Envisioning the Baroque City: The Government Block Project, 1886-1890

Takeshi Arthur Thornton

A familiar way of describing realism in two-dimensional graphic art is to invoke the analogy of the mirror. The realist painter supposedly offers the viewer a mirror reflection of the external world, immediately and without distortion. Art theorists have long argued, however, that realism remains merely one kind of convention for rendering images and can lay no claim to being an especially accurate or direct means of representing reality. Ernst Gombrich, for instance, has drawn on percep­ tual psychology in order to challenge the notion of an ktinnocent eye'' (298) that could passively depict the external world on canvas; instead, he suggests that the artist “would tend to see what he paints rather than to paint what he sees” （86). Against the assumption that the beginning point of a visual record is ‘‘knowledge，’’ he posits that it is “a guess conditioned by habit and tradition” （89). Taking his cue from Gombrich, Nelson Goodman has proceeded to even stronger conventionalist conclusions, arguing that realistic representation t4is relative, determined by the system of representation standard for a given culture or person at a given time.... Realistic representation, in brief, depends not upon imitation or illusion or infor­ mation but upon inculcation.... If representation is a matter of choice and correct­ ness a matter of information, realism is a matter of habif' (37-8). Bearing in mind the skepticism shared by Gombrich and Goodman with regard to the mimetic claims of realism, I want to examine an ostensibly “realistic” land- scape painting that constitutes part of the historical record of the so-called Kancho shuchu keikaku ( 「官庁 集 中 計 画 」）or Government Block Project of 1886-1890. In brief, the Government Block Project was an urban reconstruction and embel­ lishment scheme proposed for central Tokyo as a way to demonstrate to the world 's emergence as a modem state. Owing to changes in political conditions much of the baroque-inspired scheme was abandoned in the planning stages. The landscape painting in question offers a speculative view of what that proposed complex might have looked like had it been built. The representation is not espe­ cially remarkable-it does not display any conspicuous virtuosity or artistry. But for reasons that will become sufficiently apparent, the representation invites, even

234 demands, the sort of conventionalist interpretation advocated by Gombrich and Goodman. Let me then set the stage for analyzing the painting by, firstly and briefly, reviewing the historical circumstances that gave rise to the Government Block Project, followed by a quick consideration of the principal elements of the scheme, as enumerated in the surviving plans and drawings. If any one catalyst can be said to have set in motion the process that led to the Government Block Project, it most assuredly was treaty revision. During the 1850s and 1860s, a series of unequal commercial treaties was imposed on Japan by the United States and several European powers, including Great Britain and France. Referred to collectively as the Ansei treaties, they placed foreign nationals resid­ ing in Japan under the legal jurisdiction of their own consuls (extraterritoriality), and denied Japan the right unilaterally to change the customs duties on foreign trade (tariff control). As early as 1871 the Iwakura mission, on a fact-gathering tour of the United States and Europe, enquired about the possibility of amending the treaties, only to be rebuffed by Western diplomatic officials, who adopted the line that their nationals should not be subjected to the rigors of the Japanese judi­ cial system, and that they were not prepared to abandon low tariffs on their imports without compensation. Seemingly interminable negotiations during the years to follow convinced Japan's ruling elite that unless their country's image abroad was improved, unless their country could demonstrate to the world that it was indeed civilized and enlightened, there was little hope of persuading the Western powers to relinquish their judicial and economic privileges. So began a period remembered for Japan's enthusiastic emulation of the West, a brief but col­ orful period that elicited many interesting efforts at state-sponsored Westerni­ zation, from the passing of new ordinances forbidding public nakedness and mixed bathing in public bathhouses, to the construction of a fanciful Victorian hall in central Tokyo where foreign dignitaries could be entertained. The history and poli­ tics of this time of flux are complex and fascinating, but for our purposes we need only note that matters stood thus in 1884 when the pro-Western Foreign Minister of Japan, Inoue Kaoru (1835-1915), put forward the idea of building a new, Euro- pean-style government complex in the heart of Tokyo. At that time, most of the offices of the Meiji government still occupied a makeshift cluster of former daimyo residences in and around the grounds of the imperial palace. This ad-hoc arrangement, while pragmatic, lacked the grandeur befitting Tokyo's new status as the national capital of an imperial power. Over in Europe, the preceding decades had witnessed 's sweeping transformation

