Heritage Tourism and Sustainable Communities: Lessons from the Everyday Cultural Landscape of Tokyo

8/8/2019 Heritage Tourism and Sustainable Communities: Lessons from the Everyday Cultural Landscape of Tokyo

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Heritage Tourism and Sustainable Communities: Lessons from the Everyday

Cultural Landscape of Tokyo

Chester H. Liebs

Visiting Fulbright Professor

Graduate School of Urban EngineeringUniversity of Tokyo

Introduction

Discussions of tourism and sustainability often address threats to important heritage areas,and their residents, caused by an influx of visitors. This paper seeks to look at the topicfrom a somewhat different point of view. Using Tokyo as a case study, it will brieflyillustrate several features of the citys current everyday landscape, from neighborhoodsand shopping streets to the often unrecognized role of the bicycle, that offer potentially-valuable objects lessons for sustainable communities and for addressing the current

worldwide threat-in-common climate change.1

It will go on report on current threats tothe examples citied, countermeasures to these threats, and the potential of a WorldSustainable Inheritance List (WSIL) to encourage recognition and global transmittal oflessons from these and similar everyday landscapes that may offer valuable lessons forthe future.

A Few Tokyo Landscape Lessons

Compact, Safe Lightly-Motorized, Transit Friendly Residential Areas

Unlike the citys famous shrines, temples, museums, or Akihabara, the center for

electronics goods and anime, Tokyos many low-rise, safe, and slightly-motorizedneighborhoods, while not exactly tourist hotspots, are for the most part exemplary, well-functioning, compact communities.

These by and large middle-class areas consist of hundreds of closely-placed small houses,(sprinkled with modestly-scaled apartment buildings), built incrementally. The privateresidences often sport a mix of traditional features from tile roofs, abbreviated Japanesegardens, and grass-matted tatami rooms withshji (paper-infilled, wood-frame, slidingroom separators), to so called western-style living rooms and kitchens. 2

In eastern Tokyo such neighborhoods are often the spatial reincarnations of much older

residential precincts dating back to the Edo Era (1603-1867) which where leveled by firesresulting from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and again by American fire bombs in1945. Many of those to the west date from after the 1923 quake when there was apopulation shift in that direction to neighborhoods being developed on agricultural landsalong new commuter rail lines. 3

Their maze of twisting narrow streets, the spatial heritage of a societal proclivity to livein density, and reflecting the irregular patterns of the old farm and field boundaries they


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were gradually superimposed over, today act as the perfect deterrent to automobile trafficwhile being highly conducive to walking and bicycling. Cars are not a necessity since atrain station is usually a short walk, bicycle, or bus ride away. Highly pedestrianized, andwith a low carbon footprint, these neighborhoods, while not without their drawbacks,have much information to offer about the design of dense, sustainable communities of the

future.

Shtengai: Traditional Neighborhood Shopping Streets

Woven within these neighborhoods are traditional shopping streets orshtengai. 4 Theseusually narrow streets are flanked by small neighborhood retailers selling fresh fish, rice,vegetables, appliances clothing, medicine, and a host of other goods. It is not uncommon,especially in older areas, to find businesses which have been in continuous ownership, ina succession of structures on the same site, for a century or more. Business owners oftenreside in family living quarters, usually in the rear of the shop. These local merchant /neighborhood residents often have especially strong ties to the surrounding community.

In recent years many shtentgai have been roofed over for all-weather use, and chain-store supermarkets, and in some cases departments stores, have located along or at theends of shtengai as part of the retail mix. Within walking or biking distance of the densesurrounding neighborhoods, many shtengai are served by rail transit with station exitsoften feeding directly into them to make a seamless transition from work to shopping tohome without the need for a car. Automobile use is usually forbidden or restricted inmany shtengai and trucks are limited to delivery vehicles at certain times of the day.Within this compact environment there is scant space for motor-vehicles while access isvery convenient for foot and bicycle traffic.

