{"id":5376,"date":"2010-05-01T12:55:43","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T19:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=5376"},"modified":"2010-04-30T00:11:03","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T07:11:03","slug":"japans-building-go-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/japans-building-go-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s building-go-round"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned last time<\/a> Japan is not standing still. Guidebooks tend to credit Japan’s new buildings on fires and wars, but that really isn’t the truth as far as the modern landscape is concerned. Otherwise, most buildings in Tokyo would have been built around 1950. Actually, most have been rebuilt once and sometimes several times since 1950. I’m not talking about a remodel. Functioning buildings are torn down and constructed from scratch on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

There aren’t many old buildings where I am from on the west coast of the U.S., but that isn’t because the structures have all been rebuilt. Other places I’ve visited (Denmark, Italy, France) have many buildings more than a few decades old and some are much older. Not so in Japan, even with its long history. Outside of Tokyo isn’t an exception as the places that claim a history of hundreds of years have usually been rebuilt, frequently many times.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples I have recently noticed.<\/p>\n

\"kabuki<\/a><\/p>\n

Ginza’s Kabuki Theater closed last week. It will be gutted and a new Kabuki Theater will be built in its place. The old Kabukiza was ancient by Tokyo standards at about 60 years. I’m sad it will no longer exist, but it was very dated. There was no leg room in the seats for anyone over about 5′ 8″. Handicap access was non-existent. Modern amenities were completely missing. The rebuilding of this place actually makes sense. Once the new Kabukiza is opened in 2013, the old one will be forgotten. <\/p>\n

\"ginza<\/a><\/p>\n

This was the sign in front of Kabukiza about 190 days ago.<\/p>\n

Next up is the Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka. With less than 30 years of life under its belt, this hotel will be demolished in March of 2011. A 40-story, luxury hotel has less than a 30-year life these days? Is construction cheap or something? I don’t think so. I don’t understand why such buildings are “refreshed” in Tokyo on such a regular basis.<\/p>\n

Finally, I was walking down Meiji Doori the other day and came upon a huge construction site on the corner of Omotesando where the GAP<\/a> was a few weeks before. The building seemed pretty nice to me, but now it is gone. Another will soon fill its place. The building was only 10-years old! 10-year old buildings being razed for another to be built in its place seems more than a bit strange.<\/p>\n

Such is life in Japan’s building merry-go-round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned last time Japan is not standing still. Guidebooks tend to credit Japan’s new buildings on fires and wars, but that really isn’t the truth as far as the modern landscape is concerned. Otherwise, most buildings in Tokyo would have been built around 1950. Actually, most have been rebuilt once and sometimes several times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[175,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5376"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5380,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions\/5380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}