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Conspicuous Consumption Shapes New Tokyo Skyline
Disparities in income are changing the look and feel of the world's largest metropolitan area. Over the past five years, the number of Tokyo's 100-yen shops -- akin to dollar stores in the United States -- has nearly doubled. Yet over the same period, the number of local outlets of the French fashion house Chanel has jumped from 24 to 37. Cornes & Co., a major dealer of luxury cars in Tokyo, sold almost double the number of Maseratis in 2005 that it did the previous year. Just under half of their buyers were under 40.
As the mega-rich flock to self-contained compact cities -- which are designed to combine facilities for working and living as well as education and entertainment -- cranes on the Tokyo skyline are working at a frantic pace to meet the demand. Next year, Mitsui Fudosan Co.'s Tokyo Midtown project is set to open the city's tallest building as the centerpiece of a complex with a new Ritz-Carlton hotel, pricey apartments and an upscale medical center modeled after Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
  Mori's glimmering Roppongi Hills development boasts $50,000-a-month apartments and a parade of luxury stores. (By Katsumi Kasahara -- Associated Press) |
For now, many of the young and the wealthy are flocking to the creations of Minoru Mori.
The 71-year-old scion of a real estate family, Mori inaugurated his latest city, Omotesando Hills, in one of Tokyo's most fashionable neighborhoods last month. There, well-heeled residents can now live just above some of the priciest retail shops on Earth, wandering sparkling hallways where $1,000 Jimmy Choo heels sell alongside $21 ice creams. "What the Guggenheim does with art, we do with shops," Mori said in an interview at Roppongi Hills. "That is the only difference."
Critics of Mori's cities say they have done away with the organic growth that can typify a modern and vibrant urban neighborhood. Mori, who claims a creative kinship with the grand aesthetic of Le Corbusier, strongly disagrees.
In fact, when Roppongi Hills opened on 27 acres in 2003, it brought luxury to a neighborhood that had long been better known for massage parlors and shot bars.
"I call myself a developer of cities," Mori said. "The postwar urban structures don't fit modern lifestyles anymore. We have moved away from an economy led by the manufacturing industry into those of knowledge-led industries."
Executives of those industries, he said, "are living different lifestyles and need a different environment."
Unlike at exclusive communities in other countries, access to Mori's premier project -- at least the retail portion of the complex -- is open to the general public. It has made Roppongi Hills a melting pot of sorts. Alongside its fabulously rich residents walk far more humble Japanese tourists who literally come by the busload to gawk at the Roppongi Hills lifestyle. They can take a guided tour for $20 a person.
"We came to window-shop and get a look at something that is unreal to us," said Midori Sato, 72, who was visiting Roppongi Hills with her sister from the blue-collar suburb of Kawasaki.
"Where we live, you see futons and laundry being hung in the sun or on verandas," she said. "Everyone's daily life is in your face. But you don't see that here. I would love to die in an apartment on the top floor. Or live there for just one year. But even if all of our relatives put all their money together, we know we could never afford it."
Special correspondents Akiko Yamamoto and Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.
