Introduction
Over the past few decades, the physical reconstruction of cities and towns after World War II has been a prominent topic in a range of academic discourses and works. Many of these have considered cases in European countriesFootnote 1 but Japan has also attracted attention, particularly Tokyo as its capital and largest city. Tokyo's reconstruction plan was regarded as idealistic, and most of it has been unrealized.Footnote 2 One unique aspect of the reconstruction that did occur in central Tokyo during the 1950s involved infilling traditional canals.
Immediately after the war, the Japanese government initiated efforts at drastic urban regeneration. In December 1945, the government established guidelines for reconstruction planning in damaged areas. Local authorities aimed at generous provision of wide streets and open spaces based on a real-estate takeover process known as land readjustment.Footnote 3 Accordingly, the government designated a total of 545 km2 of land readjustment areas for reconstruction in 115 blitzed cities, with 184 km2 or more than one third of the total located in Tokyo. The capital city's reconstruction plan proposed 520 km of new main roads including seven 100-m-wide thoroughfares and green spaces totalling almost 32 km2.
In June 1949, however, the government decided to curtail the area of land readjustment in war damaged cities in direct response to pressure from American occupation authorities. In February 1949, Joseph Dodge (1890–1964), a financial advisor to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, had come to Japan and demanded the implementation of an economic stabilization plan to curb inflation. As part of its cost-cutting response, the Japanese government greatly reduced the extent of its land readjustment and reconstruction programme, especially in Tokyo where progress had been far behind schedule. Tokyo's revised area for land readjustment was 15 km2, or just 8 per cent of the originally proposed 184 km2. Many of the planned wide thoroughfares, including all the 100-m-wide ones, and green spaces were consequently abandoned. This cancellation was a pity because the principal planner for Tokyo's reconstruction was Hideaki Ishikawa (1893–1955), who had worked for the Home Ministry's local town planning committee in Nagoya, Japan's third largest city, where he had carried out land readjustment and laid foundations for urban planning before moving to Tokyo in 1933. Because Nagoya had made rapid strides in proceeding with land readjustment in the early post-war years, its revised area of land readjustment still covered 29 km2, double that of Tokyo and almost three-fourths of the originally proposed 40 km2, which made it possible to provide wide thoroughfares including two 100-m-wide ones.Footnote 4
Edward Seidensticker, in his social history of Tokyo, opens a chapter on reconstruction after World War II by stating that ‘In the early years after the war, praise for Nagoya and blame for Tokyo were much in fashion’ with regard to war damage reconstruction.Footnote 5 At the same time, he refers to a unique method of reconstruction on which Tokyo's Metropolitan Government had embarked: the infilling of canals such as Sotobori (the name of which means the outer moat of Edo Castle) and Sanjikkenbori (meaning a 30-ken-wide moat, one ken being equal to approximately 1.8 m), constructed in central Tokyo in the early seventeenth century during the Edo period (1603–1868). Infilling was first proposed by the Ministry of Transport, which was responsible for reconstructing national railway stations, in connection with the construction of Yaesu Square at Tokyo Station, on part of the Sotobori canal. The Ministry assigned part of the project to the Metropolitan Government which found that infilling had two advantages. First, it facilitated the disposal of rubble caused by air raids. Second, infilled land could be sold or rented at good prices. On the resulting newly created land, new landmarks would appear in the 1950s, such as Railway House, the new station building for Tokyo Station, which included a department store. In the nearby Ginza district, one of Japan's most thriving shopping areas, the Tokyo Expressway, the first elevated motorway in Japan with shops underneath, was constructed on another part of Sotobori. Similarly, Tokyo Spa and Miharabashi Underground Street, both part of Tokyo's new infrastructure of leisure, were built on Sanjikkenbori (Figure 1).Footnote 6
Figure 1 Tokyo Station and Ginza district in 2014
Metropolitan Expressway Inner Circular Route opened to traffic in December 1962 as the first route of Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation's expressway network. The Corporation was established in June 1959. Ginza district falls under an area surrounded by Tokyo Expressway and Metropolitan Expressway Inner Circular Route. A suffix ‘bashi’ as in Kajibashi, Konyabashi, Nanbabashi and Miharabashi means a bridge, indicating that the place used to be a bridge on a canal.
This infilling and development proceeded amidst Tokyo's massive post-war growth. The Tokyo metropolitan population, which had dropped from 6.36 million in 1935 to 3.48 million in 1945, then more than doubled in one decade, to 8.03 million in 1955, and reached 9.68 million in 1960. Correspondingly, population density per km2 of the Tokyo metropolitan area of some 2,000 km2 had dropped from 3,100 in 1935 to 1,700 in 1945, then more than doubled to 3,900 in 1955 and reached almost 4,800 in 1960. Tokyo Station had 65,000 passengers boarding trains each day in 1935; that figure skyrocketed to 258,000 in 1955 and 333,000 in 1960. The number of motor vehicles in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which stood at 41,000 in 1935 and 44,000 in 1945, increased to 240,000 in 1955 and 622,000 in 1960.Footnote 7
The infilling has received relatively minimal attention from scholars. Urban historian Masao Suzuki sharply criticizes the infilling of canals as neglecting the importance of traditional watercourses,Footnote 8 and Seidensticker notes that the infilling and ensuing disposition of the infilled land were ‘among the first stirrings as the city began coming to life again’.Footnote 9 However, the details of the process of infilling and development and their significance in the larger context of Japan's war damage reconstruction and urban planning have yet to be examined. This study focuses on Tokyo's infilling of canals and situates it within the wider historiography of Japan's urban redevelopment.
