It’s said that if you dream of Fuji on the first night of the New Year, you’re in for an auspicious year ahead. Such is the symbolic import of the sacred mountain. Yet in modern times, rather than being treated as a spiritual being, it’s been treated with secular disdain, and from the Japan Times comes a rather sad story about it being shut out altogether for the citizens of Tokyo by the forces of commercialism. It concerns the very last clear view of Mt Fuji from a Tokyo street. (It can still be seen from high-rise buildings.)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20121216x2.html
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Haneda airport in front of Fuji, taken from the Ogasawara ferry
In September 2010 Sumitomo Fudosan revealed plans for a 160-meter-high, 45-story apartment building 6 km away in the Okubo 3-chome district of city-center Shinjuku Ward. That would extinguish the view entirely.
In response, the CASF appealed to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a UNESCO advisory body, which adopted a resolution supporting “the development of guidelines to protect the last remaining vistas of Mount Fuji.”
That body also contacted Sumitomo Fudosan and various Tokyo ward offices expressing “serious international concern” and urging authorities to “re-evaluate the development in view of the importance of maintaining the vista.” It may also be significant that UNESCO is expected to decide by June 2013 whether to award World Heritage Site status to Mount Fuji.
Consequently, as Akasaka put it, “If the view from Nippori’s Fujimizaka is lost, it certainly sends a message that people aren’t really concerned about the importance of Mount Fuji as a World Heritage Site.”
View from Tokyo Tower
Though Sumitomo Fudosan has denied a direct connection with such matters, work on the Okubo 3-chome site has halted. “We’re deliberating the construction plans,” said a company spokesman who withheld his name. “Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, we’ve been changing the plans to make the building even stronger.”
Making matters worse, the CASF’s Kaneko said he was “shocked beyond words” in August when the group learned work was under way in Bunkyo Ward’s Sendagi 3-chome district on a privately financed, 11-story apartment block set for completion in November 2013. That building, to be called Fukui Mansion, would completely block out the view of the top and right side of Mount Fuji from Nippori’s Fujimizaka — utterly ruining the view.
Although CASF has urged Bunkyo Ward, the builder and construction company, Seiwa Corp., to lower the height from 11 to seven stories to preserve the view from Fujimizaka, a Bunkyo Ward planning official speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “From a legal standpoint, there is absolutely no problem with building Fukui Mansion.
“Bunkyo Ward cannot forcefully regulate the building height because that would infringe on the builder’s private rights,” he said. “And as the hill is in Arakawa Ward, it is not our job to take the preservation initiative. However, if Arakawa Ward drew up some guidelines, we would cooperate.”
Faced with pass-the-buck responses at every turn, many residents and CASF members are left pinning their hopes on the publicity and awareness generated by events such as Diamond Fuji. These are annual celebrations — usually in mid-November and late January — of the two days on which the sun sets directly behind the mountain’s peak, casting a diamond-like silhouette of the symmetrical cone.
“We want to make sure this year isn’t the last Diamond Fuji,” CASF member Eiko Ikemoto said with feeling. “By gathering people together, we’re hoping to send a message to the builder to preserve the view.”
On Nov. 13, nearly 300 people turned out for the most recent Diamond Fuji, including students, photographers and others from far beyond Tokyo. But as CASF members distributed fliers, Ikemoto pulled no punches when she said: “If we give up now, the view of Mount Fuji from Nippori’s Fujimizaka could be lost for generations to come.”
Plane landing at Haneda airport
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