What can the world learn fromthe lifescape and urbanism in Tokyo?

Riichi MIYAKE
Darko RADOVIć
Naoto NAKAJIMA
Kenji FUJIWARA

Journal of Architecture and Building Science
November 2012vol.127 no.1638

Architectural Institute of Japan

NAKAJIMA: Thank you for making time to be together, and I’m sorry
for my absence. Today we would like to hold a discussion by thetwo most internationally active researchers of architecture andurbanism. The main topic of discussion is what can the worldlearn from the lifescape and urbanism in Tokyo?
I want to explain the objective of this special issue.
3.11 exposed that the Tokyo is facing a high risk fromearthquakes and the overconcentration of people and functions.
It’s a very big problem. In the special issue, Tokyo Urbanism,
we are discussing the future of this high-risk metropolitan city,
Tokyo, in a historical perspective on places of daily life.
At the end of this special issue, I will organize three
discussions about the present and the future of Tokyo urbanism,
mainly lifescape. Lifescape means the everyday urban landscape.
The discussion by Miyake-sensei and Radović-sensei will be thevery last discussion of this issue. In the discussion we would
like to hear your views and evaluations for the lifescape andurbanism of Tokyo.
As the chief editor, I am very interested in your workon Tokyo urbanism. Radović-sensei has recently edited Small
Tokyo, which focused on smallness in Tokyo urbanism. You wrotethat smallness is a critical ingredient for the sustainable
future of the built environment in Japan. This is a very
interesting phrase. And Miyake-sensei of course has written
many books about Tokyo, for example Edo no Gaikoutoshi (江戸の外交都市) Akihabara Wa Ima (秋葉原は今), or Funoisan de Machi
ga Yomigaeru (負の遺産で街がよみがえる). In particular, the lastone, Funoisan de Machi Ga Yomigaeru, is very suggestive for thesustainable future of cities, maybe including Tokyo. In thisbook, Miyake-sensei insisted on the switch from flat thinking
to heritage thinking.
I am very interesting in your view on Tokyo urbanism andlifescape with heritage thinking. Today, please discuss about
these issues freely among yourselves.
At first, I’d like to know your own life histories, inparticularly those in Tokyo. Please could you tell me yourprofessional biography, your history? I would like to take maybe
five or ten minutes for each of you. After that, let’s talk about
lifescape and urbanism of Tokyo.
MIYAKE: I was born in 1948 in Tokyo, but not in the heart of1

Tokyo--I’m not an Edokko--but in Setagaya, Akazutsumi. It’s
where the Tamagawa line, the small tramway was running. My
parents were of very different backgrounds.
My mother was connected closely to China, living inShanghai, and my father’s parents, father’s family wereconnected very well to the United States. So I don’t have deeproots in Tokyo at all. Most of the Miyakes in Japan came fromthe Okayama region, historically speaking. But in modern times
my family, parents’ families, both families, are not wellconnected to Okayama at all. They were more based in foreigncountries.
Anyway, there was the war. They were obliged to returnback. So my images of Tokyo were just after the war, the burnedcity. I had very sad experiences. The roads were not asphalted.
There were still rice fields or fields over there in Tokyo. And
bridges were broken. But my pleasure, or maybe that was mymother’s pleasure, was to go to Shibuya by Tamagawa train. There
was a Tokyu Toyoko department store there. Tokyu was alreadythe center of urban life or entertainment in Tokyo.
But at the age of four I emigrated, I changed places to
live, to Hokkaido. So most of my childhood I spent in a very
cold place in Japan, the Nayoro area, the coldest part. Belowten is the most appropriate temperature for me, like Russians.
I’m not able to stand, even now, the hot temperature and humidityof Tokyo and Kansai areas.
I experienced two different extremes of Japan, the 1940s
and 50s. One was devastated Tokyo, but growing up in Hokkaido
was another one. It’s a really remote place, but at that time
the fisheries and the mining industries were very active. From
time to time I had to cross the channel of Seikan channel. It
took thirty or forty hours by train from that place to Tokyo.
So the change of place or deplacement [displacement] wasvery very interesting even from the age of ten or twelve years
old. When I always came back to Tokyo, Tokyo was growing.
Limitless plains of houses, small houses of course. And at thatmoment people were very poor. I stayed in my aunt’s apartment
house, reinforced concrete, but according to actual standards
it was a very small apartment house. Going to the city center
like Nihonbashi or Shibuya was very fun. There were department
stores or other types of entertainment, Takarazuka or things
like that.
But once my parents took me to Kansai. Kansai was closer
to the original place of my father’s family. It’s completely
different. So my family’s tomb was both in the countryside of
Okayama and in Rokko. So I was quite impressed that Kobe was2much more urbanized or sophisticated than Tokyo or
Setagaya-like Tokyo. Setagaya was still the countryside ofTokyo. Even now, I think it’s like that.
In Tokyo it’s very different to measure the depth of thecivilization. Many people say that Tokyo life is Edo-oriented
life, like the life of samurai who used to live in the heartof Tokyo or the downtown area of Tokyo. But my experience ofTokyo is not at all like that. I’m a foreigner in that place.
Setagaya or maybe Meguro would be my home place, but I’m not
so much interested in there.
I had one thing I have to confess is a very bad experiencein Ibaraki. Because my father’s job, I was obliged to stay only
one semester in Ibaraki. But people were so rough over there.
The kids. There was ijime. In Tokyo, I wore shoes. In Hokkaido,
it’s cold. We need shoes. But they were barefoot in Ibaraki.
Of course, in civilized life they wear shoes but for kids’ life
they were barefoot. But my feet were not tough enough to bebarefoot, because I was trained to wear shoes. I was always
wearing shoes. So I was ijimerareta [bullied] by these people,
and with kids they would be just hiding in the bushes and suddenly
they would beat me or take me around. It’s typical inaka no gaki
or gangs of small kids in the countryside like that.
And when I watch movies like that, about the life ofJapanese small kids, Nijyushi no Hitomi (二十四の瞳), etc, I havea very different type of inspiration. They are not as honest
as is described in such movies. They have some kind of distance
between Tokyo life or a foreigner’s life and their own life.
If I tell this story to my students or to my children, they don’t
believe me because Tokyo life is so different or Japanese life
is so different. But if I told such a kind of story to Southeast
Asians, they would understand because fifty years ago theJapanese countryside was still like that. That’s my experience.
NAKAJIMA: Thank you very much.
RADOVIć: In my case, Nakajima-san, as you know, I’m definitely
not an Edokko! But as you also know, I like to describe where
I’m from now, unfortunately, more in terms of time than place.
I was born in what used to be Yugoslavia 57 years ago. I wasborn in the place called Mostar, which was adorned by a famous,
beautiful stone bridge that was destroyed in 1993, during thecivil war. That is why I like to start from time; the place haschanged enormously, the city was annihilated. We expect times
to change, and places to stay relatively stable. But, in my case,that was not so.
3

