Heritage Tourism and Sustainable Communities: Lessons from the Everyday

Cultural Landscape of Tokyo

Chester H. Liebs
Visiting Fulbright Professor
Graduate School of Urban Engineering
University of Tokyo

Introduction

Discussions of tourism and sustainability often address threats to important heritage areas,
and their residents, caused by an influx of visitors. This paper seeks to look at the topic
from a somewhat different point of view. Using Tokyo as a case study, it will briefly
illustrate several features of the city’s current everyday landscape, from neighborhoods
and shopping streets to the often unrecognized role of the bicycle, that offer potentially-
valuable objects lessons for sustainable communities and for addressing the current
worldwide threat-in-common – climate change.1 It will go on report on current threats to
the examples citied, countermeasures to these threats, and the potential of a “World
Sustainable Inheritance List” (WSIL) to encourage recognition and global transmittal of
lessons from these and similar everyday landscapes that may offer valuable lessons for
the future.

A Few Tokyo Landscape Lessons

Compact, Safe Lightly-Motorized, Transit Friendly Residential Areas

Unlike the city’s famous shrines, temples, museums, or Akihabara, the center for
electronics’ goods and anime, Tokyo’s many low-rise, safe, and slightly-motorized
neighborhoods, while not exactly tourist hotspots, are for the most part exemplary, well-
functioning, compact communities.

These by and large middle-class areas consist of hundreds of closely-placed small houses,
(sprinkled with modestly-scaled apartment buildings), built incrementally. The private
residences often sport a mix of traditional features from tile roofs, abbreviated Japanese
gardens, and grass-matted tatami rooms with shōji (paper-infilled, wood-frame, sliding
room separators), to so called “western-style” living rooms and kitchens. 2

In eastern Tokyo such neighborhoods are often the spatial reincarnations of much older
residential precincts dating back to the Edo Era (1603-1867) which where leveled by fires
resulting from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and again by American fire bombs in
1945. Many of those to the west date from after the 1923 quake when there was a
population shift in that direction to neighborhoods being developed on agricultural lands
along new commuter rail lines. 3

Their maze of twisting narrow streets, the spatial heritage of a societal proclivity to live
in density, and reflecting the irregular patterns of the old farm and field boundaries they
were gradually superimposed over, today act as the perfect deterrent to automobile traffic
while being highly conducive to walking and bicycling. Cars are not a necessity since a
train station is usually a short walk, bicycle, or bus ride away. Highly pedestrianized, and
with a low “carbon footprint,” these neighborhoods, while not without their drawbacks,
have much information to offer about the design of dense, sustainable communities of the
future.

Shōtengai: Traditional Neighborhood Shopping Streets

Woven within these neighborhoods are traditional shopping streets or shōtengai. 4 These
usually narrow streets are flanked by small neighborhood retailers selling fresh fish, rice,
vegetables, appliances clothing, medicine, and a host of other goods. It is not uncommon,
especially in older areas, to find businesses which have been in continuous ownership, in
a succession of structures on the same site, for a century or more. Business owners often
reside in family living quarters, usually in the rear of the shop. These local merchant /
neighborhood residents often have especially strong ties to the surrounding community.

In recent years many shōtentgai have been roofed over for all-weather use, and chain-
store supermarkets, and in some cases departments stores, have located along or at the
ends of shōtengai as part of the retail mix. Within walking or biking distance of the dense
surrounding neighborhoods, many shōtengai are served by rail transit with station exits
often feeding directly into them to make a seamless transition from work to shopping to
home without the need for a car. Automobile use is usually forbidden or restricted in
many shōtengai and trucks are limited to delivery vehicles at certain times of the day.
Within this compact environment there is scant space for motor-vehicles while access is
very convenient for foot and bicycle traffic.

