Mountains and deserts
Tokyo is a city of mountains
and deserts. The mountains are not soaring peaks with clouds drifting far
below them, but rather the main railroad stations. The deserts are not
relentless wastes of burning sand, but rather the areas between the
stations, yet the effect is much the same.
There is no major city in the
industrialized world as disorganized, as difficult to find your way around
in, or as lacking in news and information as Tokyo. Addresses are anarchy
and the system is close to being completely arbitrary. Finding an unknown
address is difficult and frustrating. Nor is there any real way to find
out what is going on in Tokyo. It has no local papers per se, and the
papers sold in Tokyo are all big national papers with multi- million
circulations which pay scant attention to local Tokyo matters.
A Tokyoite — the tag comes
with no particular sense of pride — moves around through a fog of
unknowing. Kenzaburo Oe, a Japanese Nobel laureate for literature, once made an
attempt at a popular mystery which he called “The Shattered Map.” This
describes to perfection the situation of the average Tokyoite.
Yet in complete contradiction
to this confusion is a system of almost rigorous logic laid over Tokyo. In
a sense, the system is three-dimensional, because is runs on the ground,
beneath the ground and above the ground: it is the Tokyo rail system.
Because it is organized with a brilliant simplicity, even an illiterate or
someone who does not speak a word of Japanese can find his way around
Tokyo with ease — that is, until he steps out of the train station. At
that point he will be lost, like everyone else in Tokyo. Journeys crossing
the city involving countless transfers between a plethora of lines can be
undertaken with your eyes shut; but step out of a station and you will
waste hours trying to find an address 10 meters (yards) away from the
station, if you can find it at all.
The station has an importance
in the life of a Tokyoite that it would never assume in any other city.
The station is like a mountain that dominates everything around it.
Wherever Tokyoites live, this is the real point of contact with the
outside world. There is a verb in Japanese for “going to meet
someone.” Although there is no verb that specifically means “going to
meet someone at the station” perhaps there should be. Lined up in front
of every station you will see scores of people waiting for someone to come
and meet them to guide them to a local spot they would have difficulty
locating otherwise.
The comparison to a mountain is
not just a social metaphor, it is also physical. The station is the most
prominent structure in the entire neighborhood, sometimes cutting entire ku (boroughs) in half. But more importantly, many of the major
stations also have a gigantic department store in, on, around and through
every part of the station. In effect, in many major stations it is almost
impossible to go through the station without in part entering or passing
through some part of the department store. Some stations even have two or
three department stores in or attached to the station.
With the station being the most
important point of any neighborhood, and in effect, dominating it, the
department store in turn dominates the business of the entire district. No
one would say that the Saks 5th Avenue department store dominates the
business of Manhattan; owners of fancy boutiques on Madison Avenue would
laugh at the notion. But in Tokyo, because of the intense difficulty of
finding anything and the ultimate convenience of their location,
department stores have come to control retail business.
The upshot is that everything
else is so hard to find that there is little choice other than to go to
the department store, even if choice is limited and the prices much
higher. This in turn has created a situation of mountains and deserts
unique to Tokyo. The stations with their department stores are the
mountains, where commercial life flourishes. Every step you take farther
away from the department store or station, the deeper you plunge into
outer darkness — at least of the commercial sort. From about 100 meters
(yards) out from the department store, business, in effect grinds to a
halt, and vast areas around the department stores are “deserts” where
no business can thrive.
If you manage to get far enough
from a department store, some residential businesses reappear, such as
grocery stores and bakeries, and even some shopping streets will make
their appearance. The scale is very modest indeed, with all the “real
business” going to the department stores.
Tokyo, rather than being a
city, resembles nothing more than an agglomeration of factory barracks or
living units arbitrarily stuck in to every odd corner between a highway or
railroad, with no idea of community or livability. The combination of the
prominence of stations and department stores in the rabbit warren
arrangement of Tokyo has strangled any of the unique small businesses or
business communities that give charm and convenience to cities all over
the world. There is not even an upper-crust district where tiny boutiques
cluster together. Stores like Cartier, Hermes, Coach and Fendi are all
found inside department stores.
If there was ever a city which
has cannibalized itself, it’s Tokyo. Built with no direction, it has
allowed the railroads and department stores to devour the city.
What is even stranger is that
Tokyo and its outlying areas, Chiba, Yokohama and Saitama, are unique in
this aspect in Japan.
Osaka is as easy, or easier, to
get around as any American or European city. The same for Kyoto and
Sapporo and any number of other Japanese cities. In these cities
neighborhoods are vibrant and classy shops are to be found in upscale
areas. Yes, there are department stores in these cities too, but they are
no more nor less important than department stores in Paris, London or New
York.
Tokyo is the most recent of all
Japanese cities, none of which are very old. Kyoto dates to about 900 AD,
by which time cities such as Rome, Paris and London were all nearly a
thousand years old. Osaka got its start in the 1500s on the site of the
fortress of a religious group, and Tokyo dates from the later half of the
1600s.
Of all Japanese cities, Tokyo
is the most recent other than Sapporo. Yet it is unique in its
impenetrability, its lack of history — other than its disasters — and
its feeling of confusion and temporariness. Rather than feeling like a
city, it feels more like a herd huddled together for some type of psychic
protection. It can be said — with allowances for exaggeration — that
Tokyo is the worst enemy Japan has. Tourists are told that it is not the
real Japan. Indeed, this may be true. But it is Tokyo, with its mountains
and deserts, that sets the tone for all of Japan, and in the end, this
really is the real Japan.
©Bill Stonehill 2000 All
rights reserved
Editor's note: Bill Stonehill hails from
Chicago, Illinois. Trained as an engineer and China specialist, he has now
been living in Tokyo for well over 20 years. He imports Swiss watches, is
expert at taking them apart, and if anyone knows what makes Japan tick too
then he does. From 1999 until 2001 he wrote a regular Japan column for the
Morrock News Service (sadly discontinued), which was enjoyed by
Web-surfers around the world. We greatly appreciate the author's allowing
us to republish some of his very best articles here in Eyes on
Japan.
This page last updated 2008-06-16
Eyes on Japan compiled and edited by
David Appleyard, 2001-2008 |
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