233 from a medieval city of twisting streets and alleys—largely unchanged since the Middle Ages —into a showcase imperial capital boasting broad, straight avenues punctuated by monumental new administrative buildings, department stores, and railway stations. Not to be outdone, Vienna had replaced the line of fortification enclosing its old city with a broad annular boulevard, the Ringstrasse. And Barcelona had razed its defensive walls to make way for a ten-fold expansion in gridded land area. Even though we do not know for certain, we can assume that Inoue was at least superficially familiar with these developments in Europe. What better way to convince the West of Japan's assurance and authority as a modem state, he must have reasoned, than implementing an urban transformation program of Tokyo's own. Inoue's idea struck a responsive cord with the Japanese elite. Following the usual rounds of hopes and false starts, of bureaucratic bickerings and failed attempts to entice English architects to participate, in 188b the government invited Wilhelm Bockmann (1832-1902), partner in the respected architectural practice of Ende-Bockmann, to Tokyo to sign a contract for three important new buildings: the , the Ministry of Justice, and the Great Court of Cassation, the predecessor of today's Supreme Court. By any standard, the architect-engineer chosen for this historic mission was first-rate. A former president of the German Association of Architects, Bockmann had designed numerous public as well as private buildings in , including banks, government offices and apartment houses (Horiuchi). At the same time that the German was invited, the government arranged for some 20 Japanese architects and technicians to train in Berlin. Arriving in Japan in April, Bockmann immediately began conducting extensive surveys of Tokyo. Armed with a camera and various maps, he and his assistant led numerous walks through the city documenting its various neighborhoods. By any criterion, Tokyo was already very large, housing perhaps a million inhabitants. Despite it size, however, the Japanese capital—with its densely built up areas of single-storey wooden homes alternating with extensive tracts of rice paddies and orchards-was probably closer in character to a European city of the Middle Ages than any contemporary European capital. For someone trained in the ways of Western urbanism as Bockmann was, Tokyo's cityscape must have seemed elu­ sive. Yet the picture was not as unpromising as it might at first have seemed. Unlike its metropolitan rivals in Europe and America, Tokyo boasted much open space for development: even central parts of the city were occupied by empty resi­ dential lots. These lots were often vacant daimyo estates that had become govem-

232 iv ment property after the collapse of the Tokugawa regime. Against expectations, therefore, late nineteenth-century Tokyo offered Bôckmann ample space to devel­ op his urban vision. In June, the German, accompanied by Inoue, submitted his tentative plans for the new seat for the imperial government to the Emperor. Western architecture was thus established on the political agenda, raised from being a matter of peripheral concern to the Japanese government to being an essential preoccupation of the state. Even by modem standards Bockmann's baroque plan1 is grand indeed. Inspired in part, no doubt, by Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris under Napoleon ID, it aimed to remake an area of former daimyo estates encompassing roughly what is present-day Nagatacho, Kasumigaseki and Hibiya into a formal, symmetri­ cally-ordered urban space along European lines. Dominating the plan are a series of broad boulevards, some over 40 meters wide, that were to radiate from a new central railroad terminal just south of the present site of Yurakucho station, and leading eastward toward the ports and westward toward the government buildings, the palace, the Diet, and the prime minister's residence. At the head of Nippon Avenue, that was to form one-half of the principal axis of the new Tokyo, Bôckmann suggested placing an equestrian statue of the Emperor. Central Avenue, running at right angles from the station to Tsukiji Honganji Temple, was to form the other-half of the east-west axis. The Diet and the Hama Detached Palace were to be linked by Europe Avenue, and the police headquarters, the courthouse, the Tokyo metropolitan government, and a theater were to be built along Mikado Avenue. Restaurants, coffee shops, and a hotel were to be strategically located at the junction of Mikado Avenue, Empress Avenue and Nippon Avenue. And final­ ly, a new international port was to be built at the mouth of the Sumida River. In visual terms at least (or at most), Bockmann's plan displays all the aspects of classic baroque planning-grand avenues, axial approaches, dramatic vistas, monu­ mental scale: it is an exemplary adaptation of standard baroque principles to a pro­ foundly new canvas. Insofar as the plan exploits the aesthetics of awe peculiar to baroque architecture, it represents a dramatic break from traditional Japanese thinking about the function of architecture. And insofar as the plan makes the Diet the practical keystone of the government complex, shifting the visual balance of central Tokyo from private to public, from the imperial domain to the civic realm, it represents a dramatic break from traditional Japanese thinking about the role of government. But while one pays due tribute to the quality of Bockmann's imagina­ tion, one must observe that he was not able to escape the typically baroque sacri-

