Taking On Skyscrapers to Protect View of an ‘Old Friend’

October 12, 2009

Tokyo Journal
Taking On Skyscrapers to Protect View of an ‘Old Friend’

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Growing up in prewar Tokyo, Makoto Kaneko recalls that the perfectly shaped, snow-capped cone of Mount Fuji was like a constant companion, visible on the horizon from the narrow streets of his hilly working-class neighborhood. The most majestic view was from a steep hillside affectionately named Fujimizaka, “the slope for seeing Mount Fuji.”

Today, Mr. Kaneko’s cramped 80-year-old shop selling foods cooked in soy sauce is one of several old wooden stores and Buddhist temples that still stand here, making the Nippori neighborhood a rare oasis of medieval charm in Tokyo’s concrete sprawl. But the distant volcano, Japan’s tallest peak and pre-eminent national symbol, has been increasingly blocked by skyscrapers and smog.

Mr. Kaneko said he and other residents did not mind because they still had the vista from Fujimizaka, which has become a minor tourist attraction. Then, one day a decade ago, they learned of plans for a 14-story apartment building a mile away that would partly obstruct that view.

“My mind went blank with disbelief,” said Mr. Kaneko, 83. “That is when we realized what we were losing.”

With the help of a university professor, the neighborhood’s mostly graying residents formed the Society to Protect Nippori’s Fujimizaka, which Mr. Kaneko leads. The group has approached developers, landowners and local governments, but their efforts have collided with a preservation problem: Protecting a building or a park may be one thing, but how do you protect a view? Saving the view from Nippori’s Fujimizaka would require capping building heights within an elongated fan-shaped corridor three miles long and up to 1,000 feet wide across densely populated neighborhoods. So far, the society has met stiff resistance from city officials and developers in Tokyo, whose properties rose rapidly from the postwar ashes thanks in part to unrestrained construction.

“Tokyo’s approach has been to build first, worry about beauty and preservation later,” said Kazuteru Chiba, the professor of urban planning at Tokyo’s Waseda University who helped form the Fujimizaka society. “This is true even when it involves a national emblem like Mount Fuji.”

Still, the neighborhood’s cause has slowly gained support in Tokyo, as part of a small but growing clamor to preserve the city’s remaining historical places. The neighborhood has benefited from Utagawa Hiroshige, one of Japan’s most celebrated 19th-century artists, who depicted the view from Nippori in a woodblock print.

Local media coverage has also focused on Nippori’s distinction as the last of 16 slopes in central Tokyo named Fujimizaka from which Mount Fuji is still visible. The naming of hillsides dates to medieval times, as a form of street address before Tokyo’s more recent neighborhood-based numbering system. Fujimizaka was the most frequently used name, reflecting the mountain’s sacred place in Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion, according to Noriko Ide, a leader of the Slope Society of Japan, a private group that chronicles the history of hillside names.

“It is a miracle that one of these slopes has survived,” Ms. Ide said, “so it is a precious cultural asset.”

The slope also figures prominently in Nippori’s local lore. In the closing days of World War II, a local woman claimed that while standing on the slope, she could see a flash and a funny-shaped cloud just to the right of Mount Fuji — at the exact moment that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, according to Nobuyuki Nozawa, a local veterinarian.

“Mount Fuji is like an old friend guarding us,” he said.

Other preservationists point out that protecting views is not without precedent elsewhere.

Vancouver, British Columbia, was a pioneer in the late 1980s with ordinances protecting “view corridors” of the city’s surrounding mountains from designated intersections and parks. Some American coastal communities restrict tall buildings that would block ocean views.

Two years ago, Tokyo took its first step in that direction with a plan to protect the scenery around four prominent historic buildings, including the national Parliament and the red-brick Tokyo train station. But city officials say they have only limited powers to restrict private property rights: in many cases, officials are limited to asking landowners to voluntarily show restraint in the heights of their buildings.

When the Fujimizaka society and local government officials approached the developer of the 14-story apartment building, they could only ask for his cooperation. The developer, the real estate arm of what is now the steel maker JFE Holdings, demanded $12 million in compensation for eliminating the top five floors from the $16 million building.

With such a sum beyond the society’s means, the developer went ahead with finishing the building in 2000. It now blocks the left third of Mount Fuji as seen from Nippori’s Fujimizaka.

One problem was jurisdiction, officials say: while Arakawa ward, where the slope is located, was enthusiastic about protecting the view, Bunkyo ward, where the 14-story building was erected, was afraid of losing the tax revenue from redevelopment.

Officials in Tokyo’s city hall say they could step in, but only if they felt there was a public mandate for protecting the slope’s view.

“Whoever heard of protecting a line of sight from a single point?” said Masafumi Tanaka, head of urban planning in the Bunkyo ward office. “We can’t just ignore property rights.”

Professor Chiba said the failure to stop the 14-story building so discouraged residents that the Fujimizaka society almost disbanded. “Then we realized there is still two-thirds of the view left. So we decided, let’s protect that,” he recalled.

The society has tried to increase public awareness by contacting landowners where tall buildings could be built that would block the remaining view. They also began organizing an event called Diamond Fuji, during the two times a year when the sun sets exactly on the top of the volcano’s symmetrical cone. The last Diamond Fuji, in January, drew 300 people, Mr. Kaneko said.

Still, like most residents, Mr. Kaneko is far from optimistic.

“I can’t imagine Nippori without Mount Fuji,” Mr. Kaneko said. “But it is probably just a matter of time before another building appears that will block what’s left.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company