ABSTRACT
In cities around the world a tense game is played out between those who would plug into global modernity (and maximise profits on available land) on the one hand and others who prefer to manipulate the existing urban landscape to engender a sense of cultural and/or national identity on the other (with the potential collateral benefit of rising property values). In many European cities, the regulatory framework tends to encourage preservation, while in Asian cities there has generally been a prioritisation on development activities. Along this admittedly rather sketchy spectrum, Japanese cities, and Tokyo above all of them, find themselves nearest to the development pole. Tokyo is an extreme case, a city founded some 400 years ago with very few substantial structures over 50 years old. This is not however to say that Tokyo has no visual reminders of its past nor that conservation activities are entirely absent. But it does raise a number of questions about history, identity and memory and about conservation and tourism and the role of the state and of civil society. This chapter brings together these concerns within the spatial context of Tokyo. I argue here that the state is not seriously interested in ‘referencing’ the nation’s past in its capital city. This is true of the central state, and to a surprising extent true too of the metropolitan state. Instead, conservation becomes the preserve of citizens groups, who occasionally skirmish with the state but in general work compliantly within the regulatory framework that the state has set up. In Tokyo, this situation plays itself out to the great advantage of those whose main concern is to exploit the urban territory for profit.
