A powerful rebuttal to Shimotsuma’s proposal to convert Kita-Yard Phase Two into a green park. Drawing on historical data from prewar Osaka Asahi Shimbun, urban geography, and class structure, this essay exposes how elite romanticism about “green space” ignores the realities of labor, density, and economic survival. It also delivers a sweeping indictment of Japan’s media, democracy, and the arrogance of so-called notables.

The Text Delivered When Shimotsuma Suddenly Proposed, Two Years Earlier, That Phase Two Be Turned into a Park
2010-07-19

When people move from Osaka to Tokyo, a certain number of them say, “Osaka has less greenery compared to Tokyo.”
Of course it does.
You step out at Tokyo Station and see a vast expanse of green before your eyes…
Yet it is a place that no one is allowed to enter, and they do not even realize that this points to the fundamental difference in nature between this country and America.

Upon assuming the position of chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation, Mr. Shimotsuma said that Phase Two of Kita-Yard should be turned into a park like New York’s Central Park.

Did he know, or did he not know, that this land belonged to the JNR Settlement Corporation, which left behind a deficit of 30 trillion yen as a burden of national taxation?
Needless to say, this coveted land could be sold for several hundred billion yen.
With that amount, just how many people in need could be saved?

Tokyo is a flat plain as far as the eye can see, but Osaka is surrounded by mountains—Minoo to the north, Ikoma to the east, and Rokko to the west.
It is a narrow plain encircled by green mountain ranges.
That is why it has the highest population density in Japan.

Minoo Quasi-National Park is fifteen minutes by car from Umeda.
Rokko and Arima Onsen are forty-five minutes away.
Ikoma (and Nara, which has the smallest population) is a bit inconvenient, but even with traffic it is about an hour.
Senri New Town, ten minutes by car from Umeda, is a city of greenery.

Even Kyoto can be reached in forty-five minutes by car.
By train it takes thirty to fifty minutes (JR, Hankyu, Keihan).
Even Arashiyama, which requires a transfer, can be reached in about fifty minutes.
Last autumn, when I rediscovered Kyoto again and again, I wandered alone through Arashiyama and Kiyomizu-dera every weekend, immersing myself in autumn foliage that could only be described as exquisite and in the atmosphere of what is surely the world’s most beautiful city.
I even did the somewhat absurd power-walk of continuing on foot for a full hour from Ginkaku-ji to Hankyu Shijo Station…
Of course, I was accompanied by the streets of Kyoto and the finest music of our age in my iPod.

Here lies the pitfall into which those called the “notables” of our country fall.
And here too lies the pitfall of the Japanese mass media, led by Asahi, which has stubbornly believed that asking notables for their opinions is the very essence of democracy.

Why does such a situation arise?
(After all, aren’t they all supposed to be excellent elites? Gentlemen of culture and good temper?)
The answer is summed up in the single line I suddenly wrote on my website.

Last weekend, after writing this text, I searched the internet on Sunday to obtain accurate figures on parks in Tokyo and Osaka.
There I discovered something truly invaluable.

It was an article published in the Osaka Asahi Shimbun in the twelfth year of the Taisho era. I enclosed it, but excerpt it below.
(Boldface is mine.)

“Urban Parks and Their Use by Citizens — A Comparison of Tokyo and Osaka and Their Relative Merits
Various Facilities and the Quality of Maintenance — A Statistical Study by Park Researcher Mr. Obayashi
In short, Tokyo excels in urban parks, while Osaka excels in suburban parks. Tokyo has well-equipped and well-used urban parks such as Ueno, Asakusa, Shiba, and Hibiya, but as suburban parks it has only Inokashira and Asukayama. By contrast, Osaka’s suburbs are abundantly endowed with parks such as Minoo, Sumiyoshi, Ōhama, Hamadera, and Mataga Pond along the Hanshin Plain line, as well as Takarazuka and Ikoma amusement parks. However, its urban parks are extremely poor.
Compared with the relatively quiet academic city of Tokyo, it is unsettling that Osaka, an industrial city, possesses such meager urban parks. This is because suburban parks are of little use to the classes that most need parks, such as laborers and the poor; for workers with little free time, nearby urban parks are urgently necessary.”

This text also teaches us that Japan, in imitating Europe, even imitated its class society.

The idea of turning Phase Two into “a green forest” is almost identical to the way of thinking of this earlier writer, and I assert that it is nothing more than riding the environmental boom and chanting slogans about greenery.
In the Nikkei article of September 26 carried by the Doyukai advocating “green space,” the phrase “will lead to improved worker motivation” precisely proves this.
I believe it vividly demonstrates that your way of thinking is no different at all from that of Japan eighty years ago. What do you think?

The essential defects of our country’s mass media, represented by Asahi, are exactly the same.
Journalists and journalism ought to publish, under their own names, opinions forged through exhaustive thought and verification of the issues they tackle. Yet at every turn, they rush to ask the opinions of so-called “experts.”
One should first present one’s own thoroughly refined opinion and stir public debate. Then one should express thanks or rebuttals to the responses. That, I believe, is journalism.
To suppose that one can suddenly be asked and give a perfectly accurate answer is absurd. At best, one can only offer a passing thought.
That such an obvious truth is still not understood—what a miserable state of journalism.

In effect, they have produced newspapers by notables for notables, and that very practice also connects to the fact that innocent citizens were driven into the worst war in history some sixty years ago.

As for turning Phase Two into a green forest, even though Japan has been suffering a severe economic collapse for over twenty years, even though lifetime income may amount to only five million yen a year, we now live in an era of two-day weekends, and nearly every household owns at least one car.
Even twenty-year-olds own a car or at least have a driver’s license, and rental cars are everywhere.

Yesterday, I was speaking with an ordinary office lady who visited our company. She said, “When I want greenery and nature on my day off, I go out to the suburbs, to places like Kyoto…”

Inoue Yōsui has a magnificent song titled “The Frame of a Painting of a Long Slope.”
In it there is a lyric: “I watch the arrogance of those who are satisfied.”
Those who are satisfied, whether unconsciously or consciously, grow arrogant.

When I searched the net, I was surprised to see on the first page a 2channel-style headline reading, “Osaka is ○○ after all—don’t compare it with Tokyo.”
Yet it seemed only natural. It may well reflect the “true feelings” of satisfied Tokyo—and even the true feelings of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Once, at times of political upheaval, I foolishly thought “as expected of Asahi” when it published insider articles about the LDP and found them interesting.
But since around Heisei 2, I have watched it as a grave sinner.

This time, however, I cannot merely watch.
Why? Because without ever imagining such a thing could occur, I ignored Tokyo, where everyone else headed, and invested heavily in Osaka with 100 percent conviction that Kita-Yard would revive the city.
In other words, just as I chose Osaka as the stage of my life, I also chose Osaka as the place where my life would end, with firm conviction (though there was only one property that met my standards).

This affair is the second disaster brought about by the essential disease of this country.
I was seized by a despair and melancholy beyond your imagining, but I thought, “I will not be struck down twice.” This is a struggle. I absolutely cannot lose.
With the resolve that I will not allow my life to be reduced to nothing twice over by egoists who are, in truth, criminals, I revived.
It is exactly the cliché of TV Asahi: “There is a battle we absolutely cannot lose.”

(274) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube