Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [94]
After Lycurgus had finished laying down the laws for Sparta, he gathered the king and the people together and told them that all was complete, except for one final question that he needed to ask of the Oracle at Delphi. He made all the citizens take a solemn oath that they would not alter a single letter of his laws until he returned. Lycurgus went to Delphi and starved himself to death there, so as never to return, and the people, bound by their oath, maintained his laws unchanged for the next nine hundred years.
Japan is like this. Lycurgus left in about 1965, and since then nobody has changed anything. Land-use planners, for example, have never seriously examined the old taboo on mountain land, which has been a blessing in part, given the primitive state of Japanese city planning and the lack of environmental-impact controls. Although they have been replanted with cedar and honeycombed with concrete roads and embankments, at least the mountains have been spared the fate of the plainlands. On the other hand, this has driven up the cost of residential land elsewhere, which is why Japanese houses are 20 to 30 percent smaller than European homes and about three times more expensive, though they are built of shoddy, flimsy materials-plywood, tin, aluminum, molded vinyl sheets and, as the Kobe earthquake proved, are not designed to be earthquake-resistant (the lead in this technology is now coming from the United States). Most houses are almost completely uninsulated; people usually heat their rooms with separate units (commonly kerosene heaters) and have no special ventilation for exhaust fumes. Discomfort-bone-chilling cold in winter and sweaty heat in summer – is a defining feature of Japanese life.
One important trend in domestic architecture is quietly transforming neighborhoods across the country: prefabricated housing. «Prefab» in Japan means totally prefabricated, with the entire structure mass-manufactured by giant housing companies and delivered to homeowners as one package. Prefab homes now account for a majority of new Japanese houses – and in this there is some progress, and also a final blow to the urban landscape. On the plus side, the new homes are cleaner and more convenient than the old houses they replace. On the minus side, they represent the victory of sterility. Inside and outside surfaces consist of shiny processed materials so unnatural as to be unrecognizable. One cannot say whether they are concrete, metal, or something else, although for the most part they are plastic, extruded in various forms, and colored and tex-turized to look like concrete or metal. Industrial materials have had the last word: people now live within walls and on floors made of material that might as well be in a spaceship. This might have some futuristic appeal except that the houses are designed with exactly the same clutter and lack of ventilation and insulation as before.
Saddest of all is the utter uniformity of the prefab houses. Neighborhood after neighborhood has seen whatever character it once had disappear before rows of mass-produced homes in the shape of Model A, B, or C, all clad in exactly the same gray shade of hybrid construction material. It's another cycle in Japan's descending cultural spiral, something that no mere upturn or downturn in the economy is going to affect.
In any event, very few people, including the rich, have homes to which they can invite strangers with pride. A dinner party in Japan means dining out. A wedding reception in the back yard? Unthinkable. Most Japanese, regardless of wealth, education, taste, or personal interests, pass most of their social lives in public spaces-restaurants, wedding halls, and hotel banquet rooms.