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248 chapter seven Roppongi Reflections empire of signs In 1970, the Five Man Electrical Band wrote a song called “Signs” in which the lyrics complained that everywhere one looked, there were posted signs about what to do and what not to do in a particular area. Their words were quite prescient about how social control would evolve in the surveillance of closedcircuit television (cctv) and the overtly privatized urban spaces of cities everywhere about a generation later and would apply quite comfortably to the New Roppongi of today, a landscape in which posted signs abound to let one know who is welcome and who is not and to teach the neighborhood’s new rules. I return to the topic initiated in chapter 5 under the heading “Sign Language,” as the neighborhood has become, like the title of the famously impenetrable book about Japan by linguist-anthropologist Roland Barthes (1982), a veritable Empire of Signs. Especially in Roppongi Hills and Midtown, but also in the heart of the leftover nightclub district, there are signs everywhere, saying, just like the band sang, that we should do this, we should not do that, and that the sign owners will do the thinking for us. Some of the signs are pedestrian, as in routine “No Smoking” and “No Parking” signs, but other signage is over the top and obsessive. In Roppongi Hills, for instance, in addition to the routine signs, there are fully eight posted commandments for escalator use (e.g., “Do Not Run Walk” and “Please Stand within the Yellow Lines”), five strong admonitions on the helicopter pad at the top of Mori Tower (e.g., “Remain on Wooden Deck,” “Beware Strong Wind,” and “Keep Hold of Children”) and no less than sixteen posted commandments of behavior in Mohri Garden (including “Treat the Trees with Care,” “Do Not Touch the Medaka,” and “Do Not Throw Coins or Stones into the Pond”). The same spirit marks Tokyo Midtown. One sign, on a device with an emergency call button to the police, informs that the area is under camera surveillance and then adds in Japanese and English: “Please do not get into mischief.” Other directives posted on the property say that pets must be placed in a Roppongi Reflections • 249 “cage” before entry into the buildings and that photography is forbidden. It is interesting, I think: here in New Roppongi, in the heart of a photo-taking nation, in an attractive place where good people are being encouraged to go for clean fun, in a complex that houses offices of a giant film and photography company (Fuji), and where there is a very fine photography museum, the sign says, “Do Not Take Photographs.” Maybe their concerns are with architectural photography, which is always difficult to do well and often proprietary , instead of with people photographing themselves, but the signs make no distinctions. New Roppongi is an Orwellian world, at least proto-Orwellian. Not only are there police and security guards seemingly everywhere, but there are also cctv security cameras in every corner of this emerging terrain, and the leaders’ agents are watching. One doesn’t know where the peering eyes are nor how many pairs there are, but the cameras are visible on all sides, and one is aware of being followed and filmed. Perhaps there are big rooms with tv monitors somewhere in the bowels of Mori Tower and Tokyo Midtown filled with sharp-eyed technicians manipulating cameras, scanning left and right, and zooming in for details whenever they like. Beware! It was freer in the nightclub district, I think, even with all the warnings about crime. But here on the private, corporate-owned properties of Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown, one is told directly, again and again, what to do and what not to do, and one is continually being watched. It is a litany of safety tips, because it would be inconvenient if we should get hurt on the property (poor Ryo Mizokawa), as well as rule after rule after rule, all set unilaterally, everything from skateboards and open flames to unauthorized gatherings and photography. Maybe next there will be requirements about how to dress (various business establishments already do this) and about being physically fit and good looking (“modelish” nightclubs do this already). Hmm . . . New Roppongi spins from the old. These thoughts remind me of the “Big Brother is watching us” presentation that author Mike Davis made some years ago in his famous eye-opening account of newly renewed, neoliberal, nonliberal...

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