Marunouchi

Rose N's Japan
"Marunouchi Leviculus"

The heart of Tokyo's financial district, Marunouchi has long slumbered beneath a pall of dullness emanated by the banks and securities firms that tenant its highrises. A stroll down Eitai-dori takes you past Mizuho, Mitsubishi-UFJ, and Mitsui-Sumitomo, among other Frankenbanks stapled together by the good spin doctors at the Ministry of Finance. Down at street level, the only visual excitement is provided by bike messengers scattering Masters of the Universe from zebra crossings. But appproached from Tokyo Station, Marunouchi reveals a more appealing mien: it positively simpers. Under the aegis of the Otemachi / Marunouchi / Yurakucho District Renewal Commission, established by the city of Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward, and JR East in 1996, this august town is being "revivified," and now three new mixed-use developments soar above the Edwardian roofs of Tokyo Station: Oazo, the Marunouchi Building or "Marubiru," and the Shin-Marunouchi Building or "Shin [new] Marubiru." The Pensinula Hotel also opened here this year, and Marunouchi Park Hills is coming in 2009.

The original Marubiru was completed in 1914, before the Great Kanto Earthquake that destroyed much of Tokyo; seven decades later it was discovered not to be earthquake-proof. At the instigation of the Mitsubishi Group, the majority landowner in Marunouchi, it was razed and replaced by the current Marubiru, a surprisingly comely structure. That exoskeleton of girders has a steampunk feistiness, although I would not fancy my chances on the sidewalk below those windows when the Big One hits. Within the new Marubiru, however, all charm evaporates. Nifty flat-panel displays bombard the optic nerve, echoing the cheerful sensory onslaught of the traditional Japanese shopping street. On the same principle, the streets of Marunouchi at Christmastide turn into sparkling avenues of LEDs. But these artless ploys to put us in the emotional space associated with ye olde shotengai ultimately founder on one aspect of Marubiru, the most curious of all: there is nothing in its 100-plus shops to buy. According to the City Planning Institute of Japan, "during the week, visitors [to Marubiru] are split evenly between men and women, but women represent over 60% of weekend visitors, and the active shopping segment is mostly women in their 20's-40's". This breakdown is far from unique in Tokyo. As sociologist Togo Tsukahara notes, "While feminism has never gained their proper political and academic grounds in Japan, consumer market was mostly led by highly consumptive young female." It's obvious that the impresarios behind Marubiru have gone all out to attract this lucrative demographic. But the results, at first glance, are quite baffling. The mall floors are a spiral gauntlet of shoes, accessories, jewelry, handbags, and the sort of clothes that can be tried on easily. Typical retailers include Beams, a hugely successful "happy life solution company" which sells premium denim, handmade fanny packs, and expensive jewelry from indie designers; and Adieu Tristesse, an Aladdin's caves of scarves, hair ornaments, and one-size-fits-all fashion pumps. Nearly all of them are chain stores. I first went to Marubiru shortly after it opened, with a friend, looking for somewhere to have a meal. We bypassed the Italian place, counter seating only, fully open to the mall; we bypassed the wine bar with 300 vintages on the fabric-covered menu; we bypassed the terrifyingly expensive Chinese and Japanese restaurants guarded by chic maitre d's; we bypassed the cafe with sculptural hard chairs where young women were drinking tea out of what looked like aluminium thermoses. We ending up eating pasta at a kissaten in the bowels of Shin Marubiru, where the wrinkly proprietress allowed us to sit undisturbed for hours over our coffee. That kissaten vanished when Shin Marubiru was renovated in its turn. Now there is a tea shop where you can buy a hundred different kinds of tea leaves, but you can't sit down.

There's nothing new about the consumer capitalist paradigm, which seeks to create needs so that manufacturers and retailers may fulfil them. Still less is there anything new about "glamor," "elegance," "kawaii," and "kirei," the tactics by which consumer capitalism intimidates women into spending more and more. What is new here, what amounts to a neocapitalist apotheosis, is the revelation that even for Tokyo's voracious female consumer, there is no longer anything to buy. Not only does she have it all, she's seen it all and eaten it all. No other conjecture can explain the staggering pointlessness of the goods on offer at Marubiru, Oazo, and Shin Marubiru. Such caprices as a red fez with a chin strap are juxtaposed with real American toothbrushes at the American Pharmacy. All of this stuff, plus many more useful and lovely things, may be had for less elsewhere in Tokyo. The 240,000 people who work in Marunouchi --this figure according to the Urban Land Institute -- might have appreciated a 24-hour supermarket (not the overpriced Seijo Ishii outlet in the basement of Shin Marubiru, which doesn't have a produce section) or branches of officewear standbys Aoyama and Uniqlo. These amenities are striking by their absence. Instead, on the first floor of Oazo, we have Oraria, which sells overpriced Italian shirts, and Tabio, which sells real woolen socks that shrink in the washing-machine. (The Maruzen bookstore in Oazo represents a unique spasm of practical-mindedness on the part of the redevelopers; yet it loses out by comparison to Shinjuku's Kinokuniya, the gold standard for Tokyo bookstores.) Other shops on the first floor of Oazo include a nail salon, a handbag shop, and a patisserie, none of which could conceivably be of interest to the salarymen who toil on the building's upper floors. The logical conclusion is that the shops are not the point. Marubiru, Oazo, and Shin Marubiru exist as destinations for an overwhelmingly female demographic less-than -comfortable with the concept of leisure. (Let us here recall, in a semi-serious spirit, that JR East, which owns most of Tokyo's railways, is a member of the redevelopment consortium.) The shops and restaurants exist only to give visitors something to do when they get here.

One more feature of Oazo must be noted, indeed may not be passed over in silence, for it provides one of those only-in-Japan jaw-to-the-floor moments which Japan Web Magazine seeks to share with you. On the wall of the atrium, described as an "amenity zone," outside the cafe that sells single chocolates for Y300 apiece, is a larger-than-life reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. We kid you not. Guernica.

The ULI gave Marubiru an award for excellence. In what? That has not been specified, but the organization has stated, ominously: "Enhancing street life, the building is radiating positive economic effects throughout the Marunouchi district. Furthermore, Marubiru's financial success has encouraged the Japanese government to continue its deregulation of the economy and to act creatively in maximizing efficiency in urban land use."

Fortunately, some parts of Marunouchi have not yet been deregulated and maximally effectivized, nor defaced with staggeringly inappropriate artwork. Although many Japanese hold the tacit conviction that leisure is synonymous with consumerism, this was not always so, and traces persist in this district of grand coups by architects who felt that urban space should benefit humans, not corporate entities. The foyer of First Square on Eitai-dori is a rococo masterpiece; there are swans in the moat of the Imperial Palace, a few blocks to the west; and Wadakura Fountain Park recalls the lost Japanese dream of an egalitarian society, with its playfully dancing geysers that may be enjoyed by anyone (although the seats are mostly taken up in the afterwork hours by starcrossed lovers; have they read Yukio Mishima's "Fountains In The Rain," a masterful short story set here?). The teashop facing the park offers tepid "American" coffee and overpriced cakes that compare unfavorably with the gourmet pastries available in Marubiru, but with them you get a priceless free gift of tranquillity at the heart of things.

Rose N