Tying it All Together: Practical Bicycling and the “Mama Chari”

Although an important and highly-visible feature for supporting neighborhood life, scant
attention has been paid to the lowly bicycle, including by many foreign planners and
urbanists chronicling the development and meaning of Tokyo’s neighborhoods. 5 It is the
Shinkansen or bullet trains, which today rocket along at speeds as high as three-hundred
kilometers per hour, that always steal the show. Yet bicycles, and their extremely high
degree of practical use, especially in urban areas like Tokyo, are arguably not only the
unsung transportation wonders of Japan but a highly-undervalued agent for nurturing
neighborhood sustainability.

Citizens of other Asian countries, such as China and India, are abandoning their bicycles
for motor scooters or eventually trading up for their first cars. In contrast, the residents of
East Asia’s most “developed” country have not forsaken their bikes, the number of which
are estimated today at 80,000,000 or two bicycles for every three of the 127,500,000
Japanese. 6 While the reasons for this deserve much further study, the close-knit
neighborhoods, with narrow streets and nearby shōtengai found in cities like Tokyo,
which are more conducive to cycling than motoring, and successive policies, beginning in

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the Meiji era (1869-1912), that until relatively recently encouraged industrialization, and
railway more than highway construction, are at least part of the explanation.

Today Tokyo has the most extensive subway and urban rail network in the world, serving
most parts of the city, and bicycles are an essential adjunct to this efficient urban vascular
system. As opposed to recreational biking using expensive high-tech vehicles, and with
riders costumed in special clothing, this type of bicycling is a part of everyday life—a
practical means for families to shop at the shōtentgai or for people from all walks of life
to commute to a nearby train station.

Most of the residential areas and shōtengai, already described, with their narrow roads
with few places to park, are more conductive to bicycling than motoring and have
contributed to the development of a deeply-engrained bicycle habit. In cities like Beijing
or Taipei, which only recently began building efficient public transit systems, and where
bicycle commutes were consequently longer, the switch to motor bikes and then
automobiles has been an easier sell, with people with rapidly-rising income more
susceptible to the illusion of higher-status that car ownership is perceived to confer.
Obviously many European cities, such as Amsterdam or Berlin also have high practical
bicycle use. However in East Asia, where Japanese innovations are often emulated (even
in those countries where there are political tensions lingering from World War Two), and
where many of Asia’s future placemakes are educated, highlighting the nation’s
retention of bicycles, and the reason why, is likely to have more impact than showcasing
European examples.

In Tokyo (as well as other Japanese cities with extensive public-transit systems like
Osaka) one can see bicycles used for dozens of different tasks—practical bicycles which
Tokyoites often refer to as “mama chari,” short for “mama charinko” or mother’s
bicycle. They can be bought new for as little as 10,000 yen, around $85.00 U.S., fully
equipped with fenders, a chain guard so they can be ridden with street clothing, a
generator-powered light for night use, a low-slung frame for quick and easy mounting
and dismounting, and an ample basket and luggage rack. The fact they all look alike
makes them an unattractive target for thieves while their ingenious spoke lock, more a
declaration of ownership than security device, allows for highly-efficient land use by
preventing bikes from rolling after being parked so that many can fit in the same space
where only a few mini-vans or sport utility vehicles could be beached. 7

Each day one can witness the practicality and versatility of the trusty mama chari. Mama
chari are used to carry groceries, computers, children (safety helmets wisely are coming
into vogue), friends, police on patrol, merchants making light deliveries, and dozens of
other purposes including carrying thousands of working men and woman to the station
and back. Hundreds of bicycles can be usually be seen parked not only along the
shōtengai but in special supermarket lots like those of Seiyu stores (now owned by Wal-
Mart), and in bike-only parking lots and designated areas by train stations. A new
generation of efficient, electrically-assisted bikes are coming into use that can even scale
the hilly urban areas of cities like Tokyo.

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Threats and Countermeasures

Considering Japan is the birthplace of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and in
light of global-warming threats posed by antiquated, twentieth-century-style, auto-
oriented settlement in developed motorized countries like the United States and emerging
motorizing nations such as China or India, one might think that the nearly crime-free,
dense, livable, low-rise, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, auto-resistant neighborhoods of
cities like Tokyo, would be models worthy of careful study, protection, and selective
emulation. 8 This is not always so.

