Tokyo isn’t paving paradise to put up a parking lot

IT’S A NARRATIVE that might have sprung straight from the script of a , or perhaps a . Big corporations and government interests unite to raze trees, demolish a beloved park, and commercialize a communal area — all in the name of profits, in the face of local opposition, and even against the dying wishes of a beloved national treasure.

The redevelopment of Jingu Gaien, a green oasis in Tokyo’s city center, has been dividing opinion for years. Protesters decry the planned rebuilding of its baseball and rugby stadiums, which they say will result in the destruction of of trees. But like many compelling stories, this is mostly fiction.

The park dates back a century to the construction of Meiji Shrine, proposed by Eiichi Shibusawa, the “father of Japanese capitalism” who last week of Japan’s largest banknote. Since I first wrote about the redevelopment , the debate has intensified. A Unesco-affiliated body has raised opposition, the Supreme Court rejected an injunction to stop work, and it became a battleground in the recent Tokyo governor election, where an opposition-backed candidate pledged to put the project to the people in a first-ever referendum.

While her defeat means a plebiscite won’t happen, the success of the narrative — akin to — has been confounding. Nowhere was this made more evident than in the statement by the International Council on Monuments and Sites. In a so-called , it said that the project would lead to “complete destruction of the urban forest formed and nurtured over the past 100 years.”

One of Japan’s most prominent international figures, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, wrote to Governor Yuriko Koike calling on her to halt the project just weeks before his death last year. In the , it’s “like building skyscrapers in the middle of Central Park.”

Let’s leave this scenario for folk songs, and look at the facts. The project involves three new high-rises, one of them rebuilding trading house Itochu Corp.’s headquarters, a decades-old piece of unremarkable architecture already 22 stories tall. It’ll be replaced by 38-floor building on a thoroughfare already dominated by high-rises (speaking of Central Park, how much taller have surrounding buildings become in recent decades?). Two new structures will be added, one comprising 18 stories on the site of the current baseball stadium; the other, 40 stories tall, will replace — and I’m not making this up — a literal parking lot.

Paradise it currently isn’t. While the area is nice to jog around, much of it is inaccessible. Indeed, the park is not public land at all: It belongs to the Shinto religious organization Meiji Jingu, which administers the shrine and is pushing for the redevelopment as it depends on money raised from leasing out facilities to sustain the much larger main gardens.

The most maddening theme is over the “complete destruction of the urban forest.” Jingu Gaien is famed for the promenade of almost 150 ginkgo trees, which leads off Aoyama-dori Avenue into the park. They are so associated with the area that most local residents I’ve spoken to mistakenly believe that these trees will be razed. From the beginning, plans have always involved preserving the rows of ginkgos.¹

Many of the “thousands of trees” activists decry would be more properly termed shrubs — azaleas and other bushes that can be found anywhere in the city. While it’s true that several hundred trees will be cut down, these will be replaced, leaving more green space and trees in the park after the development than before.

The other divisive decision is the redevelopment of the baseball stadium, used by the local Yakult Swallows pro team. In English media coverage, it’s cited as one of the last remaining parks where Babe Ruth played. Indeed, the venue feels from a bygone era, and would require massive renovation to reach modern standards. Plans instead call for it to be moved to the site of the current rugby field, where there’s more room to develop and add modern facilities, including a hotel (a new rugby facility will be built on the site of the current ballpark).

The Swallows merely rent the stadium but deserve an up-to-date facility; at a time when many developers are planning new sports venues in Tokyo (and elsewhere), there’s nothing to stop them from moving out of the existing, decaying stadium.²

Sakamoto, who had a lifelong record of supporting tree-planting, was well-intended in his opposition. But, while this is difficult to say about the recently deceased, much of his political activism hasn’t aged well. Protests that he took part in in 2015 to halt legislation to expand Japan’s regional security role now look not only hyperbolic, but naive in the face of increasing aggression by Japan’s neighbors. And his dismissive comment at an anti-nuclear protest in 2012 in the highly emotive wake of the Fukushima disaster, decrying the risk of nuclear power to generate “mere electricity,” sits at odds with a nation where lives are in danger this very week from a sweltering heatwave. Countries without sufficient power supplies are seeing deaths in the hundreds and thousands.

The stakes in Jingu Gaien are smaller. But it’s important that anti-progress narratives are met head-on. It’s easy to say no, to dig one’s heels in and resist change. But Shibusawa, the early industrialist who aided the creation of Meiji Jingu, knew well that legacy comes from creating things, and envisioned a world where private business contributed to the public good. Neither scaremongering nor catchy protest songs help.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

¹ Some 19 ginkgo trees, off the main strip, will be removed, and if possible, transplanted.

² Indeed, the same concern is precisely what led to the first redevelopment of “The House That Ruth Built” — Yankee Stadium — in the 1970s, which was then replaced entirely by 2009.