly, we have examined the role
of memories as a tool that processes the identity construction before we set the
ground for the exploration of Tokyo city. Questions of place are important when
looking into a global city that challenges the fundamental fixed ideas of a place
brought by the world of flows that global cities suggest. Contemporary places are
not only a concern because of the changes that global world markets and tech-nology produce directly, but moreover places’ built environments are being trans-
formed radically. Cities are no longer places fixed in time, neither reflect sedentary
ideas, but as Sepe (2004) also argues “the contemporary city becomes a site of complex-
ity and simultaneity, which leads to situations of transience and change” (2004, p.2).
We have explained that place is viewed by some as essential for human ex-
istence while others focus on the social processes that construct a place. In this
work, we will deal with the phenomenological understanding of place where we
will look at it as a social construct and as a ground for human experience. Theunderstanding of place identity by Cohen (2000) is particularly influential since he
has facilitated our exploration into the direction of objects, rituals, and the imag-
inative use of the myths and traditions in order to understand the contemporary
identity of a perplex city. Given that Tokyo is a non-historic place (Sacchi 2005;
Wadwekar and Kobayashi 2009; Cybriwsky 2005; Koolhaas 1998) where tradition
is absent from spatial structures, is therefore rational to initiate an exploration of
different methods when looking at its identity. Therefore, we propose to examine
in this work, place as a holistic experience by incorporating tangible and intangiblevalues as a way to evaluate the complex and transient contemporary city.
Tokyo is appropriate for the study because its status as a world and global city
embraces conditions of mobility and exchange, features of a non-place. Moreover,
what is intriguing about the Tokyo case is that its built environment is also a mo-
bile element; it is a place that is in perpetual transition because of its constant de-
velopment. Addressing Tokyo in this quest of urban identity of the continuously
changing place opens up perspectives of how to identify with similar concerns of
other cities in the developing world.
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1.6. CONCLUSION
We will explain in this work how Tokyo in its entire entity and the image itprojects to the world could be considered as a non-place. While non-places gen-
erally address to specific locations such as supermarkets, airports, McDonalds,
highways, train stations, residence units, we will argue in this thesis that Tokyo
city could be considered as a non-place in its totality fulfilling those definitions of
Auge, Relph and Cresswell. Given that the non-places is not an anthropological
place and not referring to existing places how does the humankind conform and
confront these places that are more and more present in our contemporary era? As
we have discussed above, identity construction is examined under the explorationof place and space, and associations created within like ideas, memories, social re-
lations. Consequently, we will look into what kinds of identities are created and by
which processes in accordance to non-places. What are the new identities arising
in non-places? Does their omnipresence threaten the identity of place or that of its
urban habitants? Where do we find locality and identity in places that are becom-
ing more and more homogenous? What kind of human interactions are present
within these places? How do we understand and maintain the identity of a city
that is constantly changing? To which extent does the habitant relates or assimi-lates with such a city?
The theoretical framework of place has shown us that the integration the hu-
man perception and involvement is vital in understanding the place. This is partic-
ularly true in our contemporary era that with the emergence of non-places peoples’
relationships are changing. The study of place has also indicated that an interpre-
tation of myths, symbols traditions and memories can also be adopted to reveal
the identity of place. Using these phenomenological methods we are going to sur-vey Tokyo’s identity as place that creates identities by enabling the association
between lived experiences; stories of people, myths or heritage and translation of
history into the urban fabric of Tokyo. Consequently, we will examine initially, in
the next chapter, the tangible features of Tokyo, that is, the built environment in or-
der to affirm its actual complex and temporal nature. The subsequent two chapters
will deal with the intangible elements of Tokyo: in the third chapter we will look at
conceptual and metaphorical connotations that Tokyo retain in its urban structure
and the fourth chapter will directly inquire on people’s perception and interac-
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CHAPTER 1. IDENTITY OF PLACES AND NON-PLACES
tion with place, as well as lifestyle. The assessment of the tangible and intangiblevalues of a place is aiming at exposing those essentials that are indispensable in
acknowledging the identity of a contemporary city.
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CHAPTER 2
TOKYO
Tokyo lacks a visible plan, of the kind that we choose to find reassur-
ing in London, Paris or Vienna. Tokyo is the paradigm of the modern
de-centred metropolis. It’s not so much that it disorients you – rather,
you are not psychologically centered in the first place. Tokyo is a place-
by-place place – how each location relates to the last remains obscure.
Lacking vistas and grand plans, you have no sense of travel between
points: rather, you leave an experience, and start another somewhere
else. The intervening motion is out of place and time.
— Ashihara (1994, p.21)
Figure 2.1: Tokyo, Satellite view.Photo by Google Earth. Edited by the author
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
2.1 Introduction
I have visited Tokyo on various occasions, a couple of times physically and nu-
merous times mentally using the Google Earth tool on the Internet. Even though
the tool is great in understanding the physical configuration of Tokyo and its ur-
ban complexity, it has revealed little regarding place identity. Looking solely into
the geographical location and spatial structures does not reveal a place’s identity
and in our case this is particularly pertinent as spatial structures are a rather tem-
porary feature of this city. In this chapter we are going to consider the role of place in Tokyo, a fluid and regenerating city, a city that no history is evoked in its
physical structures and where past traces are not visible (Cybriwsky, 2005; Jinnai,
1994). To evoke the spirit of Tokyo, it is essential to have a look beyond buildings
and physical structures. Places have meanings, individual and collective legacies,
and personal or shared memories that structure both how people interact with the
place itself and how they conduct social interactions in the place.
The investigation of Tokyo under the title of place is the guiding force of this
thesis for its exploration as a quantitative totality, and not solely in spatial terms.The attempt of this chapter will be to evoke the spirit of Tokyo through the dis-
covery of meanings of tangible forms that are relative to the contemporary city
of Tokyo. The understanding of Edward Relph identity of and with place is go-
ing to be designated as a research tactic; identity of place will be viewed within
the exploration of spatial structures, special historical features of Tokyo and the
representative image of Tokyo through texts, while, identity with place will be
brought forward by an evaluation of peoples’ perception and ideas of place sup-
ported from interviews conducted in Tokyo. Identity with place will also includean assessment of maps drawn by the interviewees that indicate how they are in-
volved in the understanding of their city. The tangible elements analyzed in this
chapter will include a collection of information about the place, the significance
of its architecture, its urban structure, the natural environment of the place. The
intangible features examined in the following two chapters involve the analysis
of everyday places that people frequent, objects or other physical structures that
people encounter and then we will move into an investigation of the perceptions
and understanding of people, both locals and foreigners.
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2.1. INTRODUCTION
King (1995) writes extensively on world cities and particularly on the effects of globalization on built environment and on transnational and global identities, has
identified three representational levels to view such a city. The first level addresses
the city’s built environment, the feature that will be discussed in this chapter. The
second level addresses the symbolic level which not only deals with how the city is
read, spoken, and written (these is what King calls the discursive representations
of the city), but also how the city is “visually represented”. This would be a theme
that will be addressed throughout this work where the symbolic representation of
the city through metaphors of Japanese culture brought forward by many writersthat attempted to explain the city, focusing on its particular transient quality. King
argues that only with the exploration of the first two levels we can deal with the
third level that involves the “mental constructs” of the world city. In this thesis
we will approach the subject from all three levels with a particular concern of the
relationship between the discursive representations of the city and the resulting
“mental constructs” held in the minds of those who interact with these spaces on
various levels1. In this way we will be dealing also with tangible and intangible
qualities of the place, an imperative measure as our previous readings on place hasput forward. The topic of mental constructs will be covered in the fourth chapter
of this thesis, the result of a series of interviews conducted in Tokyo.
In this chapter,we will firstly present some facts and the general image of Tokyo.
Section 2.2 will give an overall impression of its spatial structure and its particular
urban system in order to aid the reader to an understanding of its spatial entity
before we raise questions on its contemporary identity. Section 2.3 will initiate the
topic of the vanishing memories in the city’s urban fabric across time, while Sec-tion 2.4 will present the same issue focusing in the post second world war period.
The conclusion of the chapter (Section 2.5) will discuss how this condition of the
liquid city could be a concern in defining the contemporary identity of the city.
1Everyday people, writers, philosophers, architects.
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
2.2 Tokyo, an introduction
Tokyo2 is Japan’s largest city and also one of Japan’s 47 prefectures, but is called
a metropolis rather than a prefecture. One in four Japanese people live in Tokyo3
which occupies a surface area of 3% of the country’s territory. When the term
Tokyo is used, we should distinguish between Tokyo metropolis, Tokyo proper4
and Tokyo prefecture. When we talk about Tokyo metropolis, we are addressing
to Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa, all
together consisting of 23 city wards, 26 cities, 5 towns and 8 villages. It has an as-tonishing total of 33 million inhabitants, making it the most populous metropolis
in the world5, followed by New York City that has a population of 25 million habi-
tants. The urban density of the metropolis accounts for 4049 habitants per km2.
Tokyo prefecture is composed of the 23 city wards (that is considered the center)
plus the administrative district, has a total area of 2,188-km2 and a population of
about 13 million people. Daytime populations mark significant changes from the
actual numbers, as there is an increase of 2.5 million people that commute daily to
the prefecture. The center of Tokyo, Tokyo proper or Tokyo-to, is a 622-km2
area,assembled by the so-called 23 “special-ward” area, has a population of 8.8 million
inhabitants, and a density of 14,152 habitants per km2 is reached 6.
2.3 Image through urban configuration
Tokyo is also regarded as a world city, a city that is considered to be of great
importance in the world economic system. Sociologist Saskia Sassen, in her book
The global city: New York, London, Tokyo, classifies Tokyo along with New York andLondon, and opposed the global city terminology to that of a mega city. World
cities share parallel structures economically, spatially and socially that are defined
by global processes, increased integration of world commodities, finished goods
2The two kanjis of To-Kyo stand for Eastern (To) and Capital (Kyo).3According to a 2009 statistic of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry the Japanse
total population has reached about 127 million people.4City proper is a definition by UN, as the city boundaries without its suburbs.5Forstall (2004, p.33) Table 56Source: Tokyo Metropolitan government official website; www.metro.tokyo.jp/
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2.3. IMAGE THROUGH URBAN CONFIGURATION
and financial markets (Sassen, 1991, p. 4). Tokyo, despite other megacities andglobal cities does not seem to face several of the related problems of urbanization:
noise, dirty, the urban poor, floating population, insufficient housing and educa-
tion provision. Tokyo is as well, probably the safest metropolis and not as polluted
(Cybriwsky, 1999, p.226).
Figure 2.2: Tokyo’s view from the Tokyo
Metropolitan Government Building. Photo byauthor.
Tokyo is the descendant of Edo, a
small fishing village that was first forti-
fied in the 12th Century. Shogun Toku-
gawa Ieyasu made Edo his base in 1603and the city became the center of mil-
itary power in Japan. By the 18th cen-
tury Edo was one of the most populous
cities of the world with about one mil-
lion inhabitants. The Tokugawa Shogu-
nate was finally overthrown in 1868
and reasserted the emperor to power
starting a new period in Japan, theMeiji Restoration. The Meiji Emperor
made Edo his permanent base, trans-
forming the Edo castle (originally built
in 1457) into his palace and established the city of Tokyo.
Tokyo is quite different from the conventional city as we know it, that is or-
ganized, ordered, centralized with a traditional center, historical monuments and
wherein people can be orientated effortlessly. Tokyo, a city of anarchy is rather
an accumulation of towns merged together forming the grand ensemble that weknow today as Tokyo. Jinnai describes:
Tokyo is often called an agglomeration of villages [...] Numerous localitiesof distinct social and physical character have formed in Tokyo, each definedin part by the natural landscape. In each of these areas a symbiosis of thecommunity and the local shrine may be seen that is based on the spatial modelof the rural village (1987, p. 7)
Tokyo unlike Paris or New York that are based on axial grid system for their
urban planning is a decentralized city without axes. A European or American city
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
evolves around its centre, usually a place fortified with meanings either divine orpolitical, a place that demonstrates the social reality and is ‘full’ in the sense that
is exploited by the general public. Tokyo possesses no such center, the Japanese
cities have never been conceived as a cosmic center affirming Franco Purini’s dec-
laration that Tokyo establishes the proof that God does not exist (Sacchi, 2004, p.
142). Sacchi explains: “C’est une thèse que l’on peut admettre si on pense à la configu-
ration chaotique de la ville, à l’absence d’une structure hiérarchique, à son consumérisme
effréné, à l’impénétrableabilité de sa dimension éthique et spirituele” . Tokyo possess no
center in the conventional means, whereas its geographic center, the Royal Impe-rial Palace, is considered a “void” because it is inaccessible to the general public
and is inhabited by an emperor that people rarely see. Barthes (1982, p. 47) writes:
L’une des deux villes puissantes de la modernité est donc construite autourd’un anneau opaque des murailles, d’eaux, de toits et d’arbres, dont le centrelui-même n’est plus qu’une idée évaporée. [. . . ] De cette manière, nous dit-onl’imaginaire se déploie circulairement, par détours et retours le long d’un sujetvide7
Actually we can argue that the absence of order in the urban structure is a fea-ture that attributed Tokyo with the title of an energetic and experiential city. It
gives architects a sense of freedom to create without constraints and that is how
we find some of the world’s most experimental buildings in Tokyo’s urban fabric.
The apparent chaos produces a sense of creativity that turned Tokyo into “an ex-
traordinary perhaps the most extraordinary – shop window of contemporary architecture”
(Sacchi 2004, p. 223)
Another basic attribute in distinguishing Tokyo as opposed to a European city,
is that the latest is read from the inside while a Japanese city from the outside. Jin-nai (1994) explains that the urban space of a European city is produced by man and
that is how and where the urban beauty is generated. A European city evolves and
extends outwards from its center from which important meanings are conveyed. It
is therefore, better understood when looking at it from within under examination
of individual entities, where each one of them is important. But Tokyo (and other
7Translation by the author: “One of the two most powerful cities of modernity is built around aring of opaque walls, water, roofs and trees, the center itself being more than an evaporated idea.[...] In this way we are told, the imaginary unfolds circularly, by detours and returns along an
empty subject.”
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2.3. IMAGE THROUGH URBAN CONFIGURATION
Japanese cities), have been structured around natural elements we experience bet-ter the cities from the outside, from an aerial photo, to perceive it as a whole, in
such a way that mountains, water, and hills become an important and symbolic
part of the cityscape. Indeed, nature for the Japanese culture is not a separate
element from the city, but the two interweave together to form coherent liaison
(Sacchi, 2005). The city’s image reminds of a forest, that is dense and disordered,
and striving to reach towards the sky is a delightful aspiration, to serve rather the
need of capital flows than arriving to the heavens. That is why many Japanese
labelled Tokyo with the sobriquet “concrete jungle”8
.
Figure 2.3: Yamanote and Shitamachi. Map
source: Wikipedia
Tokyo is divided in two distinct
parts: The high city, called the Yaman-
ote9 area and the low city called Shi-
tamachi 10 that runs along the water-
front. These two distinct areas have
been present as two distinct parts of the
city since the establishment of Tokyo.
Historically the high city was inhabited by the aristocrats and the samurais, the
higher rank people, while the ‘common
people’ lived along the waterfront, the
Shitamachi, the entertainment district.
Shitamachi, with its networks of canals
and rivers, has been described as Asia’s
Venice, where transportation of goods, commuting, and even dining have been ac-
tivities that took place by the water.Yamanote and Shitamachi were radically transformed the last century or rather
the last decades. Actually, one of the most permanent physical features in Tokyo’s
urban fabric is the Yamanote line, the most important commuter train in Japan,
ridden daily by 3.5 million passengers11 . This loop train was the first train to be
8 Jinnai (1996, p.37)9Yamanote means literally towards the mountain.
10The direct translation of Shitamachi is low city.11Wikipedia: “For comparison, the New York City Subway carries 5.08 million passengers per
day on 26 lines serving 468 stations and the London Underground carries 2.7 million passengers
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
built in Japan after it has opened its doors to the west. Construction started in1885 and the loop line with the existing 29 stations was only completed in 1925.
The trucks were built to follow the existing Edo Castle moats of the Yamanote area
and stations were built on the intersection of water and roads, erasing the element
of active life near the water and creating instead centers of commercial activities
(Sande, 2007, p.10).
The Yamanote line, though, is one of the 121 passenger lines that operate in
Tokyo. There are various types of trains such us regional trains, mono rails, sub-
ways, cable cars, trams that are run by 30 different operators. Tokyo has one of the most elaborated and extensive urban railway systems in the word12 intercon-
necting a total of 882 rail stops. At peak times the train becomes unbearable to use,
where people are pushed in the trains by professional push-men in white uniforms
called "oshiya" in Japanese. The train becomes an active element in the city because
of its physical presence and indispensable for people as 20 million people use it
for their daily transport. For film directors, Japanese (Ozu Yasujiro) and western
alike (Wim Wenders) train becomes an important element for the perception of
Tokyo. Train is ridden daily, and many activities evolve around and within trainstations. We will discuss further about trains in the fourth chapter as a new emerg-
ing and distinguishable characteristic in the city, because it becomes a component
that people identify with, and through it understand their whole environment and
themselves13.
Tokyo is a city full of surprises, as every city ward is distinctively different
from the next, where the old intertwines with the new, and the traditional with
the modern. Considering its vast scale, density, diversity and chaotic features, it
is the extraordinary system of transportation that holds the city together, keepingit away from falling apart. The image of the city reminds of a big fun park filled
with roller coasters created by the network of trains, colorful lights and advertising
signs, and where a complex system of structures is omnipresent with the only rule
per day on 12 lines serving 275 stations.”12Source :Urban Transport Factbook, Tokyo-Yokohama Suburban Rail Summary13The interviews of the last chapter demonstrate how the train is important for the daily percep-
tion of the city. The train is an identifiable component for the most of the interviewees. A smallpercentage, even, answering to the question of what makes them feel Japanese in Tokyo, have an-
swered that riding the train does.
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2.3. IMAGE THROUGH URBAN CONFIGURATION
Figure 2.4: Tokyo train map.Photo of map taken and edited by the author.
that “everything goes”.
The movement in the city is not only apparent in the constant animated physi-
cal features of Tokyo. Tokyo as a liquid city in constant movement finds also affir-mation throughout its long history of regeneration and renewal without concerns
of preservation, making the skyline of the city a fleeting feature. An insight of the
perpetual renewal of the urban fabric will follow in the next sections.
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
2.4 Vanishing memories in the process of destruction and recon-struction
Figure 2.5: Edo Map
Photo taken from Sacchi (2005)
In the first chapter, we have
shown that places carry dif-
ferent meanings within them,
how place is a setting for
human interaction, and the
power of place in forming so-cial identity. We have also in-
troduced the notion of a non-
place, the opposite of place and
discussed as well other fac-
tors that are threatening the ur-
ban memory of a city. In this
section, we are going to deal
with one of the most importantcharacteristics of Tokyo, and
the one central to our research theme; the question of mutation in the city that
leads to an absence of urban memory. Jinnai (1994), in his book, Tokyo, a Spatial
Anthropology, said that it is almost impossible to find any past traces of the city14.
Today there are only a few structures that remain dating back to the Edo era, a
number insignificant for the size of the city. What does remain from Tokyo’s an-
cestor is the urban planning even though heavily altered.
As the city transforms there is a discontinuation in the urban memory, and thischange affects respectively the identity of the place and thus those of its habitants.
Graaf (2009b) who is investigating the emotional status of residents at times of ur-
ban renewals, he identifies that at times of change there is a struggle over the iden-
tities of the place. He writes: “ policy makers and urban professionals have designed a
new place identity for them to make the neighbourhood more attractive for different groups
14He has managed, though, to reveal under the contemporary veil of the city its past traces.He has accomplished that by using old maps and strolling incessantly around the city, uncovering
some hidden secrets of the contemporary urban fabric of Tokyo and exposing the spirit of the place.
