city branding in japan, a case of nara

its been already 2 years since i wrote my thesis. at that time i often felt weird seeing differences in city branding strategies between japan and other nations mainly in the West. i dont remember clearly anymore how i define city branding actually, but if i remember correctly, it is supposed to be "monolithic consumer oriented representation" (thats what i remember for sure) to create cool images by overlapping built cities by narative cities and to attract the flux of external capitals, or something like that.

for instance, I love NY and I amsterdam are two of most famous city branding campaigns around the world. each of them has its own origins but they both have the common result; overlapping built cities by narative and attracting various capitals from all over the world.

on the other hand, the case of city branding in japan is apparently taking a totally different vector from the global trend. cities in this country are often promoting themselves by creating some weird characters which are often far from cool in my opinion. city branding in japan often doesnt have any "monolithic consumer-oriented representation" but has only names of characters, often neither its objectives, messages, or targets are clear and these aspects make me doubt if what i believe city branding in japan is actually city branding. i leave this doubt aside for now and assume what i believe city branding in japan as city branding. there are hundreds of city branding characters in japan but the most famous (or notorious) example can be seen in nara.

nara is an old city of japan which has been the capital of this country and therefore is having many valuable cultural heritages, mainly buddhism temples, such as houryuuji and toudaiji. because of its importance in japanese history, it is one of the most popular student-trip destinations. and i really dont know why but there are millions of deer around here and all tourists feed them rice crackers (yet they are said to be "wild animals"). thanks to those aspects, you can learn not only about japanese history but also trend of japanese junior-high-students, tour guides, and nature of deer around nara.

nara hosted national capital several times in ancient times and heijoukyou is the most famous one, which was capital between 710 and the end of the 8th century. in order to celebrate 1300th anniversary of heijoukyou, nara decided to promote itself by city branding campaign and started using this guy.

his name is sentokun, designed by satoshi yabuuchi, a professor at tokyo university of the art. he visualizes two major characteristics of nara successfully; deer and buddhism. i think this guy looks rather better than other branding characters. in fact, i wanted to see him when i visited nara last month. when this guy was first introduced to the media, japanese public criticized him as he was not cute enough or rather creepy. yet eventually hes become popular and successfully attracted tourists including me......

is this a happy ending or at least satisfactory outcome of the branding campaign?

im not sure about it. the data i found shows that the number of tourists is rather increasing after this dude appeared on the media. yet city's population and tax income is decreasing. from this aspect, although sentokun is famous enough to be recognized by most of japanese citizens and attract some additional tourists, hes not necessarily a successful branding figure for nara to attract the flux of external capitals to boost its status quo that what city branding is supposed to contribute to.

yet if sentokun is recognized as a successful branding character in this country, i really have to study about city branding of this country.

visiting russia in sado

my third annual trip to sado in the beginning of may started with just a short conversation with a local friend about my plan after the sado trip. whats on my mind was to visit a site of an amusement park which went bankrupt some years ago, named "Russian Village" (although i couldnt make it in the end). this conversation made him recall that there was a russian tomb in the island.

the root of russian tomb goes back to the russia-japanese war in 1904-1905. it seems there were plenty of casualties at the battle on the japan sea, and the tsushima current brought them to the island. people in sado first became confused but eventually they buried enemies' bodies. this fact was long forgotten from the history for about a century, but the embassy of russia uncovered it in 2001 and built a proper tomb for their loss during the war.   

and this is what they built

obviously, no descendants would notice it as its grave marker is written in japanese. it says "russian peoples tomb" by the way. and no descendants would even notice this tombstone is dedicated to russian casualties because of its appearance. 

whats funny about this tomb is that its not only russian descendants unfriendly to find and pray for their ancestors, but its even difficult for locals to find as it is built just behind a roadside small buddhist temple. in fact, we failed to find it in the beginning.

if any of you having russian background who have chance to visit sado island, make sure to stop by (if possible) :P

tokyo wonderland 01 sengakuji

a month and half has passed since the quake hit in northeast part of japan. seemingly besides the lack of electricity, most of the things are back to normal in tokyo. milks back, no crazy purchasing habits anymore. still we cannot be completely carefree about the situation, i guess we really have to move on. so i for now write about a cool thing about tokyo this time.  

regardless of rumors (or some believe its the fact, hopefully not) that tokyo is getting affected by radiation, its not deniable that tokyo is one of my favorite cities around the world still. there are so many beautiful, weird, or cool people, places or things everywhere in this massive city. its balanced with chaos and contradictions. the city has been developed with the most advanced technology and economy yet there are so many downshifters living as they like at the same time. everything is in a package in this city. especially minatoku has an edge of it.