While Japan is an exemplary steward of its older cultural treasures, from great shrines
and temples, and historic sites and districts, to folkways, crafts and living treasures, much
of the sustainable cultural inheritance briefly described in this paper might not necessarily
be carried into the future.

A ring road is about to be completed around greater Tokyo, major roads in the city have
been “red lined” for further widening, often without perceivable traffic pressures to cause
them to be, and those traditional streetscapes within these zones are gradually being
demolished for replacement with set-back apartment or office structures, often lined with
open plazas or cars rather than shop fronts. New shopping centers are also being built,
helping to divert business away from the shōtengai whose small stores have been under
increasingly competitive pressures, especially since the year 2000, when, owing in part to
lobbying from countries like the United States wishing to break into Japan’s retail market,
a 1974 law limiting the number of large chain stores to protect small merchants was
terminated.9 While many bustling shōtengai can still be found in Tokyo and other towns
and cities in Japan, increasingly the grey-shuttered store bays of failed shops have
spawned a sobriquet for vanishing shōtengai – syttaa dori (shutter street). 10 In addition,
a growing number of dense, safe, difficult-to-motorize, middle-class neighborhoods are
gradually succumbing to road widenings, and the demolition of individual residences for
replacement with high-rise condominiums.

There also seems to be a current war against the bicycle. Bicycles admittedly can be a
nuisance when abandoned or stacked carelessly by train stations.
However they are too often deemed by city officials, and some architects and planners, as
“old-fashioned” and a blight on the landscape rather than a boon to sustainability by not
emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This disconnect might be partially due to
the fact that bicycles are such a routine part of life in cities like Tokyo that, when viewed
in a very narrow context, their minuses are seen to outweigh the positives.

All over Tokyo one can see evidence of campaigns aimed at deterring bicycle use.
Reasons given include that they can get in the way of the handicapped, hinder pedestrians,
and that parked bikes a detriment to an attractive environment. As summed up by Meiji
Gakuin Associate Professor of Urban Planning Keiro Hattori:

“ ...The value of people using bicycles for daily shopping or commuting (to a
station) in Tokyo or other big cities has been underestimated to a degree that is just

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 absurd since high bicycle use contribute to the less use of energy for transportation,
it is much cheaper, and the parking space is much smaller than automobile. It is also
much healthier.” 11

While cars speed by recklessly, one can sometimes see police busy ticketing bicycles,
parked in places deemed off limits, even if there is perfectly adequate space for
pedestrians and cars to pass by them. 12 Meanwhile space given over to parked cars is
increasing. Also, in the hundreds of promotional adds for new high-rise condominiums
posted all about the city, one rarely sees a bicycle or pedestrian featured in the architect’s
rendering, just a car or two (often a high-end model) prominently depicted out front. It
seems evident that in the minds of much of Tokyo’s officialdom, and its development
community, the high-rise and car are perceived as icons of a world-class, global city,
something ironically Tokyo already is in its present form.

However there has been a countermovement to these trends, often from the bottom up.
Dozens of citizens groups across Tokyo have been working against the destruction of
their compact, low-rise neighborhoods. In Yanaka, which miraculously escaped the
World-War-Two firebombings, residents, though so far denied local Taitō-ward-level
historic-district recognition for the area, continue to try to protect their traditional
neighborhood from high-rise “condominiumization” and road widenings. 13 While their
efforts have at least slowed the destruction of Yanaka, similar campaigns, such as in
Shimo-Kitazawa in western Tokyo, have not been as successful. This compact, bike and
pedestrian friendly, and motorization-resistant area, boasting several thriving intersecting
shōtengai, with rail transit stations exiting directly into them, will soon have a $140
million, 81-foot wide thoroughfare rammed through it, along with the lifting of building-
height restrictions, despite spirited local opposition. 14