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
which leave little place for their own identities15
” (Graaf, 2009b, p.272).This theme is essential not only in understanding the singular identity of Tokyo,
but it addresses the question of transformation and identity of other growing cities,
a universal subject in the 21th century. Once a city carries in its structure only
reminiscent of culture, tradition and heritage, couldn’t this be perturbing for the
identity of the city itself but also for the respective social identity of the people
inhabiting the place? Today the urban structure of Tokyo is composed mostly of
structures built after the Second World War, while 30% of its total buildings were
constructed during the years 1980-2000. What’s more, the city is constantly re-newing itself and preserving a building has no meaning for the Japanese people.
Compared to Europe where preserving a city’s historical is imperative in main-
taining the city’s identity in Tokyo such concerns do not exist. Kitayama (2010,
p.4) explains:
In European cities, urban spaces are thought of as concrete entities that aremeant to exist far longer than people’s lives, and change isn’t something peo-ple are readily aware of. But in Tokyo, the structures that define the landscape
are likely to be completely different in just a couple of dozen years. Althoughthe place might be the same, Tokyo is a city in which entities only exist asphantoms.
The first encounter with place, reveals to us that place is not tied with symbols
of history, neither we can find tradition and meaning in the physical structures.
The idea of place appears ambiguous at it looks to act as a portable backstage that
is flexible and ready to be adapted for different events to take place. As Toyo Ito
suitably observed: "If we compare the architecture of Western civilization to a museum,
[then] Japanese architecture [can be likened to] a theatre16". Closer research exposes us
to the fact that the trend of restructuring, destructing and transforming the city
is not new to the history of Japan and Tokyo in particular. This fact is widely
acknowledged by architects and urban planners Miyake (1987) stated: “In Japan
the will to build a city and to construct a building has been constantly next to the reality
of destruction and included an impulse to destroy the unified whole.”
15The study was conducted in four cities: Emmen and Hoogvliet in the Netherlands, and Sale atManchester (UK) and Newcastle-Gateshead in the United Kingdom.
16Toyo Ito as quoted in Bognar (1997, p.3).
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
Overlooking for an instant all the disastrous catastrophes that occurred in Tokyothat swept away most of the urban structures, along with the concrete memories
of the place, we are going to concentrate on the city’s own determination for de-
velopment and modernization. The urge for Japan to modernize came about in the
beginning of the 20th century even though the first contact with the occident was in
1853 when the American navy embarked by force at the port of Tokyo and forced
Japan to open up to trade with the western world. Due to the opposition of the
Tokugawa Empire to western ideas and influences17 , it was only until some years
later that Japan opened up to the west. In 1868 came the end of the Tokugawaera and consequently the end of the era of feudalism18 . A new imperial rule had
begun to reign, known as the Meiji era, or Meiji restoration, where Meiji translates
into ‘enlightened rule’. The governors of Meiji embraced the market economy and
set goals of ‘western advancements’ combined with traditional ‘eastern values’19
. At the time the capital of Japan had moved from Kyoto (that was the capital
for about 1,000 years) to Edo20 that was renamed Tokyo, meaning eastern capital.
Hence Tokyo as the new capital had to meet up with the expectations of the new
government, namely the effort match the western world in all respects, resulting inthe city’s transformation into a ground of urban experimentation. It was a time of
great changes to be occurred in Japan, which entailed to the formation of Tokyo’s
present identity. The introduction of western modernism had opened the doors to
a great range of new horizons in terms of culture, architecture, arts, lifestyle, food,
fashion, literature, economy, and politics, where the adaptation involved rather the
edition of western culture into the Japanese practice. At the same time the Japanese
people were questioning the ‘self’ as they were invaded by cultural values of the
‘other’. The threat of losing the Japanese identity was palpable for many decadeseven after the Meiji Restoration. A number of extreme acts were performed, even
by deeply sophisticated individuals like Mishima Yukio21 , who performed sep-
17The agreement known as Harris treaty was fixed at the rate of 5% trade duty on all internationaltrade.
18Commander Matthew Perry in 1853 with its navy attempted to force Japan to open to the Westand end its seclusion policies. The ratified Kanagawa treaty was officially signed in 1855, a reasonfor major internal conflicts, that led to the end of the Tokukawa shogunate.
19This term is referred to Wakon Yosai in Japanese and will be explained further in this thesis.20Edo, in Japanese, means “bay entrance”.21Mishima Yukio was one of the most respected Japanese writers. He wrote a large number of
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
puku22
after a failed coup d’état. The dubious identity was also particularly evidentin the Japanese literature, with the works Junichiro Tanizaki where the search of
cultural identity and juxtapositions of the west with the Japanese tradition were
provocative themes in his novels.
Tokyo’s urban identity begun to change dramatically in the Meiji era as big
avenues were under construction, the rail system was introduced, western style
architecture and methods of construction were developed, and people started to
wear western style clothing replacing their traditional costumes. Even the word
kenchiku which means architecture is a word created in Japan during that timeto define architecture the way it is understood in the western world23. The term
was created after the Second World War when the Japanese wanted to create an
image of their country so it would be possible to compete and be recognized on
the international scene.
Districts and streets started to be renamed inspired by western names and
what’s kitschier whole areas were designed to resemble Europe; Nipponbashi that
is the district situated by water was designed after Venice, Marunochi was called
‘little London’ and Hibiya with its axial urban plan was built analogous to Paris,while Shinjuku today reminds of the Manhattan skyline. The attempt to modern-
ize produced a number of places that brought into the urban scene reminiscent of
something that Tokyo has never been, neither had any similar references in its ur-
ban history. These copy-paste structures and actually whole districts have become
today, as we will demonstrate from our interviews the new urban reality of Tokyo
and important reference points for the habitants. These non-places have become a
component of the new urban identity of the city, setting the grounds for becoming
the mnemonics of the city in the future to come.
2.4.1 Tokyo on the move
novels despite his death at a young age. He was also nominated three times for the Nobel Price inliterature.
22Seppuku is the ritualistic act that the samurai usually performed to kill themselves as an oppo-sition to surrender to the enemy. This was usually done by slicing up their abdomen.
23 Sacchi (2005, p.112). The word was created to express the artistic nature of construction, butrather this word represents the specific act of constructing, a rather concrete activity, while in the
occident architecture is rather an abstract and incorporates construction in all its totality.
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
Figure 2.6: View of Daiba Area,Tokyo. Photo from Tree
Hugger: www.treehugger.com
Understanding better Tokyoand its ephemeral urban con-
dition through an investiga-
tion of its past, we find that
one of the most impressive
qualities of Tokyo is its de-
terminant spirit for reconstruc-
tion at times of destruction as
of which the revitalization of the city is remarkably success-
ful. Japanese cities and Tokyo
above all, have been subjected
to endless destructions either
natural or brought by wars.
Perhaps there is no other city
that has been built, destroyed and rebuilt as many times as Tokyo has been24.
In its 400 year history, Tokyo has been devastated four times by fire, while therehave been two major earthquakes that completely leveled the city. In the last cen-
tury solely, Tokyo underwent three significant transformations that changed com-
pletely its physical form. The first was the great earthquake in 1923, known as the
Kanto earthquake that caused a major fire outburst right after and completely lev-
eled the city. Secondly, the latest enormous destruction of Tokyo occurred in World
War 2 were the fire bombings by the American air force entirely razed the city while
killing about 100,000 people25. Subsequently, the population of Tokyo dropped to
3.5 million people, which was half of Tokyo’s total population at the time. Thethird major transformation that occurred in the city was the frenetic development
of the bubble era in Tokyo that started in the 60’s but reached its peak in the 1980’s.
Between these years, Tokyo underwent a major economic boom inflating stock and
real estate prices, consequently changing as well its urban structure irreversibly. It
is this last transformation that we are going to focus, what Cybriwsky (2005) called
the third great destruction of the century as it is the transformation that changed
24 For the full history look at the appendix of Tokyo history from the Tokyo metropolitan office.25Source: David McNeill. The night hell fell from the sky. Japan Focus, March 10 2005
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
the city radically and assert its present condition of a transient city (See also Jinnai,1994; Sacchi, 2005). The transformations that occurred in the growing economy
begun in the 70’s, unlike previous bouleversement that came about by non natural
forces, were initiated by the city’s own intend to progress.
Figure 2.7: Arata Isozaki, Clusters in the air,
1962, Unrealized project, Photo by author
We are going to examine in this sec-
tion, the architectural and urban re-
form of the city that has occurred af-
ter the Second World War as it is one of
the basic layers that entails the physi-cal image of Tokyo as it is today. The
liquid condition of Tokyo is not sur-
prising as an epithet given by Sacchi
(2005) considering the metamorphosis
that the city has underwent. In fact, ac-
cording to a 1993 statistic, more than
30% of all Tokyo structures have been
built since 1985. As Cybriwsky (2005, p. 218) has argued: “No other city in the
world, much less one so large and important, has been so ephemeral in physical form, and
no other older city, much less one so historically significant, is so new in build environment
and so completely lacking in neighbourhoods and old buildings.”
During the bubble era, a large number of buildings were torn down not due to
their deteriorating condition but for accommodating for the new needs, of taller
buildings and multipurpose structures. To understand the rate that the city has
been growing before the end of the century, it has been recorded that 12,339 squaremeters of buildings were demolished daily, while new constructions of 62,861
square meters started daily, and 455 units of new housing constructions were un-
derway every single day. Amongst the buildings destroyed were also many im-
portant monuments and architecture marvels. Examples include Frank Lloyd’s
only building in Japan; the famous imperial Hotel who survived the devastating
Kanto earthquake in 1923, but did not make it through the frenetic development
that came about in the 1960’s. The notable Japanese architect Kenzo Tange has
designed the Tokyo city hall in 1952 that had a life of thirty-five years. It was de-
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
molished and replaced by a newer structure built on a different site designed byKenzo Tange over again. Other examples of renowned demolished buildings are
Masaharu Takasaki’s famous guesthouse that was destroyed only after four years
of life and several of Toyo Ito’s works like the famous U house and the celebrated
Nomad bar that was brought down after three years.
To a certain extent the reason of this continuous urban renewal in Tokyo is
that land is extremely expensive. In 1989, in Tokyo’s Ginza district, land price
has hit approximately one million dollars per meter square26, while the Imperial
palace worth more than all the real estate in California State27 . Inheritance taxesare as high as 50% and as a result the heirs choose to demolish the building and
to sell the land in order to pay for their taxes. Empty lands are then capitalized
as it is much more profitable to build rather than to leave the land empty. The
land can be further divided and be sold off to multiple investors as there is no
limit to parcel fragmentation in the city’s planning restrictions. Another factor that
contributes to the incessant building is that the price of construction in Japan is
cheap comparing to other places of the world. Nonetheless, the need for constant
renewal is also due to the competition in the commercial world which forces theowners to refashion their business according to new trends. This is particularly
pertinent as Tokyo has an important role in the world economy, importing and
exporting goods and culture. Alterations of facades occur every four months to
two years on average, while complete replacements take place every five to ten
years. As Bognar (1997) concluded in his essay, it is not surprisingly that both
the economy and the extraordinarily advanced nature of the Japanese consumer
society have affected the rapid lifecycle of architecture and the cityscape.
The development during the bubble era has also led to great experimentationand proliferation of architectural styles in the capital. Tokyo has been called the
world’s optimum urban laboratory; it is and has been a site where many models
are tested. The rule was not to preserve but rather to progress and in this way a
new urban identity has been moulded, influenced by movements of architecture
worldwide, rather than from the spirit of the place. Tokyo is indeed a field where
26Wikipedia: Japanese asset price bubble27Ian Cowie (07 August 2004). "Oriental risks and rewards for optimistic occidentals". The Daily
Telegraph. Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 11/01/2011.
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
a lot of experimentation occurs on the site and that is above all true for the ar-chitecture phases that the city has witnessed. Western models were tested at the
beginning of the 20th century; the international movement of modern architecture
was afterwards adopted as a rule for taking a step in the modern world and then
followed by the metabolism movement launched in the 60’s.
Figure 2.8: Tadao Ando National Museum of Western art, realized in 1959 and KenzoTange’s St. MAry’s Cathedral, realized in 1964. Photos by author.
The metabolism movement had a veritable Japanese character as it wanted to
address current phenomena of the booming economy and not follow blindly the
foreign models. The movement was initiated by a group of Japanese architects28
that wanted to respond to the culture of mass society that lied ahead and pro-
posed projects at large scale that were flexible and were expanding organically.
This movement is one of the most important in Japan as it was created with the
aim to represent the Japanese identity deriving from Buddhist and traditional ur-
banism traditions (Sacchi, 2005). The architects wanted to find solutions to the
consumerism nature of the Japanese society and to the ever-changing fashions of
the city, but as flourishing the concept was, the idea failed to be embodied in its
design as the schemes were heavy, monumental and not flexible.
Following, in the period of the late sixties, the height restrictions were abol-
ished29 and the city started to rise vertically. The fact is that it was only in 1968
28The leader of the movement was Kenzo Tange, and the members-architects of the group wereTakashi Asada, Kisho Kurokawa, Kiyonori Kikutake, and the writer Noboru Kawazoe.
29Due to aesthetic and Engineering concerns, Japan’s Building Standard Law set an absoluteheight limit of 31 meters until 1963, when the limit was abolished in favour of a Floor Area Ratiolimit. Following these changes in building regulations, the Kasumigaseki Building was constructed
and completed in 1968. Source: www.globalarchitectsguide.com
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
that the first tall building composed of 17 floors, the Kasumigaseki Building wasconstructed in Tokyo.
Figure 2.9: Social usage of Canals and
Rivers eradicated by the need to construct
highways. Photo by author.
As the height regulations started to
loosen up and the buildings started to
rise, the population of Tokyo was also
growing rapidly reaching for the first
time after the war to a peak of almost
ten million for the city and twelve mil-
lion for the metropolis. Another bigevent that accelerated Tokyo’s growth
was the hosting of the Olympic Games
of 1964, happening for the first time in
Asia and was the biggest transformation
of the urban fabric. To accommodate for
the needs of hosting the Olympics new
highways had to be constructed, as Tokyo endeavour to ‘ profile itself as a strong
nation arisen from the ashes of war-torn Tokyo’ (Sande, 2007, p.10).Planning and organization was not possible because of shortage of time and
space. Nine new ring roads were constructed above the canals and rivers, con-
serving the water structure in a sense but obstructing the social use of gathering,
contemplating and enjoying the riverbank. Along this process many natural and
built edifices have vanished from the city’s urban fabric permanently and count-
less non-places were emerging. Jinnai criticizes how memories and meanings that
are associated with present day Tokyo have been today totally eroded by the field
of architecture and urban planning:
Modern city planning [...] with no concern for the individual conditionsof par-ticular sites and in willful ignorance of the underlings powers of place, landhas been reclaimed and establishments erected that look the same whereverthey occur. Venerable rivers and ponds have been filled in, and vegetationdestroyed. In the same way the forced changing of place-names has gone onapace. (Jinnai, 1994, p. 19)
During the 70’s and the 80’s emerged the surge of impermanence in the ar-
chitecture projects. The notion of the ephemeral and ‘lightness’ that emerged in
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
the bubble era of Tokyo is still the trend that characterizes Tokyo and Japan’s ar-chitecture identity today30. Bognar (1997, p.5) below, describes best the current
architecture trend:
Contemporary design in Japan is characterized by lightness, surface, fragmen-tation, and dissolution, often with a “ruinous” quality, a sense of temporality,imaginability, sensuousness, and, finally, a spectacular phenomenonalism —all attributes of the ephemeral; combined with new interpretations of natureand the new software technologies, it favours ambiguity, transparency, andperceptual instability with an implicit indeterminacy of meaning
Figure 2.10: Kisho Kurokawa, Capsule
Tower, Realized in 1972, Photo by author.
However, isn’t this style in architec-ture launched as so, as to represent the
liquid state of the city’s urban condi-
tion; where the speed of mutation of
the city is an indicator of what architec-
ture should embody. The architecture
of Tokyo, light and ethereal, besides
representing the actual state of the city
originates from the natural phenom-ena core to the Japanese cultural iden-
tity. Many scholars, though, believe
that the vision of contemporary archi-
tecture is derived from the very prin-
ciples of traditional Japanese architec-
ture. Japanese architect Maki (1988,
p.120) said: “It was once a city of wood
and paper; it has now become a city of con-crete, steel, and glass. The feeling of light-
ness, however, remains.” In Tokyo’s urban fabric, the dematerialization of architec-
ture as a whole is striking despite the city’s perceptible solidity embodied in the
30There is often the attempt by architects to make architecture herself to disappear; this is theresearch theme of many works of contemporary Japanese architects, like Junya Ishigami, KazuyoSejima and Toyo Ito. One of the most famous examples of transcend architecture is Toyo Ito’swind of towers, a building that changes according to the directions and velocity of the wind, andaccording to the time of day, built in 1986. Ito has referred to this project as an agent to representthe changing winds in Tokyo’s architecture. Another example is Junya Ishigami award winning
project for the Venice Biennale 2010 which is entitled: “Architecture as air”.
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
tall concrete or steel buildings. The hardness of the architecture disappears behindthe signs and symbols that are omnipresent, ornamenting buildings and urban
surfaces and yet are an ambiguous surface themselves totally and constantly re-
newing.
The architects in Japan design with consciousness similar to the philosophy of
Zen (Sacchi, 2005). The ephemerality in the urban context is manifested as archi-
tects create buildings knowing that they would not endure time, considering that
there is constantly a possibility of demolition, making the process of creation di-
rectly linked with that of destruction. The occasion that brought the decision todemolish the U-House by Toyo Ito, exemplify this; while there has been a strong
disagreement by the architecture community, Toyo Ito himself gave his consent
saying that "the house has served its purpose"31. Arata Isozaki in his essay, “City
Demolition Industry, Inc.” has specified: “ Japanese architecture often makes no clear
distinction between construction and demolition, the completed and the ruined.” (p. 51).
The city’s present chaotic image was largely theorized by architecture critics,
urbanists, sociologists, anthropologists and the like intellectuals. Ashihara (1989)
famous line depicts Tokyo as the city amoeba32 because it’s a city that expandsorganically, with an incredible capacity to adapt, compared to the beautiful Euro-
pean cities that are of splendid beauty yet very static and monumental. Tokyo has
been likewise illustrated as the liquid city by Sacchi (2005, p.75), “a body of liquid
state is, as is well known, characterised by fluidity. This unlike the solid state implies the
absence of actual shape. Hence space does not remain fixed in time; architecture has more
or less always done the opposite.”
Furthermore, I believe that Tokyo is a liquid city because it is a city of flows,
not only due to the transition of its built form, but also because of the image it
generates of the flow of trains, cars, and the virtuality of the buildings through
the animated advertising. Above all the constant flows of people, an important
31Source: http://www.otto-otto.com/2009/07/be-our-guest-low-stress-ito-essence-obsolescence/ Accessed: 05/02/2011
32Amoeba is a celled aquatic or parasitic protozoans of the genus Amoeba, having nodefinite form and consisting of a mass of protoplasm containing one or more nuclei sur-rounded by a flexible outer membrane. Amoebas move by means of pseudopods (=pseudo-feet). The word Amoeba derives its name from the ancient Greek word for change. Source
:http://www.thefreedictionary.com/amoeba
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2.4. VANISHING MEMORIES
Figure 2.11: Toyo Ito’s Tower of Winds, Realized in 1986Photo taken by Carlos Zeballos: http://moleskinearquitectonico.blogspot.com
physical entity in the city, engender the image a fleeting image of Tokyo. The idea
that people circulate in the city incessantly can be explained through the fact that
their private space has diminished considerably as the economic space of the city
was expanding. This condition not only forced people to relocate far from the cen-
ter creating a mandatory need to commute but also imposed on them to seek for
urban activities outside their tiny apartments. There has been indeed a variety of
emerging new spaces in the city’s urban fabric resulting from the frenetic devel-
opment, spaces that accommodate temporary activities which can be addressed as
non-places. There are for example whole districts designed to accommodate what
the Japanese call love hotels, which are rooms that one can stay over for as little
as one hour. They are usually used for the purpose of having sexual intercourse
that is made difficult either because of city distances or because of confidentiality
issues. Many love hotels are very alienating spaces; many do not have windows;
you also can enter and exit by purchasing stay over tickets from a machine without
the necessity of human contact33 .
Capsule hotels are also an example of such an momentary place, conveying
temporary meanings that came as a result of the economic boom. These are small
plastic cubicles of about 2mX1m1m stacked one upon another that one can sleep
33We will talk further about human alienation in the city in the last chapter, after the deduction
of the interview results.
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
over the night. They were designed as Japan economy was booming to lodge theworkers that had to commute daily to Tokyo. The first capsule hotel was designed
in 1979, in Tokyo by Kisho Karakawa, and is extraordinary example, and one of
the few realized projects of the metabolic architecture movement.
Figure 2.12: Love hotel entrance hall, Chose
a room and pay by card. Photos from the book:
Love Hotels.
The fact that the newly appearing
places carry temporary connotations
and the tendency to move away from
the city center due to high prices has
changed the lives of the habitants of Tokyo that appear to be some kind of
urban nomads. The city that is un-
der constant transformation creates a
lot of temporary places, or non-places
that engender in turn a condition of in-
creased human movement. Recently,
due to the latest economic crises, these
capsule hotels as well as 24-hour inter-net cafes are becoming the permanent
residence of people that have nowhere
to stay (Tabuchi, 2010)
Cybriwsky (2005) wrote that study-
ing Tokyo cityscape is an appropriate topic for anthropologists to studying the
modes of inhabitation of the contemporary society. Indeed, the grand transfor-
mation that occurred in Tokyo in the seventies and eighties has been a subject for
study of many scholars as the affirmation of the unique Japanese identity (nihon- jinron) and many works have been published with “Tokyology” as a central theme
(Berque, 1994). We have initiated a discussion in this section of what might be the
correlation of the city’s condition with the modes of living of the habitants. The
way that habitants assimilate with the city would be discussed further in the last
chapter.
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2.5. CONCLUSION
2.5 Conclusion
Figure 2.13: Symbols, Texts and Advertising
screens omnipresent in Tokyo
Photo by the author.
In this chapter, we have accounted
the processes that occurred to affirm
the transient identity of Tokyo’s ur-
ban reality. Central to the discussion
has how memories that vanished from
urban fabric, generally without any
lamenting about losing the urban iden-
tity. We have presented the case of
Tokyo’s transformation from the 80’s
onwards which is an interesting model
to study the identity in cities that
are growing at the moment under the
shadow of globalization, fast chang-
ing technologies, and the connotation
that the world becomes a homogenousplace. As we have demonstrated in this
chapter with concrete situations and
historical references, Tokyo is a non-
static city and meets the description of
non-places as summarized by Cress-
well (2009, p.6):
Nonplaces are marked by alack, of attachment, by con-stant circulation, communication and consumption that act against develop-ing social bonds and bonds between people and the world. These nonplacesare marked by a plethora of texts, screens and signs which facilitate mediatedrelationships between people and places rather than direct ones.
Today there are a few residues of the past of Tokyo in regards to architecture,
monuments, and even names of places. Different scholars have argued that the
construction of urban identity should be a sustainable process without interrup-
tions in the urban memory34. Tokyo, has known nothing else that continuous rup-
34See Postalcı, Aysegül and Eren (2006).
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CHAPTER 2. TOKYO
tures of its urban memory and our aim in the next chapter will be to identify theelements, physical or mental, that compile its present urban identity. Non-places
have been argued to be meaningless, historicalness, and identity-less, yet, our goal
here is to demonstrate processes by which we can use to find meaning in such
places. Obviously we have to look beyond physical structures, -since it is them
that engender those temporal features in the first place-, to discover the locality or
a more veritable identity of Tokyo. The Japanese capital has a long and rich his-
tory one that is now only accounted in stories and myths and with the occasional
matsuri35
celebrations. In the next chapter, we are going to present the distinctivephysical features that a non-place can possess (its tangible features) and go a step
further to explain the complex features of Tokyo city through an interpretation of
heritage and culture (intangible features).
35Traditional Japanese festivals.
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CHAPTER 3
REINVENTING IDENTITY
Tokyo is [. . . ] a city in which the intangible quality of memory super-
sedes the physical presence of monuments. When fires have been so fre-
quently responsible for mass destruction and any building over thirty
years old is treated as unusually even peculiarly old, it is little wonder
that the city is celebrated for the immaterial qualities of memory trans-
mitted through stories and urban myth rather than any grandiose state-
ment that it might make through imposing monuments.
— Waley (2006, p. 372)
3.1 Introduction
The constant alteration of Tokyo enhanced by the fact that its urban structure
is often considered as chaotic and meaningless turns it into an object of debate
amongst planners and theorists. Waley (2006, p. 306) is discussing in his essay:
“Tokyo the unplanned metropolis, chaotic, cluttered, incoherent, without meaning, without
a moral sense of order”. Tokyo is the an ideal paradigm of a non-place, it is ugly, it
is full of homogenous and meaningless structures, places that stand for nationalor global symbols produced in masses and where whole areas are constructed to
replicate directly and shamelessly regions from around the world. It is at the same
time, probably the city where advanced technology and high tech materials are
omnipresent the most in the architecture, transportation system and the people’s
usage. Livio Sacchi confirms:
La région métropolitaine de Tokyo est aujourd’hui un non-lieu, et tend à l’êtretoujours un peu plus. Ce qui compte aujourd’hui, c’est l’ubiquité du labyrinthe
des réseaux de télécommunications, de machines et d’édifices intelligents, d’installations
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
d’accumulation et de diffusion d’énergie [...], de systèmes de transports dif-férents mais connectés entre eux.[...] La ville historique se transforme en villenumérique.1
Despite the technologically advanced culture it promotes, the ephemeral qual-
ities in its urban system and its modern physical image, we can argue that Tokyo
probably relates most to ancient traditions than any other global city. It carries in
its urban structure traditions that are difficult to identify, at least, solely in spatial
terms. The reading of Tokyo, a Spatial Anthropology, by Hidenobu Jinnai has proven
important in this research as it suggested that Tokyo’s past is still present in manyways and conjures up the present image of the city. He said:
Often one can find elements of the past in one form or another, even in newspaces created every day [...] It can be said that these elements add a culturalidentity to the townscape of Tokyo. The coexistence of past and the present isimportant for making Tokyo’s urban environment richer. Jinnai (1996, p.44)
Despite all the bouleversement that devastated the city we can find today many
elements of a veritable Japanese identity that are not necessarily linked to the phys-ical entities, at any rate not explicitly. This chapter will evolve around the question
of meaning and identity of the Japanese capital, searching for those elements that
revoke the spirit of the place, attempting to translate metaphors of the Japanese
culture in order to derive the actual state of the Tokyoite identity. Consequently,
this chapter will explain Tokyo’s contemporary identity as it has been molded
from the processes of fast expansion and constant redevelopment that we have
discussed in Chapter 2. We are particularly interested to see, firstly, what kind of
places have arisen under the new circumstances and secondly to find meaning inthe ephemeral quality of Tokyo. The latest will be carried out through the pre-
sentation of some selected symbolic representations that continue existing and are
palpable in the urban fabric. Within this context we will search those referential
characteristics with Tokyo’s heritage, past traditions and everyday culture. The
search will exemplify elements of tangible (physical characteristics) and intangible
1 Translation by the author : Metropolitan Tokyo is today a non-place, and tends to be a littlemore than that. What matters now is the ubiquity of the maze of telecommunications networks,machines and intelligent buildings, storage facilities and distribution[...], diverse energy transport
systems yet interconnected. [...] The historical town turns into a digital city.
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3.1. INTRODUCTION
natures (symbolic characteristics) that are a denotation in Tokyo’s present chaoticphysical identity.
Figure 3.1: Tokyo’s dual identity. Photo by au-
thor.
The chapter will evolve as follows.
In Section 3.1, we will present different
conditions and new spaces of the urbanfabric that have resulted from the con-
stant flux and development discussed
in the previous chapter. The discussion
will mainly concentrate on the disor-
ganized structure and the ugliness of
Tokyo that are its distinctive character-
istics. We will then attempt to translate
the present urban identity from the ba-sic ideas of beauty for the Japanese cul-
ture, an inquiry gradually evolving to
the other sections. In Section 3.2, we
will explain the renovation process in
Tokyo during the Meiji era onwards,
using the ancient slogan, Wakon Yosai,
as the method to adopt and implement
foreign elements into a ‘local place’. Itis a way to understand the Japanese
thinking when transforming the urban
spaces. In Section 3.3, we will initiate a
discussion about the importance of na-
ture and the symbolic representations attached to the city. This way we are not only
examining the physical presence of nature and structures but we are also looking
at philosophical connotations that these concepts carry for the Japanese culture as
a way to revoke more veritable meaning in the city.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
3.2 Ugliness vs. Beauty
The chaotic and unorganized urban planning of the city along with the archi-
tecture freedom of the booming economy has produced a bizarrely ugly city. Rem
Koolhass said about Tokyo after his first visit:
Japan, seven days later. First impression: the vastness and shamelessness of its ugliness. [. . . ] Japan lives (serenely?) with drastic segregation between thesublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last twocategories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty ‘happens’,
it is absolutely surprising. Koolhaas, Mau, Sigler, et al. (1998, p. 88)
Tokyo is regarded ugly by scholars, visitors of Tokyo, an attribute particularly
used by the non-Japanese crowd2. Donald Richie, a writer that has lived in Tokyo
for over 60 years have described Tokyo as unusually ugly3. Cesare Brandi portrays
it a “ frightening city, the largest and ugliest in the world [. . . ] urban planning is chaotic,
nonexistent"4 . Besides the chaotic planning, another reason that Tokyo and other
Japanese cities are regarded as ugly is the ignorance in designing the exterior en-
velope of buildings. Additionally the absence of building regulations allows each building to exist in its own right with absolutely no reference to its context.
In Tokyo and other Japanese cities, there is a general disinterest to ornamen-
tation and the production of a clean urban aesthetic, that we commonly find in
the European architecture. Instead, we encounter in the cityscape tectonic effects
that beautify the building in such a way that the urban facade has been symbol-
ised as “a sea of signs” 5. The materiality of the architecture disperses behind the
ephemeral strong imagery attached to the facades. The signs multiply and are not
limited to mere billboards for advertising: as Tokyo is a complex enough city to
get around, explanations, directions, warnings are omnipresent at all different lev-
els and surfaces. In Waley’s words Tokyo is: “[. . . ] a jumble of functions and goods
for sale. [. . . ] city of transience and flux, as against Western cities, which are built of
2The interviews conducted in Tokyo also revealed that foreigners complained about the disor-derliness and ugliness of the city.
3Richie (1999).4 In Sacchi (2005, p. 13).5Yatsuka, Hajime (1990) ‘An architecture floating on the sea of signs’, in Botond Bognar (ed.)
The New Japanese Architecture, New York: Rizzoli.
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3.2. UGLINESS VS. BEAUTY
stone and enshrine their memories in monuments. Tokyo is a textual city where West-ern cities are architectonic and three dimensional.6” Tokyo’s global economic status
generates the fluctuating need of mass communication that is ad hoc to the tech-
nological and textual image it generates. The ornamentation of the city is actually
composed of signs, billboards, images, symbols, scripts and letters and moving ad-
vertising. These features that are all jumbled up together are very characteristic of
the Japanese urban space and probably their absence will render Tokyo resembling
to any other developed and modernized big city.
Bognar (1990, p.14) calls this condition of the city the “theatrical insubstantiality”,a city who becomes a theme park or a stage set, the facades covering the building
are just a surface that could be at any time packed away. Or as Waley (2006, p.370)
states, these facades are “revealing only the deeply destabilising nuances of the term
façade itself ”. Berque adds : “Cela rend opportunément compte du désordre visuel des
villes japonaises contemporaines: dans une telle urbanité, gérer l’esthétique de la rue n’a
en effet guère de sens”7 (1994, p. 587).
The negligence of designing the facades can be explained through an insight in
Japanese traditional architecture. In Japanese traditional architecture the exteriorenvelope disperses as it is the pillars that support the roof, contrasted to Europe
for example, that the designing of cities implies an extraordinary emphasis at the
façades and the decoration of these (Berque, 1994). Furthermore, the disregard of
beauty in urban matters has its roots in the Japanese thinking and perception of
life. Magnificence is not given a significant value by the Japanese and mainly pub-
lic magnificence. Richie (1999, p.32) explains: “The truly magnificence is in Tokyo,
as in Edo, always found in public. Historically, the reason for the lack of public display
was that it was not necessary to impress a populace already impressed.” The emphasison the facade of buildings in Japan is an attribute that was brought forwards by
the 20th century international movement in architecture. Actually one of the most
important spatial concepts used to describe the Japanese city was the concept of
Oku used initially by Maki (1979). Oku refers to the spatial depth of something that
6Waley (2006, p. 367).7Translation by the author : “This makes opportunely an account of the visual disorder of con-
temporary Japanese cities: in such urbanity, managing the aesthetics of the street does indeed make
any sense”
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
is closed and can be penetrated gradually in order to grasp the phenomenologicalcentre. Maki (1979) exemplifies clearly this concept by comparing it to an onion,
saying that it is like penetrating its layers, profound and difficult to accessed. Res-
onance exists for the city, as well for the Japanese people in the deepest layers of
things.
Figure 3.2: Mix use districts in Tokyo
Photo by author.
In general the understanding of
beauty holds different meanings for the
Japanese than it does for the West-
ern people. Beauty as a public con-cern had never held the same signifi-
cance for Japanese compared to a city
like Paris per instant. Richie indicates:
“Being modern and being ostentatious
were obviously architecture concerns
from the Meiji period on, but not be-
ing beautiful.” (1999, p .35). For the
Japanese, the basic understanding of beauty for the Japanese culture is found
in the ancient idea of wabi-sabi8 that
describes beauty as “imperfect, imper-
manent and incomplete” (Koren, 1994,
p.7), and where asymmetry is one of
its main features. The concept itself is
rooted back to ancient beliefs linked to
the tradition of Buddhism, that we aregoing to discuss further on.
Another characteristic of Tokyo’s
contemporary urban identity is the
8 Like many Japanese notions, wabi-sabi cannot be easily translated in a foreign lan-guage. David and Michiko Young in Spontaneity in Japanese Art and Culture, 2006,(http://japaneseaesthetics.com), write : “Wabi refers to that which is humble, simple, normal, andhealthy, while sabi refers to elegant detachment and the rustic maturity that comes to something asit grows old”. Both concepts wabi and Sabi were aesthetic terms to describe the art of tea ceremony
dating back many centuries.
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3.2. UGLINESS VS. BEAUTY
way space is attributed in the city and the richness of diverse spaces that it gen-erates. The fast development and the absence city planning regulations have ren-
dered is a diversity of scales and usages that coexist in the city’s fabric. Behind a
huge and busy commercial avenue with tall buildings, one can find winding alleys
with densely packed small restaurants and shops of one or two floors. In Tokyo
one can see high rise buildings with small floor areas, or equally large floor ar-
eas but low rise. Another distinctiveness of the city is that high-rise buildings are
mixed with low rise and consequently people from different social status could be
living in the same district.Subsequently, we come across a translation of everyday Japanese architecture
into the urban tissue of Tokyo. In Japanese architecture, there is a meticulous effort
to make every space functional and practical, and this is mainly evident in how a
house is organized. Every object has its designated place for positioning and ev-
ery space is calculated to be used to its maximum capacity. This is also true and
evident in the city design, in the sense that every place is assigned to multiple func-
tions and required to be fully utilized. A phenomenon called "Pet architecture"by
Kuroda and Kaijima (2001), is the extreme demonstration of the Japanese fascina-tion for smallness and void phobia, the stubborn unwillingness to leave space un-
used. Correspondingly, we encounter in Tokyo very small types of buildings that
Kuroda and Kaijima (2001) referred to as the interior design of closets, treating the
urban space as a large-scale interior space, or as the authors of the book declare,
these small structures are like the pets of the city. These objects regarding their
minuscule size become as important as the skyscraper since they are often more
personalized and easier to identify for the passer by. We have observed that is not
only those pet size buildings that add a distinguished variety in the urbanscape, itis also objects that extend beyond the bounds of structures, like vending machines
or advertising panels. These create a multiplicity of the urban fabric manifesting a
more authentic feature of Japanese culture than the authoritative skyscrapers do.
These small objects have also proved their importance through the interviews as
apparent objects for identification 9.
9These results and the importance of small size objects in the city are elaborated further in the
interview process in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
Figure 3.3: Example of pet size building,
Tokyo. Photo by author.
Additionally, the need of makinguse of every little space has taken new
dimensions during the economic boom
in Japan. Exploiting every available
land or square meter possible was a
method to exploit projects on a bigger
scale. One of the particular character-
istics of Tokyo’s urbanity is the mix-
ture of different structures and differ-ent uses that are to be seen in a sin-
gle structure. Tokyo is a melting pot
of different structures and within these
structures exist a multiplicity of differ-
ent uses and the whole ensemble re-
minds of an abstract architecture col-
lage. This is a distinctive feature of
Tokyo’s urban structure that resultedfrom the fast development. It has cre-
ated an extraordinary blend of urban
practices that amongst them are con-
trasting, unrelated, out-of-place to its surroundings, but they are ad hoc to so-
cial demands. Structures of such original intertwining include: shrines on top of
office/shop buildings, tennis court in the middle of an expressway round-about,
tunnels traversing graveyards, parks on top of sewerage plants. To economize
space, is also common to find highways passing over parks, rivers and even de-partment stores. Also common is to use the roofs for inserting functions like car
parks on a tall buildings, golf courts, driving schools, tennis courts and generally
a lot of sport facilities10 .
The result could be described as ugly, at first, progressing to be funny, bizarre,
intriguing, inspiring, and finally beautiful! Beauty has resulted from the inspiring
way these mixed-used structures are being utilised. Beautiful or logical compo-
10These examples are derived from onsite examination and readings from the book by Kuroda
and Kaijima (2001), Made in Tokyo.
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3.3. WAKON YOSAI
sitions proved to be not important measures when looking at Tokyo’s’ urbanity.Sacchi affirms that “Tokyo rappelle à l’Occidental que le rationnel n’est qu’un système
parmi des autres11” (2005, p. 108).
The present urban identity of Tokyo, ugly and shameless with conditions of
hybrid and junky architecture or as called by Judo and Kuroda (2006), Dame Ar-
chitecture (translated into bad architecture) creates actually a new urban aesthetic.
Through the messy urban structure, Tokyo’s true and more practical identity is
revealed via those structures that correspond to the urban conditions of the fast
changing city as opposed to other prefabricated homogenous structures. The exis-tence of this new aesthetics is an antithesis to history or planning principles but it
is a response to "here and now"12 of the fast changing urban conditions.
Next we are going to discuss the introduction of new systems on existing pat-
terns in order to observe how the spirit of Tokyo was preserved at the time of
important transformation processes in the urban conditions were experienced in
the Meiji era.
3.3 Wakon Yosai
Analysing the current condition of Tokyo, one central notion that we have to
launch to infer the process of change in Japan is the slogan of wakon yosai, meaning
Japanese spirit, Western technology, pronounced by the Meiji emperor Yoshikawa
Tadayasu in 1868. It was generally regarded as a nationalist approach to protect
against the “alien”. The practise of sustaining the spirit of the place and its indige-
nous culture while importing foreign cultures was practiced in Japan since many
centuries ago. It dates back to the Heian period13, when the term wakon kansai
(Japanese spirit, Chinese scholarship) was adopted as Chinese thinking was intro-
duced in the Japan. The desire to learn from Japan and the ideology of wakon yosai
is often an example amongst Asian developing countries of how Japan became in
11Translation by the author: Tokyo has reminded the West that the rational system is only oneamong others
12 Judo and Kuroda (2006, p. 13)13The Heian period is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185.
Like it was customary to do, the period was named after the capital city of Heian-kyo, present day
Kyoto. It was the period where Chinese influences were making inroads in Japan.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
a few decades an industrial country without abandoning their own cultural tradi-tions14. Wakon yosai has been employed and is manifested in various disciplines,
ranging from architecture to urban strategies, food or fashion.
