And to make sure that this comment isn’t entirely content-empty, let me add that I can’t believe that the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Isa Genzken, and Tatsuo Miyajima are complicit in decorating that otherwise cultural wasteland. But upon reflecting on our current financial climate and artists’ fiscal condition at any time, maybe I can…

You are right. I do not want to undercut the importance of the political and economic weight behind the Hills; it was a product of its times. It could have happened anywhere, and if all of those things happened there and not at the Hills, the article would have read the same if it had the same effect. But Roppingi Hills come to symbolize something else, something much more sinister.

Since this is a kind of 5 year post-mortem, it is ironic that we are still fighting off the resurrection of this type of architectural zombie, and others arising like it: “We thought we killed them!! They’re still ALIVE!!” It is also horrifying, that at the dawn of 21st century Japan, that the most powerful architectural symbol of early 21st century Koizumi-era economic promises, also epitomizes everything bad about 20th century architecture.

It is tall and fat, with at its top, its anticlimax: a generic museum that doesn’t even pretend to be a house of culture, just a cynical entrapment of capitalism, the apex of the void. The process of getting there is a type of lobotomization: past the bright lights and colors, the fine luxury and top-yen, on immaculate elevators to the acoustically-secluded void, we get a panorama of the city, we are in awe to look out at what used to be an megapolis full of character, of the arrant chaos and beautiful ugliness that was Tokyo, to now, a bleak, scripted configuration of glass extrusions, a developers’ wünderland of unmitigated nihilism, or as Koolhaas says: “a city on its way to the slaughterhouse”.

But the ground level is the greatest culprit. The Jerde Partnership (their wikipage sounds like a bio straight from their PR), like some international conspiracy, is responsible for this and the ever-growing plague of junk mall-space on the earth. Who can resist? Look at Omotesando Hills (another Mori Frankenstein!); even Ando went corporate.

The Koizumi-powered politico-economics allowed this monstrosity to be conjured. Is this the zenith of globalization, of the west, of the best that Japan, that Tokyo can do, of the best that architects can do?

Japan, as it has then and as it is now, trying to spend itself out of its listless coma, has permanently succeeded in exemplifying luxury and greed, not through the temporary figures of Takafumi Horie and Yoshiaki Murakami, but of through enduring projects like Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown, and in the process, turned the impermanence and madness that makes (made?) Tokyo interesting into crystalline forms of lasting repulsiveness.

But that’s not the point. Hills has earned a place in the national vocabulary as symbolic of the Koizumi era economics. It could have been a chain of bowling alleys and my article would have read the same if it had had the same effect.

A factor which did help the 2003 offerings was the average age of the existing building stock. New development had effectively been on hold for ten years but most buildings hadn’t been designed with extensive computer networks in mind. Ceilings came down and floors were raised to accommodate the cables which led to some fairly poor working conditions. The heat meant existing air conditioning was often inadequate and even the wiring in some buildings was not up to the sharply increased power demands. By and large, then, firms wanted to move into newer buildings but they still demanded substantial incentives to do so.

When 2012 comes around, no-one can predict with any certainty what supply and demand will look like but, if oversupply is an acute problem, developers will strike deals to populate their new buildings and the strain will be felt on older stock. However, there won’t be such a big gap in building specifications.

One link I can recommend is skyscaperpage.com on which you can see a timeline of major developments in Tokyo:

http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=40784743

For anyone who has only known Tokyo as a city with a fair number of tall buildings, you can work out how low the skyline used to be until quite recently, with the notable exception of Shinjuku.

Horie is too long a subject to go into but any discussion of the Livedoor case ought to put his prosecution in the context of other executive prosecutions. As an arbitrary starting point, you could take the 1987 collapse of Tateho Chemical and go all the way to the Supreme Court decision in summer to overturn the convictions of senior executives of LTCB. There’s a lengthy list of executives who broke the same laws as Horie but didn’t receive anything like the severity of his punishment. Not to mention a longer list of people who have not yet been called to account but are commonly known to have broken laws.

It would be refreshing if Horie’s example showed the authorities have developed a greater willingness to pursue punishments for executive crime but they failed to go after Nikko Cordial when that accounting scandal came to light so his case remains something of an anomaly. Unless, of course, he wins his appeal.

To summarize:

- As of April 2008 Tokyo’s office bldg. market was strong, with vacancy rates in the main business districts at just 2.77% in February, far about the 5% line that determines the health of the market (though it fell to 4.3% in Oct. and there have been several real estate firm bankruptcies over the past few months).

- However, 2012 will see the completion of several major projects, including some Otemachi developments and the Tokyo Post Office. The last time the city saw this sort of large-scale addition to the supply of office space was in 2003 (the opening of Roppongi Hills, the massive Shiodome development, and a group of buildings around Shinagawa Station), when it effectively doubled.

- However, back then Tokyo could absorb that additional supply with growing office tenants backed by the economic recovery. In 2012, the baby boom generation will have largely retired from the workforce and the prospects of new venture capital or foreign investment are kind of low.

http://diamond.jp/series/inside/04_19_006/

Was it you who suggested a while back that the LDP should pick a female PM (Koike)and roll the dice? I was thinking the same thing – the potential for “non-traditional” figures to work for the LDP is still there. Too bad (wait a minute, I don’t like the LDP… I mean, great) that they decided to flush the party down a toilet named Aso Taro.

Don’t really want to bet, but I think that there is a chance (my gut says 20-30%) that Horie shows up semi-regular on TV and writes a book or two. I can’t see him back as a high profile CEO.

If I were Horie, come to think of it, I would consider seriously coming out and condemning all that he stood for before and becoming a champion of old school manners and modesty. Dumping on young people is a growth industry in Japan.

Though they tend to be mentioned in the same breath these days, and much to the consternation of former DPJ President Seiji Maehara, Horie and Koizumi were not close buddies. In the broadest sense, Horie simply took advantage of the national mood, and later on Koizumi sort of tried to take advantage of Horie’s name. And that is the end of it.

I am definitely interested to see what Horie will try once his legal troubles are completely settled, and whether he won’t be treated like a hot potato by those he approaches. I think it’s an open question, so contact me if you want to bet on it!

A bit 2005, but I’d still pay to see it.

Something tells me that Horie won’t have much luck with fancy pepper.