Tying it All Together: Practical Bicycling and the Mama Chari

Although an important and highly-visible feature for supporting neighborhood life, scantattention has been paid to the lowly bicycle, including by many foreign planners andurbanists chronicling the development and meaning of Tokyos neighborhoods. 5 It is theShinkansen or bullet trains, which today rocket along at speeds as high as three-hundredkilometers per hour, that always steal the show. Yet bicycles, and their extremely highdegree of practical use, especially in urban areas like Tokyo, are arguably not only theunsung transportation wonders of Japan but a highly-undervalued agent for nurturingneighborhood sustainability.

Citizens of other Asian countries, such as China and India, are abandoning their bicyclesfor motor scooters or eventually trading up for their first cars. In contrast, the residents ofEast Asias most developed country have not forsaken their bikes, the number of whichare estimated today at 80,000,000 or two bicycles for every three of the 127,500,000Japanese.

6While the reasons for this deserve much further study, the close-knit

neighborhoods, with narrow streets and nearby shtengai found in cities like Tokyo,which are more conducive to cycling than motoring, and successive policies, beginning in

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the Meiji era (1869-1912), that until relatively recently encouraged industrialization, andrailway more than highway construction, are at least part of the explanation.

Today Tokyo has the most extensive subway and urban rail network in the world, servingmost parts of the city, and bicycles are an essential adjunct to this efficient urban vascular

system. As opposed to recreational biking using expensive high-tech vehicles, and withriders costumed in special clothing, this type of bicycling is a part of everyday lifeapractical means for families to shop at the shtentgai or for people from all walks of lifeto commute to a nearby train station.

Most of the residential areas and shtengai, already described, with their narrow roadswith few places to park, are more conductive to bicycling than motoring and havecontributed to the development of a deeply-engrained bicycle habit. In cities like Beijingor Taipei, which only recently began building efficient public transit systems, and wherebicycle commutes were consequently longer, the switch to motor bikes and thenautomobiles has been an easier sell, with people with rapidly-rising income more

susceptible to the illusion of higher-status that car ownership is perceived to confer.Obviously many European cities, such as Amsterdam or Berlin also have high practicalbicycle use. However in East Asia, where Japanese innovations are often emulated (evenin those countries where there are political tensions lingering from World War Two), andwhere many of Asias future placemakes are educated, highlighting the nationsretention of bicycles, and the reason why, is likely to have more impact than showcasingEuropean examples.

In Tokyo (as well as other Japanese cities with extensive public-transit systems likeOsaka) one can see bicycles used for dozens of different taskspractical bicycles whichTokyoites often refer to as mama chari, short for mama charinko or mothersbicycle. They can be bought new for as little as 10,000 yen, around $85.00 U.S., fullyequipped with fenders, a chain guard so they can be ridden with street clothing, agenerator-powered light for night use, a low-slung frame for quick and easy mountingand dismounting, and an ample basket and luggage rack. The fact they all look alikemakes them an unattractive target for thieves while their ingenious spoke lock, more adeclaration of ownership than security device, allows for highly-efficient land use bypreventing bikes from rolling after being parked so that many can fit in the same spacewhere only a few mini-vans or sport utility vehicles could be beached. 7

Each day one can witness the practicality and versatility of the trusty mama chari. Mamachari are used to carry groceries, computers, children (safety helmets wisely are cominginto vogue), friends, police on patrol, merchants making light deliveries, and dozens ofother purposes including carrying thousands of working men and woman to the stationand back. Hundreds of bicycles can be usually be seen parked not only along theshtengai but in special supermarket lots like those of Seiyu stores (now owned by Wal-Mart), and in bike-only parking lots and designated areas by train stations. A newgeneration of efficient, electrically-assisted bikes are coming into use that can even scalethe hilly urban areas of cities like Tokyo.

