This essay criticizes media praise for a “large-scale park” planned for Osaka’s North Yard redevelopment, arguing that such claims reveal ignorance of Kyoto’s true gardens and Japan’s historical landscapes. It exposes pseudo-moralism, questions Asahi Shimbun’s intentions, and warns that even Sankei Shimbun is not immune from error.

Has the reporter who wrote this article never seen the gardens scattered throughout Kyoto?
2017-05-09
The following is an essay that was transmitted to the world on 2016-08-24.
In August two years ago, a close friend of mine who had long subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun canceled it and switched to the Sankei Shimbun.
When that friend later had an opportunity to meet an employee of the Sankei Shimbun and mentioned this, he was immediately told the following.
“If you subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun for such a long time, isn’t the Sankei hard to read? The paper quality and printing are better at Asahi.”
My friend laughed and replied.
“No matter how good the paper quality is, the content is far too terrible…”
When I heard this, I said that the Sankei, which can immediately acknowledge where it is inferior, is indeed, at present, the most reasonable newspaper company.
However, needless to say, nothing is ever 100 percent perfect in any circumstance.
Recently, the Sankei Shimbun, without harboring any doubts at all, reported on Umeda’s North Yard—the very issue that prompted me to appear on the internet.
Without examining in the slightest the process by which the Phase Two development plan—created over more than twenty years by gathering the wisdom of both government and private sectors—was nullified,
it appears that they are now soliciting plans from several corporate groups that incorporate “greenery (parks)” as a theme, even though water and greenery were already part of the original concept,
thus completely rewriting the original business plan.
In other words, the recovery of the enormous 30-trillion-yen deficit of the former Japanese National Railways, which Japanese citizens are bearing, will be greatly reduced.
The Sankei Shimbun even applied to this, and proudly featured on a large section of its pages a plan by a landscape architect said to be world-famous—someone I had never heard of at all.
They described as “large-scale” a park to be built in no more than that tiny space.
Has the reporter who wrote this article ever seen the gardens scattered throughout Kyoto?
Has this reporter ever written about Osaka Castle Park, or the former Sumitomo garden in Tennoji?
I state this categorically: stopping the commercial use of even a limited portion of North Yard Phase Two and turning it into a park is nothing but pseudo-moralism.
Even upside down, it could never surpass the gardens throughout Kyoto that I visit many times every year.
Nor does such a thing have any chance of making Osaka into a truly global city.
Osaka Castle Park is, of course, a must-see destination for foreign visitors.
But a park supposedly created by rewriting the Phase Two plan of North Yard will never become a must-see place for them.
The reason goes without saying.
Osaka Castle Park embodies Japanese history and the spirit of the Toyotomi Hideyoshi era.
By contrast, a park created by rewriting the Phase Two development,
a “green park” that nullifies the reduction of the tax burden borne by Japanese citizens,
a creation born of pseudo-moralism itself,
a park produced by the Asahi Shimbun’s scheme—less sly than outright malicious—
could never become something that represents Japan.
That said, the maliciousness of the Asahi Shimbun is indeed remarkable.
At the same time, while the current commentary of the Sankei Shimbun is grounded in facts,
that does not mean that everything about the Sankei Shimbun is 100 percent perfect.
I ask them to take care never to fall into step with the Asahi Shimbun simply because they are both media organizations.