Pure contents and expressions that impose on reality in uncanny ways, Receded Scapes are invisible yet quite real topographies. Receded Scapes only recede from us, or our sphere of accessible perception rather, at the simplest level with their inherent lack of direct physicality. It takes several different filters to manifest these scapes. The most accessible are views of any scape as we choose to see, a subjectively biased filter to understand the phenomenon unfolding realtime. Let’s call these shallower, easier-to-comprehend ‘foregrounds’ of the Receded Scapes. With further understanding, usually in forms of various analyses that synthesize something legible at the end, we might be able to touch upon certain aspects and facts about the phenomenon. Let’s call these a little deeper, mildly comprehensible ‘midgrounds’ of the Receded Scapes. Then, at a more complex and perhaps onerous level, the Receded Scapes actively work to keep themselves concealed, ensconced deeper and deeper into the society or systems at hand. These are usually not immediately accessible and demand a combination of analyses to deduce their approximate trajectories or require a certain process of trial-and-error to ascertain their validity. Let’s call these deeper, harder-to-comprehend ‘backgrounds’ of the Receded Scapes.

This piece intentionally uses terminology associated with Japanese garden design also to draw a parallel between the Receded Scapes to: the perceived world of an observer; what objects choose to reveal to an observer; and, the ecosystem that exists outside of the object-observer relationship yet exerts influence onto the capped cosmos of gardens. All these Receded Scapes greatly affect the design of architecture and urbanism, because they are formed by the biases, cultural value system, and of course the bottom line of any decision making processes, most commonly related to temporal and financial parameters.

Map showing 5min, 10min walking area from transportation hubs
(Source: Twitter @ShinagawaJP_E0D2JTxUcAItb6L.jpg)

Take, for example, the land value in Tokyo as the one of myriad Receded Scapes of pure contents and expressions that profoundly impose on reality. It has become common sense for many Japanese that property desirability has been tightly enmeshed with the proximity to major thoroughfares or transportation hubs, such as train or subway stations, and bus stops to a lesser degree. This is a ‘foreground’ of a particular Receded Scape of how land is evaluated. This “common sense” does not include other important factors such as a specific area's crime rate, buildings’ age, or desirable communal facilities and amenities. “Close to stations” has become one of the most coveted selling points for any rental or for sale properties. Indeed, the market sees a dramatic drop in monthly rental prices once the walking duration to stations reaches 10 minutes or longer. However, Hankyu Railroads invented a highly profitable prototype when it created the Takarazuka line, whereby a rail is laid to a predetermined destination and stations along the line were developed for lucrative land speculations. They, in effect, created a model where artificially created destinations and nodes become as profitable or more than actual ridership of the rail. In this case, the foreground of “being close to the stations” was embedded into the consciousness, exacting maturation into normalcy bias that controls our behavior to this day. This foreground has helped create a situation in which a transit entity can build a station anywhere and automatically create an artificial value bubble around it. This creates a perpetual chicken-and-the-egg scenario wherein it becomes unclear if the area was desirable to have created a station, or if the creation of a station made certain areas more desirable. This mythology can also be misleading, as some realtors have admitted that the statically proven reason for decreasing rent prices were in fact the age of building, which is another issue to deconstruct another day [1].

Now, the ‘midground’ to this is the more complex evaluation system of land prices. This is as brutal a blanket act as one land use map for all of Japan. Essentially all properties in Japan can be evaluated based on four “official” annual indices. First is the “official land prices” produced by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (aka MLIT); Second is the “standard land prices” investigated by each prefectural government and compiled by the same MLIT; and lastly, the “roadside prices” announced by the National Tax Agency can be further divided into two uses — one for calculating inheritance tax by the bespoke agency, and the other for calculating property tax by local municipalities. A lesser known fact is that all these 4 indices are based on evaluations by the same network of 5,000 or so real estate appraisers currently working both in public and private capacities. The underlying principle driving these indices are, again, the proximity of any given land-use points to thoroughfares and transportation hubs. The land is assumed to be tabula rasa and devoid of any structures, therefore no matter high quality designs or provenance of great architects, a building is never ever a part of formulae that dictates the land value. Terrible idea! Moreover, the appraisal process is not entirely scientific, often influenced by precedents and accumulation of uncorrected human errors[2]. To add another level of complexity, there is an “actual land price” by which land can be transacted by any figure agreed to by stakeholders, and this can be drastically different from an “official land price” set by any governmental authorities. After all these mind-numbing indices, the beginning sales price is usually set at an average or mathematical median value of all past transactions and current appraisal. I’d say it would be perfect to have AI compile the one definitive land value indices, instead of trying to play a balancing act among hurt feelings, irreversible unforced errors, and facts. In any case, however unscientific or objective, the amalgamation of these land value indices finally generates the kind of alluring color-coded topographical map, as with the reference image created by Toyo Keizai Inc. Let’s say this is a ‘midground’ of Receded Scape, of just the land value.

Toyo Keizai Inc., Nationwide Land Price Past-Present Comparison 3D Map
(source: https://toyokeizai.net/sp/visual/tko/landprices3/)

It is also important to note that land value in Japan basically increases with every transaction. The only time this certainty is reversed is by some force majeure like disasters, impingement of unwanted programs such as prisons, or collapse of a country's financial system. As urban areas have understandably more active and frequent transactions, the difference between urban and rural land values become increasingly acute.

Having outlined what appears to be a systematic land valuation in Japan, let's take up Ginza to verify these metrics. Sure, it is well connected to transportation hubs but so are many other places in Tokyo, such as Shinjuku, Ueno or labyrinthine Shibuya. Geographically, Ginza is only 4.4 meters above sea level, slightly lower than high tide prone Shinkiba area at 5 meters above sea level or certainly above recently popularized Kiyosumi Shirakawa area at 1 meter above sea level. Another way of putting it is, Ginza is close enough to the bay coast and altitude low enough to be vulnerable to water natural disasters. The seven plateaus of Tokyo from last month’s issue has far more solid bedrock and height. Lastly, a property in Ginza rarely appears on the market for sales. It is unheard of for any plot there to have gone through so many different hands to establish a kind of conventional process of incremental increase per transaction. There are no logical deductions by any metrics that can explain why Ginza is evaluated at 46,840,000 yen per square meter in 2021, averaging the previously mentioned four “official” annual indices of last year. And yet, here we are, contemplating the most expensive land in all of Japan. The paradox of Ginza is engendered by its phoenix-like history and the consciously designed branding of the area through generations of local stakeholders since the 16th century. This can be considered the ‘background’ of this Receded Scape. Ginza reveals that the Receded Scape of the land value has an embedded antinomy of pure reason, and therefore suggests a manufactured, artificial construct of human will and imagination. No matter how seemingly logical or plausible mechanisms may have been shellacked over this underlying structure, what we have after all is a hyper-subjective tool to justify arbitrary acts. The economic model par excellence of “the end justifies the means.” Having dissected Tokyo’s Receded Scape of “land value” alone, we may say that the value creation or evaluation process thereof has arrived at a high time for a fundamental reconstitution.