Volume 2 | Issue 4 | Article ID 1659 | Apr 17, 2004 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Focus

Government-Business Collusion and Land Giveaways in Central

Kamata Satoshi

Government-Business Collusion and Land Mountains of freight had lined the long Giveaways in Central Tokyo platforms of the station: apples and mandarin oranges and pears, Chinese cabbages and by Kamata Satoshi Japanese radishes, rolls of newsprint for rotary presses, checked baggage sent from hometown Shiosite, a major high-rise office, stations to the metropolis. Fish shipped from shopping, and residential development in the seaports was shunted, still in its freight cars, heart of Tokyo, has been heralded by the media down the track to the nearby Market, as the newest attraction in the city. The first while cars of pigs and steers were redirected to building in the complex opened in December the slaughterhouses behind . 2002, and the project is scheduled for completion in 2006. Here, the Shiodome site's Then, during the economic bubble of the 1980s, history as a major freight yard of the Japanese when real estate speculation sent land prices National Railways is recalled, along with the soaring, this giant, 53.4-acre yard drew the government-business collusion that delivered it attention of Japan's major real estate into the hands of the developers. developers and construction firms, along with the politicians they're connected to. The site THE GREED OF CORPORATIONS FLOCKING was called the "last tract of prime land in the TO PUBLIC LAND center of Tokyo," and it had them licking their chops. Until four or five years ago, a broad, roughly triangular open space lay to the south of During this period, Minato, Chuo, and Chiyoda , extending out from the JR wards in central Tokyo were known as the train line toward . "golden triangle." There were incidents in which elderly people living alone were Looking down from the windows of themurdered in order to obtain their small parcels bullet train, you could see the of land, or where dump trucks were crashed immense open lot, which until 1987 had been into the homes of landowners who refused to the Shiodome freight station of the Japanese sell out to developers. "Jiage" (land sharking) National Railways. For many decades its became a catchword of the day, and because of congested sidings had voraciously swallowed forced sales, the city center was pockmarked long lines of freight trains arriving in the with land undergoing redevelopment. The capital from all over the country. In 1971 the enclosure method once applied to farmland was station handled an average of 8,500 tons of now employed to obtain land in the city. All of freight a day, along with 64,000 packages. this defied the imagination, even for one who Eight hundred JNR employees worked at the had witnessed, as I had, the violent station, along with 2,100 employees of private- development techniques of corporations. sector shipping companies, day and night, around the clock. In March of 1981 the second Ad Hoc

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Commission on Administrative Reform came cheaply was "no problem." This was the into being, chaired by Doko Toshio andambition, after all, behind the privatization of reporting to the prime minister. Its charge was the JNR in the first place. to recommend a national rationalization program in response to what was called a NOW YOU SEE ‘EM, NOW YOU DON'T: THE catastrophic financial crisis--92 trillion yen in NAKASONE NETWORK cumulative national debt. One of the reasons that business circles, with Photographs of the frugal Chairman Doko Doko Toshio in the lead, pursued the eating dried sardines were carried in the privatization of the land-rich JNR (its land weekly news magazines, and he was generally holdings were second only to those of the portrayed as a man of impeccable integrity. He national government) was that there was no was called "Mr. Rationalization," and the remaining land suitable for investment in major expectation spread that any financialurban areas. Privatization would kill two birds reconstruction carried out under this former with one stone. By privatization the chairman of Keidanren (Federation ofgovernment would sell off JNR land holdings, Economic Organizations) would be anvaluable of course because the land was close eminently fair "administrative reform." to train stations, and at the same time business would profit from brokering the stock of the The centerpiece of this reform plan was the newly incorporated railway companies. division and privatization of the Japanese National Railways (JNR). Though this was During a hearing in 1982, the managing widely promoted as a means of reducing the director of the JNR was asked to estimate the national debt and eliminating the JNR's annual income from selling all of the assets of the JNR losses, as of the end of 2003 the national debt at that point in time. The answer was about 70 was projected at 450 trillion yen--five times trillion yen, which meant that the JNR, the what it was twenty years ago. As for the JNR property of the Japanese people, had assets debt, at the time of privatization it stood at 25.5 nearly triple its liabilities. That it was dissolved trillion yen, but it has now grown to 27.2 and turned into a number of new companies trillion yen, while assets have fallen from 11.8 can only be called a political conspiracy. trillion to 2.7 trillion yen. The Supervisory Committee for JNR Reconstruction, established in June 1983, was In other words, the major assets of the national chaired by Kamei Masao, the chairman of railway system have been largely disposed of, Sumitomo Electric Industries and a man while debt has increased. The reason this famous for his aggressive labor practices. happened was that the assets were left unsold Kamei had close ties to then-prime minister when their price would have been highest; they Nakasone Yasuhiro, as did committee member were held instead until the price fell to the Yoshise Shigeya, a former administrative vice- lowest level. (According to figures compiled by minister for finance. Yoshise was also a Maekawa Yuji, an attorney who has researched member of the Economic Policy Research the Shiodome development, some of the parcels Committee, a group that served as a personal of land at the site sold for as little as 23 percent advisory body to Nakasone's private-sector of their peak price.) It is thus little surprise that revitalization campaign, and he later became interest on the debt continued to snowball. chairman of the Sumitomo-related group, Trust 60, and president of a Shiodome-site Still, while the public burden of the railway development company. debt has only increased, for the corporations involved waiting to get their hands on the land The Ad Hoc Committee's report on JNR

