New National Art Centre in Tokyo

I visited the 国立新美術館 (Kokuritsu Shin Bijutsukan - New National Art Centre) in Tokyo. It’s like a big glass peanut. I love the space. It’s so light in both senses of the word. I had a real feeling I’d been there before, even though it was my first visit. It turns out the architect also designed Kuala Lumpur Airport. I fell in love with that building when I stopped over in Malaysia. I have hundreds of pictures of it from all angles. So, I guess I like the architect’s style, if not the man himself.
You see, the architect, Kurokawa Kisho, is planning to make a run for mayor of Tokyo. His campaign is based solely on the fact that he doesn’t want the current mayor to be re-elected. He seems to have no other policies or ideas for how to improve the lives of Tokyoites.
It’s a fairly dirty story. The current mayor, Ishihara, wants to bring the Olympics to Tokyo. He has commissioned lots of new sites and stadia. It seems he ignored his old friend and put forward the designs of Ando Tadao, probably Japan’s most famous architect.
In other words, an unqualified, inexperienced architect is running for mayor to snub the friend who snubbed him!
The problem is that name-value counts for far too much in Japanese politics. If you are even a little famous and have a recognised name (he’s a celebrated architect married to an actress and TV personality) you stand a good chance of being elected.
The are many stories of near-nepotism in Japan. A politician passes away. Their son or daughter is taken out of a foreign university and comes home to win the seat without the slightest political background or training. In Japan, it’s all in the name.

More scandal from the art centre

Let me libel a few more people while I’m at it.
In the New Art Centre there was a big hoopla about the opening of Paul Bocuse’s first Tokyo restaurant. Great things were expected from this world-renowned French chef. But it hasn’t gone as well as hoped.
You can see the restaurant perched there on its big, concrete cone. Quite a dramatic location, it’s works very well at lunchtime.
The problem is at dinnertime. The museum closes at 6pm. So restaurant goers must scuttle in their finery past torch-wielding security guards to a special side entrance. Then they spend several hundred Euro to sit in a cavernous, echoing dome, while in the lobby below cleaners polish the floor and stack chairs. The designers just didn’t think it through.
And as all the food passes up through dumb waiter in the centre of the cone, it has reportedly been arriving in less than cordon bleu condition.
A case of more money than sense, methinks.