One of the not-to-be-taken-lightly arguments often leveled against such areas is their
susceptibility to earthquakes in seismically-active Japan. However older neighborhoods
are not the only places that are vulnerable in the case of a major tremor. Today
seismologists are also concerned about the potential dangers of recently-built high-rise
buildings, such as those springing up all over Tokyo, and their susceptibility to “long-
cycle seismic waves” which experts warn, as recently stated in the Asahi Shinbun, have
“...the potential to cause skyscrapers to sway dangerously, perhaps striking some
structures with 2 to 4 times the anticipated force. People in the upper floors could face
serious or fatal injuries from toppling furniture....” in the event of a major quake. 15

Although a slow process, to address the dangers posed by potentially hazardous

residential buildings in older neighborhoods, low-tech seismic stabilizations are gradually
being carried out, on a case-by-case basis, by local carpenters as part of various
machizukuri (town town-making) projects around the city. 16 Also highly-deteriorated
buildings that are beyond retrofitting have the potential to be replaced, within the same
spatial footprint, with seismic and fire-resistant reincarnations17 A national NPO, the
Machinami Renmei was founded in 1974 to support efforts by local citizens groups to
save their neighborhoods and communities, and Japan’s most prestigious institution of
higher education, the University of Tokyo, has even set up a “Center for Sustainable

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Urban Regeneration” to provide research and technical services to address many of these
issues.

The debate over practical bicycle is also heating up. In Japan, due to dangers from cars,
most people ride their bikes on the sidewalk. Yet bicycles are classified legally as light
vehicles and most sidewalk riding is at the moment technically illegal. The National
Police Agency’s recent proposal to change the law to legitimize sidewalk riding has
sparked considerable controversy, especially among bicycle users who fear that it is an
excuse to avoid providing safer, bike-only travel lanes. Some local jurisdictions are
taking the initiative, such Tokyo’s Setagaya ward, to cordon off part of the street, and the
opposite sidewalk, to create two opposing one-way bicycle-only lanes. 18

This increased public attention is finally beginning to elevate the issue of practical
bicycle riding from a perceived nuisance to a matter of global concern. As Shunichi
Teranishi, professor of environmental economics at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University,
recently proclaimed that “Bicycles are the next big eco-friendly mode of transportation...
In addition to helping to prevent global warming, the emissions-free conveyances are a
healthy alternative to gas-guzzlers. They also cause far fewer traffic deaths.” 19

Yet the prevailing image of the future Tokyo, such as that portrayed in a recent
advertisement by the giant Kajima Corporation, builders of everything from roads and
high-rises to airport runways, and posted in rapid transit stations around the city, is of an
ironically twentieth-century-looking city of high-rises linked by ribbons of highways.
Since such future visions are confirmed by many actually pieces of the development
puzzle gradually being put into place, one of the world’s preeminent examples of an
earth-friendly “compact city” could still possibly metamorphose into just another
metropolis of shopping centers, high-rises, and parking lots, sprinkled with a scattering of
beautifully conserved historic sites.

Tourism and a World Sustainable Inheritance List?

In this paper Tokyo has only been used as an example. Practical, sustainable, functioning
everyday cultural landscapes can be found in many countries. The challenge is how to
make their value gain greater recognition in the places where they evolved, and to
disseminate examples of already extant lessons for practical sustainability for citizens of
other nations to adapt to their own conditions should choose to do so.

The World Heritage List has been, as is well known, an extremely powerful vehicle for
calling attention to the sites contained within it—so powerful that tourists are flocking
into designated places generating economic pressures and demands for infrastructure that
are in turn creating a demand for sustainable models.

Given the transnational nature of impending climate change, the world conservation
community might consider, if this cannot be accomplished through the current World
Heritage List framework, the creation of a World Sustainable Inheritance List (WSIL),
which, instead of being geared to “outstanding and universal” values from the past,

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would celebrate practical products of continuous cultural evolution in the everyday
landscape of the present that have transcendent value for creating sustainable
communities of the future.

