[You know, I like architectural structures. Like, when I go to a friend’s house, I like to look at the rooms, too. You know how after some years, there’s a reform or a boom? I like observing the products of those reforms, too. Oh, and I like comparing the interiors of, say, a clothing store and a grocery store, too.]
– Do you think you’d like to try producing these things yourself?
[I’d like to give it a try. But I’m sure no one would let me. Getting a store of my own would be tough, but if it means the interior would be entirely up to me, I definitely want to try.]
– But, regarding architecture, I often hear it said that Tokyo’s buildings aren’t so great.
[Ah. Buildings are what makes a city, though. And of course the roads, streets. Aren’t the streets so tiny? Tokyo’s streets, well, Japan’s streets are narrow. Originally, it seemed like Japan was going to cast off all the old stuff and put in new stuff in a hurry, and it looked like that would be cheaper. When they had to repair things because of earthquakes or air raids, they could’ve gone on to make the streets wider. But since they didn’t go about it systematically in the past, now we’re stuck going around in circles.]
– These days, they reopen all sorts of places, renaming Roppongi or Shiodome (1) for instance, but do you get the impression that they’ve only glossed them over?
[No, I think those are good developments, myself. However, it’s not the nation that directed their construction, though. It was all done by private companies. It makes me wonder if the country couldn’t do a little more. In places like California, there’s a law saying houses have to be properly maintained, isn’t there? If you don’t maintain your garden and weeds get out of control, there are penalties. And then, in European countries, for instance, you can’t build your house any way you want, it seems they’ve decided you can only build houses that are in harmony with the ones around it, but in Japan the atmosphere is more like if it’s your land, you can build anything you want on it. I think the residents should make an effort to get them to pass a law or by-law that would prevent the scenery from getting ruined.]
– The scenery of the city as a whole should be a concern, then.
[Yeah. In London, too, there’s a limit placed on billboards and neons in certain parts, right? Like around London’s Piccadilly Circus. And in the neighbourhood right around Times Square in New York. There aren’t many others, though. But in Tokyo, they’re everywhere. Furthermore, some of these things make me doubt their senses. In terms of design. Still, there certainly are quite a few buildings designed by Japanese architects that are designed well. But, I can tell that any building other than those is just built at random. Looking around the world, I think there are some incredibly well-designed buildings, so I think it’s a shame.]
– Can you think of an example of a building that struck you as cool, lately? One with architecture that you think should be the new standard for Japan.
[Out of the buildings in Japan? Roppongi Hills, maybe (2). That took quite a bit of money to build, didn’t it? It was done by a French designer, but it’s still cool. And then, even though it’s old, I get a good feeling from the Shinjuku Shintoshin (3). Aren’t the buildings in Shiodome kinda cheap-looking? I’ve never been there though. I only drove around it, but the surroundings had a cheap sort of feeling. It sorta feels fake. But, the most fake looking one of all is Yoyogi’s NTT Docomo building (4). When I looked at that thing, I kinda flipped (laughs). At first, I was looking forward to it, wondering if they’d be able to mix the Empire State building and the Chrysler building, wondering when they’d finish, but then “Eh? It’s finished?” “It’s only temporary right?!” (laughs) It’s kind of embarrassing.]
– What else do you think makes a cool metropolitan area, and do you have an opinion on the streets themselves?
[I like pretty streets lined with trees. Like Omotesandou or Purachina Dori(5). Cities with green spaces are nice. Compared to any other major world metropolis, Tokyo has extremely few of them. So, they should open up the Imperial Palace (6) (laughs), and have it be like New York’s Central Park. If we did that, we’d be up to world standards. Oh, and these days, you hear a lot about rooftop gardens, but wouldn’t it be nice if they stepped it up a little?]
– So then, tetsu-san, if you had the chance to fix up the design of Tokyo, what would you do?
[Remake it from scratch? If I was starting from scratch, I’d make it look like a Go board (7). Like New York’s Manhattan. It would be a Go board with wide streets. And then the building coverage, the floor area ratio would be lower. Build things upwards, higher. Cause, I like tall buildings (laughs).]
– Which is your favourite tall building in the world?
[That would be New York’s Chrysler building.]
– What is it about tall buildings that you find so captivating?
[What do I like about them? It’s kind of a mentality predictor, since tall buildings are a status symbol, so there’s something admirable about them. Also, I like chairs, too, and I’ve been told it’s the same principle. It’s a trend present in my mentality.]
– An admiration of status, an admiration of power.
[Don’t I sound horrible, just from hearing that? But that’s definitely all at a subconscious level (laughs).]
– Do you like Japan?