231 fice of all the other functions of the city to space, positional magnificence, and movement. For instance, Bockmann's scheme contains no sufficient conception of the ordering of business and industry themselves as an integral part of any larger achievement of urban order. With the exception of provisions for future harbor facilities, his proposals group civic buildings in a setting that is physically and expressively detached from business pursuits. Of course, it may be said that this simply reflects the neo-baroque tendency to differentiate urban space along isolat­ ed functional criteria. But even if the point were granted, Bockmann's scheme has next to nothing to say about a host of essential urban needs like housing, sanita­ tion, recreation and industrial activities. More problematically, his plan betrays lit­ tle concern for the neighborhood as an integral unit-his radiating streets and avenues cut impartially through several, densely settled commoners' sections of central Tokyo-circulation clearly taking precedence over maintenance of the coherence of the urban fabric. All things considered, one cannot help but conclude that Bockmann's plan's very grandeur is based upon an ignorance of, if not con­ tempt for, practical human needs. As Fujimori Terunobu observes in M e iji n o Tokyo keikaku: u...[Bockmann] cared more about the staging of urban beauty than practical utility when it came to design^ (297; my translation). In many respects, then, the Government Block Project can be said to have been anticipatory of many other urban development strategies to come, such as Daniel Burnham's Chicago Plan of 1909 and Albert Speer's plans for the reconstruction of Berlin. These lat­ ter-day baroque plans were also, in one way or other, obsessed with grand aesthet­ ic effects to the neglect of practical social needs like improved living conditions. So much by way of a prologue. Let me draw your attention now to the landscape painting in question2. As a graphic, pictorialized source of information no other document among the maps and drawings Bockmann furnished for the Japanese government illustrates so well the extent to which existing buildings would be razed and new streets would be cut to develop fully the plan. There is one caveat, however: because the original painting (which I assume to be a watercolor) appar­ ently no longer exists, I shall be working with a monochrome copy stored in the archives at the Architectural Institute of Japan in Minato-ku. Since connoisseur- ship in a technical sense is not my concern here, I trust this monochrome copy will suffice for our present purposes. Entitled 'Tokio, seen from Hibiya with the new government buildings” the picture—elaborately rendered in perspective—looks out west across Hibiya towards Kasumigaseki from an elevated vantage-point. Al­ though the altitude dictates a scale that is too small to delineate precise physical

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details, it serves to reveal the grandeur of Bockmann's vision. In the center fore­ ground we observe the partially erected exterior walls of a building that presum­ ably will house what the caption printed below identifies as the exposition palace. The site is bounded on the left by tree-lined Nippon Avenue and on the right by the inner moat of the imperial palace. An arch bridge leading across the moat into the military drill ground occupies what is probably the present site of Iwaida bridge. Although there is some indication of human activity, especially in and around the exposition site, save for the presence of several sailing barges sitting idly in the placid waters of the moat, none of the bustle of commercial activity is betrayed. Visible in the distal horizon is the domed Diet building, and around it other government buildings can be descried, including the Ministry of Justice. They are set within an immense, flat landscape that serves not only to suggest the vastness of the imperial metropolis, but also to evoke the rural tranquility of a Constable or Turner. By representing Tokyo as greener than it may have actually been, the painting manages to depict the municipal setting in ways that merge the ideals of pastoralism and modernity. There is, however, something distinctively more peq^lexing about Bockmann's painting: Mount Fuji is conspicuously missing from the image. There is no indica­ tion of the famous summit in the distal horizon, not even its blurred outlines. It is as if Mount Fuji has been whited out. A visit to the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, located on the ninth floor of the Kokusai Building in Yurakucho, confirms this observation. There one can enjoy a sweeping view of Hibiya and Kasumigaseki that broadly corresponds to the imagined aerial perspective adopted in Bockmann's painting. A curator informed me that Mount Fuji used to be a familiar sight from this vantage-point before taller buildings built in the late 1970s obscured the view. In light of his remarks, I judge Mount Fuji ought to be visible somewhere to the far left of the Diet building in Bockmann's painting. Assuming—as a heuristic，“reading” hypothesis, not as a thesis about Bôckmann's working methods—that his painting has been constructed according to the strict principles of Albertian perspective, what are we to make of this glaring geographic absence, this silence, as Pierre Macherey might call it? Given the estimate that Mount Fuji could be seen with the naked eye about 100 days a year from central Tokyo during the middle decades of the Meiji period (Masai 15), we might conjec­ ture that the absence is simply a function of poor visibility conditions. Possibly. But, if we take the painted image as a reliable guide to the circumstances under which it was composed—which of course it may not be (but what matters is that the