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Threats and Countermeasures

Considering Japan is the birthplace of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and inlight of global-warming threats posed by antiquated, twentieth-century-style, auto-oriented settlement in developed motorized countries like the United States and emerging

motorizing nations such as China or India, one might think that the nearly crime-free,dense, livable, low-rise, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, auto-resistant neighborhoods ofcities like Tokyo, would be models worthy of careful study, protection, and selectiveemulation.

8This is not always so.

While Japan is an exemplary steward of its older cultural treasures, from great shrinesand temples, and historic sites and districts, to folkways, crafts and living treasures, muchof the sustainable cultural inheritance briefly described in this paper might not necessarilybe carried into the future.

A ring road is about to be completed around greater Tokyo, major roads in the city have

been red lined for further widening, often without perceivable traffic pressures to causethem to be, and those traditional streetscapes within these zones are gradually beingdemolished for replacement with set-back apartment or office structures, often lined withopen plazas or cars rather than shop fronts. New shopping centers are also being built,helping to divert business away from the shtengai whose small stores have been underincreasingly competitive pressures, especially since the year 2000, when, owing in part tolobbying from countries like the United States wishing to break into Japans retail market,a 1974 law limiting the number of large chain stores to protect small merchants wasterminated.

9While many bustling shtengai can still be found in Tokyo and other towns

and cities in Japan, increasingly the grey-shuttered store bays of failed shops havespawned a sobriquet for vanishing shtengai syttaa dori (shutter street).

10In addition,

a growing number of dense, safe, difficult-to-motorize, middle-class neighborhoods aregradually succumbing to road widenings, and the demolition of individual residences forreplacement with high-rise condominiums.

There also seems to be a current war against the bicycle. Bicycles admittedly can be anuisance when abandoned or stacked carelessly by train stations.However they are too often deemed by city officials, and some architects and planners, asold-fashioned and a blight on the landscape rather than a boon to sustainability by notemitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This disconnect might be partially due tothe fact that bicycles are such a routine part of life in cities like Tokyo that, when viewedin a very narrow context, their minuses are seen to outweigh the positives.

All over Tokyo one can see evidence of campaigns aimed at deterring bicycle use.Reasons given include that they can get in the way of the handicapped, hinder pedestrians,and that parked bikes a detriment to an attractive environment. As summed up by MeijiGakuin Associate Professor of Urban Planning Keiro Hattori:

...The value of people using bicycles for daily shopping or commuting (to astation) in Tokyo or other big cities has been underestimated to a degree that is just

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absurd since high bicycle use contribute to the less use of energy for transportation,it is much cheaper, and the parking space is much smaller than automobile. It is alsomuch healthier. 11

While cars speed by recklessly, one can sometimes see police busy ticketing bicycles,

parked in places deemed off limits, even if there is perfectly adequate space forpedestrians and cars to pass by them. 12 Meanwhile space given over to parked cars isincreasing. Also, in the hundreds of promotional adds for new high-rise condominiumsposted all about the city, one rarely sees a bicycle or pedestrian featured in the architectsrendering, just a car or two (often a high-end model) prominently depicted out front. Itseems evident that in the minds of much of Tokyos officialdom, and its developmentcommunity, the high-rise and car are perceived as icons of a world-class, global city,something ironically Tokyo already is in its present form.

However there has been a countermovement to these trends, often from the bottom up.Dozens of citizens groups across Tokyo have been working against the destruction of

their compact, low-rise neighborhoods. In Yanaka, which miraculously escaped theWorld-War-Two firebombings, residents, though so far denied local Tait-ward-levelhistoric-district recognition for the area, continue to try to protect their traditionalneighborhood from high-rise condominiumization and road widenings. 13 While theirefforts have at least slowed the destruction of Yanaka, similar campaigns, such as inShimo-Kitazawa in western Tokyo, have not been as successful. This compact, bike andpedestrian friendly, and motorization-resistant area, boasting several thriving intersectingshtengai, with rail transit stations exiting directly into them, will soon have a $140million, 81-foot wide thoroughfare rammed through it, along with the lifting of building-height restrictions, despite spirited local opposition. 14