I am mentioning that is because I think that the fact thatthe places of my past have been destroyed makes an importantpart of my research position, and of my life now. I am from theplace which, like Atlantis, does not exist anymore. I am atraveler. Wherever I go I am, to various degrees, a foreigner.
That essential foreignness has defined my existence over thelast 20 years. I chose to be in Tokyo is because of that
foreignness. Cultural distance of Tokyo inspires me. By using
distance rather than proximity, I explore this culture and thiscity.
So, I used to live in what used to be Yugoslavia. I worked
in Yugoslavia and, in the late 1980s, early 1990s, in the UK
and Italy. When the war in Yugoslavia started, after
understanding that any effort to fight the madness was futile,
I decided to move to Australia. In 1993, I joined the Universityof Melbourne, which became my new intellectual home. But
Yugoslavia and some neighboring countries, in particular Italy,
remain my formative spaces, my years there were my formative
years.
In those earliest years, I had an unusual first culturalcontact with Japan. I remember that my first word in Japanese
language (and I, unfortunately, never moved much further thanthat) was - “kenzan.” My mother took some ikebana classes in
the Japanese embassy in Belgrade. The first word that I remember
was that for a strange, little thing for putting the flowerson.
Later I became interested in Japanese arts and, like many
kids in my country in the sixties, in Japanese movies. “Far East”
is term a much abused by terrible legacy of colonial powers,
but from Europe geographically Japan is far indeed. In my
culture, there was always fascination with that country which
was so far away, so different and, from what was available tous, so beautiful.
When I moved with my family to Australia, suddenly thatfar East became not so far. I started working in several Asian
countries, in particular in Thailand, Vietnam, and China. And
then a long time after my kenzan, my platonic love became
realized. I started visiting Japan. My first trip to Japan was
to Kenchiku Kenkyuu-jo in Tsukuba. I was a visiting research
fellow associated with Kodama Yuichiro-sensei. That was reallya really interesting experience. My first visits to Tokyo dateback to the late-1990s. After that, I was doing my best to visit
Tokyo as often as I could. But, they were always short visits,
except for a research fellowship at Osaka City University in
2003. And then, an unusual set of coincidences brought me to4

Todai (where I met Nakajima-san). I was a visiting professor
in the Center of Excellence, Center for Sustainable Urban
regeneration, in charge of which was a very interesting groupof people. I felt really welcome there.
I was puzzled by my first lived experience of Tokyo. I
stayed there for almost two years and within those two years
I developed a strange, schizophrenic experience, of
simultaneously being distant, and being in. I wrote a small bookthat Todai and Ichii Shobou published on 2008, which I entitled
Another Tokyo. For that book, I coined an improbable, impossible
syntagm that defines my existence there: a gaijin-vécu, using‘gaijin,’ of course, which is the reality of my distance, andthat Lefebvrian, French ‘vécu’, which denotes my lived
experiences. Making that, really improbable, language
combination was an effort to just expose how ridiculous the
position of simultaneous intimacy and distance can be.
That very much defines the rest. After spending most of
2007 and part of 2008 at Todai, I returned to the Universityof Melbourne. Then, a very interesting, irresistible invitation
came to take over Kuma-san’s laboratory at Keio, which I did.
My son, who is also an architect, agreed. That decision was maybe
brave, maybe it was crazy, but - definitely interesting. Since
then I have been at Keio University. As you know, Keio does nothave architecture explicitly as a separate department, but it
offers a very interesting situation for thinking and doingarchitecture, which I am trying to both affect and fit in.
Over the last three years, together with two colleagues,
Kazuyo Sejima and Hiroto Kobayashi, I established IKI - theInternational Keio Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, inwhich we are trying to advance architecture and urban design
at Keio.
That would be the briefest cut through my Curriculum Vitae,
describing where I am coming from and where I currently am. Whenpeople ask where I am from, I usually say - from Okurayama, justto spare them from this long introduction which needs to include
complicated, but for me necessary, historic and geographic
references.
NAKAJIMA: OK. Thank you very much for your personal history.
Now let’s talk about lifescape and urbanism of Tokyo. Tokyo
includes, of course, Setagaya or the outskirts of Tokyo, thesuburban areas like, for example, Tama New Town or others. I
want to know, how do you evaluate the lifescape and urbanismof Tokyo? Please tell us your views, citing the essence of yourwork on Tokyo urbanism; Small Tokyo, or Funoisan or something.
I wrote my questions on my sheet. If you can, please refer to5

