Having the ear of Mr Koizumi has evidently had an effect - after a meeting with the professor two days ago, the Prime Minister has asked for a study into moving the vast motorway and “opening Nihombashi to the sky so we can enjoy riverside walks”. Beauty meant nothing to Japan then,” said Professor Itou. “It was about showing that Japan was no longer poor. Unfortunately, urban planners preparing the city for the 1964 Olympic Games built an eight-lane motorway flyover just a few metres above this historic landmark, engulfing it with steel support pillars and denying the bridge any daylight at all. The ornate structure which was constructed in the 17th century, is charged with history and cultural significance - not only is it the point from which all distances to the capital are measured, but the commerce created by the bridge was what turned the old city of Edo into the country’s most important city. But the ultimate accolade in the professor’s reverse tourist guide goes to the Nihombashi bridge in the heart of Tokyo. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Professor Itou revealed the contents of his forthcoming “list of the loathsome”, in which modern shopping centres and decrepit “love hotels” are lambasted along with ancient imperial gardens and tree-lined avenues in Hiroshima. He does, however, reserve a private judgment on the glittering steel and glass tower of Roppongi Hills, one of Tokyo’s most famous new landmarks and a structure which he thinks “resembles an old Russian woman’s backside”. Professor Itou is careful not to single out particular buildings as ugly, believing that his report is only useful if it deals with “objective ugliness, not subjective dislikes”. Within weeks of becoming Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi called on Mr Itou, an emeritus professor of Tokyo University, and put him in charge of a Cabinet office panel to study a “Japan beauty renaissance” to undo some of the monstrosities of the past 60 years. He has enlisted to his cause a panel of architecture gurus, designers, sculptors and Japan’s top civil engineers - his seniority and renown also grant him direct access to the highest ranks of government. Shigeru Itou’s damning report Ugly Japan is specifically designed to provoke national outcry, and, he hopes, become the centrepiece of a drive to make the country more beautiful. JAPAN’S most senior urban planning expert, who decries almost every city in his country as “hideous”, has devoted two years to drawing up a list of the nation’s most repulsive places.
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Monuments to ugliness and the triumph of cash over culture
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My interest in Kinugawa Onsen-the hot springs resort on the river of angry demons, as its name might translate-was first sparked when, not so long ago, I stumbled across the following article, which appeared in The Times on the very last day of 2005.
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At night the owls made of it an echoing throat by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. The Tower of Flints, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven.