Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [111]
4. They are not allowed to leave any materials at the hall.
5. A majority of a group's members must be present in order for them to use the room.
Allan then offered to buy and donate equipment for the room, but they turned him down. «It seemed like the building administration wanted to make their lives easier by making the facility impossible to use,» Allan says.
Concerned about the low level of management know-how, the National Land Agency opened a course of study for people in charge of cultural halls in February 1995. According to Kogure Nobuo, the cultural-affairs director of the Local Autonomy Unified Center, participants come for one reason: «Their desperate problem is that they can't make ends meet.»
One thing is clear: an entirely new service industry is in the making. Every year billions of dollars will flow nationwide to support tens of thousands of directors, curators, planners, office workers, and sales and custodial staffs. What is remarkable about this situation is that it runs counter to the official Japanese view that a service economy is not as viable, productive, or profitable as a manufacturing and construction economy. What, then, are we to make of the business of managing monuments, which employs so many people to provide for so little social need, creates no wealth, and relies almost entirely on public handouts for funding?
Grandiose slogans cover up this tawdry reality of Japanese cities and their monuments. Slogans have deep cultural roots – words, in ancient Shinto, are magic – and the ideals stated in words sometimes have a greater psychological truth than material reality. One can see this principle in action daily in the business or political world, where people will typically state the tatemae (official position) rather than the honne (real intent); nor is this seen as duplicitous. The tatemae may not reflect objective truth, but it describes the way things are supposed to be, and that is more important.
Also, in a military culture, slogans are the equivalent of shouts going into battle. Officials preface public activities in Japan with battle cries. In March 1997, the city of Kyoto published the results of its Fifth Kyoto 21 Forum, its title trumpeting, «An Avant-Garde City at the Turning Point of Civilization.» That's the blood-stirring tatemae. The actuality is a blah industrial city that has temples on its outskirts lined with loudspeakers.
Every monument and new city plan has exciting slogans to go along with it. Take Okinawa, one of Japan's poorest regions. We hear that the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is going to develop an Okinawa Multimedia Zone aimed at creating an «info-communications hub for the entire Asia-Pacific region.» Meanwhile, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry is planning something called Digital Island, and Okinawa officials are proposing the Cosmopolitan City Formation Concept.
Yokohama describes itself as «cultivating its image as a 24-hour international cultural city, a 21st-century information city, and an environmentally friendly, humanistic city rich in water, greenery and historical places.» Alas, Yokohama, where trains and buses shut down after midnight, is not «24-hour»; nor is the city international (its old foreign community has largely disappeared); certainly it is not environmentally friendly or particularly cultural; and it is not especially rich in greenery or historic sites. The port does have a lot of water.
Imaginary towns like «Mirage City – Another Utopia» boast even more glamorous slogans than real cities. Mirage City, Isozaki tells us, is «an experimental model for the conceptualization and realization of a Utopian city for the 21st century – the age of informatics.» It will feature «inter-activity, inter-communality, inter-textuality, inter-subjectivity, and inter-communicativity.» In the slogan lexicon, «twenty-first century,» «communication,» «hub,» «center,» «cultural,» «art,» «environment,» «cosmopolitan,» «international,» joho hasshin (broadcasting of information), fureai (get in touch),