Translating this notion in the urban measures in Tokyo while it was entering
into the phase of modernization, we observe how western ideas were imposed
on existing urban patterns. Instead of destroying old neighbourhoods and exist-
ing urban configuration, new structures have been laid on top of the old to meet
new requirements. For example, in the case of new roads, existing road patterns
were superimposed to give way for wider ones. Jinnai affirms: “Rather than majorsurgery, Tokyo chose continuous and organic change to achieve growth and development.
This mechanism continues in Tokyo even today”15 . As for the architecture in the early
years of the Meiji Restoration buildings had a western and Japanese feel to them.
Buildings commenced to be built in brick as a measure to protect against fire de-
struction. For example, in Ginza16 , the existing roads widened while the buildings
along the road were designed by an English architect, Thomas James Water, after
London’s Regent Street. While the shop facades and the avenues started resem-
bling a scene from a European town, well organized and uniformed, on the back-yard of the shops and in the alleys behind, one could find the traditional wooden
houses and the maze like streets revealing the oriental sense of Tokyo unaltered
from foreign influences. Another common approach at the time was to build the
houses in western style and design the garden in Japanese style. As a general rule,
western style was used for designing the public sector and Japanese design for the
private sector. In this way, the Japanese spirit was preserved on the inside behind
a western and modern exterior façade. For thirty years the city and the lifestyle
were changing gradually, and even the dress code of the people reflected the newurban identity of Tokyo, as people used to wear western costumes in the day and
changing to their kimonos at night. King recites: “They usually dress in Western
clothing and work in western buildings at daytime, and change to robes and slippers and
sleep in old fashioned homes. What a wonderful solution that resolves both outside and
14Deconstructing ‘Japanisation’: Reflections From The ‘Learn From Japan’ Campaign In Singa-pore. Thang.
15 Jinnai (1996, p. 30)16Ginza is one of the most significant commercial districts of Tokyo today.
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3.4. TRANSIENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION
inside means.” (King, 2008, p. 20). Similarly, bowing was introduced to baseball,and fish toppings on pizza. Particularly with the introduction of Western cuisine,
a sophisticated creativity is noted. Ice cream, for example, comes in a variety of
novel flavors like green tea, cherry blossom, chicken teriyaki, eel or squid. The
transformation in Tokyo has proven that renew in architecture or urban planning
comes along with a new condition in a cultural sense, usually where a partial or
whole substitution is taking place, and where the people voluntary or not are also
converted into a lifestyle that is adept to the surroundings. Murakami(1996) re-
counts: “ Japanese have been looking at themselves through the spectacles of other peoplesince the time of rapid modernization of the Meiji era. They are thus unable to see their
own logic due to these foreign spectacles . . . ”17.
Even the trendy term glocalisation18 is a Japanese invention and brings to mind
the term wakon yosai. It was invented in the 1980’s by Japanese business practices
to describe the adaptation of farming techniques into local conditions. It has later
developed into a business marketing strategy in order to create "a global outlook
adapted to local conditions" (Robertson, 1995, p.28). The process discussed in this
section of inheriting foreign items into Japanese culture and urban space has been“ for a very long time strongly cultivated the spatio-cultural significance [. . . ] and where
the general issue of the relationship between the particular and the universal has histori-
cally received almost obsessive attention” (Robertson, 1995, p.28).
3.4 Transience and reconstruction as inherited mnemonics
We are going to focus in this section in the process of destruction and recon-
struction of the Japanese cities that has been a recurring phenomenon for many
centuries, and probably would be an unfortunate incident for the times to come
considering the seismic zone which Tokyo is situated19. Tokyo, however revives
completely after destruction sustaining the singularity of the city and its Japanese
17As quoted in Eshun (1997,p. 42).18The word has derived from the japanese dochaku which means ‘living in ones own land’.
Source : Robertson (1995, p.28).19In Japan there are earthquakes of small magnitude occurring every single day. Now special
attention is centered on predictions focusing on the next big earthquake that is expected to take
place in Tokyo this decade, and is already delayed from the anticipated time.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
identity. Given Tokyo’s long history of devastation and subsequent revival, wecan argue that this fleeting condition is actually a permanent identifiable feature
of the city. One attempt to elaborate on the compliant temperament of Tokyo in
regards to destruction-reconstruction is to have an insight in Japanese culture that
is deeply associated to this day, to nature, Buddhist and Shintoism religion. The
understanding of nature for the Japanese is a force that drives things perpetually
into a new course and with this endorsement their culture revolves around the
notion of impermanence.
3.4.1 Buddhist and Shintoism teachings
Figure 3.4: : Buddhist tradition appearing in
a Tokyo shrine. Photo by author.
During Japan’s long history entire
capitals have been moved to a different
locations. The Buddhist religion breeds
around teachings like there is no perma-
nence and that all things must pass that
have in equally profound ways condi-
tioned the Japanese mentality toward
the phenomena of change and the tran-
sitory nature of existence. Imperma-
nence is one of the basic the teach-
ings of Buddhism, it is actually one
of the three marks of existence that de-
fine Buddhism20. Waley (2006, p.366)
explains how contemporary Tokyo isa metaphor of this Buddhist tradition:
“Tokyo as city in which life is transient relates emphatically back to the notion of floating
world, the Buddhist-inspired vision of a world in which life is fleeting and therefore the
moment should be grasped and enjoyed”.
Reconstruction has also its roots in the primary religion of the Japanese, the
20The three marks of existence are the three main characteristics of Buddhism, namely: im-permanence, suffering and non-self. Source: Three Basic Facts of Existence: I. Imperma-nence (Anicca)", with a preface by Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight, 5 June 2010,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org
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3.4. TRANSIENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION
Shintoism, that requires the short and long term maintenance of buildings, andoften involves partial replacement of old parts of a construction with newer ones.
Sacchi (2005, p.114) writes: “La reconstruction était un rite de purification régulièrement
pratique selon des modalités précises et dans des lieux différents, pendant tout la période
féodale, et considérée comme une véritable règle du culte shinto"21 . The phenomenon
of renewal is largely evident in the wooden temples, and particularly manifested
with the well-known example of the important religious sanctuary of Ise, a Shinto-
ism temple that is destroyed and rebuilt every twenty years since the 8th century22.
Ashihara (1989, p. 121-2) explains that it is not the spatial structure that is signifi-cant to preserve but rather the spirit and the meaning that the structure suggests:
[...] que ce nous voyons aujourd’hui n’est donc pas une entité réelle, celle quiexistait à la période Nara, mais une fidele reproduction de la beauté originaleet intemporelle d’une structure encore extrêmement vivante de nos du sanctu-aire jours. . . prés d’Ise, ce qui est conservé n’est pas une entité physique maisl’expression et l’esprit de l’architecture.23
The custom of reconstruction becomes also evident in the lifestyle of the peo-
ple. We observe that in traditional residences a yearly replacement of the tatami is
carried out, while after the winter period people usually replace the interior panels
of their houses, the shoji and fusuma. The roof of the house is usually replaced ev-
ery 50 years. Sacchi (2005) concludes that the contemporary renewal of the urban
fabric is related with this long Shintoism tradition:
Cette attitude c’est tout naturellement appliquée aux édifices contemporaines[...] on trouve par ailleurs couramment des éléments traditionnels. Et le désirde renouvèlement est partout sensible: on sait que au Japon une loi prévoit lareconstruction des bâtiments public tous les trente ans environ.24
21 Translation by the author: Reconstruction was a rite of purification regularly practiced in aspecific manner and in different places throughout the feudal period and is considered as a truerule of the Shinto religion.
22There was only one interruption to the pattern in 1467, at the time of the ‘feudal wars of Onin’that the reconstruction was halted for 120 years.
23Translation by the author: “[. . . ] what we see today is not a real entity like what existed at theNara period, but a faithful reproduction of the original timeless and temporal beauty of a structurethat is still alive in our days [...] the thing that is preserved is not a physical entity but the spiritand expression of the architecture.”
24 Translation by the author: “This attitude is naturally applied to contemporary buildings [. . . ]where we normally find traditional elements. And the desire for renewal is palpable everywhere:we know that in Japan a law foresees the reconstruction of public buildings every thirty years
approximately.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
The temporary nature of buildings and the renewal of structures is also linkedto the cyclical passage of time, as understood through the conception of nature,
which we are going to discuss further on.
3.4.2 Nature and The City
A review of different studies on Tokyo led to the belief that one of the basic
attribute in maintaining the spirit of place and Tokyo’s unique identity is the con-
nection of the city with its natural surroundings. Nature in our research includesalso events that are related to and celebrate nature, as well as the assimilation of na-
ture in Buddhist and Shintoism teachings. Sacchi (2005, p. 119) stated that if there
is one aspect that is still a part of the traditional heritage in the urban fabric is the
rapport with nature. The relationship of the city to its natural surroundings is not
surprising given the enormous respect that the Japanese people tend for nature.
Without a doubt, understanding the meaning of nature for the Japanese culture
would help us to value and understand their cities. The discussion about nature
includes the geographical environment of the place, as well as people’s expressionin nature via events that are occurring to appraise it.
In Jinnai’s work, Tokyo: a Spatial Anthropology, (1994) we are presented with the
importance of the geographical location and the sense of place that marked the ur-
ban setting of Tokyo. A detailed history concentrating on the city of Edo25 shows
the evolution of urban space in relation to its natural settings, such us the exist-
ing topography. In particular, Mount Fuji and Mount Tsukuba seen in a distance
were very important elements in deciding the spatial orientation of the city. Moun-
tains were worshipped as gods in Japan so they became objects of glorious beauty
and the city’s planning division was perfectly aligned to be orientated towards the
mountains. The particular topography of the region also played an important role
in the urban spatial structure of Tokyo: There are eight hill tops in Tokyo, which
have been known since the Edo period as shiomi-zaka 26 and often referred to as
25The city of Edo was the former name of present capital of Tokyo, the seat of power of theTokugawa Shogunate. The Edo period in Japan lasted from 1603 to 1868, year which Edo wasrenamed into Tokyo and became the official capital of Japan.
26Tide viewing hills.
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3.4. TRANSIENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION
mountains27
. Furthermore Jinnai introduces us with the meaning of meisho forthe Japanese city. There is no direct translation of meisho but it can be defined as a
place where water and trees come together harmoniously with buildings to form
an organic environment. Meisho is rather an abstract concept as it does not relate
to a specific structure or location but rather to the success of reinterpreting a place
harmoniously between all elements. The importance that monuments have for
the occident as devices for memory is translated instead into the concept of meisho
for the Japanese city. I think that this is one of the fundamental mnemonics that
tie together people with place and it is not a model related to tradition by monu-mentalization processes that evokes often outbursts of nationalism and power. It
is rather a true and profound bond with the place. As Jinnai (1996) confirmed: “
The meishos from Edo and earlier are much more closely related to nature and their value
remains stable because they are tied to the people’s hearts at a very profound level. They
will certainly continue forever as part of the townscape.”28. Even if Tokyo perpetually
changes, the features related to nature or the topography will remain constant, a
valuable asset for a city in motion to preserve its identity, or in Jinnai’s words:
“Even if the buildings are rebuilt, the permanency of the place will remain” 29.Consequently if we observe the people of the Japanese city, as we did in the
next chapter, people’s special memories are often related to nature. It seems peo-
ple try to preserve their existence in their everyday places, sustaining their identity,
striving to “create an environment with the personality of place” (Jinnai, 1994, p. 18).
The appreciation of nature is a cultural phenomenon in Japan as people hold such
an affective bond to nature that in a way that it is perceived as a component indi-
visible of the city. For example, the changing seasons are so evident in the climate
that the people praise every season accordingly with parallel events taking place inthe city. The phenomenon of change and transformation can be as well explained
with the cyclical character that emerges in every aspect of life in Japan. The most
distinctive example is the spring blossoms that bloom every spring in Japan. The
27Certainly with the transformation of the city in the 80’s these viewing hills of Tokyo lost theirprimary role. With the construction of high-rise office and condominium buildings have begunto emerge, blocking the view completely and making it impossible for us to see directly the richundulations of the topography.
28 Jinnai (1996, p. 43).29 Jinnai (1996, p. 43).
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
Japanese people await and prepare accordingly30
for the blossoms like westernersdo for the Christmas preparations. It is perhaps Japan’s most festive season, a na-
tional sport to go sightseeing across the country, picnic under the sakura 31 trees,
have a close look at them, watch the cinematic falling pinkish leaves on a windy
day and take exactly the same smiling photos as the previous year. The annual
praise for the sakura blossoms is also linked to Buddhist teachings that indicate
the beauty of things with the passage of time, the cycle of nature emphasizing the
ever changing and impermanence of things. What Japanese people enjoy in the
sakura-viewing season is the sequential cycle that occurs during the one week;where leaves are gradually blooming and progressively falling down. In the next
chapter we will test this hypothesis with the interviews and show other ways in
which nature becomes important in people’s understanding with and identifying
the city.
Figure 3.5: Sakura blossom in Shibuya,Tokyo. Photo: www.japanstyle.info
Shinto’s dictation about nature is
also a vital doctrine for Japanese think-
ing that presents nature as indivisible
from human life. Shinto religion rec-ognizes many Gods, which exist any-
where especially in natural places such
as rivers, rocks, mountains and other
natural edifices. The underlying prin-
ciple is not to compete with nature but
rather the aspiration to reach the per-
fect harmony between nature and man.
The relationship with nature is oftenreflected in the Japanese architecture
as well. In the architecture we find a
translucent barrier between interior and exterior realized achieved through the
absence of structural walls and the ambiguous engawa32 zone that ensues gently
30Every spring the people await for the sakura blossom, every autumn the momiji blossom, thewinter snow, and the monsoon rains of the summer. All these events become such an importantfestivity, that the whole nation is equally engaged in viewing.
31Cherry trees.32 Engawa refers to the typically wooden strip of flooring immediately before windows and
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3.4. TRANSIENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION
the transition from inside to outside. In the traditional Japanese architecture woodis the primary construction material for houses, shrines and public buildings, as it
aids in obscuring the borderline of where artificiality starts and where it ends.
3.4.3 Creative chaos
In trying to explain the contemporary Tokyo’s chaotic and discentered urban
space, we have found several analogous from the old city of Edo, Japanese culture
and Buddhism which we would present here a few examples. The attempt to de-
cipher the city has often led several authors to use metaphors in order to elucidate
the city while others make associations to its heritage city of Edo. Famous Japanese
architect Kisho Kurokawa explains that Tokyo’s special feature as a city composed
of many villages each one having distinctive characteristics is an analogue of the
city of Edo:
I have expressed the idea that Tokyo is a conglomeration of 300 cities, in factTokyo in the Edo period was forced by the ruler of Tokugawa to take up res-idence in the new capital Edo. Each lord was assigned an area in correspon-
dence to his ample revenue. Temples and shrines and monks from that regiongathered in the area and took up residence, forming a city within a city. Edoused to be a group of small cities and this tradition has been inherited by con-temporary Tokyo in a symbiosis of parts as a whole. Kurokawa (1994)33
In the contemporary city each district has its own distinctive identity and be-
comes a centre in its own rights. For example, Akihabara is “Electric Town”, as it
is the Mecca of seeing and buying gadgets of the latest technology, Roppongi is a
district developed in the 1980’s and it is the centre of “nightlife”, Ginza is the “rich
town”, Shibuya the “ fashion district”, and Shinjuku were the metropolitan head-quarters are found is known as the “administrative center”.
The present state of Tokyo as a fluid and transient city and its rapport with
impermanence is also rooted to rudiments of the city of Edo where there was an
understanding of the human dwellings as temporary shelters, especially in the
storm shutters inside traditional Japanese rooms. Recently this term has also come to mean theveranda outside of the room as well. Source:Wikipedia
33 In Henra van Sande paper : Bindings. Investigation on the interest of inter-bindings in Tokyo’scontemporary city : Kisho Kurokawa, by Finch Paul, in: Learning from Tokyo, From: Architectural
Design, Vol. 64, n˚ 1-2, 1994, pp. 8-19.
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
low-city of Shitamachi. This was called ukiyo which translates into the floatingworld. Sacchi writes that its non-solid status produces a spectacular and hallucina-
tory event “dans lequel Tokyo se révèle un lieu de samara en sanscrit “sommet du devenir”
ou de l’ukiyo-e, le fugitive, le monde flottant ” (Sacchi, 2005, p.224). The floating world
of contemporary Tokyo is seen as a “ fundamental reference” to the city of Edo and Wa-
ley adds that the “references to the floating world carry connotations not only of transience
and impermanence but also to the carpe diem culture” (Waley, 2006, p. 371).
The attempt to interpret Tokyo’s chaotic urbanism, its prominent feature, we
are once more guided at the direction of Buddhism thinking. Bognar (1997, p.3)finds roots in Buddhism tradition to explain the disorganized city that discards
concepts of clear logic:
Buddhism emphasizes the evanescence and insubstantiality of things. Uni-versal and immutable laws do not appeal to the Japanese. Nor does the logicof clear or autonomous identity; traditionally, Japanese things have not beensubjected to the process of individuation and objectification.
Disorganized structures, destruction and chaotic daily routine are part of the
Japanese culture and we can infer a few examples to justify this complexity. Japanese
language one of them: the complex system that defines the Japanese culture and
has been around for centuries. In the Japanese language, exist three different al-
phabets34 all used in writing, while the English alphabet and foreign words have
also been introduced and used. The language is also notable for its complex system
of honorifics, a system with verb forms and meticulous vocabulary to address the
relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned in conversation.
This frenzied and perplex system is in reality, highly hierarchical system in which
different status such us class position, age or gender indicate the way of talking.
This system reflecting the nature of Japanese society yet it is a system that could
have been simplified. The Japanese are voluntary engaged to perform and prac-
tice their language wholly with excellence. There is also a frequent employment
of signs and metaphors while conversing. For example, saying “no” in Japanese
is not really accepted when communicating. Instead there are sixteen different
34The three alphabets or scripts are the Chinese characters called kanji and two syllabicscriptsmade up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana and katakana. Also the English alphabet is widely
used and called Romanji.
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3.5. CONCLUSION
ways to refuse35
, but without saying “no” directly. When translating a conversa-tion directly there is usually no clear verdict to it, as body language is also utterly
important in conveying meanings. For this reason there are a plentiful of books
written in trying to decipher the Japanese language and ways of communicating,
often designed for the foreigners.
If we compare this particular characteristic with Tokyo city we can smoothly
make the link with Tokyo’s urban character. There is no clear way out. It is ener-
getic, full of signs, and it takes a lot of effort to reveal the superficial veil and find
a deeper meaning. Gunter Nietzsche (1995) has called this condition the “creativechaos” that fashions a new paradigm in architecture representing the world in mo-
tion and in which we are experiencing an intensification of human consciousness.
3.5 Conclusion
This chapter elucidated on different features of the contemporary identity of
Tokyo, namely its ugliness and chaotic characteristics, a result of the frenetic de-
velopment of the city, but a feature of Tokyo that affirms its own particular identity
and makes it an identifiable place amongst other cities around the world. We have
also investigated several symbolic connotations that find resonance when looking
at Tokyo’s chaotic and meaningless and transient urban fabric. The old slogan
wakon yosai has been an ancient technique that the Japanese have used in order to
maintain their identity when exposed to foreign influences. We have linked this
idea wih glocalisation, another Japanese invention and probably an appropriate
method to maintain the locality of a place in an increasing global world. It is the
ability to inherit foreign cultures, technologies, but in such a manner that in adapts
to their own needs, a method that makes the transition smooth. Similar symboliza-
tions and translations of Shinto and Buddhist religions and the cyclical perception
of nature have been adopted to explain mainly the ephemeral identity of Tokyo.