Studies of Japan's war damage reconstruction indicate that on top of the curtailment of land readjustment for financial reasons, the failure of democratic reform of Japan's centralized, top–down planning system, based on the country's first planning law in 1919, prevented reconstruction planning from gaining public understanding and possible support, thereby resulting in unsatisfactory achievement. Under this law, the authority to determine a city's planning scheme rested with the responsible ministry's local planning committee formed at the prefecture level, not with the local council. There was no legal requirement to hold a public inquiry regarding a proposed planning scheme. In these circumstances, the local authorities did not bother to inform citizens or seek their support for reconstruction policies, while citizens, left out of the legal process of considering and formulating a reconstruction plan, did not bother to understand the importance of urban planning. The Special Planning Law, enacted in 1946, mainly concerned how to apply land readjustment, as established in the 1919 law, to war damage reconstruction.Footnote 10 Lack of public understanding of reconstruction planning led to the unauthorized construction of flocks of houses on land scheduled for readjustment and earmarked for roads or open spaces. The illegal houses delayed land readjustment and prevented the realization of long-term planning. The media were reporting the appearance of such houses in various parts of Tokyo as early as 1946, predicting rightly that they would ruin the city's long-term planning.Footnote 11
Studies of Japanese urban planning and architecture indicate that problems in reconstruction planning were endemic in modern Japan. Henry Smith indicates that the bureaucratic city planners who authored the 1919 law held to a statist ideology and saw urban problems as a matter of priorities within the national government, not one shared between the national and local governments. The term ‘autonomy’ in Japan meant ‘a commitment to the national good, an idea reflecting the Tokugawa concept [developed by the Tokugawa Shogunate administration during the Edo period] that local governments performed certain tasks out of dutiful loyalty to the state rather than as a local right’.Footnote 12 Bonton Bognar argues that during the Meiji period (1868–1912), which directly followed the Edo period, the new government was ‘modernizing Japan’ including the transformation of Tokyo into a modern metropolis comparable to those in the west. Because this rapid modernization was carried out under the direct control of the government in a top–down manner, it ‘often overlooked people-oriented initiatives in matters such as city planning, and seriously undermined the development of a strong civic awareness among the “citizens”’. It also prevented Tokyo from gaining local governing autonomy for a long time.Footnote 13 André Sorensen emphasizes that the absence of effective civil society, such as voluntary and non-profit organizations, social and political movements and general public opinion in Japan, has caused the nation's urban planning system to be heavily centralized and dominated by the bureaucratic definitions of the public interest; this absence distanced planning policy from politics, leading to serious lack of democratic input (especially any form of public debate on planning decisions) and consequently inhibited public understanding.Footnote 14
As will be seen, however, the proposed infilling and development caused considerable public reaction, including citizen protest, and became a serious political issue. The situation seemed to reflect an urban self-image of contemporary Tokyo and particularly of its governance. Neil Jackson considers efforts to establish a desirable urban self-image in Japanese cities through the reconstruction of civic buildings such as the city hall. He focuses on the difficulty faced by architects in harmonizing modernity and tradition in the architectural form and design of these buildings but does not provide details about the political process of decision-making or the public reaction provoked by these reconstructions.Footnote 15 The urban self-image of Tokyo brought about by infilling and development reflected the feelings and actions of those who were alarmed, antagonized or otherwise affected by these projects. In this connection, the observations of Amin and Thrift, in their recent theoretical perspective on the city, about the importance to city dwellers of the right to participate in politics and to shape and influence the democratic city are relevant.Footnote 16
Bearing in mind these points raised in the secondary literature, this study examines how the infilling and subsequent development proceeded amidst a centralized, statist and top–down planning system; what sort of public debate occurred and whether it led to public understanding, and to what extent citizens enjoyed the right to participate in political discussions related to the reconstruction decisions. The following three parts each examine the plan, reaction and realization in a specific infilled area: Tokyo Spa and Miharabashi Underground Street where Sanjikkenbori flowed, Sotobori's replacement with Tokyo Station's square with Railway House and the building of the Tokyo Expressway over another part of Sotobori. Finally, the concluding part presents the arguments derived from these cases in comparative focus and highlights their significance in the Japanese context. This examination should fill an important gap in our understanding of Japan's urban history.
