Shibuya used to be a place where art wasn’t authoritarian, and where spontaneously emerging cultures—subcultures—were expressed very freely and without restraint.Even if they emanated from commercial capital—entities like Parco and Seibu—there was leeway and freedom. In this exhibition, I would like to trace the changes that have occurred in Shibuya. With the help of Illustrator Harumi Yamaguchi and photographer Kazumi Kurigami, who have been working since the 1970s, I want to evoke the feeling and atmosphere of the time. Kurigami is eighty-eight years old—he saw the prewar landscape, experienced the war, and witnessed Tokyo rise from the ruins after the war. I would like to show our visitors the path that he has followed in his approach to Shibuya over the years. The title of this exhibition is “Ephemera” (fleeting, momentary) and I want to show that recording ephemera is one of the roles of art.

Shibuya allows change to occur over time. I remember how street dancers used to come at dusk to practice at Mitake Park near the train station. They were very talented, drawing crowds watch them, and they would dance with even more enthusiasm. There used to be similar scenes at Miyashita Park, where each day, the park could be used freely after a certain time. Young people found a space for themselves, and over time they found ways to take full advantage of it. It was interesting, and it was specific to Shibuya. But when there is redevelopment on a massive scale, everything becomes controlled space, and the magic of a place that has developed over time vanishes in an instant. Talk about diversity and tolerance also fades into the background.

I think of a town as a place where people generate a kind of dynamic force from within the community. That’s why restrictions on people gathering are outrageous. It’s true that the people who gather on Halloween have bad manners and can be a nuisance. But this kind of energy is just another part of the city’s vitality. It’s easy to impose restrictions, but they don’t get us anywhere. When Seibu and Tokyu came to invest in the area in the 1970s, machizukuri, or neighborhood-making, was at the very foundation of their thinking. Rather than simply pursuing sales at their stores, they seemed to have also focused on machizukuri.

At a time when all of Japan was sinking after the bubble economy, easing restrictions on large redevelopment projects in Tokyo—starting with Shibuya—was an economic policy devised in 2002 to somehow shore things back up. The government created “Urban Renaissance Urgent Redevelopment Areas,” deregulated zones where it became possible to execute redevelopment projects on a scale that was previously impossible. Now, developers are competing over the scale and height of their buildings, and wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated due to urban development. The result may be that the affluent will congregate in city centers. However, the “have-nots”—young people, the elderly, and the socially vulnerable—are getting poorer and being driven to the periphery. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the Tokyo city government has a vision for creating a city that can be shared fairly by everyone. To change the situation, it’s important to share this message at the grass roots level. This exhibition is extremely significant in that respect.

The obscure places and voids that exist in a city are places where we can feel at ease and places where we can feel at home, even when we are alone. I think that in a sense, this largesse is the true joy of being in a city. It’s true that in the past, private companies created places that are useful to people, even if it was just part of a marketing strategy. So I don’t completely reject the endeavors of major companies. But I think that people should still have the freedom and ability to use these places on their own without becoming consumers. It’s dangerous to be in a situation where we have unthinkingly ceded our rights and aspirations to the state, to the Metropolitan Government, and to big corporations. In regional areas, finding ways to increase the appeal of cities is a pressing issue, and in some places the public and private sectors are working together to try things that don’t exist in Tokyo. Because of the dire situation in some areas—their declining and aging populations—they are willing to bring in mid-tier and young architects who rarely get a chance in Tokyo. And these initiatives have produced some results that are ahead of their time. On the other hand, in Tokyo, large developers and construction companies dominate the design work. I hope that mid-tier and young architects who have had success in other regions will somehow break into Tokyo, putting their new methods and ideas into practice here.

When bombed-out Tokyo started to rise from the ashes after WWII, we forged ahead in the knowledge that we had to boost economic power as efficiently as possible. Our fathers worked hard to buy houses and cars, but today’s young people are okay with sharing. Their priorities are not the same as those driven by the aspirations of the postwar period. As a result, our towns and communities are changing, too. The same is true of the art world, and I have high expectations for the next generation. I see a nascent movement to usher in some reforms and freedoms.

Japanese artists are now subject to critique on the international stage, and while this is harsh in some respects, in other respects it is more liberating. Perhaps Japanese artists will begin to express themselves within a more international context in the future?

Kotao Tomozawa, the youngest artist showing work in this exhibition, was born in 1999. While she has become a star in Japan, the danger is that she could become merely a domestic artist. This is why I would like to take the Gyre exhibition on tour overseas, and we’re starting to talk with potential collaborators. Personally, I’d like to take this “experiment” from a limited space within a commercial building and display it in a space that is a few times larger in an art museum overseas.

The architect Fumihiko Maki, who passed away in June of this year, wrote that we must never forget that urban spaces are not just for throngs of people; they should also be places where we can find peace and inspiration even when we are alone. Maki was from the generation that was charged with creating the new postwar society, and he devoted himself to creating rich urban spaces with a sense of social responsibility and passion. Similarly, the young architects of today are in their own way tackling the issue of how to rebuild society in the wake of the Tohoku Earthquake. What I would like to see in them is an eagerness to change the very systems of society, and a hunger to expand the possibilities of architecture. To that end, it should be beneficial to interact with people working in a variety of genres, including art. All of these things are necessary if we are to work together to gain freedom for our towns and communities.