As the Olympics approaches, Tokyo is beginning to tear down and rebuild, develop infrastructure and modernize the city further. Some are not happy about the Olympic project. Kuma describes himself as “50/50.” While he remembers the success of the 1964 games and believes people need something to lift them after the 2011 tsunami shook Japan, he says, “I understand the [previous] event contributed a lot to growth in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan. But time has moved on and the economic climate now is completely different, too. I cannot predict whether the new face of Tokyo—whatever it looks like—will be a success.”
Japan, which is facing the depopulation of its rural areas, a graying society, and a national debt that may not remain sustainable for long, needs solutions. If not the Olympics, then what? “We have learned already that scattering subsidies about solves nothing,” Kuma says. His company has done work in rural areas to try and stop the rot. Towada City Plaza in Aomori Prefecture, for example, is an attempt to revive a Japanese area outside the urban centers. The center includes a wooden-floored children’s playroom as well as rooms for meetings and classes, and plenty of open space.
The building seems a little exuberant for a population of around 65,000.