Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [106]
10. Manga and Massive
The Business of Monuments
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