my questions during your discussion. Please discuss freely
between Miyake-sensei and Radović-sensei from now.
MIYAKE: OK. May I add one more thing concerning my teachingexperiences? I started teaching architecture at Shibaura
Institute of Technology, Shibaura Kogyo Daigaku, from 1982.
Before that, I lived in France, in Paris. I came back to Japanand I started teaching in the Shibaura area. That is beyond theTamachi Station area, the same area as this Kenchiku Kaikan.
What was interesting was that Shibaura, at that moment,
was an emerging place in Tokyo because of the bubble economy.
So the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, as well as otherinstitutions, are very eager to invest in many things on the
coastal or seaside, waterfront area of Tokyo. Shibaura was oneof the target areas. There was not national but lots of private
sector investing. At the same time, Shibaura used to be a very
industrialized area. There used to be an abattoir. So the imageof Shibaura was very bad. Contrary to the mountainside, Tamachi
station area was reclaimed land. It used to be the sea in the
Edo period.
The Keio area or the Kenchiku Kaikan area was a very
established side. Keio University is based in Ehime-han’sdaimyo yashiki. And Satsuma-han’s shimoyashiki was there. But
the Shibaura area--Shibaura means the Sea of Shiba area--wasreclaimed, industrialized and, in short, for the working classsector. Only Shibaura Kogyo Daigaku had started at that moment,so the name comes from that area. So the Shibaura Institute wasone of the hopes for this area, topographically concerned, or
as far as the name of the place was concerned.
But thanks to the bubble economy, hidden nightspots or
discotheques or bars suddenly appeared there. Many things
happened. The area turned to be very internationalized. So when
we had a chance to organize a series of lectures or researchseminars, joint research with foreign institutions, it was notdifficult to gather people. Once I was asked by the Frenchembassy to take young architects to the hidden bars of Shibaura.
When I said All right, the embassy people took Jean Nouvel andDominique Perrault came to us and we took them to, there wasa night place with a very strange name, Love & Sex, withextravagant atmosphere. So they were very content. This is at
the end of the 1980s. In any metropolis such as New York, Paris,
Tokyo, such new emerging places were appreciated. Shibaura
became suddenly an international brand, a focusing point for
those who sought unexpected.
Shibaura Institute is a technological institute.
6

Students are very shy and modest, but all around there were girls
in up-to-date fashionable clothes and young boys gatheredespecially to catch them up. New cars, especially Italians, are
all around the university. So there was a big difference between
our university and the surroundings. One is very traditional,
conservative and male-oriented, another very shabby places forthese young girls.
Then I learned a lot of things. Tokyo is not at all an
image of the total city. Even in my experience, the famous imageof Tokyo is the Yamanote line. In Yodobashi Camera’s
advertisement, the Yamanote line and the Chuo line are theindicators of a city. We remember only Shinjuku or Shibuya or
Shinagawa, that is, spots with station names, but not continuous
image of districts. That is how people recognize Tokyo.
Tokyo is not a walking city. I used to live in France forseven years before Shibaura. Paris is completely a continuous
walking city. Most European cities are like that. Walking around,maybe walking ten minutes, twenty minutes, so we can go allaround one quarter like that. But in Tokyo, no one takes suchkinds of experiences. They take the metro or tube, private
railway or JR, etc. It’s very punctual, point by point, so they
don’t have the image of network as a walking city.
I lived in Meguro-ku. Several times a year I tried to walkback home without a map. Even now I continue such kinds ofexperiences, even in Sapporo. Walking at midnight without any
map is very exciting.
If I take the big Kanjyou-sen or big routes, we can goback home without any problem. But walking on very small, narrow
streets is always zigzag within unknown districts and sometimes
obliges stop at the end of cul-de-sac or river. Finding the way
by myself in the heart of Tokyo is a very good experience. I’m
more and more convinced that Tokyo is groups of independent
small quarters, which are not so related each other.
RADOVIć: Thanks for leading me into this theme. Walks without
map open the possibility of fantastic experiences for a
foreigner, as well. I encourage my students to do what Guy Debord
called dérive: literally letting the streets take themsomewhere, and to apply their knowledges to challenges of theunpredictable. We have done a project in Split (Croatia) basedon dérive, and the book The Spllt Case, edited by Kengo Kuma,
Davisi Boontharm, a local academic Ana Grgić and myself is justout.
That accidental discovery is really fantastic because,
especially in a city like Tokyo, in a city as big as Tokyo. I
7believe that even people who were born here can be equally
excited by discoveries, surprised over and over and over again
how each trip can bring something new. Although this may soundlike a stereotype, it really isn’t.
I like to compare Tokyo with an archipelago, anarchipelago of urbanities. Urbanity is my research obsession.
That keyword, which is really a puzzle for which I don’t havea good definition (and, probably, having a good definition would
kill a significant part of the magic it possesses), hides thequestion: what makes cities - cities. My friends tell me thattoshi-sei is the closest Japanese term, but toshi-sei is more
like citiness, probably, than urbanity.
Anyway, to me that plural of urbanities is the mostinteresting aspect of Tokyo. You know how Michel de Certeau used
to write about culture in the plural; culture au pluriel. Tokyois plural in that sense. I think that we absolutely agree on
that, Miyake-sensei. To me as a foreigner, as well as for you
as a Japanese, that mosaic structure, or the archipelago
structure; whichever cut one takes through Tokyo, that cut isnever homogenous. It’s always heterogeneous. There is noequivalent of the Champs-Élysées, an experience which can takes
you in and leads “forever”.
My main vehicle during those my time at Todai was
mama-chari. I had a bicycle and, I must tell you, whole Tokyois accessible on bicycle. That demands a little bit of effort
but each hill, each zaka, has the rewarding down-hill side. So
there is always a reward for pumping the bicycle uphill. Thoserides helped me strengthen my main impression of diversity, thatTokyo is - in plural. They brought various surprises, some ofwhich link to the topic that we are going to come to later, whichis smallness. The small urban grain of this city provides somany opportunities, so many corners, so many roji, so many smallthings, and they all add up to its really a fantastic diversity.
MIYAKE: I have the hypothesis that for living in Setagaya or
Meguro, the roads are not at all well regulated. There was aconstruction period for the railways in the 1920s and 30s,
especially the private railways. But the infrastructure,especially the roads and streets, were not at all well planned.
Maybe because of lack of funds, I think.
But private investment was so big that the private sector
for housing was able to developed both small portions andsometimes big portions of lands or estates all around Tokyo,
especially in the places which used to be farms or rice fields.
Many of actual roads, and even small paths, originate fromagricultural paths. The municipality was not rich enough to8