The main sources of this study include the verbatim minutes of meetings of the National Diet (Parliament) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly; minutes and related documents of Chogi, or meetings of officials of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which, though basically of an impersonal nature, provide important information; newspapers and magazines including such national newspapers as Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun and Tosei Shinpo, the newspaper specializing in the affairs of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which reported the infilling and subsequent development most extensively with much inside information.Footnote 17
Infilling of River Sanjikkenbori
The idea of infilling canals was considered in connection to the disposal of wartime rubble caused by air raids during World War II. It was necessary to dispose of 4.8 million m3 of rubble in Tokyo. The first step was levelling the ground on which the rubble sat so that land readjustment projects for war damage reconstruction could proceed. As house building gained momentum, illegal disposal began to cause problems. In central parts of the capital, the appearance of mounds of rubble from individual homes became an everyday occurrence on the streets. Beginning in 1947, rubble was transported to the Tokyo lowlands to raise its ground level. This method cost four times more than on-site disposal.Footnote 18 In early 1948, complaints were rife that wartime rubble on main streets had been removed from individual homes illegally. Those who followed the law were required to store all rubble at their home.Footnote 19 Moreover, under the official procedure for war damage reconstruction, no permanent rebuilding was permitted without surveying, which could not happen unless rubble disposal occurred first.Footnote 20 The concerned sections of the Metropolitan Government and the state department were receiving 300 complaints a day regarding unauthorized rubble.Footnote 21
A new method of disposing of rubble was urgently needed. As a result, the idea of infilling was proposed. The first such proposal came from the Ministry of Transport as it planned a square for Tokyo Station. Asahi Shimbun reported in October 1945, two months after the end of the war, that the long-term reconstruction of Tokyo Station would consist of a main station to be built in a square on the east side of the station called Yaesu side, on land to be created by infilling Sotobori.Footnote 22 In November 1946, Asahi Shimbun reported that the Tokyo Local Urban Planning Committee was to designate part of a square on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station for a main station building.Footnote 23 The Transport Ministry started the 32,000 m2 station square project in October 1947 and assigned part of it, totalling 8,700 m2 in area, to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.Footnote 24 Seiichiro Yasui (1891–1962), governor of the Tokyo Metropolis from 1947 to 1959, recalled in his memoirs that the Metropolitan Government, taking part in the Yaesu Square project, thought that infilling canals would be an efficient way of rubble disposal.Footnote 25 A head of the Metropolitan Government's land readjustment section told Tokyo Shimbun confidently in late March 1948 that infilling of canals with rubble would solve the problem quickly.Footnote 26 A week later, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly decided to infill four canals including the River Sanjikkenbori.Footnote 27 In the following year, it decided to infill four more canals, which were deemed unnecessary because they were extremely contaminated. By August 1951, most of the 4.8 million m3 of wartime rubble had been removed, of which some 900,000 m3 had been used to infill these unnecessary canals and create 245,000 m2 of land. About 292,000 m3 had been used for the infilling of 36,000 m2 of surface area where Sanjikkenbori once flowed (Figures 2–4).Footnote 28
Figure 2 River Sanjikkenbori before infilling
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1948. The width of Sanjukkenbori was reduced by infilling from 30 ken (approximately 55 m) to 19 ken (approximately 35 m) in 1828 to increase the river bank.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
Figure 3 Infilling of River Sanjikkenbori in progress
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1948. 80 trucks per day were said to be used for infilling.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
Figure 4 Infilling of River Sanjikkenbori near completion
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1949. 7.2-m-wide road was under construction in the middle of the infilled land.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
Initially, Tokyo Shimbun was sympathetic to the infilling. Specifically, when the infilling of Sanjikkenbori was proceeding in August 1948, the newspaper asserted that the project symbolized the ‘characteristics of Tokyo as an ever-changing city’ since the Edo period; some might dislike the fact that change was removing the past but doing so would ‘constitute a main stream in a new age’.Footnote 29 Sanjikkenbori's eastern bank retained an atmosphere from the Edo period, with many warehouses for waterborne transportation, theatres and geisha houses.Footnote 30 The Metropolitan Government intended to sell or lease newly created land as ‘an ideal shopping street like the Champs-Élysées in Paris’.Footnote 31 However, some of the inhabitants of Ginza opposed vigorously the proposed development. Commercial interests particularly feared that a new street might become a site for a black market.Footnote 32 As Toranosuke Shinohara (1890–1985), a veteran member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly who represented the Ginza area, stated at an Assembly meeting, the merchants were also concerned about losing business to a new shopping street. In reply, Hideaki Ishikawa, head of the Metropolitan Government's Construction Bureau at this time, offered assurances that the government had reached agreement with local inhabitants that the infilled Sanjikkenbori would be developed for public, international and cultural purposes and would not become a rival shopping street.Footnote 33
However, discontent was echoed in the National Diet. Members of the House of Representatives’ Construction Committee expressed criticisms and concern in April 1949. Committee member Senpachi Suzuki (1899–1967) contended that the 7.2 m width of the new street planned on the infilled Sanjikkenbori would be very narrow in the event of a major fire or earthquake. Rather, the project seemed to him an expedient measure ‘for the sake of making money or disposing of rubble’, which would ‘violate the spirit of long-term urban planning to build a livable, healthy city for future generations’.Footnote 34 Another member, Kakuei Tanaka (1918–1993), argued that the infilling was a ‘matter of grave concern to the national sentiment’ and that its judgment required ‘consideration from . . . fundamental viewpoints, such as the importance of open space and elegance and aesthetics in the urban scene’.Footnote 35