One of the not-to-be-taken-lightly arguments often leveled against such areas is theirsusceptibility to earthquakes in seismically-active Japan. However older neighborhoodsare not the only places that are vulnerable in the case of a major tremor. Todayseismologists are also concerned about the potential dangers of recently-built high-risebuildings, such as those springing up all over Tokyo, and their susceptibility to long-cycle seismic waves which experts warn, as recently stated in theAsahi Shinbun, have...the potential to cause skyscrapers to sway dangerously, perhaps striking somestructures with 2 to 4 times the anticipated force. People in the upper floors could faceserious or fatal injuries from toppling furniture.... in the event of a major quake.

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Although a slow process, to address the dangers posed by potentially hazardousresidential buildings in older neighborhoods, low-tech seismic stabilizations are graduallybeing carried out, on a case-by-case basis, by local carpenters as part of variousmachizukuri (town town-making) projects around the city. 16 Also highly-deterioratedbuildings that are beyond retrofitting have the potential to be replaced, within the samespatial footprint, with seismic and fire-resistant reincarnations

17A national NPO, the

Machinami Renmei was founded in 1974 to support efforts by local citizens groups tosave their neighborhoods and communities, and Japans most prestigious institution ofhigher education, the University of Tokyo, has even set up a Center for Sustainable

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Urban Regeneration to provide research and technical services to address many of theseissues.

The debate over practical bicycle is also heating up. In Japan, due to dangers from cars,most people ride their bikes on the sidewalk. Yet bicycles are classified legally as light

vehicles and most sidewalk riding is at the moment technically illegal. The NationalPolice Agencys recent proposal to change the law to legitimize sidewalk riding hassparked considerable controversy, especially among bicycle users who fear that it is anexcuse to avoid providing safer, bike-only travel lanes. Some local jurisdictions aretaking the initiative, such Tokyos Setagaya ward, to cordon off part of the street, and theopposite sidewalk, to create two opposing one-way bicycle-only lanes. 18

This increased public attention is finally beginning to elevate the issue of practicalbicycle riding from a perceived nuisance to a matter of global concern. As ShunichiTeranishi, professor of environmental economics at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University,recently proclaimed that Bicycles are the next big eco-friendly mode of transportation...

In addition to helping to prevent global warming, the emissions-free conveyances are ahealthy alternative to gas-guzzlers. They also cause far fewer traffic deaths.19

Yet the prevailing image of the future Tokyo, such as that portrayed in a recentadvertisement by the giant Kajima Corporation, builders of everything from roads andhigh-rises to airport runways, and posted in rapid transit stations around the city, is of anironically twentieth-century-looking city of high-rises linked by ribbons of highways.Since such future visions are confirmed by many actually pieces of the developmentpuzzle gradually being put into place, one of the worlds preeminent examples of anearth-friendly compact city could still possibly metamorphose into just anothermetropolis of shopping centers, high-rises, and parking lots, sprinkled with a scattering ofbeautifully conserved historic sites.

Tourism and a World Sustainable Inheritance List?

In this paper Tokyo has only been used as an example. Practical, sustainable, functioningeveryday cultural landscapes can be found in many countries. The challenge is how tomake their value gain greater recognition in the places where they evolved, and todisseminate examples of already extant lessons for practical sustainability for citizens ofother nations to adapt to their own conditions should choose to do so.

The World Heritage List has been, as is well known, an extremely powerful vehicle forcalling attention to the sites contained within itso powerful that tourists are flockinginto designated places generating economic pressures and demands for infrastructure thatare in turn creating a demand for sustainable models.

Given the transnational nature of impending climate change, the world conservationcommunity might consider, if this cannot be accomplished through the current WorldHeritage List framework, the creation of a World Sustainable Inheritance List (WSIL),which, instead of being geared tooutstanding and universal values from the past,

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would celebrate practical products of continuous cultural evolution in the everydaylandscape of the present that have transcendent value for creating sustainablecommunities of the future.