transform them into wide and regulated street system. If I checkold maps of Setagaya or Suginami, we may understand that theroad system hasn’t changed. Hidenobu Jinnai has done very goodwork on that subject.
And I was very amazed to see that Tokyo did not evolvein that direction. The actual map for disaster mitigation by
the Tokyo Metropolitan Government indicates that the mostdangerous zones consist of such residential quarters. When I
started teaching I came to be deeply interested in the real
downtown of Tokyo. Just after the Hanshin earthquake of 1995,
I was introduced to Kyojima District, which is in Sumida-ku.
And urban structure of those areas was very controversial,
Kyojima used to be the outskirt of old Edo, beyond Sumida River.
Due to the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, major parts ofdowntown Tokyo. This produced countless number of evacuees.
They were obliged to live outside of this burnt area.
Taking this chance, small investors and constructors developed
instant type of housing estates in Kyojima. Cheap constructionof Nagaya type with no special infrastructure appeared in thisarea. These people became the land owner. Those who bought thehouses became owner of buildings. Then, these house were rented
to ordinary people.
The relation between such private sector and public bodywas controversial. People demand municipality to improve or
ameliorate
infrastructure,butpublicauthoritywas
indifferent or they were not capable of doing this kind of
infrastructure construction. So the road system is as it used
to be, that is, following the shape of small rivers or small
paths of agricultural lands. But, the life here is more exciting
than downtown Tokyo.
This area was not burned down during the Second World War.
It was saved by the inhabitants who extinguished the fire causedby bomb. By doing so, they were successful in keeping the oldhouses. Then after 1945 a lot of people who had lost houses
immigrated here and lived together with the original people.
So the density became, at the peak, 800 people per hectare. It’s
really, one of the highest densities in the world.
But this density promoted the intimacy of the people, andalso the prosperity of the local commercial activity and thesmall industries, the manufacturers there. This tendency
continued up to 1970s, making the spirit of people lively.
But again the problem of the aging society has been
affecting the area since the 1980s. Although the location of
Kyojima is the very center of Tokyo, quite near to the Ginza
area by train, the housing did not advance well. Young boys and9

girls, the second generation or third generation, don’t wantto live there. They moved to surrounding areas like Kanagawa-ken
or Saitama-ken. Only their parents, many times women, they live
alone over there. The ratio of vacancy is nearly 14%, it’s alittle bit more than the average of total Japan. So even in theheart of Tokyo, population decrease is outstanding.
NAKAJIMA: Thank you very much.
RADOVIć: I am very glad that Miyake-sensei links that densityand quality of urban life. Density and overcrowding are two very
different phenomena. Coming back to the keyword which I like,urbanity – urban culture is also critically linked to how many
people can meet each other in the street. But, Miyake-sensei’s
elaboration was part of this discussion which I could mostly
just listen and learn.
NAKAJIMA: Thank you. Density is very important. But I’d liketo ask about buildings themselves, for Kyojima buildings arewooden buildings. Very very traditional Japanese buildings. But
I think now all over central Tokyo concrete buildings,
non-descript buildings, cover all over central Tokyo. On thatpoint, Miyake-sensei, what do you think about non-descript
buildings, post-war Japanese buildings? How do you think thesebuildings are the heritage, or how do you see them from heritage
thinking?
MIYAKE: Yes. To answer this question, it is better to categorize
such non-descriptive buildings by construction periods. The
buildings after 1945 and until the 1950s, they belong to thereconstruction period and these buildings were with very low
quality, so most of them have disappeared. But after that, fromthe end of the 1950s to 1970s there was another movement. Even
what we call mansions started in the 1960s. At the initial stage,people, including specialists, architects and builders, werevery anxious to make high quality buildings, Danchi, forinstance. But once this sense of innovation came to be shared,
and became very common, such a kind of innovative mind
disappeared, or rather to say, automatized. This was followedby the decrease of skills among carpenters or builders. The
workforce of such conventional sectors lost motivations
although the training system was well established for young
workers.
Still the cycle of building and demolishing in every 20-30
years continued until the end of 1990’s. Most of theconventional buildings which we see everywhere are those
constructed in 1970’s to 1980’s. It is rare to find older
buildings in Tokyo. Frankly speaking, I’m not so much interested
10

in them. But my “petit tour” going back home without map, whichtakes two hours or three hours sometimes, is a very goodexperience to find out what kind of buildings are occupying thequarter. We can distinguish the construction period quite
easily: style and taste, building technique, cliché such as
Spanish windows and bow windows, and so on. Some buildings werevery well-elaborated. At the peak one million houses per year
were built all over Japan. High quality group must be quite
limited, but enormous number of production.
Still there is a rule. Difference of gawa（ガワ）and anko（アンコ）, that is, the surrounding part along the street andinner area of the block. Along the big routem gawa consist ofhigh reinforced buildings because of disaster mitigation
measures. But in more conventional districts, gawa represents
more outstanding appearance. Typology is the method todifferentiate these buildings.
But I haven’t read a good report on the quality of suchbuildings that were constructed in the 1970s and 80s. This may
be the task of your generation to define them. For instance,in the Tamachi area, because of the considerable growth of theeconomy of the Minato-ku area, all the buildings have been
completely renovated. We have to know its mechanism.
RADOVIć: That is Miyake-sensei’s particular interest. To me,
the non-descript buildings as such are not a problem. I remember
how Robert Venturi used to speak, in positive terms, about ugly
and ordinary architecture. Ugly and ordinary urban stock is very
important. I do not know of any city with all its buildings
glamorous and beautiful. That is, I think, not a point. Whatis interesting to me is that ordinary buildings are an importantresource. They exist. At the pragmatic level, they embody energy.
At the poetic level, they treasure embodied memories. They also
constitute the city.
Today, when we have to think about sustainability, when
we have to think about resources, the importance of suchbuildings should never be underestimated - even if they are
non-descript, even if they are ugly. There is always “something”
about urban environments, some quality which may be of
immeasurable significance for the locals, for the people wholive there, for those who have been born there, who lived andloved there. That brings us back, I think, back to the topic
of this discussion, what you call lifescape. Lived experiences
adds quality which is very difficult to recognize on the facade.
11That would be my main point on this topic.
Of course, there always are buildings which need to be
replaced. But I really think that fast replacement of building
stock has become one of the myths of Tokyo. Like all myths, thisone is grounded, of course. In Tokyo buildings do not last long.
But, that is an unsustainable myth. I believe that buildings
everywhere
have
to
last
longer,becausetheyareenvironmentally expensive and, culturally, they make history.
No one can persuade me that Tokyo would somehow lose its soul
if some of its old, demolished buildings were still around.
MIYAKE: I would like to say actually more than 40% of the houses
constructed per year are industrialized buildings. The building
industry is very keen to ameliorate the quality of the buildings
and achieve the goal of up-to-date notion of sustainability.
As I told you, the building cycle was so short, little bit morethan 20 year, but the economic and social situation has
radically changed, people tend to maintain the existingbuildings. In this context, ugliness doesn’t matter. Making thebest of old buildings, including recycle and reuse, is currently
a new task for the experts.
RADOVIć: That is the resource approach I am speaking about.
MIYAKE: Exactly.
RADOVIć: Buildings are the resource. A cultural resource, notjust a physical resource. Let me repeat that even in the ugliestof buildings imaginable, some significant events may have
happened.
NAKAJIMA: I have a question. The professor Aoi, who is the chief
editor of AI Journal Japan, he has one question for you. On behalfof him, I will tell you the question. Is that OK?
MIYAKE and RADOVIć: Yes.
NAKAJIMA: On this trick of small housing, Professor Aoi wrotethat “We think that the structure of Tokyo has strongly affected
the nature of the profession of architects.” For instance, wehave in Tokyo a number of architects who design only small
detached houses. We call them ‘jyutaku sakka.’ What are yourobservations of Tokyo architects and what is your expectation
for the future of the role of Tokyo architects? I think thisquestion is related to the discussion about small buildings or
small alleys in Tokyo. Do you understand the question?
RADOVIć: Yes, we have it in writing.
NAKAJIMA: Tokyo architects.
12