Development of a WSIL could have wide-ranging effects by finally and solidly

connecting heritage conservation with the contemporary world and its global challenges.
It would also help people working at all levels, government, NGOs, business, academe,
etc., from a broad spectrum of disciplines, as well as ordinary citizens, to become, in a
sense, full-time tourists who are better informed by everyday places—essential but often
overlooked matrices for thinking about the global-future-in-common.
1
For over six years, at various times from 1995 to 2007, as a two-time Fulbright scholar, and also as
visiting professor in heritage conservation at several of Japan’s major universities, I have kept extensive
research notes on observations of Tokyo’s changing urban landscape. My current research, as Fulbright
Visiting Professor in the Nishimura Urban Design Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, focuses on lessons
for sustainable “compact cities” that can be learned from Tokyo’s often overlooked everyday cultural
landscapes. Between September 2006 and the March 2007 writing of this paper, I have walked 462 miles,
noting changes in the visible daily life and urban form of this metropolitan area of 35 million, the largest
urban agglomeration in the world. This paper is only a brief sampling of some of the information gleaned
from reading the primary visual landscape texts, conducting interviews, reviewing the works of other
researchers, and undertaking archival investigations.
2
Chester Liebs, “Heritage Conservation in Japan: An Eyewitness View,” Cultural Resources
Management 19, (1996) 2
3
See Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (New York:
Knopf, 1983); André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan (London: Routledge, 2002) 125
4
Sorensen, 195
5
e.g. Sorensen; Barre Shelton , Learning from the Japanese City: West Meets East in Urban Design
(London: E & FN Spon, 1999).
6
Amelia Gentleman, “Soaring Ambitions in New Delhi: Planners Envision a Manhattan Skyline,”
International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun 13 Mar. 2007, 2; Editorial, “Bicycle Traffic Safety,”
International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun, 21 Feb. 2007
7
Chester Liebs, “In Praise of One of Japan’s Great Treasures: The Car-less Life,” Architectural
Institute of Japan Journal 1508 (2003) 41
8
e.g. The Commissioner Bruhut Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, “Inviting Expression of Interest for
Construction of Elevated Inner-Core Ring Road (advertisement),” International Herald Tribune/Asahi
Shinbun, 5 Mar. 2007
9
Jetro (Japan External Trade Organization), “Special Report 4: New Era in Japan’s Retailing Market,”
Online Magazine: Invest Japan, Special Edition, Vol. 2, 2003, <http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/newsroom
/newsletter/backnumber_nl.html>
10
For a popular description see e.g. Captain Japan, “Tokyo’s Disappearing Shōtengai,” Sake-Drenched
Postcards, n.d. < Sake Drenched Postcards - Tokyo's Disappearing Shotengai.mht>
11
Prof. Keiro Hattori “Opinion of State of Practical Bicycling in Tokyo.” E-mail message to Chester
Liebs. 14 Mar. 2007.
12
Field-study observation, Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo, by members of the “Mama Chari Zemi” led by the
author, Graduate School of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, 23 November 2006.
13
Masaru Maeno. Study of Yanaka. Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 1991; At the
turn of this century Yanaka residents mounted a campaign to protest high-rise construction and road
widenings.
14
Martin Fackler, “Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One,” New York Times, 2 Oct.
2006. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/world/asia/02tokyo.html?ex=1317441600 &en=514522
cbd3566978&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>
15
“ Dangerous Sway/ Skyscrapers Vulnerable in Major Quakes,” International Herald Tribune/Asahi
Shinbun, 7 Feb. 2007. <http://www. asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200702070147.html>

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 16
Hitoshi Nakamura, “The Incremental Improvement of the Area Densely Built-up with Old Wooden
Houses in Tokyo,” International Symposium on Vulnerable Urban Space, Center for Sustainable Urban
Generation, The University of Tokyo, 1 Mar. 2007.
17
Interview with Prof. Junichiro Okata, in Prospectus, Center for Sustainable Urban Regeneration.
(Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 2006) 6.
18
Editorial, “Cycling/ Tokyo to test-ride one-way bike lanes,” International Herald Tribune/Asahi
Shinbun 14 Mar. 2007.
19
Yoshitaka Sumida, “(Cycling/ Move To Revise Right-Of-Way Law On Cycles Stirs Online Ire,”
International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun 14 Mar. 2007.