Development of a WSIL could have wide-ranging effects by finally and solidly

connecting heritage conservation with the contemporary world and its global challenges.It would also help people working at all levels, government, NGOs, business, academe,etc., from a broad spectrum of disciplines, as well as ordinary citizens, to become, in asense, full-time tourists who are better informed by everyday placesessential but oftenoverlooked matrices for thinking about the global-future-in-common.

1 For over six years, at various times from 1995 to 2007, as a two-time Fulbright scholar, and also asvisiting professor in heritage conservation at several of Japans major universities, I have kept extensiveresearch notes on observations of Tokyos changing urban landscape. My current research, as FulbrightVisiting Professor in the Nishimura Urban Design Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, focuses on lessonsfor sustainable compact cities that can be learned from Tokyos often overlooked everyday culturallandscapes. Between September 2006 and the March 2007 writing of this paper, I have walked 462 miles,noting changes in the visible daily life and urban form of this metropolitan area of 35 million, the largesturban agglomeration in the world. This paper is only a brief sampling of some of the information gleanedfrom reading the primary visual landscape texts, conducting interviews, reviewing the works of otherresearchers, and undertaking archival investigations.

2 Chester Liebs, Heritage Conservation in Japan: An Eyewitness View, Cultural ResourcesManagement 19, (1996) 2

3 See Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (New York:Knopf, 1983); Andr Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan (London: Routledge, 2002) 125

4 Sorensen, 1955 e.g. Sorensen; Barre Shelton , Learning from the Japanese City: West Meets East in Urban Design

(London: E & FN Spon, 1999).6 Amelia Gentleman, Soaring Ambitions in New Delhi: Planners Envision a Manhattan Skyline,

International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun 13 Mar. 2007, 2; Editorial, Bicycle Traffic Safety,International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun, 21 Feb. 2007

7 Chester Liebs, In Praise of One of Japans Great Treasures: The Car-less Life, ArchitecturalInstitute of Japan Journal1508 (2003) 41

8 e.g. The Commissioner Bruhut Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, Inviting Expression of Interest forConstruction of Elevated Inner-Core Ring Road (advertisement), International Herald Tribune/AsahiShinbun, 5 Mar. 2007

9 Jetro (Japan External Trade Organization), Special Report 4: New Era in Japans Retailing Market,Online Magazine: Invest Japan, Special Edition, Vol. 2, 2003,

10 For a popular description see e.g. Captain Japan, Tokyos Disappearing Shtengai, Sake-DrenchedPostcards, n.d. < Sake Drenched Postcards - Tokyo's Disappearing Shotengai.mht>

11 Prof. Keiro Hattori Opinion of State of Practical Bicycling in Tokyo. E-mail message to ChesterLiebs. 14 Mar. 2007.

12 Field-study observation, Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo, by members of the Mama Chari Zemi led by the

author, Graduate School of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, 23 November 2006.13Masaru Maeno. Study of Yanaka. Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 1991; At the

turn of this century Yanaka residents mounted a campaign to protest high-rise construction and roadwidenings.

14 Martin Fackler, Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One, New York Times, 2 Oct.2006.

15 Dangerous Sway/ Skyscrapers Vulnerable in Major Quakes, International Herald Tribune/AsahiShinbun, 7 Feb. 2007.

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16 Hitoshi Nakamura, The Incremental Improvement of the Area Densely Built-up with Old Wooden

Houses in Tokyo, International Symposium on Vulnerable Urban Space, Center for Sustainable UrbanGeneration, The University of Tokyo, 1 Mar. 2007.

17 Interview with Prof. Junichiro Okata, in Prospectus, Center for Sustainable Urban Regeneration.(Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 2006) 6.

