Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [73]
To that end, most of the technological improvements are tucked out of sight inside floors, walls, and ceilings, while the old chalkboards-which were removed, refurbished, and then reinstalled-provide reassurance that the character of the classrooms remains intact. Where new hallways have been constructed or old corridors have been extended, their new oak-veneer paneling looks practically identical to the solid oak of the original halls. Where windows have been replaced, the new panes recreate the appearance of old.
What Yale is doing to its buildings – at a cost of $1 billion over a twenty-year period – involves some very complex processes. At the Sterling Memorial Library's periodical reading room, University Librarian Scott Bennett points out, «We literally tore the outside skin of the building off.» Yale removed the stone surface, installed modern anti-moisture systems, and then reattached the stone.
Here is how renovation is done the Japanese way: Starting around 1990, an heiress named Nakahara Kiiko purchased eight chateaus in France. She and her husband then proceeded to strip them of their interior decorations, after which they carted away statues and marble basins from the gardens and cut down the trees, leaving the properties in ruins. The saddest case was the Chateau de Louveciennes, in suburban Paris, where Madame du Barry once entertained King Louis XV. The New York Times reported:
Today, the celebrated dining room that the courtesan had lined with finely carved oak wainscoting is just a shell of bricks and plaster, stripped of the paneling. In the salons and bedrooms the marble fireplaces have been ripped out of the walls leaving large black hollows. The three-floor chateau seems a haunted place now, with shutters flapping in the wind and dark puddles on the wooden landing when rain drips through the roof.
In January 1996, French authorities jailed Nakahara on charges of «despoiling national heritage.» Concerned about her adverse effect on Japan's image in Europe, the Japanese press pilloried her for her gross insensitivity to history and cultural heritage.
Yet one could argue that Nakahara was treated unfairly. What she did to the chateaus in France is nothing other than standard practice in Japan. It is exactly what businesses, homeowners, and civic officials have done and are still doing in Kyoto, Nara, and every other city, and to tens of thousands of great houses and temples across the country. In uprooting old trees and stripping historical buildings, Nakahara was only following the customs of her native land.
In seeking the roots of Nakahara's actions, the best place to begin is the city of Kyoto. Professor Tayama Reishi of Bukkyo University in Kyoto has written:
How must Kyoto appear to one who has never visited here? Passersby clad in kimono going to and fro along quiet narrow streets between temples, rows of houses with black wooden lattices, glimpsed over tiled roofs the mountains covered with cherry blossoms, streams trickling at one's feet. Well, even if we don't believe such a city really exists, nobody can help imagining such things about a town one is about to visit for the first time. The travelers expectations must be high – until the moment when he alights from the Bullet Train.
He leaves the station, catches his first sight of Kyoto Tower, and from there on it is all shattered dreams. Kyoto Hotel