MIYAKE: When I was a graduate student, there used to be magazines
called Toshi Jutaku and SD. These magazines were provocative
enough to introduce young architects’ avant-garde individual
houses. They started their careers with such a kind of very smallbuildings. When I was asked to organize an exhibition in France,“Le Japon des Avant-Gardes, I just focused on these architects:
Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito in 1970’s. They were very inventive andinnovative, and they had even fighting spirits.
Thirty years ago, the society was not so tolerant and even
the Architecture Society, Kenchiku Gakkai, AIJ, was occupied
with conservatism. Among the jury for the grand prix ofarchitecture, the annual prizes, they were not able to accept
such attitude. But now, even the AIJ has changed quite a lot.
They are for new and innovative ideas and also have strong tie
with European and American partners. However, this tolerance
may spoil young generation architects. They can do whatever they
like but most of them are far behind the social context and nocommitment for restructuring Tokyo.
Architects are often regarded only as those who makebuildings on the designated sites with give budget, ant nofurther engagement in society building. They are the one who
add another one with whatever type and style. What they haveto do should be strategic idea for making human settlement basedon their own analysis and conception of Tokyo or Japanese cities.
That is my hope.
RADOVIć: To me, this is a very interesting question because
I am an architect. I am an architect with an interest in, andwith graduate qualifications in urbanism. I am, thus, a bit
schizophrenic in terms of scales. I like urban scales and urban
complexities. I am interested in Japan because of an undeniably
high quality of its architecture. Japanese architecture isappreciated globally. That makes this topic particularlyinteresting to me.
As you know, we architects, historically, like to think
about cities. But, history also shows how architects very rarely
produced good urban theories and good cities. The reasons forthat are, possibly, best described by Jane Jacobs, when she wasdefining urban design. She reminds us how design is the most
exclusive field that one can imagine. I believe that my design
is better than yours, of course; at the same time, you believethat your design is better than mine. We are subjective. On theother hand, the urban is the most inclusive of all phenomena.
Everybody contributes to making of a city. The thrill and the
problem for urban design is, thus, how ultimate inclusivity and13exclusivity come together to make an unbreakable unity. Thatis a very interesting question. There are many theories that
follow the fashion of the day and design manifestos which claim
to be theories. Recently popular positions of that kind arethose which promote bottom-up approaches, which argue how
aggregation of buildings, of good architecture, will eventually
produce a good city.
I find that simplistic. Such views forget many key aspectsof the urban, ranging from infrastructure to politics. Politics
make cities. I always remind my students of the word ‘polis.’
Word ‘politics’ comes from ‘polis,’ which is the old Greek term
for city. The word ‘police’ has the same root.
So, cities are political, and cities are places of many,
many manifestations of the humankind. Those manifestations
include architecture. Architecture (and, I repeat, that is myfield) is an important ingredient of good cities, but it cannot
on its own produce a good city. It is a much more complex gamewhen exclusivity of good architecture enters in dialogue withgenerous inclusivity of the urban (where, as I said before, notonly beautiful, but also ugly and ordinary has its place).
So cities are not only about fantastic architects like
Ito and Ando, or after that Kuma and Sejima, or others. Those
designers make fantastic contributions to city-making, but
added together those contributions do not produce the city. Thisin itself is an excellent topic for discussion. We should never,
never forget politics, economy, and infrastructure.
MIYAKE: Generally speaking, t understand a city, we have to
distinguish its urban layers relating to the construction
period like the case in European cities. A city, if it ishistorical, is well segmented in such a sense, from the central
urban core of the medieval age, then surrounding areas one byone. Building types, styles and techniques differ according to
the age. And Tokyo, unlike other Japanese cities, is exceptional
because the speed of expansion after Meiji was too fast, andthe repeated disasters have changed enormously its structure.
As Radović-sensei mentioned, Tokyo is a mosaic of groups or
small urban units and sometimes rural units. Actually, theexpansion period has gone and it has entered in shrinking
process.
So what happened? High standard of building qualities
is assured, but losing the population means losing necessityof buildings. There is no more big activity of human beings
inside. We are required to find a completely different approachor strategy for how to reshape the buildings of Tokyo.
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Fortunately enough, one priority of Tokyo is that the railway
systems are quite well-organized, as they were implemented in
the 1920s, 30s, before the motorization. Commuting by public
transportation is highly appreciated.
RADOVIć: Everybody is envious of Tokyo’s railway system. The
whole world is aiming towards the famous TOD, transport oriented
development, while somehow, since the early days of the Meiji
era, Tokyo adopted the technological novelty and did the rightthing. I mentioned infrastructure in my previous comment, but
in this case we have a veritable infrastructural inheritance,
one of the resources of Tokyo which is something that needs tobe built upon. Even if the road structure is inefficient, inthe times of scarcity we need to further discourage car. Whatis seen as a problem can become an advantage, rather than adisadvantage.
Nakajima-san, have we addressed properly the question ofarchitecture?
NAKAJIMA: Yes. How do you feel the change of the lifescape andurbanism of Tokyo?
MIYAKE: The last twenty years?
NAKAJIMA: The twenty years after the collapse of the bubble
economy and the coming of the global economic era.
MIYAKE: So, is it all right to restart the discussion?
NAKAJIMA: Yes.
MIYAKE: So during the last twenty years. Tokyo has experienced
not a big change in a sense of the construction business. Up
to the middle of the 1990s, the construction was a series ofhuge and hyper-scale buildings like the Metropolitan Government,
Tokyo Forum and Tokyo Opera City. That was bubble economy,
indeed, but after that, Tokyo has lost such a kind of propelling
power for economized urban activities.
Kenchiku Gakkai has regularly organized international
exhibitions every ten years. To conceive the last exhibition,
which is still going around the world, maybe in Tehran, I has
a role to play the role of curator together with the JapanFoundation.
This exhibition concerns the buildings
constructed from the middle of the 1990s to the middle of the
2000s. Tokyo Opera City, included in this period, is the lastbuilding of the bubbly Tokyo. After that, no significant
buildings were constructed in Tokyo except some private sector
buildings such as Marunouchi Building or Dentsu Headquarter.
Epoch-making buildings of this period were constructed not inTokyo, if I say, in the countryside, sometime with the financial
assistance of the central government for social welfare
15

