Are Preview of World to Come
Boyé Lafayette De Mente
TOKYO—On a recent visit to Tokyo I and renowned tanka poet Mutsuo Shukuya were treated to lunch in a gourmet restaurant in the huge, spectacular Roppongi Hills complex by Yoshio Karita, senior executive advisor to Mori Building Company, creator of the amazing city-within-a-city.
Once Shukuya and I had arrived at the Roppongi Hills complex via an underground concourse from Roppongi Subway Station, and rendezvoused with Karita San, getting to the restaurant required a miniature tour of this forerunner of Tokyo’s futuristic business-dining-residential-shopping centers.
During the luncheon Karita San shared with us the philosophy that had attracted him to Mori, a philosophy that he was dedicated to helping carry out. Formerly director of protocol for the Imperial Household and recently awarded The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure for his services to the Imperial family, Karita San is one of the new breed of Japanese whose vision is helping to create today a lifestyle that is a harbinger of the future.
The amazing Roppongi Hills complex is divided into five areas: North Tower (which encompasses casual gourmet dining areas), Metro/Hat Hollywood Plaza (featuring beauty, diet and health amenities), West Walk (a free zone for trendy communication), Hill Side (art and lifestyle spaces including entertainment), and Keyaki Zaka Dori (sloping streets filled with greenery and luxurious urban apartment buildings).
These zones includes restaurants, upscale shops, lifestyle and lifecare services, a cinema complex, gallery, museum, TV broadcasting station, Grand Hyatt Tokyo Hotel, an educational academny, a tour center, the Roppong Hills Club, an observation deck, and more.
In a recent article in Wired.com British architect-writer-photographer I. Momus said that walking around in the new areas of Tokyo was like getting a preview of the 21st century. He added: “But glimpsing the future in Japan isn't just about first sightings of cool gadgets. It's also about seeing a city change—fast—as if photographed in time lapse. The city is shockingly unstable. Buildings disappear, replaced by new ones. Entire districts come and go, seemingly overnight.
“Roppongi is the hot district just now, with a new art museum and the massive Tokyo Midtown complex drawing people to the formerly sleazy neighborhood. Other districts, like Odaiba, rise spectrally and speculatively from Tokyo Bay on artificial land.”
Momus went on to say that Tokyo is a city where yesterday’s tomorrow is constantly being replaced by today’s, adding: “The Tokyo way is to try stuff, trash it, then try something else. Whether it's the legacy of earthquakes or Buddhism, everything here is understood to be temporary. It's best not to get too attached. The spirit of what you lose will probably pop up somewhere else.”
However, the new complexes like Roppongi Hills, Shiodome, Odaiba, Omotesando Hills and Tokyo Midtown—and new independent buildings like the Marunouchi Building and the Shin Marunouchi Building across from Tokyo Station Plaza—are not temporary efforts. They are representative of the new Tokyo that is rapidly rising where the old once stood.
The two new independent Marunouchi buildings are themselves remarkable examples of 21st century edifices, combining business offices, restaurant arcades and shopping floors that make the most of architectural imagination, superior design and decorating sense, and advanced technology.
Both of these buildings are integrated with Tokyo Central Station, its massive Yaesu side underground shopping mall and the Marunouchi and Otemachi business districts, with subterranean plazas and concourses. You can, in fact, stroll, dine and shop underground from the Tokyo Station area to Yurakucho, Hibiya and the famous Ginza shopping, entertainment and dining districts that are generally considered the heart of Tokyo.
Tyler Brûlé, writing in The International Herald Tribune, says: “The Japanese might be obsessed with many things (cute mascots, manga, belting out a good tune to close a business deal) but few pursuits can compete with the passion [they] put into building—not just the concrete-and-cranes variety but also the fine art of building anticipation.”
He adds: “I'm usually not the biggest fan of such 'grand projects,' but Japanese developers have a special knack for not only delivering extraordinary modern wonders but also completing them on time.
He goes on: “When Mori finally took the hoardings off its Roppongi Hills development, it was remarkable how quickly the mix of high-rises, tunnels and retail blended into the fabric of its surroundings. While the final execution may not have been to everyone's liking, Mori could hardly have been accused of leaving a trail of mud, untended flower beds or unfinished concrete canyons on or around the site. Within weeks of completion, Roppongi Hills felt like it had been around for years.”
Brûlé was also impressed with when he was given a sneak preview of Tokyo Midtown, only a short stroll from Roppongi Hills. He said he was fully armed to dislike it, but within four minutes he “was hooked” by its design as well as its extraordinary mix of brand-name retailers, financial institutions, its Ritz Carlton hotel facilities, its Starbucks/Tokyo FM café-cum-studio, its open spaces, and more.
He suggests that the denizens of London, New York and Paris and other major world cities would no doubt be envious of Tokyo Midtown—as they no doubt would be of dozens of other new developments in Tokyo, Yokohama and other Japanese cities.
For years now, I have been saying that anyone interested in seeing what common sense raised to a high level, imagination, courage—and money!—can do to improve the quality and ambiance of human life all they have to do is go to Japan and visit a few of its new mixed-used developments and some of the country’s hundreds of mixed-use train stations.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
To see a list, with descriptions, of the author’s 30-plus pioneer books on Japan, go to his personal website: www.phoenixbookspublishers.com.
