Ugly Japan

Excerpted from The Economist Tokyo Briefing

Shigeru Itou, Japan’s top urban-planning expert, spent two years ranking the country's most hideous spots. In “Ugly Japan”, the report he released in December, he dubbed Tokyo's Nihombashi bridge the “country’s ugliest sight”, followed by a bike park and a bubble-era ghost village. The bridge, from which all distances to Tokyo are measured, was thrown across a critical stretch of river in the 17th century to promote trade. It was elegantly renovated in the early years of the 20th century, but in the 1960s, to Mr Itou’s horror, an eight-lane motorway was built on stilts a few metres above it, blocking all daylight and making the bridge a blot on the landscape.

[Ed. Go here for a pix of Nihonbashi today (Bashi = Bridge in JPN).]

Mr Itou, a professor emeritus of Tokyo University, says his report is not merely an exercise in sadism, but a way to inspire efforts to beautify the landscape. He heads a government panel with the purpose of promoting a “Japan beauty renaissance” and undoing some of the architectural crimes of the last century. Such is the professor's influence with Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, that he requested a study into restoring Nihombashi to its former glory by rerouting the highway above it. Mr Itou will submit a full proposal for the renovation by September. If the plan goes ahead, work will be finished by 2012.