TOKYO (AP) – The Jingu Gaien area in central Tokyo is a cultural and historic treasure, a mostly green space set aside almost 100 years ago with private donations to honour Japan’s famous Meiji Emperor.
With the tacit support of Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, a real estate company is planning to redevelop the green enclave with a pair of high-rise towers – about 190 metres (m) each – and a smaller 80-metre companion.
Plans also call for razing a famous baseball stadium where Babe Ruth played – and demolishing an adjoining rugby venue – and rebuilding them on a re-configured tract that provides more commercial space.
“This is like building skyscrapers in the middle of Central Park in New York,” Professor Mikiko Ishikawa told The Associated Press.
Ishikawa is an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo who did her masters degree at Harvard. She studied landscape architecture and Central Park’s history and said the park was an inspiration for the Japanese – as were European designs – when Jingu Gaien was completed in 1926.
“Tokyo would lose its soul,” said Ishikawa, who described the area as “the showroom of the Japanese nation” when it was opened.
“Jingu Gaien is a public place, and you should think of it as a commons,” she said.
The controversial, billion-dollar project pits a diverse group of activists, preservations, and local residents against Koike, the metropolitan government, and real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan.
The project will take more than a decade to complete, but Koike has allowed some limited construction to begin despite questions about the environmental impact.
“The Jingu Gaien was paid for by private money, maybe the earliest example of crowd-funding,” Ishikawa said. The flashpoint has been trees, green space, and who controls a public area that has been encroached on over the years. Also at issue is the fate of more than 100 ginko trees that line an avenue in the area and provide a colourful cascade of falling leaves each autumn.
The developer said the trees on the avenue will be kept, but 18 others away from the main avenue will be felled. In addition, Ishikawa said the root system of the remaining ginko trees will be damaged – perhaps killed – when the new baseball stadium is built within about eight m of the tree line.