18

Editorial, Cycling/ Tokyo to test-ride one-way bike lanes, International Herald Tribune/AsahiShinbun 14 Mar. 2007.19 Yoshitaka Sumida, (Cycling/ Move To Revise Right-Of-Way Law On Cycles Stirs Online Ire,

International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun 14 Mar. 2007.

Note: I would like to thank Professor Emeritus Masaru Maeno, Tokyo NationalUniversity of Fine Arts and Music and President of the Japan Machinami Renmei andJapan/ICOMOS for introducing me to the Japanese everyday cultural landscape; themembers of the Mama Chari Zemi for our excellent discussions; Magokoro Yoshihirawho helped with several shtengai-owner interviews, Associate Professor Keiro Hattori,

Meiji Gakuin University, for his support and valuable insights; and especially ProfessorYukio Nishimura of the University of Tokyo, the host of my current Fulbright andJUSEC, the Japan/United States Education Commission (home of the Japan FulbrightProgram) and its staff, for making still another opportunity to teach and conduct researchin Tokyo possible.

Chester H. Liebs is Fulbright Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Urban Engineering,the University of Tokyo. (Also Adjunct Professor of Historic Preservation andRegionalism, University of New Mexico and Professor Emeritus, and founder of theHistoric Preservation Program, University of Vermont). He served as Visiting Professorof Heritage Conservation, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (2000-2003), Visiting Professor of Area Studies, Tsukuba University, Japan (1997-1998), andFulbright Senior Research Fellow, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music(1994-1995).

A former board member of US/ICOMOS, he has consulted and lectured internationallyon conserving historic towns and cities, heritage corridors, and intangible culturalheritage. Among his publications is Main Street to Miracle Mile: American RoadsideArchitecture 1985, rev. 1995. Liebs was awarded the National Council for PreservationEducations James Marston Fitch Preservation Education Lifetime Achievement Awardin 2004.

Illustration captions:

1. Mother with child biking through a narrow, virtually car-free street of the denselybuilt-up Higashi Nagasaki neighborhood, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2007.

2. Thriving shtengai, Asagaya, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

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3. Red-lined zone for eventual road widening. Cars are parked, to the right, in an areaonce occupied by traditional, street-side commercial buildings such as the gable-roofstructure in the path of future destruction to just to the rear. Note the light traffic onHongo Dori to the left. Hon-Komagome, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

4. SUV shoehorned onto a narrow house plot, an example of the gradual incursion ofautomobiles into dense, motorization-resistant neighborhoods. Mitaka City, Tokyo.Photo: Chester Liebs, 2001.

5. Satake Shtengai, an incipientsattaa dori (shutter street). Note the closed store to theright. East of Ueno, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

6. An image of blight or a blessing for limiting climate change? Even though there isplenty of room to pass, the area where these bicycles are parked has been designated a noparking zone. Vehicles are ticketed and their owners are forced to reclaim them, after

paying a high fee, at often-remote impoundments. Komagome, Tokyo. Photo: ChesterLiebs, 2006.

7. Poster protesting high-rise condominium construction, Yanaka, Tokyo. Photo: ChesterLiebs, 2002.

8. Two rapid-transit lines exit directly into the lively, multi-street shtengai of Shimo-Kitazawa. Soon a road for automobiles will be rammed through the middle of this highly-successful, pedestrian-and-bike-friendly shopping area. Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo. Photo:Chester Liebs, 2006.

9. Mama Chari Zemi (seminar), University of Tokyo, Graduate School of UrbanEngineering. In this fall 2006 seminar, organized by the author, graduate and post-graduate students in urban design and transportation planning, from Japan, China,Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, discussed the importance of bicycles to the future ofsustainable communities in East Asia. The photo was taken in the bicycle-parking area ofthe Seiyu Department Store (owned by Wal-Mart), in Tokiwadaira, Chiba, Japan, asuburb of Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2007.

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Heritage Tourism and Sustainable Communities: Lessons from the Everyday Cultural Landscape of Tokyo

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