Essay

Chaotic but involving city

By Benjamin Woodward

When I first went to Tokyo, I was bewildered by how the city was laid out: a disorienting maze of narrow, indistinguishable streets, seemingly numbered at random. It was easy to get lost. A simple address was a challenge to find; businesses had to hand out detailed maps, buildings were given bizarre names to better identify them, and meetings would be arranged at conspicuous landmarks near train stations to stop you from losing your way. The chaotic system seemed at odds with an otherwise efficient and well-organized country. Things have changed. The system, in so far as there is one, remains, but the omnipotent, omniscient cell phones have tamed the urban landscape and it's easier to find your way around. Nevertheless, the city can still surprise.

Over the years, I grew to enjoy this Tokyo jumble, and since moving to another city -- a city of waffle-like grids and logically numbered streets where addresses are almost depressingly easy to find -- I have come to miss the messy sprawl of Tokyo. The antiquated system of numbering buildings in order of when they were built has a quirky charm (In my first apartment, no one could even agree on the address), and there is a charm, too, in the conspicuous lack of urban planning in Tokyo, which makes experiencing Tokyo on foot a pleasure.

Despite the success of some large-scale planning projects and massive modern complexes, the Japanese tendency still seems to be to move away from large, ordered public areas, and into more closed-off spaces, like the soba-noodle scramble of some backstreets. Take a wander, and you may not find what you set out to find, but even the quietest residential areas yields some unexpected encounter: a shop, a restaurant, a bar or cafe, a temple or shrine perhaps, some unusual, eye-catching scene.

Again, because of a lack of planning, architecturally anything goes in this city. There is an incredible variety there. The Japanese have a talent for miniaturization (now, it seems, even applied to the prime ministerial term) and there's plenty of evidence of it in the ingenious use of space. Imaginatively designed buildings are packed into tiny plots of land, some more stylishly than others, providing an interesting dynamic with the huge scale of the city itself. I now realize how unusual are the tall narrow structures filled with tiny bars and restaurants, which I came to take for granted while in Tokyo.

That said, no one could say it was a beautiful city. It is ugly and overcrowded, and there's precious little greenery among all the concrete. Still, there's something in the chaotic and haphazard way it has and continues to take shape, and an energy from all the people crammed together, that makes this city so involving. Developers and planners may itch for a more ordered city, but Tokyo just isn't Tokyo without the disorder.

Shukan ST: October 8, 2010

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