Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [100]
Japan Railways and the city authorities turned all these proposals down, however, and chose one designed by Professor Hara Hiroshi of Tokyo University. It divides the city as before, and does away with every reference to Kyoto's history and culture. The New Kyoto Station is a dull gray block towering over the neighborhood, so massive that Kyoto residents have taken to calling it «the battleship.» The pride of the station is a tall glass-fronted entrance lobby that resembles an airport building.
Professor Hara has a reputation as an expert on ethnic architecture, yet at a glance nothing here would appear to be particularly «ethnic.» But there are signs of the monumental architecture peculiar to modern Japan, now as ethnic as kimono. We've seen it all before in the Orochi Loop, the aggressive denial of-even attack on-the surroundings, the bombastic style, the architectural equivalent of sound coming from loudspeakers turned up to maximum volume. As Kyoto slides deeper into mediocrity, the station tries to impress by its sheer size. And, last, there are the cheap, functionless decorations. A plain gray box might not have been so bad, but Hara couldn't stop himself from adding things: miniature arches are built into the structure (apparently as a sop to Ando); the back of the station features external yellow stairways, red piping, and rows of porthole-like windows pasted onto the facade; and inside the giant entry lobby, escalators leading nowhere soar toward the sky. These are all features in which we see the influence of manga, Japanese comic books. The manga effect is reinforced in front of the station, where the first thing an arriving passenger sees is the Kyoto Mascot, a totem pole topped by big-eyed baby-faced children, molded in plastic. It's the equivalent of arriving in Florence and being greeted by Donald Duck.
The station's crowning glory is its so-called Cultural Zone, featuring a multipurpose entertainment center. As real culture disappears, these expressions of artificial culture, in the shape of cultural zones and halls, are a major source of revenue for the construction industry and hence a national imperative. Every year billions of dollars flow to such public halls; by 1995, Japan had 2,121 theaters and halls (up from 848 in 1979), and by 1997 it had 3,449 museums, the result of a museum-building rush unequaled by any other nation in the world.
Unquestioning foreign observers new to Japan often accept these halls and museums at face value. But most of these institutions satisfy no need aside from the construction industry's intention to keep building at public expense. The Kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo says, «A multipurpose hall is a no-purpose hall.» At the theaters, events are staged that are planned and paid for by government agencies, attended mostly by people to whom they distribute free tickets. The museums are echo chambers, empty of visitors, with a few broken pots found in archaeological digs or obscure contemporary artworks chosen by the architect.
For Japanese architects, cultural halls are a leading source of income, and designing them is a dream. The buildings need not harmonize with their surroundings, nor need they provide a community service or indeed fulfill any recognizable function, and this gives architects a free hand, to put it mildly The result is a plethora of buildings that are fanciful to the point of being bizarre. In Fujiidera City, on the outskirts of Osaka, one can find an office building in the shape of a huge concrete boat. In Toyodama, a town with a population of 5,000, the Home of Culture is a ¥1.8 billion extravaganza in the shape of a multi-storied white mosque. The Desert on the Moon Hall (¥400 million), on the Miyado coast, is shaped like an Arabian palace, complete with bronze statues of camel riders in an artificial dunescape.