2 2 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF privatization was written by At the time of privatization, JNR was estimated Professor Kato Hiroshi and formerto hold 8,150 acres of salable land, worth 7.7 administrative vice-minister for transportation trillion yen. The 53.4 acres of the Shiodome site Sumita Shoji. Sumita was a counselor to the alone were worth 2.4 trillion yen. However, by Japan Project-Industry Council (JAPIC), a group the 1990s the price had fallen to less than half that tied together corporations from the steel, that amount. cement, construction, electric power, and other industries to promote large-scale development After privatization, it was anticipated that the in Japan. jostling to determine who would end up purchasing the Shiodome site for how much The Supervisory Committee for JNRwould soon begin in earnest. It was rumored at Reconstruction served as Nakasone's general the time that the Mitsubishi group would end staff in the extraparliamentary realm of Doko's up with the site, the Mitsui group Ad Hoc Committee. The committee,would get , and Shiodome would go to the commanded by Sejima Ryuzo, a formerSumitomo group. Japanese Army staff officer, formed a behind- However, the government put a freeze on the the-scenes headquarters to carry out the Shiodome sale, on the grounds that it would dissolution of the JNR. contribute to the inflation of the bubble economy. In time, the bubble burst, and the Swearing loyalty to this headquarters was a sale was made in February 1997, ten years trio that comprised the "reform faction" within after privatization. The price was one third of the JNR: Ide Masataka, Kasai Yoshiyuki, and what had been estimated, while in the Matsuda Masatake. These men would later meantime, interest on the JNR debt had been become presidents of the gold-mine companies borne by the citizens. that resulted from the division of the JNR: the West Japan Railway Company (JR West), JR During the first phase of the land sale, the Central, and JR East, respectively. The posts corporations involved--including the advertising were bald rewards for services rendered, the giant , the real estate developer Mitsui "generals" reaping the benefits of the sacrifice Fudosan, Matsushita Electric Works, Nippon of many. Television, Kajima Shiodome Kaihatsu (a subsidiary of a major construction firm), and The JNR was privatized and divided into the JR Mitsubishi Estates--participated in a process companies in April 1987. Surplus properties called "construction planning guidance." were placed in the hands of the JNR Settlement Rather than an open-bid process, this guided Corporation: in addition to the Shiodome method began with a redevelopment plan freight terminal, these included the JNR initially drawn up by government authorities, headquarters building in the central-Tokyo which prospective buyers then bid on Marunouchi district, the yards at the Yaesu constructing. north exit of , the Shinkansen yards at Shinagawa Station, the freight yards at Later, negotiated contracts were signed with the south exit of Station, and the the Housing and Urban Development Omiya switching yard in neighboring Saitama Corporation and Sumitomo Life Insurance. Prefecture. All of these properties have now Kyodo News was the only corporation to been transformed into clusters of skyscrapers. purchase land through open, competitive bidding. During Diet hearings concerning JNR MAJOR MEDIA CORPORATIONS ENCAMP ON privatization, Transportation Minister PRIME LAND Mitsuzuka Hiroshi had boldly pledged that the