[It’s difficult to say if I like it or hate it, but I think it’s an unusual country. For example, kanji and hiragana and katakana (1). We have three kinds of characters. Even for simple magazines. We can start either from the left or from the right, and in newspapers we even have it top-down. I think we should standardize it, already. I want to make things simple. Simplify, simplify. Besides, in the West it’s always from the left, and anything in Arabic characters reads from the right. But in Japanese, you can write things top-down and still start from the left (2). I wouldn’t get it, if I was a foreigner. I want to make it simpler, much simpler. Both the characters and the sentences.]
– But, with hiragana and katakana and kanji, many subtle nuances can be brought out, don’t you agree?
[Nah, I don’t go for that sort of thing. I’d like a simple global standard. For magazines, too, I think the western style, opening on the right, is based on human engineering. There are more right-handed people, so they’d open things on the right and flip through them that way. Reading words horizontally is less tiring, too; I think it’s the proper path for the eye. Originally, Japanese went top-down but these days, it’d be good to standardize the horizontal system, wouldn’t it? And open on the right. And then, our cars drive on the left. Here too, if you apply human engineering, there are overwhelmingly more right-handers, so it should be better to do the gear changing with the right hand. It doesn’t matter so much with automatics, but in a manual one, it’s better to use your dominant hand. This is how I think : Make everything simpler. Global standards and universal designs. Standardize the world standards. I mean, standardize to either centimetres or inches. Inch sizes and centimetre sizes might seem like a subtle distinction, but it really is a different size. I think there should be a world standard for voltage, too.]
– Doing so would certainly be logical, and probably much more convenient.
[So anyway, I think Japan’s a terribly unique country. Even on a worldwide scale. Like how we’ve got all these foreign military bases here, but everyone thinks that’s normal. However you look at it, the Self-Defence Force(3) is an army, but it isn’t recognized as an army. I think it would be okay to call it an army, since it is one. Oh, and we don’t have many patriotic people, do we?]
– tetsu-san, are you patriotic yourself?
[Me? I’m not (laughs). I don’t think of it as a problem. To put it bluntly, I don’t think anyone does. Not loving your own country. Even during the soccer world cup, there were incredibly many cheers for Korea. I don’t think Japan should go that far. I think that’s the reason Japan’s representatives couldn’t win against Korea.]
– It could perhaps be that we have a gentle national character. We have a deep rooted reverence for modesty. Something like gracefully accepting poverty.
[Hmm. Are those ideas the natural state of the Japanese? Is that Bushidou(4)? Is it really? I think that all that modesty was planted later into education about the Second World War. And so the nature of the Japanese probably isn’t much to scream about. The people who are getting old now, they grew up in an era where they had nothing, they learned to treasure what they had by enduring that era, but are we mistaking that way of thinking for a Japanese tradition, I wonder? Am I wrong?]
– Then, you don’t identify with a mentality like the one I mentioned?
[I just saw “The Last Samurai” and I couldn’t identify with it at all. I thought that my way of thinking was nothing like the typical Japanese. From the beginning, when I saw the TV advertisements that said something like “He was touched by Bushidou, he wept,” it occurred to me that we can only know as much about the ancient samurai as we were taught. Besides, during that era, most of the Japanese were peasants.]
– So, can you describe a time when you felt glad to be Japanese?
[Whenever I eat Japanese food. After all, food from other countries has such strong flavour, doesn’t it? And in America, they overcook their meat, too. The Japanese have a delicate palate, they say, and so I think that means we have a highly developed sense of taste. And so, we get to eat all kinds of delicious food. You know, since I do this kind of work, I get to travel to all sorts of areas and sample the local delicacies, but in the end I think Tokyo’s food is the tastiest. Of course, in rural areas, the ingredients might be fresher, but I think that when it comes to the skill of the cook, the more skillful people are found in Tokyo. The rural people take it easy. Just cause they’ve got the freshest materials, right? It’s the same sort of thing, say, with Thai cuisine made in Japan. When you go to Thailand, Thai food doesn’t taste as good (laughs). The Thai food you can get in Tokyo is the best. It’s made to suit Japanese tastes, too.]
– That’s certainly true. You could argue that it isn’t really Thai food anymore.
[Right. It’s like how curry originally comes from India, but Japanese-style curry tastes better because it’s been adapted for Japanese taste. Since I’m Japanese, I prefer ours.]
– Listening to you speak so far, I thought you needed to take a little bit more pride in being Japanese, since you pointed out how much you’re apart from your countrymen, but you mentioned universal designs and global standards, which brings to mind an image of a borderless nation. This might be something you’re opposed to discussing, but tetsu-san, do you keep yourself highly aware of how this nation is going?
[Eh, opposed? Well, in the end, I want this to become a country I can love. How can I come to love it? That’s hard to answer. A presidential system would be better, wouldn’t it? Where the people decide in a presidential election. So, we’d have many more chances to pass judgement on how the president is doing, and that would be good, wouldn’t it?(5)]
– Interviewer : Kikuchi Keisuke
Translated by Natalie Arnold
– Do you think you’d like to try producing these things yourself?
