As Japan's countryside gives way before concrete, plastic, automatic vending machines, and pachinko parlors, hidden onsen make us forget the passage of time. It is a joy when I can report that such places still exist. Alas, they are on the verge of extinction. When I visited them some years back, these places were wonderfully untouched. But when I go to visit hidden onsen nowadays all vestige of former scenery has been removed, and replaced with modern monstrosities totally out of keeping with the surroundings. Or new highways, dams, hideous bridges, ski lifts, ropeways, and electrical generating stations are built where they can be seen right out the front door. [Translated from the Japanese]
Onsen were a true cultural treasure, which would have appealed to travelers from around the world; if they had been developed with truly modern design and management, there is no doubt that Japan could have based a thriving international tourist industry on them. Not so now. A few lovely onsen do exist, but loveliness in Japan has become a luxury that few can afford. Most of the affordable onsen have become places «neither here nor there» – a mix of nice scenery and eyesores – places you might visit if you happened to be in Japan and had some free time, but not destinations you would cross an ocean or spend a lot of money to see.
The historian Gibbon, an expert on the rise and fall of empire, wrote, «All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.» Thirty or forty years ago, Japan had all the earmarks of modernism: technical finesse in manufacturing, clean cities, trains that ran on time. For bureaucrats, architects, university professors, and city planners, Japan seemed to have the perfect formula, and it needed only to develop on a grander scale along established lines. It was so deceptively reassuring that few observers noticed that time had stopped. Confident in their belief that their country had «got it right,» Japan's leaders firmly resisted new ideas, whether domestic or foreign. Lacking the critical ingredient, change, culture in Japan took on modernism's outward forms but lost its heart. Without new attitudes and fresh knowledge, the quality of life in cities and countryside, as Gibbon could have predicted, did indeed retrograde. This is the paradox of modern Japanese life: that although it is known as a nation of aesthetes, there is hardly a single feature of modern Japan touched by the hand of man that one could call beautiful.
In 1694, the haiku poet Basho set out on his final journey, one that he expected to be his greatest – he was traveling from the town of Ueno near Nara to Osaka, where he planned to meet with his disciples, put an end to their bickering, and set the haiku world to rights. But it didn't turn out that way. Basho fell sick along the way and died, having accomplished nothing. As his disciples gathered around his bedside, he granted them one final haiku:
Stricken on a journey
My dreams go wandering round
Withered fields.
After the 1960s, fueled by one of the greatest economic booms in world history, Japan embarked on a journey to a brave new world. During the next few decades, the old world was swept away with the expectation that a glorious new world would replace it. But somewhere along the way Japan was stricken on its journey. It is now clear that there will be no glorious new, no sparkling extravaganza of the future like Hong Kong, no tree-lined garden city like Singapore, not even a Kuala Lumpur or a Jakarta. Only withered fields – an apocalyptic expanse of aluminum, Hitachi signs, roof boxes, billboards, telephone wires, vending machines, granite pavement, flashing lights, plastic, and pachinko.
9. Demons
«My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!»
– Percy Bysshe Shelley, «Ozymandias» (1817)
In ancient times, in faraway Izumo on the coast of the Sea of Japan, there lived a fearful eight-headed serpent, the Orochi. He ravaged the mountains and valleys far and wide, devouring the daughters of local villagers, and only when the god Susano-o vanquished him did peace come. Inside the Orochi, Susano-o found the sacred sword that still ranks as one of the three imperial treasures; nearby was founded Izumo Shrine, Japan's oldest. Since that time, the land of Izumo has been holy, so much so that the traditional name for the month of October is Kannazuki (the month without gods), because it is believed that in that month all the gods of Japan leave their native places and gather at Izumo.
Alas, all the gods of Japan cannot save the town of Yokota, in Izumo, from an enemy even worse than the Orochi: depopulation. In rural areas all across Japan, young people are fleeing to the cities, transforming the countryside into one giant old folks' home. The exodus of young people for the cities is a worldwide phenomenon, but in Japan it has been exacerbated by several factors. One is the centralization of power in Tokyo, which inhibits the growth of strong local industries. No Japanese Microsoft would for a moment consider having its headquarters in the equivalent of Redmond, Washington.
Other means of recycling the resources of the once agricultural countryside-retrofitted small-town businesses, resorts, vacation homes, tourism, parks – have not been explored, since, as we have seen, Japan's bureaucratic structures are aimed at manufacturing and construction, and little else. Civil-engineering projects and cedar plantations have not addressed core issues concerning rural areas in a postindustrial state. Worse, the new and useless roads, dams, and embankments make the countryside less attractive while failing to give it the advantages of city life. This scarred countryside does not offer appealing locations for companies to locate their headquarters or subsidiaries, for artists to set up ateliers, for retirees to build homes, or for quality resort developers to attract tourists.
What to do? With subsidies from the Construction Ministry, Yokota took its most picturesque valley and filled it up with a double-looped elevated highway complete with tunnels, bridges, concrete supports, and embankments. At one end, a brightly painted red bridge, lit by spotlights, spans the valley. The tunnels are decorated with dragon eyes, and eight viewing spots (the Orochi's eight heads) feature towering concrete pillars. Yokota proudly proclaims the «Orochi Loop» as Japan's longest highway circle. «An invitation to the world of the gods,» sings the tourist pamphlet, and indeed it is a celebration of the gods of construction who rule Japan today.
When the Orochi Loop opened in 1994, Yokota hoped that the highway would become a tourist lodestone to vie with the fabled Izumo Shrine itself. But it turned out that city dwellers are not so impressed by what is basically just another road. There are far too many concrete pillars in Tokyo and Osaka already; why come all the way to Izumo to see more?
So it was time for Yokota to take the next step in mura okoshi, «raising up the village.» Mura okoshi (there is also machi okoshi, «raising up the town,» and furusato zukuri, «building up the old hometown»), civic-improvement schemes, are sweeping the nation. The process goes like this: Yokota built the Orochi Loop, thinking it would bring tourists in and keep the locals around. It didn't. So officials called in a consulting firm, which advised, «Leave things alone. Accentuate the natural beauty of the area. This is what tourists come to see.» This advice was unwelcome, as it did not factor in the largesse of government subsidy money, so the town called in another group, with Allan West, an artist knowledgeable about nihonga (traditional Japanese painting), as a foreign adviser.
Yokota had a beautiful 1920s railroad station facing a nice town square, but in the 1970s the city fathers had rebuilt the shops with their backs turned to the station and the square. West suggested that they resurrect the town square and station, which would give back some life to the center of Yokota, and the citizens supported this, saying they were sick of having to hold their annual festival in the town-hall parking lot. But the officials wouldn't hear of this, as it didn't use enough money. They also dismissed the suggestion to bury telephone wires, because it went against the Construction Ministry's agenda for rural areas. Someone proposed refurbishing an ancient local temple, where the priest, a mahjongg addict, had gambled everything away to local gangsters, who stripped the temple bare, right down to the ornamental tiles on the roof, and left it to rot. But the local officials showed no interest in fixing it up or restoring it.