We can after all conclude that this impermanent quality of the city is actually a per-
manent feature in Tokyo’s urban image, brought forward by ancient beliefs and the
practise of those to this day.
35(Sacchi 2005, p.105).
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CHAPTER 3. REINVENTING IDENTITY
In the next chapter, I will also propose that Tokyo’s urbanity can be related tothe universal laws of the Japanese culture and people. Additionally, I would try
to draw associations between the city identity and the human identify focusing
in the non clear and not autonomous identity can describe both cities and people.
Kimura (1972) and Hamaguchi Eshu who have extensively study the Japanese self
appraise the uniqueness of the Japanese psyche. Kimura presents the Japanese self
as “not an autonomous entity, but merely as that part of a relationship which happens to be
temporarily held by a person. [. . . ] it expands and contracts to fit shared relationships and
situations.36
” Similarly, Berque (1994, p. 174) explains that the city amoeba as putforward by Ashihara that adapts situations to fit in the urban tissue can interpret
an order to the chaotic image of Tokyo: "[...] l’urbanité japonaise adapte souplement
ses formes à l’évolution des besoins. [. . . ] Il ya bien là un ordre, mais c’est un ordre caché
sous l’apparence du chaos”37.
The suggestion of the human in the city, as an important constituent in terms of
maintaining memories and meanings on one hand and in practicing a daily space-
routine, on the other hand, delineates the use and identification in the city. People
and their way of living is a vital value for the city and what we will try to suggest inthe next chapter is how their lifestyle and activities aid to enhance Tokyo’s identity
by promoting locality that is hidden behind the global image of the city.
36As cited in Davis (1998, p. 174).37Translation by the author:“Japanese urbanity adapts its forms in a flexible manner to the chang-
ing needs. [...] There is definitely an order but it is a hidden order under the disguise of chaos.
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CHAPTER 4
THE INTERVIEWS
[. . . ] les dimensions moyennes d’un logement sont de 55m2 , [ . . . ] 5%
est réservé aux parcs contre 30% à Londres, [. . . ] 75% des travailleurs
passent plus d’une heure par jour dans les transports ; plus de 70% dor-
ment moins de 6 heures par nuit ; 41% des couples mariés se parlent
moins de 15 minutes par jour [. . . ] et 10% ne se parlent pas du tout. Le
coût de la vie est 50% supérieur à celui de New York [. . . ] la vie moyenne
d’un édifice est de 26 ans [. . . ].
— Sacchi (2005, p. 32)
4.1 Introduction
In the last chapter we have discussed how the identity of the place is conveyed
through conceptual connotations and translations of culture in the urban fabric.
We have shown how the interpretation of the contemporary city is possible using
metaphors, translation of traditions and culture. This is a way to reinforce the
belief that in order to evaluate the condition of a city that architectural and urban
spaces hold temporary meanings, we have to look beyond the physical structures.Throughout our exploration of place in the first chapter we have been pointed
towards the investigation of other intangible values that express place identity. As
the first chapter of this work has examined, one important element in looking into
the identity of the place is to observe people. In this chapter we are going to look
further into the intangible values correlated with the appreciation of place via its
people, the practice of everyday life, such as lifestyle, local food and daily space
routine. Within the pages that will follow Tokyo is presented through the eyes
of its citizens, in this way we are looking as well at the identity with Tokyo, that
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
Edward Relph suggested as an appropriate research method.We will demonstrate in this part that one significant apparatus that Tokyo holds
in preserving its identity and the unique spirit of the place is through its people.
People are not only important for their physical presence in the city but their prac-
tice of everyday life in the contemporary metropolis evokes traditional Japanese
values and keeps the Japanese spirit alive. We are going to look at some of the cus-
toms and everyday rituals that are performed by the habitants of Tokyo, that will
guide us to discover another side of Tokyo that we cannot simply decipher when
looking at the physical attributes or scholars’ ideas about the place.
Figure 4.1: Tokyo: people as a physical
element. Photo by author
The perception of the city by its habi-
tants is another supplementary tool to un-
derstand a city that is difficult to define in
its spatial terms. The image as figured by
the inhabitants, furthermore, “ play a social,
psychological, and esthetic, as well as practi-
cal role in our lives” (Lynch, 1960, p. 123).
Section 4.1 is going to portray the impres-
sion of Tokyo by the interviewees, through
maps designed by the people and direct
questioning on the subject. In Section 4.2,
we will inquire directly on the question of
orientation and identification, an essential
element in understanding one’s environ-
ment since primitive times (Lynch, 1960, p.123). Identifying and orientating oneself
within a city demonstrates ones attachment
of the city, one’s place within the city. The
notion of place attachment that we have
discussed in the first chapter is a feature
that needs to be examined via conversa-
tions with people in order to reveal the place-identity.
The exposition of this part of the research has resulted from a detailed inter-
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4.2. IMPRESSION AND CENTERS
view conducted while in Tokyo in the summer of 2009. The attempt is to enhancethe hypothesis that in fast changing city we should concentrate on the intangible
values of a city in order to comprehend its identity. Furthermore, the people’s ex-
ploitation of big cities and the question of place-identity is an interesting subject
for studying cities under development.
For the purpose of this project, I have interviewed 27 people that I have en-
countered while walking in Tokyo-to around the Shinjuku and Shibuya districts.
The interviews were a process that lasted for 8 consecutive days. The 27 people
were chosen to fit a melting pot of different sexes, different age groups, and differ-ent occupations. The interview also aimed to incorporate a non-Japanese crowd,
as to have a more wide perception of the city, given that each culture understands
the city in an alternate fashion. The overall outcome was as follows: 14 females
of which 4 were non-Japanese and below 35 and 4 were Japanese women over 40.
There were a total of 13 males who 5 of them were non-Japanese and below 35,
and 4 were in the age group of 40 and over. The overall process interview had a
duration of about one hour, a considerable amount of time for the busy Tokyoite.
Generally the non-Japanese crowd was more open to talk directly of their ideasabout Tokyo while I had a general difficulty in trying to reinterpret the question.
The questionnaire was designed partially following the example of Lynch’s (1960)
questionnaire in his book: The image of the city (ibid., p. 141). Lynch’s questionnaire
proposes the examination of the imageabilty of the city, those " physical qualities
which relate to the attributes of identity and structure in the mental image". (ibid., p.
9). Questions one, two and four, are somewhat compiled from Lynch’s question-
naire. They have been though, extensively adapted to fit our case of study Tokyo,
and was further enhanced to make queries about center, identity, quality of living.The questionnaire helped to widen the questions firstly regarding the image of a
city that lacks physical references and secondly to retrieve those qualities that are
important for the residents of such a city.
4.2 Impression and Centers
We are going to present here the general results of question 1 that were depicted
from asking people about their general impression of Tokyo. Question 1 was con-
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
Figure 4.2: Map 1: Concrete Jungle
sisted of questions like descriptions of the city, distinctive features, the question of
center, and the sketch of a quick map. Tokyo Tower1 came first as a monument
or a landmark that the people incorporated in the descriptions of the physical im-
age of Tokyo. The density and the tall buildings was another important reference
that people commonly expressed. Yet, these tall buildings were anonymous in the
descriptions; it was rather the overall image of Tokyo that was described. Other
frequent responses were of the sort: “ funny, exciting, crowded, silly, tall buildings,
chaotic, concrete jungle, a city for the young people”.
A few answers portrayed people as a kind of physical element in their depiction
of the city like: “ people in nice clothes walking amongst tall buildings” and “Dark and
1The Tokyo Tower is a replica of the Eiffel Tower(320m), built in Tokyo in 1958, and it has beenthe worlds tallest (333m) self supporting steel tower. It is a communication and observation tower
that attracts millions of tourist per year.
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4.2. IMPRESSION AND CENTERS
sad Japanese guys wearing sad black suits rushing to take their train to go to their sadCompany and spoil their lives there.”
Tokyo Tower is the only reference of a historical structure, even though a very
recent one, there has been no reference to other physical elements revealing Japanese
identity, neither the natural environment appeared in the first impression. Con-
trary a few non-places have been mentioned like the Tsutaya2 chain shops or the
Shibuya Crossing 109 Shopping Centre3. A general observation from the first im-
pression was the vagueness of the answers brought forward by the generalization
of the descriptions.
4.2.1 Map Analysis
Figure 4.3: Map 2
The maps were an appropriate
method to create an initial impression
of Tokyo prior to the interview that
inquires directly on the mental image
of the encountered places before pro-
ceeding with the rest of queries that
exhort for precision. Above all, they
serve as an indication to understand
how the habitant relates with his envi-
ronment. In designing the map of his
city, the interviewee is positioning him-
self in place and reveals his perception
and connection to the city. Below I willsummarize the most significant infor-
mation drawn out from the maps. The
request was to draw a map of Tokyo
similar as if “making a rapid description
to someone about the city” as specifically asked in question 2a.
2Tsutaya is a rental chain shop of music, films and other audio visual material. It is omnipresenteverywhere in Japan, and it is usually a standardized building easy to recognize with bright blueand yellow colors standing out.
3A huge department store of ten stories high, featuring the latest fashion.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
I have received a variety of responses concerning the spatial boundaries of Tokyo. Fifteen people consider Tokyo to be the inside of Yamanote line, which
is actually the Tokyo center not Tokyo as a whole. The geographical situation of
Tokyo including the prefectures that composed it was described as Tokyo from six
people. Five people positioned Tokyo with relation to the neighboring cities, while
one has actually placed Tokyo in a world map. 24 people placed correctly the north
in their drawings.
Figure 4.4: Map 3
The most important observa-
tion made from the maps is thestrong physical presence of train
stations that seem to help people
to identify with the city. Names
of areas have been identified and
placed on the maps in accor-
dance to the train path traversing
through them. Yamanote line that
encircles Tokyo-to, the center, wasa key feature and shown in twenty
maps.
Two important physical land-
marks have been identified: The
Imperial Palace and the Tokyo Tower which were structures that six people in-
cluded in their drawings. Other points of references were not physical structures
but districts as a whole. Twenty one interviewees used districts as a whole aspoints of reference in their maps, districts that for the most of the times are found
on the Yamanote line. (For example Shinjuku and Shibuya were almost continu-
ally present, and others like Ueno, Odaiba, Asakusa, and Akihabara were present
randomly).
An important remark reflected from the interviews is that the physical presence
of Tokyo has an impact on the people, but not the specificity of places but the image
as a whole. This was depicted from the incorporation of tall buildings in the maps,
where five people either represented them in text but for the most cases by drawing
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4.2. IMPRESSION AND CENTERS
in their maps.
Figure 4.5: Map 4
The demonstration in the previ-
ous readings about the natural en-
vironment of Tokyo was one fea-
ture that I had expected to be re-
vealed from the interviews. How-
ever, there were four people indicat-
ing the position of Tsukuba and Fuji
mountains and another one to pointout the Tama River that traverses
Tokyo. Tokyo bay and the sea were
present in the drawings of one fifth
of the people but this is probably
due to the proximity to the Tokyo
center. Seven interviewees precisely
illustrated the Daiba4 area in their
maps, which is the district next toTokyo bay, a perfect example of a
non-place, as it is an artificial island consisting of primarily shopping centers, en-
tertainment venues and chain hotels. Daiba is a collection of places around the
world where the district as a whole brings to mind a sea resort from Australia as it
consists of a lot of open spaces unlikely the rest of Tokyo. The Rainbow Bridge that
connects Tokyo center to this artificial island and is described as “Tokyo’s answer
to Golden Gate Bridge” (Cybriwsky, 2005, p. 223). There is a little Hong Kong dis-
trict and the Telecom Building that is a version of Le grand Arc in La Défence of Paris. A little further there is another Huge Shopping mall named Venus fort, with
interior streets and buildings reinvented with origins of a 18 th century southern
European town that actually resembles a “ Las Vegas version of Italy” (Cybriwsky,
2005, p. 224). On the same island, we can find also many examples of impressive
and massive buildings originating from Japanese architects, like the Fuji TV Head-
quarters, designed by Kenzo Tange or Tokyo Big sight convention center. There
4Daiba is a waterfront area opposite Tokyo Centre, connected by Rainbow Bridge. It is built
entirely on reclaimed land and it is a leisure and recreation area.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
are much more of these massive buildings in Daiba which demonstrates Japan’sfascination to impress through their pizzazz architecture.
‘Home’ positioning was also important in the drawing of these maps where
one third of the people located their home in their maps. Work was also more or
less equally represented. Other places with meaning that evoke a sort of Japanese
spirit were under represented; one interviewee has positioned the important and
traditional Tsukiji5 fish market and another the famous Rainbow Bridge. Rather,
non-places have appeared on people’s maps like the Haneda and Narita airport
(one interviewee), and Disneyland (one interviewee). One interviewee has drawnan impression of Tokyo instead of a map in which we can interpret his own percep-
tion of Tokyo: chaotic, tall buildings, sameness of physical structures, the presence
of people, and the search for the sky. Two more people have also illustrated people
in their maps while others attempted to depict the spectacular image of Tokyo by
placing stars, glitters and colors in their drawings.
The maps were an appropriate tool to form a first impression of Tokyo because
it has been a quick and spontaneous practice that captures the insight of people
before insisting on specific descriptions. For example, the impression portrayedregarding the question of center was different in drawing than in the general de-
piction about the center of the city. On one hand, it was evident from the maps
the absence of a center in the city, while on the other hand, we had for half of the
people, the prominent Yamanote line encircling the center of Tokyo, creating a new
mega center.
4.2.2 Centers
Responding directly to the question of center (1b), there has been a contrived
view of what is considered to be the center, a peculiar fact for habitants of the
city. From the diversity of answers I have received, only six people understood
the structure of the multiple centers that Tokyo is bounded within, from which
four were foreigners. Otherwise, I have been receiving answers naming differ-
5Tsukiji fish market is the biggest fish wholesale market in the world and maybe the biggestwholesale market as well. (Wikipedia). Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa shogun and builderof Edo, has established the market and invited fishermen from all over Japan to work by supplying
the city of Edo with fish.
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
ent places as centers, Shinjuku and Shibuya more notably while Chiyoda and thecentral station of Tokyo where also popular answers. A small percentage (3 peo-
ple) considered the inside of the Yamanote subway line to be the center of the city
which is an area that is already too vast (an area of 70km 2) to be appropriated
as a center. Two interviewees considered the imperial palace as the center, while
another two could not identify any part of the city as a center.
The fact that the Imperial Palace is either considered as a prominent physical
feature by some or the center of the city by others is a peculiar result given that it is
an empty place, a void center since it is closed to the general public and thereforeprohibits any social interaction. Tokyo, the city without a center was a subject of in-
terest to many anthropologists, and was used to try to explain the distinctive and
particular personalities of the Japanese people. Chie Natane, a Japanese anthro-
pologist took this fascinating idea to explain the society as mollusk, and explained
how it attributes perfectly to the decentered personalities of the Japanese people
(Sacchi , 2005, p.78). Nakane explained that in the social group of the Japanese,
the leader is an “empty figure”, “ready, apparently, to receive and accept anything that
might be offered.” Ikegami (1991, p. 11). We can also link the absence of the center inthe city with what Watsuji stated about denial of individual autonomy “a Japanese
human being is never an individual in the western sense of world; he or she is defined
by a set of relationships with others.” This new model of contextual structure of hu-
manism can find similar resemblance to the way the Japanese city is viewed and
understood from the outside as a whole and not by the attentiveness to individual
entities (Jinnai, 1994). Actually, the concept of the empty center in the Japanese
culture is a phenomenon evident in myths dating back to the 8th century. These
myths portray stories of Gods that appear in triples which in the middle one isnever actually represented (Kawai, 1982)6.
4.3 Identification and Orientation
One of the major concerns of a city that is always mutating, is that it does not
facilitate the task of orientating and of finding one’s way in the city. Architect
6As quoted in Ikegami (1991, p. 12).
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
Lynch (1960), along with the ethnologist Norberg-Schulz (1980), pointed out howorientation and identification aid in establishing a relationship with meaning be-
tween man and his environment. The notion of the spirit of the place as Norberg-
Schulz (1980) illustrated, presents the power that a place seizes which guides man
into inhabiting a place. To understand who we are and where we are coming
from we need to be able to identify with the places that we live. Orientating one’s
self in a big city like Tokyo is not an easy task, contrasting to other cities that are
based on an axial grid system and have important buildings as landmarks, or other
fixed identifiable structures that people reference to find their way around the city.In Tokyo, not only monumental structures or buildings are absent but moreover,
given the rhythm of change in the city, even buildings and facades could be altered,
or demolished at express speeds, creating a sort of confusion for the habitants.
Overlooking these facts, one of the fundamental difficulties in finding ones’
way in Tokyo is the fact that the streets have no names, or as Barthes (1982, p.
33) put it “largest city in the world is practically unclassified”. The city is divided
scrupulously like a hierarchical pyramid. It is first classify by ku, the prefecture,
then into shi, a city, then the next smaller nest is the cho, the urban ward and finallyon the inner stratum of this allotment is chokai, the neighborhood. The chokai is
appointed with a name and further divided into parcels where numbers are placed
randomly, in a first come first serve kind of logic7. The chokai is actually a self-
governing organization unit that dates back to the middle ages. When one lives
in a particular chokai, he becomes a member of the neighborhood, the smallest
group that exists in Japanese social structure besides ones’ household. The above
mentioned city structure expresses the hierarchical order that exists in Japanese
cities that as Nitschke (2003, p. 3) also confirms: “has its roots in the social behaviour
of its people, traditional and modern”. Tokyo of course could have adopted another
system of naming the streets since the city was completely leveled in World War
2 and was already a modernized city with occidental characteristics. But yet the
naming and numbering of the streets remain illegible. As Nitschke (2003, p. 2)
7The actual logic of the numbering of the parcels with in a district is according to the date thatparcel was used to accommodate a structure. It is kind of a first come, first serve, and the numberingruns consecutively. A common address in Japan might has the following format: Arao Building B2,
2-25-2, Kabukicho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160-0021
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
said: “There must be a profound, perhaps unconscious, reason why the Japanese chose tolive with a system of urban spatial orientation which is nearly not understandable to an
outsider, and why they continue to do so.”
We will next analyze the responses of the questionnaire and discuss the impli-
cations of orientation and identification in such a transient city. How do its habi-
tants maintain a sense of orientation and identification with their surroundings if
they keep transforming? To what are the habitants referring to in their daily life?
Through which objects or daily practices is their Japanese identity revealed? What
spaces have emerged as identifiable structures?
4.3.1 Orientation
The questions about orientation was aiming to point out which spatial struc-
tures or other reference points do the Tokyoites identify with and use as everyday
reference points in the undertaking of their daily space-routine. It is a significant
component of the questionnaire as the answers enables us to discover the elements
that people living in Tokyo encounter everyday, and use as references to locate andmove themselves physically in the city, while creating and maintaining their sense
of orientation in an ever-changing environment 8.
The nature of these features resulting from the interviews were of diverge na-
tures, possessing further varied and hybrid qualities when compared to Lynch’s
responses, that were for most of the time related to the urban artifacts. From the
assortment of answers received, I have decided to organize them in four distin-
guished categories: I have named the first one physical references, a category which
includes physical structures like buildings, bridges and monuments. The secondone is named environmental references, which includes any natural edifices (the sky,
the sea, the mountains and so on), the third unimportant others because it embraces
elements that are of insignificant nature. The fourth and more obscure category I
named nowhere as it the interviewees could not give any description of their daily
space-routine.