services. Lacking in the idea of grand design, Tokyo itself has
been losing its interest.
In the meantime, lifestyle and the social goals of thenation have been changing in these years. Disasters have forced
us to redirect the urban policy completely. Actually, those
who are engage in urban management, mayors or leaders of NGO’s
are not so much interested in architecture. With thearchitectural issues, we are not able to change the situation.
Architects, on the other hand, are not so much capable ofcommitting is such problematic.
In the digitalized society, space does not matter. For
instance, I live in Hokkaido, but such distance doesn’t matter.
Wherever I am, communication is assured and it is not any morenecessary to live in the city center of a big city. SNS is giving
more opportunities, facilitating us for meeting anytime andanywhere: discussions and chatting.
RADOVIć: That is a really interesting question. When it comesto Tokyo, I am very young, about twenty years old. My age inTokyo coincides with the emergence of those issues behind yourquestion, Nakajima-san. I have seen the end of that boom. I wascoming to Japan when some of those big things were just finished.
I remember first time visiting Tokyo with an architecture
guidebook, seeking some of those glamorous projects, and afterthat seeing how the situation changes. I like this place verymuch. I am in Tokyo not by birth, but by choice. If there issomething to be critical about, that is about this period of
the last twenty years. Besides technology which Miyake-sensei
stressed, there is also a very strong sense of a single, dominant,ruling ideology in that.
French urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre used to say thatthe city is a spatial projection of society. Cities look theway their framing societies are. Each change in the city overa longer period of time reflects the forces governing that city.
What is evident over the last 20 years in Tokyo is the powerof an outdated economism, a strong neoliberal emphasis on
spectacle rather than urbanity.
Over the period shorter than last twenty years, in which
all these big, high rise building such as condominia are start
to appear all around Tokyo. That is happening in all places where,
in terms of ideology, a belated Thatcherism, or Reaganism rule.
And Tokyo seems to be one of those places.
With my students I was doing a modest exploration on
highrise developments in places such as Musashi-Kosugi, Toyosu
and alike. We were trying to understand how those new typologies
16affect urban fabric, how they affect patterns of movement, how
they change that lifescape, which our discussion is about. Theychange the streetscape profoundly. They profoundly change theeveryday life. Amidst solitaire typology, there is no contact
in the street. It was interesting to me to see how real estate
brochures for sale of those properties, for instance, promotelatest surveillance systems. Tokyo, probably the safest big
city in the world, does not need security cameras, but thosebuildings have high-tech 24-hour surveillance systems. Thosesystems are part of an imported model, from places like New York.
That is one of the aspects of recent development of Tokyo where
I have to be really critical. That is, I think, an irresponsible
import. Those surveillance cameras may, in some strange reverse
order, become necessary. If people disappear from the streets,
if streets disappear from Tokyo, then the antiurban events will
start to happen. That is the biggest change which I, as aforeigner see happening, and that is a dangerous change.
There are many nice evolutive changes In Tokyo. We alreadymentioned the small scale architecture, where new architectural
styles seek diverse expressions within the grain of Tokyo. Those
projects respect cultural nuances of individual streets, theculture of roji. While those big buildings, big developments,
hardly respect anything (if I may say as the only foreigner here),that I consider to be Japanese in this city. That would be mymajor observation in terms of trends. The sad loss of small anddangers associated with everything big and alien that comes inon the wings of an alien, outdated, unsustainable economic model.
(I deliberately do not say foreign, but – alien.)
MIYAKE: The center of Tokyo and the outskirts are different.
The extreme case is Akihabara. It used to be a quarter of verysmall shops for electric and electronic parts. They sold anastronomical amount whatever for the purpose of electronics.
Then it has become of a center for computer. But the interventionof big real estate companies in the middle of 2000’s hascompletely changed the aspect.
The fundamental is the urban policy of the metropolitan
government. They are depending on the cutting in piece policy,
that is, to sell the government’s land to the private sector
to make a balance sheet of government finance. I’m very critical
about it. Tokyo has pursued this policy since the beginning of
Meiji. Tokyo was covered by daimyo yashiki. But, the new
government formed by Satsuma-Choshu was financially very poor,so they were obliged to make money by selling those properties
which were expropriated from Samurai lords. Not only Mitsubishi,
but any other private real estate company had this benefit.
17

