Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [84]
The end of the road for the domestic tourism industry is when it gives up on natural or historical attractions altogether and makes concrete itself an attraction. This is beginning to happen, for Japan Railways and local towns are sponsoring package tours of their dams and cement fortifications. Flyers advertising dam tours are often seen in subways and buses. «At Atsui Dam, everywhere you look, it's huge!» trumpets a publicity pamphlet from the Construction Ministry, urging travelers to join a bus tour and come and see cement being poured. «It's almost the last chance to see Atsui Dam while under construction,» the pamphlet says invitingly.
There is hardly the need to create fake tourist facilities or to rely on cement-pouring at dams for excitement when Japan has plenty of the real thing. Still, the modern malaise seems to have created an inability to distinguish between what is fake and what is real. Kyoto prides itself on being Japan's «cultural capital,» yet for the past fifty years it has put all its energies into destroying its old streets and houses. The Cultural Zone in the New Kyoto Station typifies the confusion; there a tearoom provides a light show of cherry blossoms instead of the real thing, and the restaurant features a copy of a Raphael fresco-«culture» with no particular connection to Kyoto at all.
Recent events in Kyoto show that a sizable minority of its citizens are angry about all this. In November 1998, one group miraculously succeeded in halting a very destructive project. The story began more than a year earlier, when the city office announced plans for its newest monument – right in the middle of Pontocho, one of the few historic city blocks left, a narrow street of bars and geisha houses running alongside the Kamo River, with the Sanjo Bridge to the north and Shijo Bridge to the south. The city proposed to demolish a segment in the middle of Pontocho and build a new bridge modeled on one that spans the Seine-not even one of the famous old bridges, with picturesque stone arches, but a modern structure of steel girders and tubular concrete pilings of no distinction. To add insult to injury, the city fathers actually proposed to call this copy the Pont des Arts, and enlisted the support of France's President Chirac, who in a classic case of foreign misunderstanding of Japan endorsed the project because it was French inspired. For many, this was the last straw. Professor Saino Hiroshi wrote:
Pontocho is part of our cultural heritage, representing Kyoto's cityscape based on a wood-based culture. It was built as an integral piece of the space along the river. [The new bridge] will conflict with traditional architecture such as Shimbashi [an old neighborhood on the other side of the river], and furthermore [Pontocho] has something rarely seen in other cities – traditional architecture extending continuously 600 meters down it – and one feels a sense of historical atmosphere. This will be split in two by a modern European-style bridge right in the middle of it, which will greatly decrease its cultural value.
This time the protests of Saino and others did not go unheard, as they had in 1964 with Kyoto Tower, in 1990 with Kyoto Hotel, and in 1994 with the design competition for the New Kyoto Station. The concerned citizens of Kyoto amazed everyone by gathering such overwhelming support for their anti-bridge petition that the project was discontinued.
For now. One must keep in mind that the Law of Concepts still applies: once a concept, always a concept. After all, the city has been planning this bridge for a long time, perhaps decades, so it canceled only the French design, reserving the option to build another bridge at Pontocho later, with a different design. Sooner or later, the old street of Pontocho is probably doomed.
Yet some parts of Kyoto could in fact be saved. Hundreds of temples and shrines