For a few weeks now various members of the family have had an array of health issues that have kept us away from doing anything at the farm. Dad has been setting the pace for this family health breakdown by having a persistent and inexplicable dodgy bladder with toilet breaks at times being only half an hour apart (or the time it takes to put up half a fence panel to put it another way). No it’s not the onset of Diabetes, not cystitis, prostatitis, kidney stones or any other definable condition it seems. A CT scan and consultation with one of the best urologists in our area ruled all those out. It’s just one of those things, which thankfully seems to be clearing up with medication.

So this weekend we took a leisurely trip to the farm and specifically to the local town hall, mainly to go through some administrative stuff concerning our move ; our son’s entry to the local crèche and changing our official address and the like. As my wife quiet rightly said it would pay to strike up a good relation with the town hall staff since we’ll no doubt be dealing with them occasionally from here on. So kitted out in our friendliest ‘we area nice family’ knitwear we made our way to the town hall.

Now reading ‘town hall’, images of some grime washed, tired old building might spring to mind but no no not in Japan. It seems the smaller and more provincial the area is the more assured you can be that the building will look to be an entry for an architectural award in modern design. We were not disappointed ! As we swung into the huge car park devoid of cars save ours we both asked the question, are they open. They were. A few staff swam in an ocean of pristine white office space and all heads looked up as we entered, eager to deal with this unexpected visitation from ‘citizens’.

<pic of town hall>

The Ise-Wanko Road
As my wife dealt with business I looked after Eldan and found in a display rack a brochure entitled the ‘ISE-WANKO ROAD’. Now the geography here may be a bit difficult for those not familiar with Japan but unbeknown to me they are planning to build a motorway across from Tokaido (which is the road that runs along the coast from Tokyo in the East to Nagoya right in the centre of Japan) across the sea to join up with our small provincial motorway here on the coast of the Mie peninsular. This involves building a bridge across the sea of over 20kilometres, this would then join up with motorways leading to the other major city of Osaka way in the West.

The proposed route of the bridge.

I think before going any further with this story, for those unfamiliar with Japan’s governments love affair with construction some brief explanation is best. Japan construction industry is the bedfellow of the government. Retired politicians go on to top positions in the construction industry, which if you think further about it in turn means that junior politicians who fill the higher positions left by those retired politicians then feed jobs to their former bosses in their new role as construction industry executives in preparation for their own post retirement position Construction is not about profit, it is a closed circle, projects are made at government level, to create the need for more concrete production and the installation of that concrete.

By the same logic generally 2 projects are better than 1. There is in fact already a recently constructed motorway that stretches for almost double the length of this newly proposed ‘ise-wanko’ road on concrete piers over the Nagoya harbour estuary and runs only around 40 kilometres away from the start point of the latter. It is an ‘aka-ji doro’ , a road ‘in the red’.

And in the same way, the bigger the project the more attractive it seems to the politician. The government is still getting hot pants over the idea of concreting over the whole of Tokyo bay, an area of 922km2.

The area to be concreted

But so what ? Shouldn’t I be happy with this motorway that will allow me to travel unimpeded to my wife’s hometown in Shizuoka in less than a few hours ? A journey I make quite a few times a year. A motorway that may bring travellers from Tokyo and the Tokaido coast to our area in the summer, sun and beach hunters. Great for business to the area. I think about all this, but no, I can’t be happy. My home, Mie is a peninsular, I prefer the Japanese actually, ‘ Han-to ‘ which carries the meaning ‘half-island’ . An apt description of the experience of travelling to the far reaches of the peninsular where you are removed from everything but the sea, the land itself dissolves into the sea, crumbles like biscuit into a myriad landscape of rocky outcrops. There is no reason to come here, no other destination to travel to except to gaze out at the waves.

Linked by this grafted artery to the never sleeping industrial coastline of Tokaido across the water that stretches for almost 400kilometres I fear it is this that will be lost.

Photo montage of what the bridge would look like, or more precisely half of it, it makes use of an island in the centre of the stretch of sea. Presumeably another bridge takes it to the mainland on the other side of that island.

This scheme is apparently just a small part of a bigger plan that will see the road march on across to the smallest island of Shikoku away to the West then onward linking the far western island of Kyushu. Although I wouldn’t say this is an overt agenda, the governmental process of homogenization of Japan which started with the assimilation of the Ainu and Ryuku (Okinawan) people appears to march on, for Island, and to a lesser degree, peninsular people lead lives forged by the isolation of their location. Lives intrinsically different and inhomogeneous to those on the mainland.

And this is precisely what stands to be lost.