Even in the 1960s, around the Olympic Games and following
Minobe Tosei have this cutting into pieces policy, especially,
the waterfront line of kashi.
And now Ishihara government is deeply involved in thispolicy. The redevelopment of Akihabara started in such asituation as in Iidabashi or Marunouchi. The land of vegetable
market was thus sold to the private sector. The governor is proudthat the balance sheet is good, but the reality of urban life
is going to another direction. Tokyo is losing the public spaces
unlike European cities.
This neo-liberalistic policy has affected a lot, making
a huge amount of commercial and business complex, not related
to its original business character. Jimoto, that is local
business people were always excluded.
RADOVIć: Yes, to me, that is of course--when we speak about,and that is an inevitable word, I think, to mention,
globalization. We are led to believe that only one globalizationis possible and that is this kind of globalization which leads
towards sameness. And that is that unfortunate byproduct.
I like to show to my students photos of high rise buildings
and say, which one is where? It is very difficult to recognize
which building is in which part of the city because same kindof economy produces them, like that spatial projection ofsociety. Same outcomes. And it is absolutely impossible for a
global capital to produce local expression. Very very hard. Verydifficult. So I think one of the aspects of Tokyo which is very
important in this, what I find dissatisfactory, is competition.
It is competition for the world class or the global city
leadership, because that battle is being fought at the momenton the basis of a single bottom line, which is just economic,
financial bottom line.
And since 2008, we see clearly that that bottom line isactually fairly dotty and fairly shaky. So I think that the next
generation of world class has to have multiple bottom lines.
It has to have an environmental bottom line, it has to have social
sustainability, cultural sustainability, and I think cities
which make a U-turn on time, towards going to multiple rather
than single bottom lines are going to be future leaders in theworld.
Unfortunately, that is what I don’t see with these
condominia. These condominia could be easily in Jakarta insteadof Tokyo, in Hanoi instead of Tokyo, and then where is Tokyo?
That followship, that followership I think is not good for any
city. And this is now for me kind of generalizable situation,18

because uniqueness is what we cherish. And Japanese culture does
have that, probably because of geography, probably because ofphysical insularity. It has very well nurtured and developed
specificity, and globalization as we are experiencing it at the
moment goes against it. I like those philosophers who are
speaking--I was speaking about Tokyo plural. I like thosephilosophers who speak about globalization plural. Not about
toward a homogenized world but towards a heterogenized world,a world of differences.
I remember that Johann Wolfgang Goethe was the first one
who mentioned the term ‘world city.’ But he was speaking about
difference. Today, Florence in Europe doesn’t qualify to be aworld city. Kyoto doesn’t quality to be a world city. Only places
with strong financial centers qualify to be world cities andfor me that is an absolutely unsatisfactory bottom line.
MIYAKE: Yeah, but from that bottom line Tokyo is really losing
its position compared to Shanghai or Singapore for instance.
The location of Tokyo is a bit far from the continent and theSoutheast Asian countries. But at the same time this remotenessis one of the merits of Japanese life.
But still, I am very convinced that Tokyo should be divided
and scattered, because it’s too big. And spending two hours andforty minutes as average commuting time per day is really a wasteof energy. A story about Keio SFC is like this: from the northernpart of Tokyo it takes more than two and a half hours for one
way. A student’s father has to go to Seoul for a one-day trip
while the daughter goes to SFC. The father returns back homeearlier than his daughter.
Decentralization should be another goal of Tokyo. Basedon the good infrastructure system, this kind of divisionism
would work well: more compact size city with independent
quarters.
RADOVIć: In that sense, an otherwise good railway system canalso produce some negative outcomes. It is driven by animperative of efficiency, rather than efficiency.
I like to juxtapose efficiency and sufficiency. The
difference between growth (which is still a fetish today), anddevelopment. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s and Club ofRome report, we know that there are differentiated andnon-differentiated growth. The last twenty years were very muchthe period of non-differentiated growth, the growth for the sakeof growth. There were no mechanisms to differentiate between
good and bad growth.
We have to go back to qualitative assessment of growth,19

to value quality over quantity. At the moment, because thefinances rule, more is more. More money is better than less money.
But, what does that money translate into? That is anotherquestion. More money can translate into very unsustainable
environments. Then, that is not good. That is an agenda that
not only Tokyo struggles with, but I think that we all have toseek solutions, because we now know that we are going in a wrong
direction.
MIYAKE: After thirty years, the population of Tokyo will be two
thirds of what it is now. Still we are affected by a myth ofgrowth but if we watch carefully the actual situation is so
serious. Ee have to really conceive an alternative plan for the
next generations. What is the most appropriate sphere forliving? Most appropriate type of communication? In Hokkaido
where I am working, there are some villages that are reallyshrinking. One village which is near to Sapporo, there used tobe 1000 people living there but now only 20 people. That’s really
happening all over Japan. Such is the case in Tohoku, even in
Kyojima in the center of Tokyo. For me Tokyo with less population
and a more efficient network may be another goal.
RADOVIć: In that context, I would like to mention Thomas Kuhn’s
notion of paradigm shift. The most fascination message of his
book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is thatsometimes the questions we are answering are the wrong questions.
It seems that in this era, t exactly that kind of inertia rules.
We are dealing with questions which may be the questions fromthe 20th century, not the questions posed by the epoch we areliving now.
In September, I am going to attend a conference on degrowth.
That is a very interesting concept, which can be related
directly to shrinking populations, shrinking cities, shrinking
trust in current system and a growing awareness that we haveto redefine our ways of thinking and living. Does development
need to seen as bad if it is not exponential? What about
qualitative difference. For instance, at Keio University
Onishi-sensei starts a very interesting project which is about“supermature” society. And I like that euphemism. Not aging but
maturity, not old, but mature society. Putting old people ininstitutions may be seen(if I need to be banal) as 20yh century
solution. We should aim towards enabling them to live normal
and dignified lives for as long time as possible. A good city
for old people is a good city for everybody.
That is a sort of change in thinking which is necessary
and which I would like to help happen --Nakajima-san’s question20

