Hacker News Reader

Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I am just back from Japan and I am not going to lie, I think they are great in how they both value their traditions and history but as a society they only look forward.

Sure, they might be economically less wealthy than they used to 30 years ago, but in practice you see them being bold in their projects and developments 24/7. Their cities are forward looking, more efficient, developing higher so less people need to commute it's a necessity that eventually will kill many of these older districts, but so be it if it spares tens of thousands from commuting every day.

View on HN

The core of the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka are like that, but as soon as you move a little bit outside, Japan quickly devolves into endless urban sprawl. I live in a Japanese city of 40k and it is just stroads, two-story buildings, and big box stores, and the buildings are all really ugly...

> Their cities are forward looking, more efficient, developing higher so less people need to commute it's a necessity that eventually will kill many of these older districts, but so be it if it spares tens of thousands from commuting every day.

What's the end game with this? Identikit cities with little to no character, all created to prioritise convenience. For people that care more about work than their life outside of work, they aren't going to care much, but for people that are the opposite the loss of culture is more strongly felt.

> but for people that are the opposite the loss of culture is more strongly felt.

Constant change and cities that are no longer recognizable after few decades *is* japanese culture, from millenia.

99% of their historical buildings, whether it's the imperial palace in Kyoto or the Todaiji temple in Nara have been rebuilt multiple times over and over or haven't been rebuilt at all.

Those shotengai arcades are a byproduct of a specific timeframe and conditions: rebuilding their cities quickly after ww2 in a fastly developing urban landscape. The same way they didn't exist few decades before they won't exist few decades from now.

> Constant change and cities that are no longer recognizable after few decades is japanese culture, from millenia.

That's clearly false. Yes there have been periods of time with large changes, such as the post WW2 era, but that doesn't reflect how Japan has always been. There have been large periods of cultural conservatism as well.

Just because you state something it doesn't make it true.

Japanese have built with wood for millenia, thus their cities have been destroyed multiple times over due to natural disasters, fire and war in a neverending cycle. And every time they have rebuilt and adapted to the new political, cultural and social reality.

The entire country, literally, the entire country has one single building that is largely unchanged and survived since their earliest feudal age: Horyu-Ji. One.

Even if you go back by few centuries the number of buildings in the whole country that survived in their original forms is insanely small.

> And every time they have rebuilt and adapted to the new political, cultural and social reality.

Doesn't mean that every time they rebuilt something based on new designs, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with the historical sites they have. The following webpage shows a small number of the historical sites that exist in Japan:

https://www.tsunagujapan.com/8-must-see-buildings-in-japan-w...

Also, the cycle of creation and destruction of buildings due to wars and earthquakes are different than changes due to economic pressures. People that value a culture have little choice if it's destroyed by wars and natural disasters.

The most sacred shrine in the country is rebuilt every 20 years, and has been rebuilt every 20 years for hundreds of years.

Which shrine are you referring to?

They mean Isejingu:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine

singapore

> What's the end game with this? Identikit cities with little to no character, all created to prioritise convenience.

People say this but Tokyo preserves _way more_ weird subculture stuff and small stores than other major cities IMO, despite constant rebuilding. My theory is basically that because it's nice and dense, and the real estate is extremely liquid by my understanding, stores and restaurants can get their 100 superfans that support the business.

Like I moved to Australia a couple years ago and I have no idea how anyone could afford to open a small independent shop, and you see loads of chains.

Tokyo it's harder than before, but places like these shopping arcades offer some respite (along with other shopping centers).

I am worried that the Tokyo government isn't particularly interested in preserving these places though. They have openly said they want more places to be redeveloped like Ginza of all places.

A lot of the new redevelopment that is going on is in areas where the Tokyo Metropolian goverment have relaxed/suspended the old zoning laws etc, hence the fact the new development is all big high rises, and more identitkit than previous development stuff. So is it more of a concern than it was historically

> People say this but Tokyo preserves _way more_ weird subculture stuff

> I am worried that the Tokyo government isn't particularly interested in preserving these places though

You're basically agreeing with me. The fact that Tokyo has interesting places now doesn't mean it will in the future.

Fair enough.

I think that the attitude of the government has shifted but not by _that_ much, and I don't think we can discount the past 50 years of urbanism as having no effects (plenty of the stores I'm thinking about aren't 100 years old after all). But I won't pretend to believe that we can't have nice things taken away from us.

I don't know how we get new Nakano Broadways in the current environment.

These older districts were also doubtless considered bland and character-less when built.

There are small homes near me that were built right after WW2. They were built as quickly and cheaply as possible, with almost no effort made at looking pretty. Now considered charming.

> These older districts were also doubtless considered bland and character-less when built.

It's not about the buildings, it's about the human interactions. The buildings that replace the ones at risk may be more aesthetically pleasing, but it seems very unlikely to support something that is as interesting to visit as what they currently have in that area. Gentrification rarely leads to a blossoming of culture.

I am not sure what do you mean by forward looking? There are huge shopping districts under construction even right now in very central locations in Tokyo, basically building office towers and shopping malls.

What's forward looking about that? Other than that, the japanese tend to build roughly the same kind of low-riser/high-riser condominiums with varying quality literally everywhere. So it's not very easy to find and buy truly livable areas in downtown Tokyo right now, unless you are highly above the 80th-90th wage bracket.

Also, I find it odd to say that it's a society which only looks forward right now, when a right-wing populist party has just become tenfold stronger in the last parliamentary elections by propagating the idea of "traditional family values" (as in women to stay home instead of working).

While it's true that there are aspects of life which are more advanced than in other countries, but after living here for a decade, I can confidently say it's a mixed bag.

Just a silly example: when I came to the country, front loading drum type washing machines were a rare sight here, while that had been the norm for decades in many European countries. Also, the idea of insulating the houses from cold and heat and condensation was not at all considered until the government started pushing some tax breaks and whatnot to make the idea catch on and make housing more energy conscious. Etc, etc. Japan in many aspects were/is behind the times.

I wish people would stop idealizing japan as some kind of wonderland...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com