minatoku is the very central ward of tokyo. super rich people are living, super high-tech buildings are uprising, and million of business people are making massive amount of money everyday and night. what people usually imagine from minatoku should be something fancy, like those skyscrapers in roppongi and shiodome or funny designed stuffs in odaiba or elsewhere. yet there are always exceptions even in minatoku. this area is near sengakuji in minatoku. 

to tell the truth, this area is quite famous for its restaurants. ive been willing to go one of them for a long time but unsuccessful yet unfortunately. surrounded by modern built environment, this area looks as if its totally abandoned from development. or maybe its been successfully escaping from development. anyways its awesome that it has completely different and unique character comparing to other parts of minatoku. 

there is a funky tunnel some hundreds meters away from this area which seems to be forgotten as well. as i described sometimes ago, public transportation system is really advanced in tokyo. yet some parts of infrastructure related public transportation system seems to be really rough. this tunnel under the railway has a ceiling of only 1.5 meter height. apparently this tunnel is no use for most of trucks and van type automobiles. 

when ordinary people walk in this tunnel, they can look like giant with ease. 

i think what people tend to imagine from TOKYO should be something fancy, cool, high-tech, and some other stuffs like that, but obviously there are always exceptions. id try to discover these sorts of interesting exceptions in this city and try to spread them to the world in order to contribute to tokyo to re-attract more positive global attentions.

tokyo after quake 3

many labor forces in tokyo got affected by the quake. some have relocated their labors to osaka or hongkong or shanghai or wherever temporary (hopefully), some have changed their working hour in order to (try to) avoid the planned blackouts, and some have been forced to stop operating. my cousin, for instance, works at Tokyo Disney Land and she cannot work for a while as its in a break until... who knows. 

as for my work life, there are/were 4 things changed at least. a forum i was organizing for a municipality was canceled, a survey i was supposed to make was canceled as well, and one of my clients has been facing a huge problem and it has turned out that it cannot pay for a project i am supposed to work for any more, so there is a need to find other sponsors to sustain this project. these three are quite direct influences from the quake. and the other thing hasnt really affected my work itself but my motivation quite badly. its all about the Tokyo Tower.

its always great to see tokyo tower with lights on on the way home after hard days. maybe because im not originally from tokyo and having a strong aspiration for tokyo, what the tower represents (probably ambition that ill achieve something special in tokyo) always cheers me up and recharge my battery for a new hard day. "every dog has its day."    

yet because of after quake electricity shortages, now lights are gone

whats worse, the tower got a direct impact from the quake. because of the quake, the edge got somehow bent a bit. (its not that obvious from the photo tho)

i think there are many people getting cheered up by seeing tokyo tower with full of lights in the darkness after their hard days. its a real unfortunate that at the moment theres no other choice but to accept this dark tower, yet from the bottom of my heart, i want tokyo to be fine to relight the tower to cheer us up:)

and btw, i really should buy a new camera. somehow i cant get rid of this stain any more. 

tokyo after quake 2

the day of the quake made all the distance commuters difficult to go home, yet it was just a beginning of our trial. what followed was the invasion of markets by outrageous consumers. 

although the damage tokyo received directly was relatively small, indirect impact on tokyo was massive. the most notorious example is of course the breakdown of the nuclear power plant. it has led to the lack of electricity in tokyo region, and that has caused planned blackouts (although it seems its over for now). but thats only one of many aspects. 

soon after the quake, people went nuts and started leading weird consuming patterns. many people lost their coolness and started buying whatever they thought they might need. many shops started making big sales of disaster prevention goods AFTER the main big quakes and people went to buy them, again, AFTER the quakes. 

and the outcome of the madness is...

but the real crazy consuming patterns have been found at markets and convenience stores. as i described above, tokyo region has implemented planned blackouts. many areas has been having blackouts sometimes, which means there is no guarantee that fridges and freezers would function properly 24/7. nevertheless, people went to buy literary anything anyways. im kind of sure that there could have been many food thrown away as a result ironically. 

this rampage is getting rather calm down gradually. yet still this sort of trend is expected to continue inevitably. for instance, it has been extremely difficult to get milk recently. this is not because of the influence of radiation or the breakdown of distribution network. it could be partly because of stupid consumers buying millions of cartons but its not the only reason either. the thing is that the quakes and tsunami have left huge damages on carton factories. this means that there are not enough cartons to fill milk in. this could be applied also on paper as well. many paper manufactures and gigantic paper storage were affected by tsunami and liquefaction. and it seems we have shortages of paper as a result. 