Despite these objections, the infilling of Sanjikkenbori proceeded. Acceptance of bids for the building sites started in March 1949,Footnote 36 and infilling was completed in July.Footnote 37 The first building in the infilled Sanjikkenbori to attract wide attention was Tokyo Spa (Figure 5). Ujitoshi Konomi (1912–80), the driving force behind the construction of this building, had been an important member of a military secret service based in Shanghai during the war. In Shanghai, Turkish baths with female employees attending to customers were very popular. After the war, Konomi was cross-examined by American prosecutors but escaped charges of war crimes and went on to establish the Tokyo Spa Company under the auspices of the Iwaki Cement Company and Nikkatsu Entertainment Company. As a gossip magazine called Shinso (The Truth) reported, Konomi and Jiro Saito (1901–71), president of Iwaki Cement, had become close because both were acquaintances of an influential right-wing activist. Nikkatsu, a thriving film company, was constructing its headquarters at Hibiya, adjacent to Ginza. The executive board of the Tokyo Spa Company included Saito and three Nikkatsu executives.Footnote 38
Figure 5 Tokyo Spa
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1957. The building with a chimney in the middle of the photograph is Tokyo Spa. It was demolished in 1986.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
Newspapers repeatedly criticized Tokyo Spa as a microcosm of decadence, extravagance and social injustice. Yomiuri Shimbun thought it improper that young girls in bikinis would massage and wash a naked customer in a sauna room. As an amusement centre, Tokyo Spa would also contain restaurants, a cabaret and a dance hall, but its prices were so high that only elite civil servants or businessmen who claimed the cost as official or business expenses could visit them.Footnote 39Yomiuri Shimbun also reported that a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Technology and Industry who visited the United States was told by a comparably high-ranking US military officer that the Japanese government should not offer special treatment to Tokyo Spa, such as providing building permits and materials for the construction of a building solely for luxury and fun, when the country was in financial trouble and about to have its independence restored.Footnote 40
In November 1951, following remarks by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (1878–1967) at the National Diet that he would set things right,Footnote 41 the executive board of the House of Councillors’ Health and Welfare Committee demanded that Tokyo Spa close the cabaret and dance hall and abolish the system of young female masseuses.Footnote 42 However, the masseuse practice survived and Tokyo Spa eventually gained popularity as a luxurious place that ordinary people could also afford. Although it was recognized that Tokyo Spa was not an indecent massage parlour, neither could it be regarded as a place that fulfilled or enhanced public, international and cultural purposes as the Metropolitan Government had promised that the development of the infilled Sanjikkenbori would do.Footnote 43
Meanwhile, several months after the Tokyo Spa opened in April 1951, another development started on the infilled Sanjikkenbori around Miharabashi Bridge, where Sanjikkenbori intersected the main west–east road in the Ginza district. A private company called the New Tokyo Tourism Company was established to develop this area. An affiliated organization of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government called the Tokyo Metropolitan Tourism Association would lease the land from the Metropolitan Government and then entrust the Tourism Company with its management. The president of the Metropolitan Tourism Association was actually the governor of the Metropolitan Government, Seiichiro Yasui. The president of the Tourism Company was Yasunobu Taku (1890–1959), a former town clerk of the Tokyo City Government, the Metropolitan Government's predecessor. Furthermore, the Tourism Company's managing board included a few high-ranking Metropolitan Government officials and a member of the Metropolitan Assembly. Originally, the development organizations and local representatives had concluded that the underground area was to be used to promote tourism by housing such facilities as a tourist information centre and a shop that sold Tokyo specialty products. However, the Tourism Company developed it as an entertainment area in the form of a short street running along the former canal's width. It contained a cinema, a pachinko (Japanese-style pinball) parlour and Japanese-style pothouses. In 1953, the Tourism Company added twin two-storey buildings of similar character, one at each end of the Miharabashi Bridge above its underground area. These two buildings created a new controversy. Originally, sites for the twin buildings were earmarked for a roundabout. However, they prevented the construction of a roundabout, blocking the street along the infilled Sanjikkenbori and contributing to the underground neighbourhood's conversion into a vulgar area.Footnote 44
The objections to the development of the Miharabashi area were perhaps more problematic for the Metropolitan Government than Tokyo Spa was. While the Spa had been built and was operated solely by private entities, the Miharabashi area was developed by a collaboration of the Metropolitan Government, Tokyo Metropolitan Tourism Association and New Tokyo Tourism Company. The Metropolitan Government's involvement was unmistakable, and Asahi Shimbun referred to the tripartite relationship as ‘dubious’.Footnote 45 Under the circumstances, the Metropolitan Government's leaders were forced to make public apologies. Deputy Governor Hikosaburo Okayasu (1899–1982) stated at the Metropolitan Assembly meeting in July 1954 that the Metropolitan Government executives were ‘sorry for mismanagement caused by our inattention’.Footnote 46 Governor Yasui, similarly, stated in an October article in Yomiuri Shimbun that he was ‘utterly sorry to the citizens of Tokyo’.Footnote 47 In November, when the House of Representatives’ Local Government Committee discussed the matter, Okayasu appeared as a witness and offered further apologies for ‘having been unable to obtain the desired result’.Footnote 48 Unquestionably, the project had produced something far different from what the Metropolitan Government had promised. Meanwhile, two cases of major development on the infilled Sotobori, one at Tokyo Station and the other along the western border of Ginza, had also sparked considerable reaction.
