Another factor that prevents Japan from coming to its senses is the effect of the damage already done. Gavan McCormack has written, «The real and growing need is for imaginative projects designed to undo some of the damage to the environment: begin de-concreting the rivers and coast, demolishing some of the dams, restoring some of the rivers to their natural course.» Such a process has in fact begun in the United States, but in Japan it is nearly inconceivable. Consciousness of environmental issues is so low and heedless development has already so damaged Japan's urban and rural settings that what it would take to repair them beggars the imagination. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: as the texture of city life and the natural environment deteriorates, there are fewer and fewer places in which people can enjoy the quiet, meditative lifestyle of «pure poverty,» and fewer and fewer people who can appreciate what it ever meant.
A child brought up in Japan today may have a chance to travel to Shikoku'sTokushima Prefecture, but the closest he will come to enjoying its native culture is to see robots dancing in ASTY Tokushima's Yu-ing Hall. When he goes on family or school outings, bus tours will carry him not to famous waterfalls or lovely beaches but to see cement being poured at Atsui Dam. As Japan flattens its rivers and shoreline, and sheathes every surface with polished stone and steel, it is turning the nation into one huge artificial environment – a Starship Enterprise, though not nearly so benign. A Death Star. Aboard the Death Star, every megalomaniac sci-fi fantasy is a possibility.
At the deepest level we find ourselves face-to-face with what McCormack calls the «Promethean energy» of the Japanese people. With a thousand years of military culture behind them, a mighty energy propels the Japanese forward – to go forth, to do battle, to vanquish all obstacles. This is Japan's vaunted Bushido, the way of the warrior. During the centuries of seclusion before Japan opened up in 1868, this energy lay coiled within like a powerful spring. Once opened, Japan leaped forth upon the world with a voracious hunger to conquer and subdue – as Korea, China, and Southeast Asia learned in the 1930s and 1940s. And, despite the defeat of World War II, Japan has still not come to terms with its demon.
Economic analysts have seen the Bushido mentality in positive terms, as the motive force behind the long hours workers spend in overtime at their offices, taking few vacations, and devoting their lives to their companies. But Japan's unlimited energy to go forth and conquer is like a giant blowtorch-one has to be careful which direction the flame is pointing. In the past half century, Japan has turned the force of the flame upon its own mountains, valleys, and cities. McCormack writes:
One of the more philosophically minded of Japan's postwar corporate leaders, Matsushita Konosuke of National/ Panasonic, once advocated a 200-year national project for the construction of a new island that would involve leveling 20 percent, or 75,000 square kilometers, of Japan's mountains and dumping them in the sea to create a fifth island about the size of Shikoku. He argued that only the containment and focusing of Japan's energies in some such gigantic project at home could create the sort of national unity and sense of purpose that formerly had come from war.
This is why Yokota had to build the Orochi Loop, Kyoto had to build the New Station, and Tokyo and Osaka have to fill in their bays. A demon escaped from the bottle in 1868, and it has yet to be tamed.
10. Manga and Massive
Society is like sex in that no one knows what perversions it can develop once aesthetic considerations are allowed to dictate its choices.
– Marcel Proust
The building of monuments is now so important for Japan that it deserves to be studied as an independent sector of the economy. What follows is, I believe, the first step-by-step outline of the business and planning of monuments in either Japanese or English.
Government subsidies underpin it all. With construction so lucrative to bureaucrats and politicians in charge, building mama has overrun every part of Japan. Most of the «pork» goes to the countryside, since the Liberal Democratic Party, heavily dependent on the rural agricultural vote, has governed Japan with only slight interruptions for a half century, and it supports a policy of special rural subsidies, most of which are earmarked for construction. That is why the more remote the countryside, the greater the damage. A tiny mountain village like Iya Valley in Shikoku depends on construction for more than 90 percent of its income; government handouts for building dams, roads, and kominkan (community halls) are its very lifeblood.
In the case of halls and monuments, the Ministry of Home Affairs'Bonds for Overall Servicing of Regional Projects (chisosai bonds) channel much of the subsidies to local entities. Using chisosai bonds, towns can borrow up to 75 percent of the cost of their monuments from the government, which shoulders 30 to 50 percent of the interest. Subsidies also cover 15 percent of «ground preparation,» including landfill and foundation work, which is often the most expensive part of construction.
In addition, Japan has a Monument Law. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru began with a onetime grant of ¥100 million to rural areas to use any way they wished. Had the money gone to «dogs» – planting trees, beautifying river-banks – it might have led to real benefits, but it was intended for «demons,» for striking monuments and attention-gathering events that are much more expensive. So with only ¥100 million, small towns could do nothing much. (Perhaps the biggest success story concerned the town of Tsuna, in Hyogo Prefecture, which used its money to buy a sixty-three-kilo gold nugget, and drew more than a million tourists to see it.) Takeshita followed up with a full-fledged law that provides subsidies to «specially targeted projects for building up old hometowns (furusato zukuri)» waiving interest on loans for «ground preparation» and facilitating chisosai bond issues. Even with subsidies, villages like Toyodama can hardly afford the expense of their mosques and museums, but with debt so easy and with bonds matched by government grants, provincial towns have not resisted; during the 1990s, small towns borrowed about a trillion yen for their monuments.
So the money is there (albeit on loan). The next step is to plan what sort of hall your town is to have, and planning a monument isn't easy. The architect YamazakiYasutaka, an expert in civic-hall construction, says, «They are not building these halls in order to vitalize culture. The aim is, through building halls, to vitalize the economy. To put it strongly, in the name of these halls, local governments are simply building whatever they want to build.»
The journalist Nakazaki Takashi illustrates how a hall gets planned. When the village of Nagi in Okayama decided that it needed a monument, its first idea was a museum of calligraphy, but regional authorities pointed out that a monument is not a monument unless a famous architect designs it. So Nagi approached Isozaki Arata, and Isozaki told village officials that if they would allow him a free hand in designing a museum according to his own ideals, he would agree to do it. Flattered by the famous architect's attention and at a loss how to build a monument otherwise, Nagi agreed to Isozaki's terms. What the village got was a modern museum housing only three artworks, two by Isozaki's cronies and one by his wife, with a small token calligraphy gallery tacked on at the back. The three artworks (valued at ¥300 million) were included as part of the construction budget, but Isozaki never told the village the details of the fees the artists received; the total cost came to ¥1.6 billion, about three times the village's annual tax income. Takatori Satoshi, the director of the museum, said, «There was nobody in the village who could talk back. It could be that those who had some idea of what was going on were scared and didn't dare raise their hands.»