From the depiction of the results, only 14 people gave descriptions that in-
8The results for this section were derived form question 2b, 2c, and question 4 and can be found
in the appendix.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
cluded physical structures. This group of physical references, included mostly unim-portant and anonymous buildings, gray buildings, the building with the green
neon signage. It was not the building as such that proved important but some
kind of peculiar feature that the building had that made it identifiable. Those
anonymous structures were referential points for six interviewees while for three
of them was the indication of the train stations. At the same time, monumental
type buildings like Tokyo Tower, Tokyo University, the Imperial Palace and Tokyo
Station were included in five of the twenty seven descriptions. Other types of
buildings that are of insignificant architectural nature but yet of an increased im-portance due to their omnipresence and homogeneity, are structures like McDon-
alds, Tsutaya shops, Konbini stores9, Starbucks, pachinko10 and shopping centers.
These places are easily identifiable because the same physical image is produced
everywhere which makes them easy to identify, easy to recognize comparing to the
messy organization and the proliferated hybrid features of the street. Due to their
regular occurrence in the city, or in the entire country and many of them even glob-
ally they have become the new type of monuments, the new landmarks of cities.
Pachinko parlors for example can be easily identifiable because of their frenzy col-orful appearance, the sparkling flickering lights and particularly due to the bland
technologically generated music that exits these buildings.
Another example of an identifiable structure in the urban fabric is the Kon-
bini stores. These are places that all Japanese use daily at least once a day and
have appeared frequently in the people’s descriptions. Inside these stores there is
what is needed to practically live by. There is fresh food on a daily basis, cold and
warm, beverages including alcoholic ones, newspapers, cigarettes, objects needed
for household or office use, an ATM machine, a copy machine, the possibility to
reserve tickets (ranging from buses, concerts, trains, a sport spectacle, etc.), print
your photos, pay your bills. There are also toilets that the public can use upon
request and that are always surprising clean! All these goods and services are
available on a twenty-four hour basis, which makes them truly convenient and a
9Konbini are 24 hour convenience stores like 7/11, Lawson, Sunkus that are exactly the same building produced nationwide.
10 Japanese center for gaming devices used for gambling.
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
Figure 4.6: Tokyo: Outside Shibuya train station; Identifiable elements: the MacDonald’ssign, Promisu Department store, green peas pachinko, a tree. Photo by author.
place absolutely necessary for the entire population. At the moment some 42,34511
konbini stores are calculated to exist in Japan.
In the same category of physical references we find that train stations are again
central to people’s daily spatial interaction and recognition in there urban space.
Most oral descriptions have been actually the way from home to the train station,
the way finding within the train station in order to arrive at work. Train stations are
an emerging place with highlighted meaning for the Japanese people as one uses
them and interacts with them the same way one moves in the city; it has become
their daily urban reality. The labyrinth of routes inside train stations, the widerange of shopping activities possible underground including post office, toilets,
camera shops, pachinko, becomes a new kind of urban place where all kinds of
activities can take place within these extents.
Many train stations are connected underground with all major buildings, this
way people transfer directly from the train to their work space without having to
exit. Below one example of the daily space routine of one interviewee in which
11 Japan Franchise Association, as of August 2009 (data pertaining to the month of July 2009);
Source: Wikipedia
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
we find absolutely no indication of where this place might be. The only indicationthat we might be talking about a Japanese city could be the advertisement sign of
Suntory Hall, a beer establishment:
First, I walk down the slope in front of my apartment until it hits a crossing.Then, turn to the right and walk straight until I reach the subway station. Itake subway and get off at the second station. When I get out of the platform,I ignore the first exit that is connected to an office building, and turn to theleft. Passing by the advertisement of Suntory Hall, I walk underground until Ireach the other exit. I use the escalator and get to the ground. Then, the office
building in which my law firm is located is already in front of me. I pass by a
restaurant and a tea shop on the ground level and enter the building.
Figure 4.7: Tokyo: Shinjuku underground train
labyrinth. Photo by author.
The second category of environ-
mental references has been significant
to only six people, contrary to what
I expected, as these are the static
references of Tokyo. Rivers, moun-
tains, the sea, the slopes, the hills,
and the greenery are more or lessfix elements and from the previous
readings proved to be important in
preserving Tokyo’s identity. For
Rumiko, a young female engineer
we observe in her narrative a mix-
ture of environmental elements (the
cherry trees and the river), unim-
portant others (the red post box), and physical structures (the konbini and japaneserestaurants) that reveal a pure Japanese character, yet the generality of the image
is ubiquitous in her depiction:
I used to go out of the front door, make a right turn at a red post box, walkalong with the river with cherry trees (beautiful in spring!), arrived at the sta-tion after passing a few Konbini, Ramen-ya12 , Izakaya13, and coffee shops[ . . . ]
12Ramen-Ya stands for Noodle shop respectively. These are restaurants serving solely traditional Japanese noodles.
13Izakaya derives from ‘i’ and ‘sakaya’ meaning to sit and sake shop respectively. It is a Japanese
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
Figure 4.8: Unimportant
others: warnings on thepavement, vending ma-
chine, direction signs, el-
evated car park. Photos
by author.
The third category named unimportant others thatarose, was remarkable as the non physical elements,
rather abstract begin to take an important place in the
memory of the people and were present in more than
half of the responses. Examples of these elements that
arose from the interviews where: the red post box, the
coin showers, multi-storey car parks, the tobacco ma-
chine, plastic sushi on the window display, advertising
signs in the street, restaurant front signs, city signs on thepavements, the vending machine of used women’s un-
derwear14. Signs, advertising, maps in train stations, elec-
tronic surfaces, noises from the street, people activities.
Signs in the street whether maps, advertising signs, trains
station entrance signs, shop names and so on proved to be
central to people in their everyday way finding.
We can interpret these small objects or structures into
what Judo and Kuroda called the pets of the city, that adda richness to Tokyo’s urban identity. The recognition of
these objects for the daily space routine of the people is
not surprisingly. Even though they are very temporal ele-
ments in the city, I think that their human scale makes the
habitants association to them more straightforward than
a skyscraper or a bridge. Following is an example of a
description that incorporates the pet size objects, like the
coin shower, the vending machines, unidentified build-ings and generally the anonymity of all physical struc-
tures:
First thing I see when going to the train station isthe two “Coca Cola” vending machines near my
building. Then a rental parking lot on the left, then
style drinking and eating restaurant, that for most of the times the sitting is on the floor on thetatami mats like Traditional Japanese style sitting. Izakayas are usually affordable, and they areplaces that you can drink and eat until early morning hours.
14Yes, it exists!
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
a coin shower. Next is a “Sunkus” convenient store. After a sloping road,there is a two-floor grey building on the right: this is the place when I have toturn left. Then I cross a bridge, have a school on my left, and walk along therailway track until I reach the station.
We can see in the descriptions of Maxime, a foreigner living in Tokyo, that the
unimportant others elements that are rather abstract or could be defined as non-
places like the parking and the cola machines are the objects he uses to position
himself and move though city space. These unimportant elements, anonymous
structures, global symbols take now an important place in the human memorywhen creating the mental map of the city. Maxime always takes the same road,
and like all Japanese persons are precisely aware of time, he as well knows that it
takes him 12 minutes to reach his destination.
Figure 4.9: Unimportant others: small shop in
Tokyo selling beuatiful objects becomes a point
of reference Photo by author.
Finally, from the interviews arose
the nowhere category, that accounts
for a big number of eight out of the
twenty seven of the total answers.
This category portrays people thatcould not give any accurate descrip-
tion of their daily space routine.
All these people were Japanese res-
idents. Blurred images of their en-
vironment, inability to form a men-
tal image, these are the people that
seem to be fully absorbed in their
daily routines, a ritual that they per-form in a robotic manner. They are
entering a train, closing the eyes, lis-
tening to their music while playing
with their high-tech gadgets, the only indication of reaching a destination being
the name plaque at the train station’s stop or rather the automated voice that pro-
nounces the station at each stop. The image that these people have is busy train
stations, trains cramped with people, pushing in the trains and relief upon arrival.
One young woman told me that she cannot find her way home without the use of
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
her GPS mobile phone. She went on to depict her story of losing her phone andwas incapable to locate her house after work.
One way that we could try to explain this is the excess of materiality and the
multitude of information that exist in the city. There is an excess in image, an ex-
cess of people, of buildings, of advertising signs and symbols, of noises. All this
can be overwhelming for a habitant; the entire city is composed by the omnipres-
ence of places, objects and signs that are not referential or historical elements. One
hypothesis that we have drawn from this question is that people choose subcon-sciously not to absorb their environment as reluctance to assimilate with it.
Whilst, I have specifically asked about the attention to the advertising surfaces,
being one of the most basic characteristic in Tokyo’s urban image. As discussed
before, these surfaces are actually what ornate the external envelope of a building.
They are an inseparable part of the façade, immense and decorative, however not
a static and permanent feature but an ever-changing one. 17 people answered that
they use them daily for identification and orientation while four interviewees tend
towards them when they are in search for a place. This demonstrates people’s
daily dependence and attachment to these electronic screens. Additionally, five of
the twenty seven use these surfaces as an important part of their life because they
portray the latest trends in fashion and gadgets. The remaining four interviewees
pay no attention to these advertising billboards because they overwhelm them.
An interesting observation that also arose from the interviews is that the disori-entating personality of Tokyo is the incentive for people to go out and experience
the city. Four interviewees mentioned that one of their activities in Tokyo is to
walk and explore the city. It looks like that for the Tokyoites, orientation comes
only after the experience of the city, there is a need to discover the city by walking,
by sight, by habit. The need to discover the city arises probably from the fact that
the city changes and is never the same hence memories vanish causing a constant
desire to accumulate the new environment and recreate memories to relate with
the city.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
4.3.2 Memories
Subsequently, I have asked specifically of what are the emotions and thoughts
of their changing environment or of buildings that have vanished from the city.
Twenty people have generally accepted this reality reminding of the Zen principles
and ideology that distinguishes Japanese people and culture. Soosaku an artist
from Tokyo said to me: “it changes so fast, I cannot really follow, but it is funny15”.
While interviewee No.4 said: “If this is what is ought to happen, it is ok. Tokyo has to
keep up with the capitalist image”. These people looked at changes as something that
is ought to happen, because of the need of constant growth. Another interviewee,
Yoshi explained: "Tokyo is symbol of Japanese modern aspect and should develop itself
constantly in advanced manner. I feel happy by seeing new things. No nostalgic feeling.”.
Five people were feeling sad to see buildings go down but only if they had a histor-
ical or other personal meaning to them. Only two people were generally negative
about the transient city and the boundless growth, and both of them were people
over sixty years old.
The majority of people, 22 of them, do not hold specific memories of buildingsthat have already being torn down, while the remaining five of them could give
accurate descriptions if the place had a special meaning to them.In general we
could say that most of the young people considered this transient personality of
the city as a challenge, as it provides them for the excitement to be there and to
exist in this hallucinatory state. These younger crowds enjoy being lost in the city
and for them it is a stimulation to walk around and discover this city, which in turn
almost always endows with the unexpected.
When talking about special memories that the city has engraved in peoplesmind, a great deal of them were related with activities in which the environment
setting has a principal role. Examples included, cruise in Sumida River, Sakura
blossom viewings, picnic in parks, appreciating Tokyo’s view from a skyscraper.
For seven people, monuments like imperial palace and Tokyo Tower held a special
place in their memories, whilst of similar importance had the shopping centers.
There were as well stories describing personal memories that could only become a
15 Japanese people often use the word funny when they want to express something that is inter-
esting and fun.
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
reality in Tokyo like Jean-Francois story. Jean-Francois, a French engineer marriedto a Japanese and permanently residing in Tokyo narrates: “When colleagues came to
my place just before my marriage and make me dress like a Shibuya girl16 and walk around
in Tokyo with a sign "free kiss”. The best was it was easy to catch girls to try it ! That’s
really Disneyland, in Paris I would have probably gotten into trouble ...”
4.3.3 Identification
Question 5 aimed directly in enquiring of these features, tangible or intangibleelements, physical structures or just activities in Tokyo that divulge Japanese spirit
or people’s identity. People were asked to point out these elements in the city that
“make you feel closer to your “Japanese identity” ". The results were of diverse nature.
Eating Japanese food and going out to traditional Izakaya was top of the list, as
seven people considered food as an important feature of the Japanese identity.
Figure 4.10: Tokyo: Washoku, Japanese traditional
food. Photos by author.
Japanese cuisine which is
called washoku is indeed an in-
dication that reveals the exclu-sivity of the Japanese identity,
given its long history and the
fact that it has remained unal-
tered from western influences. It
is as well, one significant ele-
ment of Japanese culture that is
widely exported. The rich vari-
ety of dishes and the attention to seasonality are not the only reasons that foodin Japan is considered to be authentic and truthful to its origins. The way food
is prepared and served demonstrates once again how the notion of beauty that is
absent from the city is found rather in smaller objects or deeds. Saito (2007, p. 116)
explains:
16Shibuya girls is a fashion statement that some Japanese girls seem to follow. This is a stylewhere the girls bleach their hair, spent hours per day in tanning salons and have indeed a verydark skin. To contrast their dark colour they wear pale lipsticks, punkish colourful clothes, andhigh platform shoes. Shibuya girls have become a tourist attraction of Tokyo, and they are walking
around craving to be photographed.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
The highly sophisticated aesthetics involved in Japanese food, engaging allthe senses [. . . ] an important focus of Japanese food is its handling of theingredients. In general, the manipulation of each ingredient (cutting, choice of cooking method, seasoning arrangement) is done so as to bring out the best of its native qualities
Serving and presenting the food is also crucial, as the Japanese cuisine, requires
various plates each destined to receive the appropriate content. Saito says that
“[. . . ]the arrangement is not only evident in restaurants but also in everyday meals at
home.” The idea of exposing one’s identity in the city through other activities not re-lated directly to spaces can find a lot of other indications in the Japanese paradigm.
A discussion I had with Yoshi, a young manager, of a famous car industry estab-
lishment, elucidated my enquiries: “Tokyo is always creating modern Japanese culture
and enjoying it makes us feel very Japanese. Identity is not always linked with tradition.”
We can use the example of the rite of packaging in Japan, to present such a cultural
practice not relating with tradition, yet it transmits an indispensable Japanese qual-
ity and is not as straightforward as one will imagine. This is an action performed
with a meticulous and rather spiritual effort. Every shape requires different meth-ods of wrapping, while the context of the enclosure decides on the material for
wrapping. In Japan, one can find hundreds of books with instructions of how to
package items. Fumihiko Maki (1979) declares: “I know of no other culture that has
produced such a rich accumulation of wrapping systems so beautiful and functional, for
accommodating the wide variety of contents and shapes for the enclosures” (p. 60). These
are patterns in everyday life that show a great aesthetic sensitivity, where beauty
is exposed in the unfolding sequential experience that these acts are performed.
Practices of everyday life that are customary employed by a large percentage of people, also revealed the place-identity even though only a few pointed them out
in the interview. These are actions exclusively Japanese and include taking shoes
off in ones’ house and in restaurants, sitting on the floor, bowing, having a Japanese
bath at home or at the local public bath, the sento. These activities have one feature
in common, the need for cleanliness. Cleanliness for the Japanese is an expres-
sion of ethnic values as well as an affirmation of ethnic superiority. Shoes are re-
moved and left at the entrance of the house (even if this is an apartment in Tokyo),
as not to allow the external evil and dirty to penetrate their house. This habit is
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
performed still in many restaurants in Tokyo, regardless of their western appeal,where customers and staff alike wear slippers to enter. Naturally, shoes should
be removed when entering all religious establishments or teahouses in Japan. In-
deed Tokyo is an extremely clean capital, the streets are usually clean of garbage,
public spaces are extremely clean while public toilets are spotless. This practice
in not only initialized by government, but it is always striking to see that Toky-
oites that carry their portable ashtrays or plastic bags so they will not throw any
waste on the street. Other everyday objects that people carry for the stipulation for
cleanliness include hot towel to wash hands before eating, special face tissues toremove sweat, normal tissues, gloves and hats (to protect against the sun as beauty
is considered to be the white skin color).
Additionally, two people pointed out the simple act of bowing as a practice
that exposes their identity. This simple act is a gesture used to greet someone, a
fundamental practice in the everyday life of the Japanese people. It is a form of po-
liteness, and performed mutually by everyone who resides in Japan regardless of
the place’s features. People bow in front of God statues in shrines, they bow in the
McDonalds counter, in a petrol station and when talking to the phone even though
nobody is looking at them. The custom is not presupposed by the physicality of
place but rather by the intangible values of peoples’ mental qualities.
Fashion is also an identifiable feature that we can employ to define Tokyo’s
uniqueness, as well as an expression of cultural identity. We find particularly in
Tokyo streets, more than any other city in Japan or in the globe an extreme vari-
ety of fashion styles. Besides traditional costumes or western modern outfits, the
popular fashion involves an integration of various styles piled together in a sophis-ticated system of hierarchizing layers, textures and colors that result in an original
and fresh look. On top of that, Tokyo street fashion is particularly outstanding
as it is possible to count at least ten alternative styles that we do not encounter
in other parts of the world. Examples are Cosplay style where people dress up
as their favorite anime characters, Kogal, where girls dress up in high school look
alike uniforms, or the emerging style of Dolly Kei, that is inspired from the Middle
Ages with a twist of fairy tale theme, vintage clothes or religious symbols. Sacchi
(2005, p. 210) accounts how even in the financial crises of the 90’s the shopping
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
habits of the habitants did not change:A Tokyo en somme, on vend et on achète tout, comme si rien-ou presque-rien s’était passé. Un peuple de fashion victims, pour le quel le shoppingest un impératif catégorique, sur l’autel duquel on sacrifie sans hésitationn’importe quoi ; . . . le shopping prend ici les dimensions d’un phénomènepsychologique du masse, et les architectures consacrées à la vente des pro-duits du luxe constituent une composante importante de l’image urbaine17.
Figure 4.11: Tokyo: Fashion. Photos by
author.
Engaging in traditional activities like
Noh theatre, Kabuki, traditional Japanesedance, martial arts, festivals that represent
the Japanese culture was another important
delineation that proved as important as
food. Festivals, called matsuri in Japanese
are often spectacular events, with tradi-
tional costumes and processions through
cities. There are hundreds of them and
all of them aim to revoke ancient Japaneseheritage. One interviewee mention that he
feels ‘Japanese’ while attending the Tokyo
Sumida Fireworks (Hanabi) Festival is cel-
ebrated on the last Sunday in July. It is a
spectacular show with 20,000 fireworks and
a crowd of more than one million attending
to watch the Tokyo sky light up. Fireworks,
call Hanabi in Japanese are a common cul-tural ritual used for matsuri celebrations. It
is a tradition inherited from China and fired
up for the first time in Edo in 1733 to mark
the opening of the river for boats. In a way, the Japanese spirit is kept alive
17Translation by the author: In short, at Tokyo, one sells and buys everything, as if nothing-oralmost-happened. A crowd of fashion victims, for which shopping is a dogmatic imperative, like analtar where things are sacrificed without any hesitation; [...] shopping here takes the dimensions of a mass psychological phenomenon and the architecture is dedicated to the sale of luxury products
is an important component of the urban image.
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4.3. IDENTIFICATION AND ORIENTATION
through the continuation of these customs, and as these proceedings take place inthe city, the city itself becomes the ground were tradition and history is reinvented.
Through the many celebrations of deities and other ancestral and ethnic legacies
that are omnipresent in Tokyo, people start experiencing them by becoming part
of them hence the sense of belonging and identification with place is strengthen.
Figure 4.12: Tokyo: Matsuri. Photo by author.