Infilling of Sotobori and Railway House development
There was some initial expression of disappointment over infilling Sotobori to provide a station square on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station. A column in Yomiuri Shimbun maintained in April 1949 that despite its contamination, Sotobori had been an oasis in Tokyo and should have been cleaned up rather than filled in.Footnote 49 However, the plan faced minimal public criticism and the station square was completed quickly. Construction of a new permanent station building proceeded less smoothly owing to lack of money,Footnote 50 but before the end of 1951, the Japanese Railways corporation published a five-year plan that included a proposal to start the construction of a station building on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station during 1952.Footnote 51 In May 1952, the corporation announced that it would start construction in October in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the national railway's founding.Footnote 52 In August, it officially released plans for a 12-storey Railway House, which would be one of the tallest buildings in Japan. The cost was estimated at 2,500 million yen (almost 7 million US dollars). To entice private investment, the establishment of a Railway House Company was proposed.Footnote 53 The Railway House Company thus became a representative example of the ‘people's station’ project, initiated in 1946, which envisioned reconstructing station buildings destroyed in wartime air raids by utilizing private investment in exchange for allowing commercial facilities on the premises. The Japanese Railways were short of money for constructing station buildings, partly because they had to focus their limited financial resources on improving transportation.Footnote 54
However, the Railway House project soon became a sensational political scandal. In June 1953, about 10 months after the Japanese Railways officially announced the plans for the Railway House, a debate on this project started in the National Diet.Footnote 55 The Railway House was scheduled to open to the public with six storeys initially, with the expectation of adding six more in future. Its site was on part of the station square created by infilling Sotobori, which was classified as state-owned land. Some members of the National Diet questioned whether it was proper to allow the private Railway House Company to build on state-owned land without collecting a guarantee or stipulating the rental fees that the Japanese Railways would charge. The Railway House Company would have the Daimaru department store and many other shops as its tenants, at high rental costs, while the Japanese Railways used only parts of the ground and second floors as a railway station.Footnote 56
Members of the National Diet also pointed out that many existing properties near the Railway House might have to be demolished because the height of a 12-storey building would require additional open space in front of it according to the Building Standards Act. Moreover, the relationship between the Japanese Railways and Railway House Company was called into question. Most of the Railway House Company's executives were former Japanese Railways executives. For example, its president, Yukio Kagayama (1902–70), had been the president of the Japanese Railways until he was forced to resign in August 1951 following a tragic train accident four months earlier. Rumours claimed that the new president of the Japanese Railways, Sounosuke Nagasaki (1896–1962), was so sympathetic to his predecessor's plight that he had established a company for Kagayama. The contract between the Japanese Railways and the Railway House Company was private, not the result of competitive bidding. An official of the Board of Audit of Japan admitted to the House of Representatives’ Audit Committee in September 1953 that seeking a private contract from the start could not be regarded as the best practice.Footnote 57
On 2 November 1953, the Audit Committee adopted a resolution regarding the relationship between the Japanese Railways and Railway House Company. The resolution contained several demands, i.e. the Japanese Railways should determine who was responsible for this project and restructure its personnel accordingly, that basic principles regarding the Japanese Railways’ people's station should be established so as to ensure that the presence of private investment and commercial facilities would not prevent the Japanese Railways in any way from fulfilling their fundamental duty of transportation and that care should be taken to complete the development of the Yaesu station square, on which the Railway House stood, in amicable co-operation with local representatives.Footnote 58 Accordingly, within a month, the chiefs of the relevant three bureaus at the Japanese Railways (sales, facilities and accounting) were demoted.Footnote 59 Railway House Company leaders, including President Kagayama, submitted their resignations around the same time. It was thought that these personnel changes would resolve the controversy.Footnote 60
In spring 1954, however, interest in the Railway House was rekindled as newspapers reported in detail on investigations by the public prosecutor's office and police into matters related to the National Diet debates of the previous year. There was strong suspicion that the Japanese Railways had secretly approached some National Diet members, seeking to ensure that the personnel changes demanded would be limited to the bureau chiefs concerned and would not include the Japanese Railways president. As a result of the investigations, Diet member Yoshimitsu Fujita (1911–86), who had proposed the resolution adopted at the Audit Committee meeting of 2 November 1953, was arrested and turned over to the public prosecutor's office in April 1954 on the suspicion of accepting bribes.Footnote 61