regardless of this reality, i still see it optimistically. this is because i know itll be alright in a while. in fact, now we can find bread and bananas quite easily, all chocolates are back, and sometimes i can even find milk when im lucky. these are good enough to make me believe that tokyo is recovering gradually. and if i can be insanely optimistic, i can say that those selfish consumers buying up my milk and yoghurt are now storing their energy in order to contribute for the recovery of northeast (although i dont really think so). 

tokyo after quake 1

when the earthquake hit japan on the 11th march, i was organizing a seminar in Hamamatsucho, tokyo. the quake was big enough to make all the participants and lecturers panic, and soon after the quake, the seminar was naturally canceled. after about an hour of cancellation, we headed back to our office in Nishi-shinbashi, about 15minutes walking distance from where we had the seminar, while afterquakes kept hitting the country. 

what i saw on the way to the office was tremendous amounts of people evacuating from their work places with helmets on. ive learned that tokyo is the biggest city in the world with regards to population, but ive never seen that many people during the day time on weekdays in the CBD. some were just waiting, and some were already walking back to where they live. 

tokyo's public transportation system is super convenient and therefore it allows millions of people to commute from distance. yet its not necessarily resilient for its location (as a city with many natural disasters). relatively big earthquakes and typhoons can easily paralyze the transport system for hours. this time, it stopped almost a half day or longer. this led to the millions of people had choices, either to walk home, take cab home, or stay at hotels or friends' or offices. i believe they all wanted the choice "to head back home by trains" but it was out of order. i chose neither of them, cycling home as usual. 

on the way home, i saw hundreds of taxis and buses stuck by traffic jam, thousands of people walking with their determination to get home (and some failed), and millions of people waiting for taxis hopelessly. as i cycled, i reconfirmed that my choice to live near to the central was a right decision.

although it was crystal clear that heading to stations would never bear any fruits but still some did anyway seemingly. heres the shinjuku station. many were just waiting helplessly, hopelessly. 

when i passed by the tokyo metropolitan hall, the building was full of lights regardless of its time. apparently most of municipal officers had to stay overnight that day. and many police officers had to maintain peace and order.

of course this was not an ordinary thing but an once-in-lifetime urgent matter in tokyo. yet by seeing this chaos and panic, i came to realize that we are way too dependent on what we take for granted which could be of no use when we really need. many news around the globe regarded japan as the most disaster prepared nation, yet obviously we are way too far from ready yet. 

its not deniable that tokyo needs some time to get recovered (let alone northeast) yet we cannot let the lesson from this brutal disaster a waste. i hope tokyo is wise enough to make the most of this bitter experience to make it more livable. this is a crucial point for tokyo to shift its paradigm to another. as a tokyo-urbanite&planner-wanna-be, i really hope i can contribute to tokyo to be wiser. 

tokyo after quake 0

its been almost 2weeks since the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis hit northeastern part of japan. it was unbelievably shocking when i saw the news broadcasting destructive tsunami wiping cities away. whats worse, the catastrophe was not over then. a few days after the quake, the nuclear power plant in fukushima started having huge troubles that make all the residents in tokyo region worried, and some are already evacuating from the city because of the risk and the reality of the leak of radiation. as nuclear power plant stopped producing electricity, tokyo is facing a serious problem of the lack of electricity, and that has led to implement the system of planned blackouts which is quite inconvenient for the people of modern lifestyle. under these circumstances, its extremely difficult to lead an ordinary lives but fortunately, the life in tokyo at least has been getting rather calm recently. 

as things getting calmer, ive been thinking what i should do in this situation, and somehow came to the conclusion that i should let the world know whats going on in tokyo, not in iwate, miyagi, fukushima that all the media broadcast. ive been watching closely whats happening in my favorite city of tokyo since the quake, as a tokyo urbanite representative, whos studied urbanism. 

its really discouraging to see as if all of tokyo is in mourning, yet we cannot let it be like that any longer. tokyo has to be THE driving force of the recovery of northeast. it might sound inappropriate and quite offensive for those who are affected, but there shouldnt be time for tokyo to weep for the loss. some say that tokyo is also a victim but how can it be, comparing to the brutal situation of northeast. tokyo should be strong, should be wise, should move on. i really appreciate that the global community is super supportive for the northeast, but tokyo should take the lead to support. 

i have next to no influence on the global and even local society yet, but by uploading blogs to the world of www, i hope at least I can get some positive influence on my mind. lets see.