was about the last two decades, but we started projecting into
the next two decades.
One of my works which I enjoyed doing was eco-urbanity.
It brings together environmental and cultural sensibilities andresponsibilities. I strongly believe that the measure of our
success or failure will be the quality of everyday life. Not
the quality of exceptional buildings and spaces, but of everyday
life. The best bad example, a total opposite to what I am arguingfor, is the residence of one of the richest Indian billionaires
in Mumbai. It has the top rating as a sustainable building, whileplaced next to the slum! That is absolutely unsustainable andshould be unacceptable. The quality of life in that slum should
be used to measure the level of civilization of that society,not the quality of life of its richest person. Such distortions,
I think, need to be addressed forcefully. Maybe, if we project
the needs arising from the problems caused by the last 25 years
towards the next 20 years, those should include radical
improvement of everyday lifescape, the general conditions oflife. That would be some success.
MIYAKE: We lost Nakajima-san.
NAKAJIMA: I heard your discussion. I think time is almost up?
I think I’ve already got the answer for the final question, themessage for the world from Tokyo. Mainly for Asian cities andAfrican cities.
MIYAKE: Maybe that’s related with the last question.
NAKAJIMA: Yes.
MIYAKE: An alternative for future Tokyo is not the metropolis
like other Asian cities. I’m a bit skeptical whether Tokyo
should always compete with other growing Asian cities. Tokyo
has various components. There is Ekoda, Kyojima, Jiyugaoka andShibaura. Different types of activities. I feel it is like afederation of different districts. Federated Tokyo could be oneof the models for me. It could be something related to Edo-jidai,
Edo samurai lifestyle. Tokyo should not be the huge
agglomeration.
But my hope or my idea would be to diversify the districts
or the quarters or making use of the old stocks, the buildings
and other properties. Those which are not needed should becleared. That’s my idea. We need more green space or vacant
spaces. I prefer living in a much wider space. Tokyo is actuallya very overwhelmingly dense type of a city. If I go to the port
area or the waterfront area, I’m very relaxed. I’m thinking that
we have to make some kind of relaxation space in between thesequarters.
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RADOVIć: Well, a couple of comments. I like Miyake-sensei’sidea of a federated model, if it relates to governance. Thatis about recognizing the true identity of Tokyo, saying - yes
Tokyo is diverse and finding ways to acknowledge and empowerthat local diversity. In what direction would such Tokyo develop
is hard to predict, because that diversity would guide theoutcomes. What I also find important, what I am reallyinterested in, is the resilience of local cultures. For instance- matsuri. I like those events which are proving to be stronger
than the buildings of Tokyo. Buildings get demolished, but
nothing can uproot the resilience of culture. That is, I think,is another important thing to be preserved – not conserved.
Energies that generate difference needs to be supported andnourished.
I do not like, as said before, when Tokyo follows other
cities, especially the cities as distant (not only
geographically but also culturally) as New York. The only thingwhich may link New York and Tokyo is that there is a lot of money
in both. That is not enough. Edo did not follow. Much of what
we like in Tokyo today refer back to the authenticity of Edo.
That interesting period of sakoku, when Tokyo was on its own
in a way, was the time when it had a higher level of literacy
than London or Paris. Uniqueness, recognizing, cherishing andsustaining (without idolizing) own uniqueness, is of criticalimportance.
The second important thing to stress is the need to
distinguish between loss caused by natural disasters, such as
earthquakes and tsunamis and those caused by human ideologies.
Disastrous human ideologies. We have a fresh, tragic exampleof Fukushima. An earthquake is unavoidable, and is thus bearable.
The same is about tsunami. But, nuclear disaster is unbearable.
It was caused by the humans, by a wrong decision to put thenuclear plant there. Those are, I think, very important issues
and they should be carefully dealt with. This part of the world
is vulnerable, and some nuances of its cultural beauty come fromthat very vulnerability. But, the of Japan vulnerability should
not be increased by wrong decisions based on a single bottomline.
My last point maybe links to Miyake-sensei’s notion offederated model. In Lefebvre’s thinking, I like to stress theconcept of the right to the city. Each inhabitant has the rightto his or her city. Each citizen owns the city. With development
model which I mentioned before, those ubiquitous condominia andmore and more of privatized open space, that right to the city22

is impossible. There are no rojis, there is no permeability,
there is no access to places which are not owned by the citizens.
Any city should be the place of all people. Understandingthat diversity and smallness are in the nature of this city andfinding mechanisms to let that diversity and smallness produce
new creativities is the way to go.
Bottom up creativity can not be imposed. It can only be
let go. How to let those bottom up creativities flourish, thatis the key question. That includes, of course, resource approachto architecture, with which we have opened this discussion. A
tremendous amount of resources were constructed by the humans.
How to use those resources, how to reuse them, how to provide
a responsible husbandry model to that resource is the question
for 21st century.
MIYAKE: One thing still missing is the existence of the Imperial
Palace in the center of Tokyo. Because it’s a very big space
and it’s as big as the old imperial palace of Beijing. No one
speaks about it nor touches it, but still it exists. This mythic
area has a function to unite all the surrounding areas. So once
this was opened like in China or, if I say, democratized, Tokyo’s
integral power would be lost. Roland Barthes described it asempty void. Without it, Tokyo would become Osaka or whateverelse. The invisible role of Mikado is obvious.
RADOVIć: That is a powerful statement by Roland Barthes. “Tokyo
is a city with an empty center.” It is not for a gaijin to judge,
but that space, the overall spatial organization of Tokyo, is
an interesting and unique phenomenon. Some cities have it indifferent forms. New York, Central Park is that sort ofequivalent green, but it does not have the equivalent symbolic
power.
MIYAKE: Symbolism and mysticism as well as ecological concern.
There are no such cities in any advanced countries like Tokyo.
The imperial palace and also the imperial tomb have not yet
allowed to be researched scientifically. Tokyo is still a hidden
pat of Japan…

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