In the following month, Yomiuri Shimbun reported that local opposition had intensified against the Metropolitan Government's plan to enlarge the Yaesu station square. The locals thought that the station square project aimed at providing enough space to allow the currently six-storey high Railway House building to be 12 storeys high.Footnote 62 The Metropolitan Government's final proposal for the project would involve demolition of more premises than locals expected, and it called for releasing 10 per cent of each neighbouring plot to be used as open space. In response, 484 signatures opposing the proposal were collected,Footnote 63 and a meeting of the Tokyo Local Urban Planning Committee scheduled on 20 May to authorize the project had to be cancelled.Footnote 64 Amidst this conflict, the Daimaru department store opened in the Railway House on 21 October 1954,Footnote 65 attracting 300,000 people on its first day of business (Figure 6).Footnote 66 In contrast, two more years would pass before the Tokyo Local Urban Planning Committee finally authorized the building expansion in 1956,Footnote 67 and even then local opposition to the open space project continued unabated.Footnote 68
Figure 6 Railway House (Daimaru department store)
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1957. The building was six-storey high at this stage. It was demolished in 2009.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
Infilling of Sotobori for the Tokyo Expressway
Meanwhile, on another part of Sotobori that formed the western border of the Ginza district, infilling and construction of a motorway generated objections as well (Figure 7). In February 1950, Minoru Higuchi (1888–1977), the former president of Mitsubishi Estate Company who would become the first president of the Tokyo Expressway Company, applied to the Metropolitan Government for permission to construct a ‘sky building’.Footnote 69 The proposal envisioned building five blocks of 12-storey, 45-m-high buildings on Sotobori between Nanbabashi near Shinbashi Station and Kajibashi near Tokyo Station. This complex would include shops, offices, a hotel, a theatre and other amenities. On the second level of the buildings, motorways called ‘skyways’ would extend south from Shinbashi Station area via Tokyo Port and Haneda Airport to the Rokugogawa, a river forming the southern administrative border of Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture.Footnote 70 Toranosuke Shinohara, a veteran member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, stated in retrospect at its meeting in 1955 that the idea of sky buildings and skyways had come from Hideaki Ishikawa, the Metropolitan Government's chief planner, who explained it to him around 1950.Footnote 71 Ishikawa had presented the idea of a structure containing a motorway on top with dwellings underneath as early as 1940 in the road engineering journal.Footnote 72
Figure 7 Tokyo Expressway under construction
The photograph was taken by Chuo Metropolitan Ward in 1957. A tower with a car at the top was an advertisement for Toyota's car dealer. In front, there was a signboard reading Fujiya which was a chain confectionery. A wide street with a tram along the Expressway was Sotoboridori, connecting Tokyo Station and Shinbashi Station.
Source: Courtesy of Chuo City Kyobashi Library.
However, the Metropolitan Government told Higuchi that the construction of a high-rise building, as proposed in his 1950 application, was not acceptable. In February 1951, he accordingly applied to use the public watercourse on part of the Sotobori canal to construct a two-storey-high motorway.Footnote 73 The two storeys beneath the road would be used exclusively for warehouses and garages. After discussion among its executive officials, the Metropolitan Government decided in the following month that the skyway should be constructed as a motorway free of charge.Footnote 74 In September 1951, Tokyo Shimbun reported that the Metropolitan Government had commissioned a company to develop a proposal for a 1.3-km-long motorway from Nanbabashi to Konyabashi near Yurakucho Station as part of a motorway network that the government was contemplating.Footnote 75 The Tokyo Expressway Company was officially established on 13 December 1951 with Higuchi as the president.Footnote 76
Up to this stage, the Metropolitan Assembly was not officially involved in decision-making regarding the motorway, and the infilling of the Sotobari canal for its construction was not anticipated either. The motorway was to be supported by piers that would cover up part of Sotobori, but the canal was expected to remain navigable. Then in August 1953, the executive officials of the Metropolitan Government decided to infill part of Sotobori to construct the Tokyo Expressway.Footnote 77 The reasons given for this decision were (1) a fear of further water contamination once the projected structure was built, (2) the demand for creating open space and (3) the need for public parking space in central Tokyo.Footnote 78 In May 1954, Metropolitan Government Governor Yasui submitted proposals to the Metropolitan Assembly for infilling Sotobari and two other canals in order to construct the motorway.Footnote 79 The Metropolitan Assembly approved the proposal in June.Footnote 80
However, by then the Tokyo Expressway had raised considerable doubt and opposition, particularly at meetings of the House of Representatives’ Construction Committee. One member of the committee, Mitsuo Setoyama (1904–97) of the majority party Jiyuto, questioned the wisdom of building ‘a Chinese Great Wall of reinforced concrete which would be a warehouse zone’ on the historic canals in Ginza.Footnote 81 He decried the project as ‘disregarding the feelings of locals and general citizens’.Footnote 82 Another member, Eiji Yamashita (1901–90) of the Moderate Socialist Party, asked Metropolitan Government deputy governor Okayasu, who attended as a witness, if he thought that there should have been a public inquiry into the case. In reply, Okayasu admitted that ‘it would have been better to hold an inquiry to listen to citizens’ critical opinions’.Footnote 83
