Everything is gray. The water is ash. The sky is concrete. The buildings are slate. Some are warm grays, but most are not. Even the foggy air is gray. I feel like I'm drifting past a panoramic Rothko painting.
These buildings in Tokyo usually don’t last very long. In an article, the Tokyo Federation of Housing Production Organizations (don’t give me that look) said that residential buildings last an average of 26 years before getting torn down and rebuilt. There seem to be no opportunities to walk with your grandson and point to the building in which you raised your family. No prospect of living in a charming, vintage locale. No room for nostalgia.
But... everything is gray. Are these buildings ones you’d want to preserve over time?
Maybe I come from egocentric cultures. Maybe the Japanese value communal identity more than personal histories. Who cares if your house is being rebuilt? It’s getting upgraded, that’s a good thing. And Japanese cultural identity, the kind rooted in its past, is preserved in historical buildings.
Earlier this year, I ran into the work of Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist and writer, and rolled my eyes. I now wonder if she grew up in one of these buildings. Maybe her art is protest (it would explain her use of colors and circles). Or maybe putting polka dots on things is overrated.
Maybe spending money on painting a building that statistically won't see three decades from now is overrated.
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