Note: I would like to thank Professor Emeritus Masaru Maeno, Tokyo National
University of Fine Arts and Music and President of the Japan Machinami Renmei and
Japan/ICOMOS for introducing me to the Japanese everyday cultural landscape; the
members of the “Mama Chari Zemi” for our excellent discussions; Magokoro Yoshihira
who helped with several shōtengai-owner interviews, Associate Professor Keiro Hattori,
Meiji Gakuin University, for his support and valuable insights; and especially Professor
Yukio Nishimura of the University of Tokyo, the host of my current Fulbright and
JUSEC, the Japan/United States Education Commission (home of the Japan Fulbright
Program) and its staff, for making still another opportunity to teach and conduct research
in Tokyo possible.

Chester H. Liebs is Fulbright Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Urban Engineering,

the University of Tokyo. (Also Adjunct Professor of Historic Preservation and
Regionalism, University of New Mexico and Professor Emeritus, and founder of the
Historic Preservation Program, University of Vermont). He served as Visiting Professor
of Heritage Conservation, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (2000-
2003), Visiting Professor of Area Studies, Tsukuba University, Japan (1997-1998), and
Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
(1994-1995).

A former board member of US/ICOMOS, he has consulted and lectured internationally

on conserving historic towns and cities, heritage corridors, and intangible cultural
heritage. Among his publications is Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside
Architecture 1985, rev. 1995. Liebs was awarded the National Council for Preservation
Education’s James Marston Fitch Preservation Education Lifetime Achievement Award
in 2004.

Illustration captions:

1. Mother with child biking through a narrow, virtually car-free street of the densely
built-up Higashi Nagasaki neighborhood, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2007.

2. Thriving shōtengai, Asagaya, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

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3. Red-lined zone for eventual road widening. Cars are parked, to the right, in an area
once occupied by traditional, street-side commercial buildings such as the gable-roof
structure in the path of future destruction to just to the rear. Note the light traffic on
Hongo Dori to the left. Hon-Komagome, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

4. SUV shoehorned onto a narrow house plot, an example of the gradual incursion of
automobiles into dense, motorization-resistant neighborhoods. Mitaka City, Tokyo.
Photo: Chester Liebs, 2001.

5. Satake Shōtengai, an incipient sattaa dori (shutter street). Note the closed store to the
right. East of Ueno, Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2006.

6. An image of blight or a blessing for limiting climate change? Even though there is
plenty of room to pass, the area where these bicycles are parked has been designated a no
parking zone. Vehicles are ticketed and their owners are forced to reclaim them, after
paying a high fee, at often-remote impoundments. Komagome, Tokyo. Photo: Chester
Liebs, 2006.

7. Poster protesting high-rise condominium construction, Yanaka, Tokyo. Photo: Chester

Liebs, 2002.

8. Two rapid-transit lines exit directly into the lively, multi-street shōtengai of Shimo-
Kitazawa. Soon a road for automobiles will be rammed through the middle of this highly-
successful, pedestrian-and-bike-friendly shopping area. Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo. Photo:
Chester Liebs, 2006.

9. “Mama Chari Zemi” (seminar), University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Urban

Engineering. In this fall 2006 seminar, organized by the author, graduate and post-
graduate students in urban design and transportation planning, from Japan, China,
Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, discussed the importance of bicycles to the future of
sustainable communities in East Asia. The photo was taken in the bicycle-parking area of
the Seiyu Department Store (owned by Wal-Mart), in Tokiwadaira, Chiba, Japan, a
suburb of Tokyo. Photo: Chester Liebs, 2007.