Network and a Mask
We have shared a journey through kaido trails emanating as capillaries covering the archipelago, and diverse point elements that make the otherwise interminable linearity of paths bearable. Through which, we encountered charming relics, enigmatic chimeras, cold epitaphs… Let’s not forget the insatiable encroachment of love hotels, pachinko parlors, and malls. Together, these things composed a web in which people, objects, and products of transactions (money and information) traversed intensely for centuries. Since then, though important portions of kaido trails have been supplanted by concrete highways or sidelined to present-day railways, this hyperactive state of mobility has remained intact, if anything at a higher speed, volume, and potentially global repercussions. In other words, this network is still active to this day. However, the aging and declining population compounded by a lethargic economy and uninspiring politics are affecting the energetic pulsation of this network.
One hypothesis is that the nodes of this vast network are isolated, though spatially connected to one another in theory. Each node is, in essence, fending for itself, suspended in a self-imposed standalone complex. Therein lies deep historical roots that shape the present. Tsugi (stations), sekisho (checkpoints), and intermittent agrian villages rarely interacted with one another. They were functionally and culturally autonomous institutions, and exceptions were activated only in times of crises or theatrical matsuri festivals, including ostensive displays of power and control such as daimyo-gyoretsu. Under the Edo shogunate, each han, or feudal domain controlled by a ruling clan, retained an incredible level of autonomy that cultivated its own unique institutions, traditions, crafts, and even distinct but often indiscernible dialects up until the Meiji Restoration. Another layer to the autonomous fiefdoms was the fact that only one fortified settlement was allowed to develop constantly over the course of three hundred years, vis-a-vis “One Dominion, One Castle” Decree of 1615. People, power, wealth, and knowledge flocked into that one place, and in most cases these became contemporary prefectural capitals or provincial municipalities. This further internalized the system with rarely an opportunity to interact, much less coordinate, over the boundaries, resulting in a selectively permeable osmosis of localized isolationism. It is not an entirely outlandish thing to say, the sole unifying set of value-systems that tied the entire island nation together was the taxation by rice, the gold standard currency, and a hybridized form of ambiguous religiosity. Otherwise, each dominion was content to keep to itself, highly protective against the hegemonic gaze of the notionally extant yet invisible center. At the top of this food chain was Edo (Tokyo), where all things coalesced and collided, where an isolated state theoretically, though selectively and deceptively connected to the global, masked itself from foreign interferences. The destabilization occurred only when an anomaly forcibly uncorked the system; three such large interventions perhaps being the Mongol Invasions in the 13th Century, the Perry Expedition of the 19th Century, and the Allied Occupation of the 20th Century. Yet, this underlying structure persists, manifesting itself in how people and communities behave, cities and prefectures govern, and above all, how the nation is able to repackage exceptionalism nonetheless by the self-deprecating neologism of “Galapagosization [1][2][3]” forever withdrawing itself from others.
Thus, while the network fulfills the performance of commerce, it is not functioning as a reciprocal cultural system. The interconnectedness need not be rigidified in a gridded twine, rather, can be connected in loose opportunistic bonds. What may be at stake here is “the realization of a humane society, of a ‘communitas’ ” as aptly framed by John Hejduk. At all levels among municipalities, prefectures, and cumulatively, the nation, the idea to improve just the immediate area under a specific sphere of influence is precisely causing the loss of allure as a region. We must understand and conceptualize the issues not at an isolated, discrete, highly localized scale, but as a larger surface. First, by peeling off the multilayered constraints of contemporary fiefdoms, masks of perceived polity, and willingness to step on some boundaries. Masterplanning, regional design, whatever the preferred nomenclature, architects in Japan ought to begin engaging with a larger territorial strategy.
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Next month, we will have a guest writer contribute a piece. Stay tuned!
English Writing: Kaz Yoneda
Peer Reader: Gregory Serweta
Editor: Hinako Izuhara
Associate: Tatsuri Sonobe