229 painting, seen in these terms, invites us to take the image as such)—Bockmann's nearly cloudless view essentially refutes such an explanation. Alternately, we might contend that since it is an architectural representation, Bockmann's painting should not be mistaken for an accurate description of historical topographic condi­ tions. In the sense that they precede the actual development of a place, that they are produced without reference to already constituted objects in the world, archi­ tectural representations certainly do not conform to traditional formulations of mimesis. But this would be to miss the point. For as Gombrich and Goodman both contend, no artistic representation, however objectively constituted, can mirror in summary form the external world beyond the representation; artistic representa­ tions of any kind are of necessity constmcted within the limits of various conven­ tions such as medium, perspective, framing, and symbolism. Therefore, instead of raising the issue of mimesis or verisimilitude in attempting to account for and understand the geographic absence in Bockmann's painting, I suggest that we should raise the issue of representational conventions. We should try to specify what sort of conventions operating in Bockmann's painting might be responsible for the suppression of Mount Fuji. Before I pursue that line of inquiry, however, let me engage in a brief digression, the relevance of which will become apparent shortly. In an anthropological spirit, I want to consider the symbolic significance Mount Fuji held for the citizens of Edo/Tokyo in the not-too-distant past. To this end, I want to invoke an example of architecture from the Muromachi period (1338 1^73) that obviously has no his­ torical bearing on our current discussion, but serves to throw into relief an under­ lying convention that possesses considerable explanatory value. The example I am thinking of is Kinkakuji, or the temple of the Golden Pavilion. Built in 1398 by the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu, the first floor walls of this three-story struc­ ture are composed primarily of shitom ido— \a.rgQ, two-part reticulated shutters, and the second floor has newer m a ir a d o sliding wooden doors as well as latticed win­ dows. These sliding doors and shutters are designed as a system of moveable screens that frame different views of the beautiful outer garden and pond depend­ ing on the ways in which they are opened. In other words, the building is designed to co-opt its natural setting and allow the exterior world to form a part of the inte­ rior. By comparison, in the West, when a garden is laid out, it usually remains independent and is not fully integrated with the building proper. The interior is not designed to blend with the exterior. In Japan, via the shutters an aesthetic continu­ um is established between interior and exterior space. Artificial as it might seem,