Activities or events related to naturealso proved important for the people’s
identity. Five people mentioned activ-
ities such as the sakura blossom view-
ing, having picnic in parks as to con-
nect them to their true nature. Another
interviewee mentioned that walking
around Tokyo and exploring the city
makes him feel Japanese, because thecity offers innumerable surprises. An-
other one said that the lack of time
while living in the capital made them
feel as particularly Japanese, as if the
absence of time this is what the Neo-
Tokyo represents. A few answers also related identity to the Japanese psyche’s
nature to be organized, clean and polite as a common feature that all Japanese
people possess. One interviewee said to be that using the train marks his Japaneseidentity, and this train culture made him feel utterly Japanese! One more said
that the only thing that can help him get close to his roots in Tokyo was to watch
Japanese television which is a genuinely Japanese practice broadcasting Japanese
dramas about everyday Japanese life, silly shows, and Japanese anime that gener-
ally present the pop culture that is evident in contemporary Japan. Another inter-
viewee recognizes Karaoke spaces as a way to feel ‘Japanese’. Karaoke venues are
consisted of individualized room-boxes that exist in multi floor buildings that our
interviewee regularly goes to practice his singing abilities.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
4.3.4 Public Spaces
Finally other interesting statements about identification arose from people’s re-
gard to public spaces. We have drawn essential remarks about the meaning of
public spaces and what kind of places consider as public. Even though parks were
a common understanding of a public space, (yet at Tokyo many of the parks have
an entrance fee), there were a lot of responses that suggest a new meaning of public
space. Shopping centers were considered as public space by six people. A young
Japanese girl mentioned that purikura as what she performs frequently as a public
activity. Purikura are sticker photos decorated with a choice of hundreds symbols,
taken in individualized photo booths that exist everywhere, either free standing in
streets, department stores, trains stations, or in purikura centers.
New understanding of public spaces came about as people were considering
train stations (three people), Streets (two people), Konbini (two people), Karaoke
halls (two people), public baths (one person), internet cafes (one person), love ho-
tels (one person). Those places of transitory character previously defined as non-
places, several of them embedded by technology are finding new meanings as im-
portant and referential public places for the Tokyoites. The nature of these public
spaces as resulted from the discussions, were described in their totality with char-
acteristics like safety and cleanliness. These places can also be described as an
intertwining of private and public spaces, an attempt to reinvent house activities
so that they are performed outside due to lack of space in the domicile. Public
baths, karaoke rooms, love hotels, internet spaces, are transitory in the sense that it
is a product consumed for short periods of time at a very cheap price, yet they are
shared and common for all people twenty-four hours a days. New public spacesalso suggest the necessity to be technologically equipped.
4.4 Conclusion
The chaotic image of Tokyo produces situations of disorientation, ambiguity in
distinguishing physical structures caused by its disordered urbanism, the emer-
gence of homogenous structures and the excess of information that exists in the
city. Taking a quick glimpse at Tokyo a hundred years ago, we can see the radical
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4.4. CONCLUSION
transformation that the city has gone through, evident both in the image of the city, but above all in the sentimental attachment that people had for this place. The cel-
ebrated writer Natsume Soseki18 nostalgically describes his neighborhood in the
beginning of the 20th century:
“[...] several houses in the district were built in the impressive go down style.[...] One of them was the impressive Omiya Denbei, visible as you went upthe road. And when you went along the road that goes downslope, there was asake shop called Kokuraya, which had wide frontage [. . . ], it was a place witha history19 [. . . ] There was also an oak woodworking shop and a smithy. A
little towards Hachiman Hill road there was also a covered vegetable marketwith a spacious dirt floor.[. . . ] There was, of course, a bean-curd merchant,[. . . ]the front gate of the Seikanji Temple”. Soseki (1915, p. 204-205).
In Soseki‘s description (1915), we can distinguish a clear image of the city; the
description is rendered with specific buildings and names that he portrayed with
accuracy. We can see that the traces of history have been indispensable in his per-
ception and identification of his neighborhood. His familiarity with the place pro-
vokes feelings of attachment, emotions that were not evident through our inter-
views. We have observed that for the most of our interviewees, it is Tokyo’s image
as a whole that has more impact on them, not the specific meanings of places, his-
torical accounts neither the human relations. The two most identifiable structures
were the Imperial Palace and the Tokyo Tower, structures that offer no public us-
age but are there as symbols of power and tradition in one hand, and innovation
and modernity on the other. It was peculiar for people to identify with structures
that are ‘void’ in their social usage.
Even though the habitants’ relation with the city presents a certain detachmentand indifference towards city structures, people use their current environment as a
backdrop to conduct daily activities related to their core identity. What this chap-
ter confirmed through the evidence of the sentimental detachment with the place,
is that firstly, place-identity in such a transient city cannot be recognized (at least
totally) from its physical entities. It is the people who are faithful followers of
18Natsume Soseki is one of the most important Japanese writers of the Meiji era “ a transcendentfigure in modern Japanese history and literature”, as Laurence Rogers write in Tokyo, a literallystroll. It is not by coincidence then than his portrayed is figures in the Japanese 1000 Yen note bill.
19The author here goes on to give exact details and information about the place.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
a strong culture, and reinvent tradition into their contemporary lifestyle. Iden-tity, like beauty discussed in the previous chapter is found in the deepest layers of
things. Particularly, “Japanese” identity is revealed in the zeal of cleanliness, in tra-
ditional celebrations, in beautiful small objects, in the appreciation of nature, in the
meticulous food preparation and serving and in packaging of objects. Observing
closer these everyday rituals reveal a different type of beauty and one central for
the Japanese identity. Although the place possesses an unfamiliar urban structure,
it turns into a mediator for the revelation of Japanese uniqueness. It becomes a
setting for daily rituals to be carried out: the superficial department store becomesa stage set where the saleswoman will ritually wrap a package, nameless and ugly
modern looking restaurants are spaces become a ground were dining on the floor
takes place, and the seaside near the restructured Sumida River reinvents ancient
traditions through firework celebrations. Even if their environment is in a constant
state of change, Japanese people are still closely bounded to their traditions; people
still bow everywhere to greed someone, take their shoes off inside their houses, eat
commonly Japanese food, enjoy wearing their traditional clothes and following a
matsuri celebration. We can conclude that Tokyo comprises notions of a progres-sive place, translating successfully into what Massey (1994, p.244) announced:
It is a sense of place, an understanding of ’its character’, which can only beconstructed by linking that place to places beyond. A progressive sense of place would recognize that, without being threatened by it. What we need, itseems to me, is a global sense of the local, a global sense of place.
A further conclusion observed form the interviews is that the non-human inter-
actions in the spatial configurations have proven more important that the human
interactions. Interviewees were identifying with small and unimportant objects inthe undertaking of their daily space routine, and human relationships were almost
absent. Yet, the people’s involvement in Tokyo have proven important in the sense
that through their activities and practises, daily transactions and spatial interac-
tions, reveal a strong tradition where identity is omnipresent in a mental level in
this non-place. Kobayashi and Wadwekar (2009, p. 3) remind us that “ Japanese per-
ceive their built environment through their activities, not through the physical presence”.
The integration of the human aspect in the city serves not only as a way to
widen our understanding of the city in a more interpersonal approach but above
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4.4. CONCLUSION
all it has enabled to establish the link between place and human identity. Theinterviews have facilitated us to prove that a mutual correlation exists in the dis-
tinctiveness of the city and that of its inhabitants. The juxtaposition between the
two can be measured through various associations:
Figure 4.13: Tokyo: People manifesting.
Photo by author.
Firstly, the absence of center in the
city presents an equivalent absence of
center in the social group in Japan. Like
the city’s structure that is to be eval-
uated when looking at it as an inte-gral whole so does a Japanese human is
never considered as an individual but as
part of the group he belongs (his neigh-
borhood group, his work group, or his
family). The salary man, a term widely
used, is the average working man in the
Japanese society. It is defined as those
men20 that work on a salary base andare part of big corporations, identified
by their white collar shirts and suits.
The term usually refers to middle class lifestyle, low wages, and long working
hours. The company requires this salary man to identify completely with the com-
pany, follow blindly the working methods and never question. It is a similar man-
ner samurai obeyed their feudal lords. Huang (2004, p. 74) establishes the link
between people and city through the embodiment of modern samurai and the am-
biguous meaningless structures like the Tokyo Metropolitan office, by stating “whocan be a more qualified user of that space than the modern samurai, the middle class Toky-
oites, like the salaryman.”
A second analogue we can describe is how the anonymity of the physical struc-
tures that causes conditions of indifference and detachment is a parallel with the
human alienation. The built environment has evoked a general disinterest and
impassiveness in the emotions of the habitants which presents a similar absence
20 A woman in an equal position is referred to as career woman demonstrating the undermining
role of woman in the Japanese society.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
of emotions in interpersonal relations. This condition is enhanced by the use of modern technology in the city that has led to an emergence of new places, where
citizenship can be practiced individually and not in relation with others. The alien-
ation is a condition provoked by the city as for emotional ties to develop between
people and places, social interactions need to take place, in the literal sense of the
word21 . In Tokyo the social interactions or the use of public space are limited in big
shopping centers, manga kissa cafes, the individualized karaoke rooms, love hotels
or trains. With the appearance of these places, social interactions are not possible,
given that these daily transactions are more efficiently conducted companionlessand without the need of human interaction. The habitant becomes so captivated
by the use of technology that is omnipresent and much depends on it to perform its
daily spatial routines, a common concern in cities that advanced technologies are
omnipresent. Similarly place dependence is enhanced through people’s identifica-
tion with electronic screens omnipresent in the city. The condition of the peoples’
attachment to technology and gadgets leave us not shocked by the fact that in the
year 2008, five out of ten of the best selling Japanese novels- frequently depicting
stories of human solitude - were written on mobile phones22, usually by peoplecommuting long hours in trains, indicating both the absence of time and space in
their lives that is counterbalance in these "other places" and technology.
A further association observed is the dualism in identity in both personal and
urban characteristics. Even though the physical environment is supermodern,
somehow one feels the strong impact of tradition, and this was achieved by the
way foreign imported models have been successfully translated into local stan-
dards. The element of surprise in the city is an exceptional characteristic of Tokyo
today. Behind a façade, a surface, a street, or a person, one always discovers morethan what is apparent on the outside. In the special urban setting, Japanese identity
is concealed behind the huge avenues laden by tall buildings, and the modern look
presupposed by a world leading commercial capital we still find labyrinth-like al-
leys, temples, and characteristics that associate the city to its pre-modern condi-
tions. The identity and lifestyle of the Tokyoite is somewhat similar; the Tokyoite
21Graaf (2009b, p. 267).22The Economist, Nomads at last, April 10, 2008
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4.4. CONCLUSION
can be a fanatic otaku23
, equipped with the latest technological gadgets, living inmodern apartments but yet is deeply rooted in tradition.
This is evident from his everyday space routine and activities like going to Noh
theatre, enjoying Japanese cuisine, or celebrating old traditions. On the outside,
what is visible and conceivable is to set an image that promotes advanced ideas of
an extra modern society, imposing on the habitants to follow this model.
Figure 4.14: Tokyo tower. Photo by
author.
The suggestion of the duality in identity or
the multiplicity of identities juxtaposed both
in the city’s structure and in social structure isalso apparent in many contemporary Japanese
movies. This intriguing relationship is evident
in Tsukamoto films, were the subject body is
overwhelmed by the powers of the city’s ab-
stract space and starts to mimic these forces, ac-
quiring a double identity. Huang (2004, p.60).
In a similar way the hero of Tokyo Eyes24 pos-
sesses a double contrasting identity. A com-puter debugger, polite and sweet guy swipes
delicately into a harmless murderer shooting
wrongdoers in Tokyo city. Every time before
shooting he puts on a pair of thick glasses as if
to become the other person, the super hero that
will save Tokyo from all kind of offenders, usu-
ally the impolite and rude, heartless or chauvin-
istic people. The theme of becoming a strong
hero that is palpable in Japanese movies can be
explained with the desire to match the urban space of Tokyo. The idea of double
identity is also a distinguished element of the protagonists of Japanese animation
films, like the films of Satoshi Kon in which we observe a lot of urban translations
23A Japanese term used to describe persons that are fascinated by animation films, video gamesand manga
24French-Japanese thriller-romance directed by French film/documentary maker Jean-Pierre
Limosin. It was presented in the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
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CHAPTER 4. THE INTERVIEWS
especially an emphasis on the multi-culturism, chaotic imagery where everyonesucceeds in coming together. His main characters are possessing a double iden-
tity shaped by their environment. For example, Mima in Perfect Blue is influenced
by media and technology and in Paprika the main hero has two alternate and ex-
tremely different personalities, a violent one and a more charming and friendly one
on the other side. Similarly in Japanese literature, Keiichiri Hirano in his futurist
roman Dawn, is proposing a new concept of ‘dividualism’ as the structural founda-
tion of a person. Hirano is suggesting here that even if we possess one body we
have many personalities, and is the ensemble of all these personalities that givesus our identity (Kunieda, 2010).
The dual identity characteristics are observations drawn from the interviews
and personal observations. They were examined and validated as well through
ongoing Japanese literature, anime movies and contemporary films. However, a
more extensive research should be carried to evaluate this correlation and elucidate
the impact that such a place has on the people.
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CONCLUSION
The power of a landscape does not derive from the fact that it offers
itself as a spectacle, but rather from the fact that, as mirror and mirage, it
presents any susceptible viewer with an image at once true and false of
a creative capacity which the subject (or Ego) is able, during a moment
of marvelous self-deception, to claim as his own.
— Lefebvre (1991, p.189)
The aim of this work was to investigate new ways for analyzing the urban iden-tity of a contemporary city that under the shadow of economic booms and glob-
alization is undergoing constant construction and development. Consequently,
these mutations can direct into a total transformation of the urban fabric, raising
questions of urban memory loss and a new place-identity merging. The physi-
cal changes bring similarly cultural and social changes that could put at risk the
meaning and values that place carries. We have throughout this work, as Massey
(2001) suggested, not considered place as something static, because social inter-
actions and the physical environment that constitute its being are not motionless,neither frozen in time. According to Massey (2001) the contemporary place should
be consider as processes.
Tokyo has been an appropriate case study as a place-process. We have ex-
plained that Tokyo can be addressed as a non-place due the multiple homogenous
structures enhanced by the advanced technological nature along with the fact that
it is in a constant state of transition; it possesses little physical reminders of its long
history. Despite its ultra modern look, and its novel physical nature, there is some-
thing undoubtedly Japanese in its identity, a reasoning that drove us in the pursuit
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and exploration of these features. Hence after, what is important to highlight isthat Tokyo is a living example of a city that despite its contemporary physical im-
age, the spirit of the place has its roots to Japanese traditional aesthetics. Massey
(1991) questioned in one of her essays whether it is not possible for the place to
be progressive in our times, to be appropriate for this ‘time-space compression”
era (the current global-local times). Tokyo appears to be a place that corresponds
to this anticipation. We have proved that even if Tokyo is above all a metropolis,
thus a product of the global market world and of homogenized spaces, it has a
distinctive character of its own that is revealed mostly through everyday practicesrather than through the physical matter of the architecture. In its global context it
possesses many local features.
Throughout our research, we have unveiled hidden meanings that are bounded
in the city’s urban structure that help us to appreciate its complex identity. The
tangible and intangible values of Tokyo were the approach that facilitated into a
holistic view and understanding of the place. The consideration of the tangible
values was evaluated through an investigation of the physical identity of Tokyo
historically, with an emphasis on the drastic restructuring of the 1980s. This ac-
count has verified that the very matters that we have considered to be a threat for
Tokyo’s identity, like the kitsch, the ugly, its transient state, the copy-paste and un-
historical places are the same elements that we can exploit to distinguish Tokyo’s
present identity today from other cities in the world. The chaotic and unstable
built environment or the messy urban cityscape are in reality features that enforce
the imageabilty of the city; as new and strong images are created and recreated
constantly leading to the conclusion that we can find meanings and values in tem-
porary notions or spaces that are generally considered to weaken the spirit of the
place. This refection has been further validated in the last chapter where we have
confirmed that people are attached and find meanings in their ambiguous envi-
ronment.
What’s more, the study of Tokyo’s urbanity has demonstrated another way of
examining the cities. Tokyo is an example of an alternative interpretation of a
place, since it carries a strong sense of place not through a powerful presence of
its long history, but rather in its ability to respond to changes and adapt to the
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conditions of the given times, an approach adopted since ancient times. This wasexplained by the term wakon yosai, employed during the Meiji era, a method that
encouraged the copying of western culture, architecture, technology and then ap-
plied in their local traditions and ways of living.
Nonetheless, what this research expressed is that a city in a transient process
discloses history and tradition through other means besides its built environment.
The descriptions of people regarding their daily space-routine show almost no
indications, or referential physical features of a Japanese place-identity. It is via
intangible features that are less fragile that the Japanese unique identity was re-vealed like the appreciation of nature, daily lifestyle, or Zen like principles. We
have been able to associate the transient character of Tokyo with Zen teachings
that encourage temporality and ephemerality through the dictum all things must
pass. We have established how the temporary identity of Tokyo is actually a per-
manent feature via an insight in Zen philosophy that determines how the Japanese
perceive their environment. Our effort to ascertain Tokyo’s identity led us to the
translation of metaphors and other conceptual connotations of Japanese culture,
along with an investigation of its spatial configuration. We have investigated the
abstract meanings and cultural values that are omnipresent in the contemporary
identity of Tokyo, like the notion of beauty and aesthetics of traditional architec-
ture. The understanding of everyday life through teachings of Zen and nature, or
ancient beliefs on aesthetics has proven to be fundamental ideas that one can in-
terpret and juxtapose with the city’s urban condition, rendering a more lucid and
comprehensible Tokyo.
Nevertheless, what has proved of utter significance in order to appreciate theuniqueness and identity of Tokyo is to observe human interaction and the practice
of everyday life in Tokyo. We can also argue from our results that the peoples’
engagement in their daily activities, such as their cuisine, their language, their ap-
preciation for small things, the common zeal for cleanliness are all components that
are part of the city and can be pointed out to distinguish the particular “Japanese”
character of Tokyo. Through the study of people, we have traced, firstly those qual-
ities physical and abstract that people identify within their city and secondly we
have indicated new emerging places in the city as well as new modes of habitation.
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The new emerging places are generally characterised by their ephemeral features;examples include love hotels, trains, internet cafes or other places with a strong
presence of advanced technology. We have addressed these emerging places as
non-places, but in fact we observe an additional parameter: the exploitation of
these places arises due to lack of personal space and the search to extend domestic
activities in the city. These are spaces that can be described as third places25 and are
worthy of further investigation as these places that are neither public nor private
are an emerging phenomenon of growing cities and are bound to change entire
cities.This research has directed us into making further verdicts a propos to the jux-
taposition of the city structure and the social structure, observations that resulted
from the interviews. People appear to be the essential apparatus that the city en-
compasses to preserve its identity because mainly of the Japanese savoir vivre that
is closely bounded to Japanese traditions. Yet, the deeper the consideration, we
witness a new kind of human emerging, the one that starts to merge with the city,
and starts to receive the impacts of such a powerful city. Huang (2004) claims that
the Tokyoite becomes a body upon which forces of violence are exerted from thecity, making him acquire a double contrasting identity26. Caillois similarly argues
that a living organism tends to imitate its environment, a consequence of being in
a powerful space (Huang 2004, p. 58). In Tokyo people are deprived of their body
space and it looks like the Tokyoite becomes a mobile body in an ever fragmented
space. The lack of space along with the fleeting condition of the city itself urges
the habitants into fusing with the city creating the decorpolization of the habitants.
Toyo Ito who examines thoroughly the predicament of flux and fast changing so-
ciety and named the residents of Tokyo living in this liquid state and comparedthem to “urban nomads wandering in artificial forests,” for whom, “a tent would suffice
25Term employed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his book “The great, Good Place”,1989.26Could this be a way to look at what happened in 1995 in the unfortunate event of the Tokyo
gas attacks? The attacks were led by the spiritual group Aum Shinrikyo killing 12 people andinjuring 5,000. Castells (1997, p. 101) explains how this was viewed as an act against globalizationand threat of losing one’s own identity :“the ultimate goal was [. . . ] to save Japan [.. . ] from thewar of extermination that would result from the competing efforts of Japanese corporations andAmerican imperialism to create a new world order and a united world government ”. This extremeact left puzzled the world as Japan is regarded as an ordered, fair society, and the most ethnically
homogenous one amongst the world big cities.