3 2 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF sales would be conducted by "competitive When it started operations, the station master bidding," but ten years later, his words had swaggered through the station in a gilded become an empty promise. uniform like a naval officer's. The station was the terminus of the Tokaido main line, running Terms of land use at the site were sweetened west to and , until Tokyo Station by increasing the allowance for the density of opened in 1914. But the elegant building that construction and raising building height limits symbolized the opening of Japan to Western over 200 meters. Infrastructure was further civilization burned in the Tokyo earthquake of improved by connecting the site to the new 1923, and all that survived were the platforms high-tech train line that runs from and the metal zero-mile maker. The ruins were Shimbashi out to Tokyo's waterfrontburied and, in their place, a freight station was development area, by building a stop on the built. new Oedo subway line that loops through the The station served as the main freight terminal city, and by adding an access road to the for Tokyo until the mid-1970s, when metropolitan expressway. It's a complete containerization and computerization combined package, of extraordinary use value. to rationalize freight handling. In time, a new container terminal was built at the Oi wharf On top of all this, factor in the site's prime further to the west and the amount of freight location right next to the in the center of processed at Shiodome declined quickly. The city, and that there was no expense involved in long-term trend of freight transport shifting packaging the real estate or demolishing from railway to trucks also contributed to existing buildings, and it becomes clear the price obtained was absurdly low. The cost was Shiodome's demise. borne by the citizens of Tokyo and Japan, in When the JNR was dissolved, the Shiodome what was nothing other than the collusion of a yard was excavated. Found buried on the site government-led cartel. were a fan-shaped roundhouse and turntables, Construction finally began at the enormous the foundation for the original Shimbashi train Shiodome site in 1999. Now a grove of glitzy station, and the residences of the foreign buildings looms forty-plus stories high, hulking employees who served as engineers and over the tracks of the JR line beyond Shimbashi firemen during the first years of rail operations. Station. But that was not all that was discovered: there EDO-TOKYO HISTORY UNEARTHED AT THE were also ruins of Edo-period estates, for the SHIODOME SITE Shiodome district was the historically rich locus of the overlap between Edo culture and In the plaza in front of the 43-story Shiodome early Western development. City Center building stands a two-story 19th- century English-style stone building. There is a The area was originally an inlet that reached tall flight of stone steps facing a carriage from Edo Bay toward and Marunouchi, porch, tall windows with chevron canopies on in the center of what is now downtown Tokyo. either side of the entrance. The building is a The name Shiodome means "where the tides reconstruction of the old Shimbashi Station. stopped." During the first half of the 17th "Leaving Shimbashi, with one blast of the century, the tidal flats were filled in and several steam whistle," go the lyrics of an old railroad daimyo--drawn by the advantageous location song. The station anchored Japan's firstnear the port-- established their Edo estates in railroad, running 29 km. from Tokyo tothe area, with all of the related buildings: , which opened in September 1872. domain offices and residences, samurai long-

4 2 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF house barracks, shops and tea houses. Ruins of the public at large. And the developers were all of these buildings were discovered, virtually none other than the authorities who had intact, at the Shiodome site. succeeded in crushing the JNR.

These were invaluable relics from theAs a result of the preservation movement, the transformation of Edo into Tokyo. If they had old Shimbashi Station was reconstructed, but been preserved, along with the restoration of even here shops and restaurants are the modern-era Shimbashi Station, they would conspicuous, while historical exhibits are little have become a popular tourist destination. A more than perfunctory. It is transparently clear campaign to preserve these ruins was launched that JR East's sole concern is making money, by Kamiyama Akihito, then chairman of the and it cares little for historical relics. Shiodome local of the National RailwayToday the remains of Japan's historic Workers Union, and Maekawa Yuji, an attorney. transformation are once again buried, now But the effort faced long odds from the start. under eleven skyscrapers. The development, comprising 3.23 million square feet of office JNR DISSOLUTION AND NAKASONE'S space, is a major contributor to the glut in "GENERAL ACCOUNTING" office space now afflicting Tokyo. Red ink and corruption in the management of As we have seen, the land was sold at one third the JNR had become political issues even of the price it would have fetched at the time of before the Nakasone administration was the JNR dissolution. Had it been sold at a inaugurated in November 1982. Calling for a "general settlement of postwar accounts." higher price more could have been set aside for Nakasone's program included an array of a unique historical district with a reconstructed elements. His famous description of Japan as town that incorporated both the Shimbashi "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" for theStation and the Edo-period remains. It would American military, as well as his support for have been of much greater cultural value than revision of the constitution and official visits to Tokyo Disneyland or the reconstructed Dutch Yasukuni Shrine were all precursors of the settlement, Huis Ten Bosch, in Nagasaki. hawkish Koizumi administration. The attorney Maekawa, of the Committee to On the domestic economic front, Nakasone's Demand the Democratic Use of the Site of the policies centered on business-ledShiodome Station, expresses it this way: "It "administrative reform" and "a vital private simply amounted to a disposal of government sector," with the JNR being the prime target. property. Government, business, and politicians Books reflecting Nakasone's program, with colluded to carry this out just as they planned titles like "International Financial Metropolis," from the beginning." "Rebuilding the Capital," and "Twenty-First Century City," filled the shelves of bookstores. Kamata Satoshi is a veteran documentary journalist and author of Japan in the Passing Given this context and unquestioning media Lane: an insider's account of life in a Japanese support for the Nakasone program, "Neither auto factory and Kokutetsu shobun (The the labor movement nor the citizens movement Disposal of the JNR, Kodansha, 1989), among were able to prevent this forcedother books. This article is condensed from a redevelopment," preservation campaign leader two-part series in Shukan Kinyobi, December Kamiyama says somberly. The site was not one 12, 2003 and January 9, 2004. frequented by ordinary citizens, so it was difficult from the start to raise concern among Translated for Japan Focus by John Junkerman

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