228 viii the inside and outside interpenetrate. I believe something akin to what I have just described operates in the basic urban morphological structure of Tokyo. Consider, for example, typical bird's-eye-view maps of Edo that appeared from the late Tokugawa through the Meiji periods, such as “Edo hitomezu”（ 「江尸 一 目 図 屏 風 」 ，Tsuyama Kyodo Museum) by Sukikate Kunzai or “Edo meisho ichi- ran sugoroku” （「江戸名所一覧双六」 ，Edo-Tokyo Museum) by Utagawa Hiroshige. Sharply drawn and meticulously detailed, they are rich sources of infor­ mation about the social and spatial morphology of Edo. From the heights above the Koto district, they always look out west, capturing faithfully the waterfront spaces of Shitamachi where the commoner classes lived. Flowing from right to left across the pictures is the Sumida River, the major artery of the low city. Packed densely along its banks are fish markets and warehouses bustling with commercial energy. These buildings are depicted in great detail, revealing an intense intellectu­ al interest in the actual space of street life, narrow and enclosed. Although the cen­ ter of these maps is occupied by Edo Castle, Mount Fuji, over 80km away, stands as a focal point in the background. It is drawn with bold exaggeration in order to emphasize its role as a point of reference for the city. Indeed, it is the one truly individuated feature in these works, embodying the enduring and unmoveable, providing a psychological tie between the past and the present. A symbol and cultural pride of the citizens of Edo, Mount i^uji was frequently incorporated into woodblock artists' compositions. Torii Kiyonaga (1753 -1815) used it, as did Katsushika Hokusai (1760 1849), who made its moods and caprices the subject of a whole series of prints， the famous “Fugaku sanjurokkei” ( 「虽 獄 二 十 六 景 」 Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji). The mountain was a center- piece for some of Hiroshige's (1797 1858) best prints as well， such as “Toto odemmacho han'ei no zu” （「東都小伝馬町繁栄の図 」 the prosperous Odemmacho quarter of the eastern capital). In this famous print, the artist used the snow-capped peak as the focal point of the entire composition, and he drew the eye to it through the use of the converging lines of the shops to both sides of the thronged avenue. Another of his well-known prints “Nihonbashi yukibare”（ 「日 + 橋 ！ 月」 ， Nihonbashi on a clear winter day) depicts foot traffic crossing Nihonbashi. The next bridge, Ichikoku, can be seen to the right, with the Tokugawa castle behind it. In the distance Mount Fuji rises high above the city. Never mind that Mount Fuji held such charm for the artists of the period that some were no doubt inclined to include it in pictures of parts of the city from which it was not in fact visible. In most cases artists were expressing no more than

227 the truth about the dominant role of the mountain in the consciousness of the citi­ zens of Edo. Indeed, even when enveloped in clouds, Mount Fuji's presence moved Basho to write: t4Kirishigure Fuji wo minuhizo omoshiroki (Though Fuji is hidden，/ In the rain and mist of winter,/ On such a day too，/ There is joy.)” {Nozarashi Kiko). One of the many resonant generalizations offered by geographer D. W. Meinig is this: “Every mature nation has its symbolic landscapes. They are part of the iconography of nationhood, part of the shared ideas and memories and feelings which bind a people together'' (164). It hardly needs pointing out that Mount Fuji is Japan's most important symbolic landscape. The many “local Mount Fuji” that have been christened throughout Japan testify to this fact, as does the following passage from S a n s h ir o (1908), Natsume Soseki's often humorous story of a young man from the country come up to study in Tokyo. At the outset Hirose-sensei reflects on the special appeal Mount Fuji holds for the Japanese:

We Japanese are sad-looking things next to them [Westerners]. We can beat the Russians, we can become a first-class power, but it doesn't make any difference. We've still got the same faces, the same feeble little bodies. You just have to look at the houses we live in, the gardens we build around them, they're just what you'd expect from faces like this. —Oh yes, this is your first trip to Tokyo, isn't it? You've never seen Mount Fuji. We go by it a little farther on. It's the finest thing Japan has to offer, the only thing we've got to boast about. The trouble is, of course, it's just a natural object. It's been sitting there for all time. We certainly didn't make (15)

Needless to say, Mount Fuji has long occupied a special place in the Japanese heart. This, however, is not to assert that emotional attitudes toward Mount Fuji have not been evolving with the passage of time. In fact, the current popular per­ ception of Mount Fuji as a national symbol has in some ways obscured the more traditional image of the mountain as Tokyo's most famous landmark. As late as 1915, Nagai Kafu could devote an entire chapter of his book Hiyori geta (Clogs for bad weather) to the beauty of Mount Fuji as distantly observed from within the city of Tokyo. Comparing Tokyo to cities such as Kyoto, Kafu boasted: “From the cities of Kansai, one cannot see Mount Fuji however much one wishes. For this reason, Edoites have made the good drinking water and the view of Mount Fuji the pride of the eastern capital” （385; my translation). Looking upon Mount Fuji as a