Suspicions were also raised that the entire project had been plotted by particular businessmen in collusion with the Metropolitan Government. The suspicions increased when the head of the Metropolitan Government's construction bureau stated at the House of Representatives’ Construction Committee meeting in May 1954 that shops and offices could use two storeys that had, at first, been exclusively earmarked for warehouses and garages.Footnote 84 In response, Nobuchika Murase (1902–66), a member of the conservative opposition party Kaishinto, declared that the entire story had been ‘plotted from the beginning’. The condition that the structure should be used exclusively for warehouses and garages had been jettisoned, making the project's value rise astronomically. Against the growing objections to the project, the new chairman of the Metropolitan Assembly's Construction Committee, Michiharu Uchida (1902–84), asserted that because the structure was mostly built, it was ‘out of the question to change a fait accompli’.Footnote 85
In a month's time, the Metropolitan Assembly approved the infilling, although a supplementary resolution stated its regret that executive officials of the Metropolitan Government had taken the advantage of established facts to make their case for infilling.Footnote 86 The Metropolitan Assembly's decision angered the local metropolitan wards and inhabitants. The local wards of Chuo, Chiyoda and Minato submitted a petition to oppose infilling to the Metropolitan Government, Metropolitan Assembly and Tokyo Expressway Company in September 1954.Footnote 87 Among the local commercial interests in Chuo ward, a ‘United Association Opposing Construction of the Motorway’ was set up in July. Its members were mainly established, relatively wealthy locals in the Ginza district.Footnote 88 Meanwhile, more than 100 residents along Sotobori also set up an ‘Association Opposing the Motorway in Defence of Living’ in August. Most of its members were small traders such as tavern owners who would be directly affected by the motorway's construction. Many had come to the area after their previous locations were damaged during the war.Footnote 89 The two organizations co-ordinated their activities and staged a demonstration on Sotobori by boat in October.Footnote 90 Eventually, Chuo ward submitted a petition to the House of Representatives’ Local Government Committee opposing the infilling of Sotobori for a motorway and also criticizing the development of the Miharabashi Bridge area.Footnote 91
As for the infilling, the ward leaders complained that they had never been officially consulted in the decision process regarding the motorway construction and subsequent infilling of Sotobori. They argued that Sotobori had provided a scenic oasis for people and that dredging was more appropriate than infilling. The Local Government Committee considered this matter at its meeting on 10 November 1954. As mentioned above, the Metropolitan Government's deputy governor, Okayasu, was apologetic at this meeting about how the Miharabashi Bridge area had been developed. However, he argued strongly in favour of the Tokyo Expressway's construction and especially for the need to infill part of Sotobori. He maintained that the Metropolitan Government had explained to the local wards, though it did not officially consult them, about using the public watercourse for constructing a motorway before it decided to proceed with the project in March 1951. This was despite the fact that the governor of Tokyo could decide the use of a public watercourse without consulting any local assemblies. Okayasu also noted that no particular opposition was raised against the proposal at that time. He went on to say that the infilling required approval by a local assembly, but that according to the amended Local Autonomy Law of 1952, the local assembly to be officially consulted should be the Metropolitan Assembly and not a metropolitan ward assembly. Therefore, there was no requirement for official consultation with the relevant local wards. Eiichiro Nosou (1902–87), chief of Chuo ward, argued that the local people were unhappy that their opinions were not considered in this matter, although he admitted that the lack of official consultation did not violate any existing legislation.Footnote 92
Conclusion
We have seen how the infilling of traditional canals of Sotobori and Sanjikkenbori in central Tokyo and subsequent development there proceeded in the centralized, statist and top–down planning system of that time. In the course of this process, dubious activities – apparently linked with motives of personal profit – by leaders of the Metropolitan Government or Japanese Railways became hard to overlook.
With regard to the infilling of Sanjikkenbori, the gossip magazine Shinso in 1951 indicated that permission to build Tokyo Spa had been granted in exchange for a bribe to Governor Yasui.Footnote 93 As for the Miharabashi area, Tosei Shinpo reported in 1953 that House of Councillors' member Ken Yasui, Metropolitan Government's Governor Yasui's younger brother, had pulled strings to form the infamous tripartite relationship.Footnote 94 Similar suspicion was rife that the Metropolitan Government's agreement in 1951 to permit the use of the public watercourse of the Sotobori canal for constructing a two-storey motorway was given in exchange for financial support for the Metropolitan Governorship election campaign.Footnote 95 When the Tokyo Expressway eventually opened to traffic in June 1959, Asahi Shimbun stated that ‘it would be difficult to erase the memory of the smell of profiteering out of the mind of the citizens of Tokyo’.Footnote 96 And as for the development on infilled Sotobori in front of Tokyo Station, the relationship between the Japanese Railways and their subsidiary company, the Railway House Company, was also widely viewed with suspicion and criticized vehemently at the Diet. The overwhelmingly pre-eminent concern was not about building safety or the presence of a motorway on infilled land but about the dubious, scandalous nature of the events related to decisions on these projects.
In this situation, the ministries concerned never discouraged the Metropolitan Government or Japanese Railways from proceeding with their projects. Civil servants thought, as Soichi Shibue (1906–88), head of Ministry of Construction's planning bureau, emphasized during the National Diet debate on the Tokyo Expressway, that the use of public land created by infilling was ‘inevitable’, given the limited amount of land available in central Tokyo.Footnote 97 On the other hand, when the Diet discussed the infilling of Sanjikkenbori and criticized a new road there as too narrow in 1949, Yoshibumi Zaitsu (1905–2000), head of the Construction Ministry's city bureau, repeatedly stated what he really thought: while the infilling as such should legally require ministerial approval as urban planning, what should be built on it, such as ‘a tiny road’ on Sanjikkenbori, did not require ministerial approval; the Ministry therefore would ‘not really bother considering it as urban planning’. These remarks made the Diet members furious.Footnote 98 Suspicion of profiteering in the Tokyo Expressway case continued to smoulder in the Diet debates of the late 1950s. However, civil servants in the associated ministries stated, often in a nonchalant way, that the decisions made had been inevitable under the circumstances.Footnote 99
The examples in this study emphasize the collusive rather than the heavily top–down aspect of Japan's planning system reflected in the relationship between the ministries and the Metropolitan Government. The Metropolitan Government had the initiative in drawing up and realizing urban projects which civil servants regarded as a fait accompli. At the same time, the Metropolitan Government neglected dissenting views. It might be apologetic about problems that arose in the course of development, as seen in the case of Sanjikkenbori, but as long as the ministries acquiesced, it would not take any decisive measures to redress undesirable situations. Opponents eventually, albeit grudgingly, acknowledged this situation. Around the mid-1950s, local residents gradually realized that, to benefit the Sanjikkenbori area's prosperity, the inclusion of ‘some sort of special business such as an amusement centre’ was inevitable, even though they had criticized it earlier.Footnote 100 In response to local opposition to the motorway on Sotobori, the Metropolitan Government unflinchingly maintained that it had always conformed to legally prescribed procedure. A member of the Chuo ward assembly who had been active in the opposition movement admitted in 1955 that the movement had to proceed on the proposition that the motorway's construction was ‘almost a fait accompli’.Footnote 101 Similarly, although one local building owner continued to oppose the effort to enlarge the open space in the Yaesu station square, the expansion of the Railway House to 12 storeys was completed in July 1968, and the dissident building owner decided voluntarily to demolish the structure at the end of that year, concluding a dispute that had lasted for more than a decade.Footnote 102
After all, there were few signs that citizens could influence the politics of reconstruction based on infilling. We have seen that the key to Nagoya's success in reconstruction lay in rapid progress in land readjustment. In fact, that city was so determined to proceed with land readjustment that it took action before most of the former inhabitants – who had been conscripted, evacuated or bombed out – could return to their previous premises.Footnote 103 Juro Tabuchi (1890–1974), superintendent responsible for all engineering affairs in Nagoya, recalled in 1961 that the city ‘was taking merciless, drastic measures, but otherwise you would never accomplish town planning’.Footnote 104 In neither Tokyo nor Nagoya did local authorities make much effort to explain their reconstruction plans or rationale to the general public. In contrast, local authorities in Britain behaved very differently during the same time period. Not only were they mindful of seeking to promote public understanding and support of their plans, but they used that public support in some instances to hold off pressure from the central government. Plymouth and Coventry, in particular, adhered to their bold and drastic visions of reconstruction despite the planning ministry's pressure to curtail them, and public support for the plans played a crucial role in their resistance.Footnote 105
Overall, the negative impact on Tokyo's urban self-image brought about by infilling and subsequent development was unmistakable. These projects did not contribute to the public good but instead benefited a few high-ranking persons in the political, administrative and business circles who were able to achieve dubious but lucrative deals. Following the forced curtailment of the official blitz reconstruction planning effort, the Metropolitan Government took initiative in proceeding with unique urban projects but its executives during the 1950s audaciously neglected their citizens in forcibly pushing forward with these projects despite criticisms of profiteering. A similar situation occurred among the Japanese Railways and Railway House Company executives, while some politicians willingly joined ranks with the profiteers. Sadly, the infilling of canals and subsequent development became a lasting reminder of the Japanese public's distrust and hatred of the crafty and greedy upper strata of their society.
