TOKYO BRIEFING April 2005

News this month

No men

Amid a boom in reported cases of groping, Tokyo's rail operators will add more female-only carriages in April. East Japan Railway Company first introduced women-only carriages on the Saikyo and Rinkai commuter lines in Tokyo early in the month. Several other rail and subway operators, including Tokyo Metro Company, plan to follow suit soon. Previously, only two Tokyo-area rail lines offered female-only carriages, and only late at night. Such cars existed in other parts of Japan, but Tokyo officials had feared that implementing them would increase congestion in other cars.

Reports of molestation on Tokyo subways have risen in recent years: last year there were about 2,200 cases, a three-fold increase from 1996. Many cite overcrowding as a contributing factor; during rush hour, Tokyo's trains are filled to around 1.7 times above official capacity.

Tune in

Tokyo's Sumida ward has emerged as the favourite site for a new Tokyo Tower, promising a welcome boom in tourism for the sleepy neighbourhood. Scheduled for completion in 2011, the tower will house an antenna for directing television signals and an observatory. At 600 metres, it will be nearly twice as tall as the current Tokyo Tower, built in 1958. The elder tower, which stands at 333 metres, is one of the city's best-known landmarks, attracting about 2.5m tourists per year. Following the new tower's completion, it will be consigned as a backup antenna.

A consortium of six broadcasting companies tipped Sumida from among 16 competing districts, following testing for television signal interference at all potential sites. Sumida also offers convenient rail access and several tourist attractions, including temples, shrines and the Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo stadium. The group will announce its official decision in March.

New bank in town

ShinGinko, which means “new bank”, opened its doors near the main Tokyo train station on April 1st. Set up and financed by Tokyo's city government, it has a mandate to provide loans to small and mid-size Tokyo-based businesses. Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's governor, created the bank to support local companies that failed to find support from Japan's bigger banks. Many Japanese banks have been reluctant to loan money to smaller companies since the collapse of Japanese land- and stock-prices a decade ago forced many such companies to default. The city government provided ¥51.3 billion ($474m) in start-up capital, and formed the bank by buying BNP Paribas Private Bank (Japan) Ltd, a Japanese unit of BNP Paribas, a French bank. Yasumasa Nishi, a former executive of Toyota, will run the bank, which plans to open five more branches by July.

Goodbye, red lights

On April 1st, Tokyo's police began enforcing a new law prohibiting street-hawkers from luring customers into brothels, massage parlours and pornographic-movie houses. Touts openly peddling sex services can be fined up to ¥200,000 or arrested in 135 neighbourhoods throughout Tokyo. This ban is part of a broader set of revisions to Tokyo's public-nuisance laws, aimed at cleaning up the city's red-light districts. The tougher ordinances stem from worries about increasingly brazen solicitations and the growing influence of foreign criminal groups in the sex trade.

Mourning

Some 2,000 people gathered in central Tokyo in March to commemorate the 60th anniversary of a series of fire-bombings from American aircraft near the end of the second world war. The bombings killed more than 100,000 Tokyo residents, mostly women and children. Survivors, relatives of the dead and schoolchildren attended the ceremony, which was sponsored by Tokyo's government and held in the Toshima district. Mr Ishihara called the bombings “unforgivable”. He went on, “One hundred thousand people died in a night. That's a massacre, isn't it?” The attacks, which began on March 10th, destroyed more than 60% of Tokyo, which was then mostly composed of wooden houses.

Catch if you can

April 2005

Mishima's “Dramatic History”

April 23rd-June 5th 2005

Yukio Mishima, a writer and political activist, died by committing hara-kari in a public demonstration in 1970, after a failed coup against the government. Called the Proust and the Hemingway of post-war Japan, Mishima is widely considered to be the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times during his life. He would have been 80 this year.

His first book, “Confessions of a Mask”, which chronicled his violent fantasies, was published when he was 23. Some of his best-known works are “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” (1956) and “The Sea of Fertility” (1965). His suicide was meant to highlight his passion for a return to the ways of ancient Japan. “Yukio Mishima, Dramatic History” at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature concentrates on Mishima’s work as a novelist, playwright, essayist and poet. This may be the last chance to see a literary exhibition mounted by his friends and contemporaries.

Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature, Yamate-cho 110, Naka-Ku, Yokohama. Tel: +81 (04) 5622-6666. Take the Tokaido Line from Tokyo, get off at Yokohama, and change to the Minato Mirai Line, going to the terminus at Motomachi Chukagai. Open: Tues-Sun 9.30 am-5pm. See the museum's website (Japanese only).

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