226 kind of last refuge of the Edo spirit, Kafu went on to make an emotional plea to the citizens of Tokyo: 4tWhat makes Tokyo Tokyo is the fact that one can view Mount Fuji from there. . . . Presently, when Tokyo's landscape is being utterly destroyed, my utmost desire is that the people do not overlook the relationship between the national capital and Mount Fuji” （386-7; my translation). As Jinnai Hidenobu, among others, has already explored the relation of Mount Fuji to Tokyo's morphological structure, we need not here repeat his powerful and extensive argument. Suffice it to say that the design of Edo/Tokyo was conceived on a scale that encompassed its wider natural surroundings. Distant vistas were recognized as decisively important elements and were actively incorporated into the layout of the city. Not so in Western, especially baroque, cities where the focus is on interior space. As Carl Schorske points out in Fin-de-siecle Vienna, the baroque vision of the ideal city is built upon the premise of a glorified center: “baroque planners had organized space to carry the viewer to a central focus.” This involved creating uvast vistas oriented toward the central, monumental fea­ t u r e s ,(32). Cities like Paris display this strong centripetal tendency: its streets and avenues all seem to be oriented toward the central human made landmarks-the Arc de Triomphe, the Gamier Opera, the Louvre-the sheer size and magnificence of which require that they be viewed from a distance. Tokyo could hardly be more different. There the urban form displays a strong centrifugal tendency: the city defines and locates itself in relation to its broad natural setting, conforming with the irregular contours of the topography, taking natural features that loom in the distance as landmarks. With the dramatic exception of a city like Venice or Naples, European cities seldom incorporate their wider natural setting. Rare indeed is it for mountains to be included in the profile of a European city, particu­ larly as symbolic objects. Once within the city walls of a European urban space one is surrounded by human-made facades and vistas and typically cut off from the natural world outside. We are now, I think, in a position to account for and understand the geographic absence in Bockmann's painting. It remains an open question, of course, whether the omission was intentional or not. In any case, it should be obvious by now that to call it an embarrassing oversight and leave it at that lacks explanatory teeth. Simply put, I suggest that Mount Fuji's absence from Bockmann's painting is part­ ly, if not entirely, a function of specific predefined baroque habits and conventions for organizing, perceiving and representing landscape. If I am correct in interpret­ ing the omission thus, we can perhaps understand why Bockmann's picture quite

225 literally does not see the same landscape that a typical contemporary Tokyoite might have done. Of course, to claim that Bockmann's painting is blind to the actu­ ality of Mount Fuji because it is structured according to a baroque perceptual framework is also to say that the eye that sees Mount Fuji as part of Tokyo's cityscape is an eye structured by a particular visual practice. Either way, it is an indication of how geography can be manipulated, invented, characterized quite apart from a site's merely physical reality. As a socially constructed representation, then, Bockmann's picture reveals the tensions between accurate depiction and overall impression, between what a picture records and what it conveys, what it says and what it means. Granted my account reduces the overall issue too much, accentuating differences between baroque and traditional Japanese urban morpho­ logical principles in simplistic, schematic terms. Besides, other powerful influ­ ences no doubt were involved in the construction of Bockmann's representation. Nevertheless, I think my account provides the core of an explanation for the absence of Mount Fuji in the painting. As for the fate of the Government Block Project, even before a single course of foundation stones had been laid out, Japanese enthusiasm for the scheme began to wane. The vanity of the project, its courtship of money and beauty, had become ready fodder for the government's enemies. Inoue was singled out as a symbol of Japan's shameful pandering to the West. He was harshly criticized for his continu­ al inability to negotiate an acceptable treaty revision, and his Westernization poli­ cies were denounced for accomplishing nothing towards the necessary political goal. Late in 1887 Inoue was forced to resign. The fall of Inoue was followed by more trouble. On his visit in May of 1887, Hermann Ende (1829 -1907), the artistic partner of Bockmann, had persuaded the Japanese to let him revise the firm's original plans in favor of more “Oriental” buildings. Ende may have thought that orientalizing the proposals would minimize the foreigness of the scheme as a whole, thus mitigating nationalistic objections. But when the new plans arrived in early 1888, the Japanese government rejected them out of hand. Fortunately so perhaps, since Ende's revised plans, calling for municipal buildings with hipped-and-gabled tiled roofs and fanciful pagoda-like towers, inspire unflattering comparisons with typical “Chinatown” architecture. Time was consumed while the went back to the drawing board to pro­ duce acceptably Western-looking buildings. More time was lost when they insisted on better local building materials, especially better brick. Meanwhile, a protracted excavation of the Hibiya site for the Ministry of Justice found it unsuitably