[I’d like to give it a try. But I’m sure no one would let me. Getting a store of my own would be tough, but if it means the interior would be entirely up to me, I definitely want to try.]
– But, regarding architecture, I often hear it said that Tokyo’s buildings aren’t so great.
[Ah. Buildings are what makes a city, though. And of course the roads, streets. Aren’t the streets so tiny? Tokyo’s streets, well, Japan’s streets are narrow. Originally, it seemed like Japan was going to cast off all the old stuff and put in new stuff in a hurry, and it looked like that would be cheaper. When they had to repair things because of earthquakes or air raids, they could’ve gone on to make the streets wider. But since they didn’t go about it systematically in the past, now we’re stuck going around in circles.]
– These days, they reopen all sorts of places, renaming Roppongi or Shiodome (1) for instance, but do you get the impression that they’ve only glossed them over?
[No, I think those are good developments, myself. However, it’s not the nation that directed their construction, though. It was all done by private companies. It makes me wonder if the country couldn’t do a little more. In places like California, there’s a law saying houses have to be properly maintained, isn’t there? If you don’t maintain your garden and weeds get out of control, there are penalties. And then, in European countries, for instance, you can’t build your house any way you want, it seems they’ve decided you can only build houses that are in harmony with the ones around it, but in Japan the atmosphere is more like if it’s your land, you can build anything you want on it. I think the residents should make an effort to get them to pass a law or by-law that would prevent the scenery from getting ruined.]
– The scenery of the city as a whole should be a concern, then.
[Yeah. In London, too, there’s a limit placed on billboards and neons in certain parts, right? Like around London’s Piccadilly Circus. And in the neighbourhood right around Times Square in New York. There aren’t many others, though. But in Tokyo, they’re everywhere. Furthermore, some of these things make me doubt their senses. In terms of design. Still, there certainly are quite a few buildings designed by Japanese architects that are designed well. But, I can tell that any building other than those is just built at random. Looking around the world, I think there are some incredibly well-designed buildings, so I think it’s a shame.]
– Can you think of an example of a building that struck you as cool, lately? One with architecture that you think should be the new standard for Japan.
[Out of the buildings in Japan? Roppongi Hills, maybe (2). That took quite a bit of money to build, didn’t it? It was done by a French designer, but it’s still cool. And then, even though it’s old, I get a good feeling from the Shinjuku Shintoshin (3). Aren’t the buildings in Shiodome kinda cheap-looking? I’ve never been there though. I only drove around it, but the surroundings had a cheap sort of feeling. It sorta feels fake. But, the most fake looking one of all is Yoyogi’s NTT Docomo building (4). When I looked at that thing, I kinda flipped (laughs). At first, I was looking forward to it, wondering if they’d be able to mix the Empire State building and the Chrysler building, wondering when they’d finish, but then “Eh? It’s finished?” “It’s only temporary right?!” (laughs) It’s kind of embarrassing.]
– What else do you think makes a cool metropolitan area, and do you have an opinion on the streets themselves?
[I like pretty streets lined with trees. Like Omotesandou or Purachina Dori(5). Cities with green spaces are nice. Compared to any other major world metropolis, Tokyo has extremely few of them. So, they should open up the Imperial Palace (6) (laughs), and have it be like New York’s Central Park. If we did that, we’d be up to world standards. Oh, and these days, you hear a lot about rooftop gardens, but wouldn’t it be nice if they stepped it up a little?]
– So then, tetsu-san, if you had the chance to fix up the design of Tokyo, what would you do?
[Remake it from scratch? If I was starting from scratch, I’d make it look like a Go board (7). Like New York’s Manhattan. It would be a Go board with wide streets. And then the building coverage, the floor area ratio would be lower. Build things upwards, higher. Cause, I like tall buildings (laughs).]
– Which is your favourite tall building in the world?
[That would be New York’s Chrysler building.]
– What is it about tall buildings that you find so captivating?
[What do I like about them? It’s kind of a mentality predictor, since tall buildings are a status symbol, so there’s something admirable about them. Also, I like chairs, too, and I’ve been told it’s the same principle. It’s a trend present in my mentality.]
– An admiration of status, an admiration of power.
[Don’t I sound horrible, just from hearing that? But that’s definitely all at a subconscious level (laughs).]
– Do you like Japan?
[It’s difficult to say if I like it or hate it, but I think it’s an unusual country. For example, kanji and hiragana and katakana (1). We have three kinds of characters. Even for simple magazines. We can start either from the left or from the right, and in newspapers we even have it top-down. I think we should standardize it, already. I want to make things simple. Simplify, simplify. Besides, in the West it’s always from the left, and anything in Arabic characters reads from the right. But in Japanese, you can write things top-down and still start from the left (2). I wouldn’t get it, if I was a foreigner. I want to make it simpler, much simpler. Both the characters and the sentences.]
– But, with hiragana and katakana and kanji, many subtle nuances can be brought out, don’t you agree?
[Nah, I don’t go for that sort of thing. I’d like a simple global standard. For magazines, too, I think the western style, opening on the right, is based on human engineering. There are more right-handed people, so they’d open things on the right and flip through them that way. Reading words horizontally is less tiring, too; I think it’s the proper path for the eye. Originally, Japanese went top-down but these days, it’d be good to standardize the horizontal system, wouldn’t it? And open on the right. And then, our cars drive on the left. Here too, if you apply human engineering, there are overwhelmingly more right-handers, so it should be better to do the gear changing with the right hand. It doesn’t matter so much with automatics, but in a manual one, it’s better to use your dominant hand. This is how I think : Make everything simpler. Global standards and universal designs. Standardize the world standards. I mean, standardize to either centimetres or inches. Inch sizes and centimetre sizes might seem like a subtle distinction, but it really is a different size. I think there should be a world standard for voltage, too.]
– Doing so would certainly be logical, and probably much more convenient.
[So anyway, I think Japan’s a terribly unique country. Even on a worldwide scale. Like how we’ve got all these foreign military bases here, but everyone thinks that’s normal. However you look at it, the Self-Defence Force(3) is an army, but it isn’t recognized as an army. I think it would be okay to call it an army, since it is one. Oh, and we don’t have many patriotic people, do we?]
– tetsu-san, are you patriotic yourself?
[Me? I’m not (laughs). I don’t think of it as a problem. To put it bluntly, I don’t think anyone does. Not loving your own country. Even during the soccer world cup, there were incredibly many cheers for Korea. I don’t think Japan should go that far. I think that’s the reason Japan’s representatives couldn’t win against Korea.]
– It could perhaps be that we have a gentle national character. We have a deep rooted reverence for modesty. Something like gracefully accepting poverty.
[Hmm. Are those ideas the natural state of the Japanese? Is that Bushidou(4)? Is it really? I think that all that modesty was planted later into education about the Second World War. And so the nature of the Japanese probably isn’t much to scream about. The people who are getting old now, they grew up in an era where they had nothing, they learned to treasure what they had by enduring that era, but are we mistaking that way of thinking for a Japanese tradition, I wonder? Am I wrong?]
– Then, you don’t identify with a mentality like the one I mentioned?
[I just saw “The Last Samurai” and I couldn’t identify with it at all. I thought that my way of thinking was nothing like the typical Japanese. From the beginning, when I saw the TV advertisements that said something like “He was touched by Bushidou, he wept,” it occurred to me that we can only know as much about the ancient samurai as we were taught. Besides, during that era, most of the Japanese were peasants.]
– So, can you describe a time when you felt glad to be Japanese?
[Whenever I eat Japanese food. After all, food from other countries has such strong flavour, doesn’t it? And in America, they overcook their meat, too. The Japanese have a delicate palate, they say, and so I think that means we have a highly developed sense of taste. And so, we get to eat all kinds of delicious food. You know, since I do this kind of work, I get to travel to all sorts of areas and sample the local delicacies, but in the end I think Tokyo’s food is the tastiest. Of course, in rural areas, the ingredients might be fresher, but I think that when it comes to the skill of the cook, the more skillful people are found in Tokyo. The rural people take it easy. Just cause they’ve got the freshest materials, right? It’s the same sort of thing, say, with Thai cuisine made in Japan. When you go to Thailand, Thai food doesn’t taste as good (laughs). The Thai food you can get in Tokyo is the best. It’s made to suit Japanese tastes, too.]
– That’s certainly true. You could argue that it isn’t really Thai food anymore.
[Right. It’s like how curry originally comes from India, but Japanese-style curry tastes better because it’s been adapted for Japanese taste. Since I’m Japanese, I prefer ours.]
– Listening to you speak so far, I thought you needed to take a little bit more pride in being Japanese, since you pointed out how much you’re apart from your countrymen, but you mentioned universal designs and global standards, which brings to mind an image of a borderless nation. This might be something you’re opposed to discussing, but tetsu-san, do you keep yourself highly aware of how this nation is going?
[Eh, opposed? Well, in the end, I want this to become a country I can love. How can I come to love it? That’s hard to answer. A presidential system would be better, wouldn’t it? Where the people decide in a presidential election. So, we’d have many more chances to pass judgement on how the president is doing, and that would be good, wouldn’t it?(5)]
– Interviewer : Kikuchi Keisuke
Translated by Natalie Arnold
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