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as shelter”27
.Another association we have detected is that the same way that the city-amoeba
changes and adapt to current needs, so do Japanese people, said to have a sponge28
like personality, mimic the city and can adjust their lifestyle to incorporate new
situations. The millions of habitants that live in Tokyo and are proud of their envi-
ronment, orientate and identify in a city in which its built environment is a mobile
practice, turning themselves into urban nomads to assimilate with this condition.
They appoint new meanings to their environment and adapt to new ways of inhab-
itation to satisfy their desire to be a part of this city. Within this context the secondand last chapter have revealed a selection of novel type of spaces that emerged.
These spaces arose, firstly, to reflect the changing economic and global space of
the city, secondly recreate abstractly the vague city’s form into a microcosm of am-
biguous spaces and thirdly to accommodate the pervasive needs of private space
that was taken away from Tokyo habitants. The diminishing personal space for
the habitants, along with the long process of the daily commute encourages this
traveling culture within the city, and the search for spaces that can be an exten-
sion of one’s living room. We are therefore confronted with new spaces that are an“architectural hybridization of public, domestic, and commercial realm” marked by the
“existence of commercial venues distributed throughout the city that serve as an extension
of the private residence” (Jorge Almazán Caballero, 2006, p. 301) This correlation of
city structure and people can be elaborated further into the following sequence:
fleeting city-mobile places-urban nomads. This trend of nomadic lives that orig-
inated in the 80’s with the unrealized works of Archigram and Tokyo Ito have
found concrete meanings today as “commercial space is rapidly providing setting to
accommodate the nomadic urban lifestyles” (Almazán Caballero, 2006, p.308).The parallel that we have initiated between the association of city structure and
the people has been induced by Huang (2004), who argues that Tokyoites start to
absorb the city and desire to be identical with it. She brings evidence on the subject
27Roulet, Roché-Soulié and Ito (1991). Toyo Ito in an interview with Sophie Roulet and SophieSoulie, entitled "Towards a post-ephemeral architecture,” in Sophie Roulet and Sophie Soulie, eds.,Toyo Ito (Paris: Editions Moniteur, 1991), p. 96-97.
28From a personal communication with Professor Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama, Kyoto University, hehas expressed that people have a personality similar to a sponge, that is soft flexible and can adapt
to fit in different states.
103
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Figure 4.15: Tokyo: In department store 109. Photo by author.
by an insight in many Japanese films. She has expressed the power that the city
has over people as manifested through the urban plans of the construction boom
where said “. . . in abstract space, the conceived space overrides the concrete space of
everyday life” (Huang, 2004, p.59) 29. We have observed from the overall question-
naire results that people are proud users of their city even if their concrete space is
diminishing as the city’s economic space is expanding. This reality has been widely
accepted by the habitants as the new identification with the city. We can argue that
the Zen approach towards development and reconstruction of the Japanese cap-ital has turned the Tokyoites into a subconscious decorpolization with their city.
Huang (2004) describes decorpolization as a condition arising from the desire to
mimic one’s space and wherein a body assimilates to his environment, blurring
the boundaries of the body and the city limits, causing conditions of psychastenia.
This theme of the people assimilating with the city remains open-ended and re-
quires further research. In what ways do we have a parallel projection of identities
and through which means does the city form the identity of the habitants or vice
29This thought was initiated by Lefebvre in his book The Production of Space, 1991.
104
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versa. Certainly, supplementary investigation is needed in that area will enable tomeasure identities of the people-city relationship when talking about cities with
non-fixed values. Subsequent in depth investigation to understand the complex
future metropolis should aim to find other elements and various methodological
approaches in regards to how and by which means such powerful cities have an
impact on its users-inhabitants. Will the end of masterplan launch the creation of
micro plans to be inserted in the cities facilitating mobile practices? How the mo-
bility of contemporary cities lead in new forms of life? Should we start thinking,
as urbanists, to provide elements for such flexible and mobile places in the city?
105
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APPENDIX A
QUESTIONNAIRE
Interviewee details
-Tokyo citizen/how long?
-Resident of (ward)/Transportation Means
- Age/Gender
-profession
-Japanese/Foreigner
1. Tokyo Impression
a. What are the first things that come to your mind that symbolize Tokyo?Descriptions that relate to the physical image of Tokyo.
b. Is there any part of Tokyo you consider as the centre of the city?
c. What are distinctive features of Tokyo/of the area that you live? Could you
tell me elements that are particular for you, easy to identify and help you orientate
in the city. These elements might be large or small, environmental, or physical, or
abstract elements.
d. How much do you pay attention to the billboards, the electronic announce-
ments, notices and generally all signs that are omnipresent in Tokyo?
2. Tokyo Image
a. Map by interviewee
I would like you to make a quick map of Tokyo. This is just a conceptual image
that you have about Tokyo and it is like you are making a rapid description to
someone about the city. This is a rough sketch and not an accurate drawing. (If you
have problems understanding I have drawn a sample map of how I will describe
in a map the city of New York. I have lived in NY for 3 years and this is how I
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will describe it by drawing a map) It is important to draw the map as you haveit in your mind and NOT TO COPY OR REPRODUCE A MAP. This process is
called cognitive mapping in environmental psychology and it is this image that I
am interested to look. YOUR MAP DOES NOT NEED TO BE ACCURATE; I JUST
WANT YOUR IMPRESSION OF TOKYO CITY;
b. Map/Notes by interviewer. -Can you please give me accurate descriptions
of your daily trip from home to work/school etc...(or a route that you have per-
formed regularly when living in Tokyo). I am interested to know of the images you
see, what are the points of reference you see on the way that guide you throughyour destination.
- Any particular feelings while taking this trip? How long does it take? Do you
always take the same road? Have you ever had the feeling of being lost?
3. Tokyo-sense of place-memory map
a. Is there any special place with a particular meaning for you in Tokyo?
b. Any particular feelings when a neighborhood takes a new form? Was there
for you, once, a special place that now no longer exists? Emotions seeing new
things come up, other things to go down.
c. Any special memories that you carry with you from the Tokyo of 10/20/30
–where appropriate-years ago? Did you orientate yourself the same way? Using
the same routes?
4. Tokyo Recognition
(From the answer of 3a ask the following questions) a. Would you describethe district you know well to me? If you were taken there blindfolded what kind
of clues would you look for to know where you are? b. Would you show me on
your map where is the district you know well? And where are its boundaries (if
applicable) c. Would you show me on your map the direction of north?
5. Identity
a. Living in such a contemporary and global city, in what sorts of activities/spaces/habits
make you feel closer to your ‘Japanese identity’.
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6. Tokyo Lifestylea. What kind of services or activities does the city centre offer to you?
b. What is your understanding of public space? Which parts in Tokyo would
you describe as a successful public space?
c. What kind of outdoor activities do you do in Tokyo? -Any special facil-
ity/activity that you would have liked to be available in the city? -Are you satisfied
by the around of green/open spaces?
d. Tokyo being the most international city in Japan, do you see yourself in-
volved in more international activities?e. Do you believe that living in the city of Tokyo has engaged you in living in a
particular lifestyle? Has it changed in any ways the way you live your life or has
it relieved a certain side of your personality? Please explain in which ways.
f. What is the importance of orientation and recognition of city elements to
Tokyoites?
g. Do you feel any pleasure from knowing where you are and where you are
going? Or displeasure in the reverse?
h. DO you find Tokyo an easy city to get around and identify its parts?
i. Which city has for you a good orientation? Why?
j. What are your best memories of Tokyo city? If possible could you be specific
in spatial terms identifying the place of importance.
7. Quality of living
Would you rank the following, in order of importance, as your criteria when
choosing a place of living in Tokyo City?’1. Access to green/open spaces
2. Access to shopping facilities
3. Ease Of transportation
4. “Ron” type district (backstreets, with small communal streets, more tradi-
tional streets.)
5. Modern district
6. Square meters/price
7.Parking place
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8. Reduced noise level of district9.Access to cultural/educational facilities(school for children)
10.Access to place of work or study
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APPENDIX B
ON INDENTITIES
The choice of Tokyo, has not been accidental. I have lived for three years in
Kyoto, Japan, where I have been induced by a heavy dose of the power of this
place. The connection with the place still remains strong today; to the extent that
I feel nostalgic when I recall the times I spend there. The structure of the city, the
strong identity of the city, the reflection of culture in the everyday life have been
easily accessible giving the chance to be experienced by non-locals, like me. Be-
cause of my stay in Japan I am approaching this research as both an insider and an
outsider. This dual status , gives first the advantage that I have a good understand-
ing of the culture, and the social issues and on the other hand, the distance from
the subject allows a more open observation and interpretation of the results, that
might be omitted by a genuine insider. My interest for human identity and how
this is shaped by the environment was intrigued after my three year stay in Japan.
At that time I was astounded at the way the Japanese society has achieved such a
beautiful equilibrium in bringing together their Asiatic identities, traditional, dif-
ferent and complex with the menacing omnipresence of the contemporary western
identities. I think that Japan is an adequate model to investigate identities at times
of transformation, political, urban and social.In this work we talk about identify of the city, so I want to clarify that we are
referring to the urban identity and at the same time of human identity. In this
work i have perceive the two as inter connected, as our urban environment reflects
our human aspirations and principles. Human identities and the question of ego
are much related to the real world we are living to our activities and our various
relations within a place. These are theories that have been long suggested and
evident in the work of Martin Heidegger.
In Tokyo the question of identity is particularly pertinent as there are often
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and radical transformations that shift fixed meanings of identity. Japan has experi-enced such an enormous economic boom which was reflected directly on the urban
identity of Tokyo and to human identity of the people who live there. Besides serv-
ing as a palpable model for the study of cities under rapid transformation, Tokyo
also opens the way in a new direction at looking at cities in the contemporary era.
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APPENDIX C
TOKYO FACTS AND FIGURES
Facts about Tokyo for the metropolitan government website :
Source: http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/PROFILE/overview01.htm
Tokyo history appendix
• 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu establishes Shogunate Government (Tokugawa Shogu-
nate) in the town of Edo. Edo period begins.
• 1657 Major fire in Edo claims over 100,000 lives.
• 1721 First population census conducted (Edo’s population about 1.3 million).
• 1854 Treaty of Peace and Amity between Japan and the U.S. concluded (Japan
ends seclusion policy).
• 1867 Tokugawa Yoshinobu, last shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, resigns
and returns governing power to the Emperor.
•
1868 New Meiji government established. Meiji era begins.
• 1868 Edo renamed Tokyo and becomes a prefecture.
• 1872 First railway line opens between Shimbashi, Tokyo and Yokohama.
• 1877 First Industrial Exhibition held at Ueno Park.
• 1882 First zoo opened in Ueno.
• 1888 Municipal organization system introduced.
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•
1889 Constitution of the Empire of Japan promulgated. Tokyo City and 15wards established.
• 1894 Tokyo-fu Government Building completed in Marunouchi.
• 1912 Taisho era begins.
• 1920 First census conducted. Population of Tokyo-fu rapidly increases and
becomes 3,699,428.
• 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake claims the lives of around 140,000 people anddestroys about 300,000 houses.
• 1926 Showa era begins.
• 1927 First subway line opens between Asakusa and Ueno.
• 1931 Tokyo Airport opens in Haneda.
• 1935 Tokyo’s resident population reaches 6.36 million (almost the same as
New York City and London).
• 1941 Port of Tokyo opens.
• 1943 Metropolitan administration system established.
• 1945 March 10: Tokyo hit by heaviest air raid since beginning of war.
• 1947 Constitution of Japan promulgated.
• 1947 Tokyo launches 23 special-ward administration system.
• 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan and Japan-U.S. Security Treaty concluded.
• 1962 Tokyo population reaches 10 million.
• 1964 Olympic Games held in Tokyo.
• 1989 Heisei era begins.
• 1993 Rainbow Bridge opened.
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History of TokyoThe history of the city of Tokyo stretches back some 400 years. Originally
named Edo, the city started to flourish after Tokugawa Ieyasu established the
Tokugawa Shogunate here in 1603. As the centre of politics and culture in Japan,
Edo grew into a huge city with a population of over a million by the mid-eighteenth
century. Throughout this time, the Emperor resided in Kyoto, which was the for-
mal capital of the nation. The Edo Period lasted for nearly 260 years until the Meiji
Restoration in 1868, when the Tokugawa Shogunate ended and imperial rule was
restored. The Emperor moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo. Thus, Tokyo became the capital of Japan. During the Meiji era (1868–1912), Japan began its avid
assimilation of Western civilization. Buildings made of stone and bricks were built
on the sites of the mansions of feudal lords, and the major roads were paved with
round stones. In 1869 Japan’s first telecommunications line was opened between
Tokyo and Yokohama, and the first steam locomotive started running in 1872 from
Shimbashi to Yokohama. Western hairstyles replaced the traditional topknot worn
by men, and bowler hats, high collars, and bustled skirts were the height of fash-
ion. In 1882 Japan’s first zoological gardens were opened in Ueno. In 1885 thecabinet system of government was adopted and Ito Hirobumi became Japan’s first
prime minister. With the promulgation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan
in 1889 Japan established the political system of a modern state.
During the Taisho era (1912–1926), the number of people working in cities in-
creased, and a growing proportion of citizens began to lead consumer lifestyles.
Educational standards improved, and the number of girls going on to study at
higher schools increased. Performing arts such as theater and opera thrived. InSeptember 1923 Tokyo was devastated by the Great Kanto Earthquake. The fires
caused by the earthquake burned the city center to the ground. Over 140,000 peo-
ple were reported dead or missing, and 300,000 houses were destroyed. After the
earthquake a city reconstruction plan was formulated, but because the projected
costs exceeded the national budget only a small part of it was realized.
Beginning shortly after the Great Kanto Earthquake, the Showa era (1926–1989)
started in a mood of gloom. Even so, Japan’s first subway line was opened between
Asakusa and Ueno in 1927, and in 1928 the 16th general elections for the House of
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Representatives of the Diet (or Parliament) were held for the first time after theenactment of universal male suffrage. In 1931 Tokyo Airport was completed at
Haneda, and in 1941 the Port of Tokyo was opened. By 1935 the resident popu-
lation of Tokyo had grown to 6.36 million, comparable to the populations of New
York and London.
However, the Pacific war, which broke out in 1941, had a great impact on Tokyo.
The dual administrative system of Tokyo-fu (prefecture) and Tokyo-shi (city) was
abolished for war-time efficiency, and the prefecture and city were merged to form
the Metropolis of Tokyo in 1943. The metropolitan administrative system was thusestablished and a governor was appointed. In the final phase of the war, Tokyo
was bombed 102 times. The heaviest air raid was on March 10, 1945, in which there
was great loss of life and material damage. The war came to an end on September
2, 1945, when the Japanese government and military representatives signed the
Instrument of Surrender. Much of Tokyo had been laid waste by the bombings
and by October 1945 the population had fallen to 3.49 million, half its level in 1940.
In May 1947 the new Constitution of Japan and the Local Autonomy Law took
effect, and Seiichiro Yasui was elected the first Governor of Tokyo by popular vote
under the new system. In August of that year, the present 23 special ward system
began in Tokyo Metropolis.
The 1950s were a time of gradual recovery for the nation. Television broad-
casting began in 1953, and Japan joined the United Nations in 1956. Economic
recovery was aided in particular by the special procurement boom arising from
the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. This led to Japan’s entry into a period
of rapid economic growth in the 1960s. Due to technological innovations and theintroduction of new industries and technologies, this period saw the beginning of
mass production of synthetic fibers and household electric appliances such as tele-
visions, refrigerators, and washing machines. As a result, the everyday lives of the
residents of Tokyo underwent considerable transformation. In 1962 the popula-
tion of Tokyo broke the 10 million mark. In 1964 the Olympic Games were held in
Tokyo, the Shinkansen (“Bullet Train”) line began operations, and the Metropolitan
Expressway was opened, forming the foundation for Tokyo’s current prosperity.
Entering the 1970s, the strain of rapid economic growth became apparent as the
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country was beset by environmental issues such as pollution of the air and rivers,as well as high levels of noise. The Oil Crisis of 1973 brought the many years of
rapid economic growth to a halt. In the 1980s, Tokyo took large steps in economic
growth as a result of its increasingly global economic activity and the emergence
of the information society. Tokyo became one of the world’s most active major
cities, boasting attractions such as cutting-edge technology, information, culture,
and fashion, as well as a high level of public safety. From 1986 onwards, land and
stock prices spiraled upwards, a phenomenon known as the “bubble economy.”
Japan enjoyed tremendous growth under the bubble economy, but with the burstof the bubble at the beginning of the 1990s, sinking tax revenues caused by the
protracted economic slump led to a critical state in metropolitan finances.
After two successive fiscal reconstruction programs Tokyo was able to over-
come its financial crisis, and now continues to strive to achieve the goals of the
10-Year Plan, Tokyo’s blueprints for the city, to become a truly attractive and ma-
ture city rich in greenery.
Geography of Tokyo
Tokyo Metropolis is located in the southern Kanto region, positioned in ap-
proximately the center of the Japanese archipelago. It is bordered to the east by the
Edogawa River and Chiba Prefecture, to the west by mountains and Yamanashi
Prefecture, to the south by the Tamagawa River and Kanagawa Prefecture, and to
the north by Saitama Prefecture.
The Tokyo Megalopolis Region, or Greater Tokyo Area, is made up of Tokyo
and the three neighboring prefectures of Saitama, Kanagawa, and Chiba. This areais home to around 28% of Japan’s total population. The National Capital Region is
made up of Tokyo and the seven surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Kanagawa,
Chiba, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, and Yamanashi.
Tokyo Metropolis is a metropolitan prefecture comprising administrative en-
tities of special wards and municipalities. The “central” area is divided into 23
special wards (ku in Japanese), and the Tama area is made up of 26 cities (shi),
3 towns (machi), and 1 village (mura). The 23 special-ward area and the Tama
area together form a long, narrow stretch of land, running about 90 kilometers east
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to west and 25 kilometers north and south. The Izu Islands and the OgasawaraIslands, two island groups in the Pacific Ocean, are also administratively part of
Tokyo, despite being geographically separated from the metropolis. The islands
have between them two towns and seven villages. In addition, islands compris-
ing the most southern and most eastern lands of Japan also fall under the admin-
istrative district of Ogasawara-mura; these are, respectively, the Okinotorishima
Islands, which have an exclusive economic zone of about 400,000 square kilome-
ters, and Minamitorishima Island. The overall population of Tokyo is about 12.99
million (as of October 1, 2009), and the area is about 2,188 square kilometers. Theclimate is generally mild.
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ABSTRACT
In this thesis, we are going to enquire on the identity of the city, as a complex andperplex place of our contemporary era, contradicting and unstable engendering
situations of transience and transformation (Graham, 1998). As the new places
emerging in cities are marked by urban features that make them hard to identify,
we have to look for new methods in reading and explaining the city with its novel
features. In what ways can we measure the identities of contemporary places that
are marked by non-fixed values and physical attributes? In this work, we are go-
ing to demonstrate how and why the contemporary city is not only an artificial
construct, but identified by a set of habits, customs and life styles. Our concernsare epitomized through the case of Tokyo because enduring continuous construc-
tions have constantly transformed its urban structure. Moreover, questions regard-
ing the identity of the city find justification in this city of rapid urbanization, fast
changing societies, and the importation of western elements. Tokyo was chosen
because its distinctive features of complexity, liquidity and impermanence makes
it a suitable city to conduct such a study. This work can be used as an initial model
to understand and evaluate cities that experience rapid urbanization.
Keywords: city, identity, Tokyo.
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