224 marshy. Around this time, a new cabinet led by Yamagata Aritomo concluded that the Germans were too expensive and voted to terminate their contract in 1890, a year before it expired. Without the enabling clout of Inoue, the Germans had no choice but to finish their current projects and return home. As it turned out, not until the mid-1890s did Japan break free of the semi-colonial status to which the unequal treaties had relegated it, and then only after unrelenting negotiations. The sudden dissolution of the architectural alliance between Germany and Japan did not mean that Bockmann and Ende did not have considerable influence on Tokyo's architecture. After all, they were instrumental in determining the Diet's present hilltop site in Nagatacho, albeit not its design. Of Ende-Bockmann's two massive buildings in Kasumigaseki, the Ministry of Justice (1895) and the Great Court of Cassation (1896)， only the former remains， firmly planted on solid ground across from the Sakuradamon gate of the Imperial Palace that the Germans finally judged acceptable. A bilaterally symmetrical red brick edifice with a grand central pavilion, it is built in a style known as German neo-Renaissance. Its high- pitched mansard roofs were lost in the firebombings of March 1945, which gutted the interior and left standing only the steel-reinforced outer walls and foundation. But with the help of several surviving photographs and plans, much of the old building has been restored to its former stately appearance, although the original exterior design has been revised apparently in the direction of simplicity. Today, the building is utilized by the ministry's library as well as the ministry's Research and Training Institute. The Great Court of Cassation, on the other hand, was a classically baroque edifice with mansard roofs and very prominent cupolas. It was undamaged by the war but demolished in 1974 when Okada Shin'ichi's new Supreme Court building was completed. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to deride Inoue's vision of a baroque Tokyo. What politician, we ask, could possibly have thought that Western powers would be so moved by a ceremonial axis or a tree-lined avenue that they would have been persuaded to relinquish their extraterritorial privileges and tariff con­ trols? Yet that is what the Government Block Project was about. The assumption was that by embellishing and beautifying the physical setting of the city, foreign dignitaries could be impressed and political concessions could be gained. As such, visual and aesthetic issues clearly stood supreme. There was a total concentration on the monumental and on the superficial, on architecture as a symbol of pomp and power; and correspondingly, an almost complete lack of interest in the broader social purposes of planning.

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An urban plan basically is a scale drawing laying out the streets and public places of a town or city. Its chief purpose is to divide the urban land into public ways and private spaces, into streets and blocks. Yet the success of an urban plan hinges on its comprehension of general settlement patterns and building styles, economic functions, traffic flows, and on its familiarity, might we add, with local geographical features. Given these terms as a measure of success the Government Block Project must be accounted a disappointment. But perhaps that is the wrong standard to apply. After all, the impetus for the scheme was national pride, not social welfare or historical/cultural preservation. By way of a conclusion, let me turn very briefly to Roland Barthes's 1970 work E m p ir e o f S ig n s. In this seminal text of poststructuralism Barthes famously con­ trasts the fullness at the center of the typical Western city with the evaporated notion of center in Tokyo. He observes that the Western city must have a city cen­ ter if it is not to cause profound uneasiness:

It is here that the values of civilization are gathered and condensed: spiritu­ ality (churches), power (offices), money (banks), merchandise (department stores), language (agoras: cafes and promenades); to go downtown or to the center-city is to encounter the social 'truth', to participate in the proud pleni­ tude of reality'. (30)

By contrast, he observes Tokyo has an empty center:

The entire city turns around a site both forbidden and indifferent, a resi­ dence concealed beneath foliage, protected by moats, inhabited by an emperor who is never seen, which is to say, literally, by no one knows who. (30)

Overly simplistic as it might seem, we should not be too quick to dismiss the rele­ vance of Barthes's forced comparison of the Western city with Tokyo. In terms of Western norms, it may well be true that the Japanese capital possesses an empty center. Where Barthes falls short, however, is in failing to recognize that histori­ cally the primary reference point of Edo/Tokyo's morphological structure, spiritu­ ally, if not politically, has inhered not at its geographic center, but rather in Mount Fuji, situated over 80km away. It is my hope that the foregoing essay has, among other things, reinforced this point.

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