The Fresh Start

Roar. Rattle. Bump-bump-bump. Bee-eep beep. Clang. Rat-tat-tat. The illuminated sign at a Nishi-Ginza intersection in downtown Tokyo blinks a tentative 80, then flashes to 82.

Red light. Screech! North-south traffic stops. The number blinks: 81, 79, 78. Ready, eastwest? Engines whine. Clutches out. Getaway! Flash goes the sign: 79, 81, 82--84!

Tokyo being Tokyo and gadget-minded Japanese being gadget-minded Japanese, some campaigner for municipal quiet has dreamed up the idea of erecting an electronic billboard to measure Nishi-Ginza's sound level, translate it into phons (decibels), and transmit it in illuminated numbers to a populace presumably shamed into silence. There it stands, beside a bold sign proclaiming BE MORE QUIET! THE NOISE AT THIS MOMENT: 78 PHONS. STANDARD FOR RESIDENTIAL AREA: 50 PHONS. BUSY CORNERS: 70 PHONS.

Bedrooms and Highways. Nowadays, as Japan prepares for the XVIII Olympiad in October, Metropolitan Tokyo's 10 million-plus citizens don't even look up at the noise-measuring machine. It remains for the newcomer to stand, dazed and deafened, gazing at the measurement of the world's biggest city tearing itself down, building itself up, air-hammering its streets into rubble, ripping out its innards, and riveting itself into ever-more-sprawling, ever-more-ugly bigness.

The tumult and the clamor have been going on ever since Tokyo began rebuilding the wreckage of World War II. But the phons intensified as the Olympics neared. The problem was the low-slung nature of Tokyo itself: a megalopolis covering a radius of about 65 miles, with sidewalkless streets barely broad enough for two rickshas to pass cautiously, most of them lined with open-fronted shoe stores, rice stores, restaurants, confectionaries, raw-fish shops.

Superhighways worth $470 million had to be built over 58 miles of Tokyo to cut the traveling time along vital arteries to Haneda airport and the outlying Olympic sites. Bedrooms had to be built for part of the expected 30,000 visitors; dormitories had to be prepared for 7,000 athletes to sleep in, a pool for them to swim in, arenas for them to wrestle in, ranges for them to shoot on. All the while, the city raced ahead with its normal frenzy of office-building, subway-building, sewer-laying and department-store erecting.

Bear with Us. The result is a pace of life twice as dizzying as New York, thrice as noisy as Chicago. Each evening, out of nowhere, a mob of workmen materializes on a downtown street.

Looking for all the world like shrunken Erich von Stroheims in yellow hard hats, puttees and jodhpur-like work pants, they throw up signs reading: FOR

THE SAKE OF THE OLYMPICS, PLEASE

BEAR WITH us. With that, work lights burst into brilliant glare, diesel compressors roar into life, air hammers rip into the pavement, and dust begins to rise. Comes the dawn. Trucks rumble up loaded with thick lengths of timber. Racing against the clock, the workmen literally pave the torn-up street with the square logs--just in time to let the morning torrent of traffic flood through. Can Tokyo possibly finish the building job by October? There have been doubters. Workmen are still scrambling all over the swooping, tent-shaped roof of the vast Olympic swimming pool and the upward-spiraling conch-shell roof of the Olympic basketball court. A fleet of five truck-trailer, mobile public rest rooms is still under construction for the Olympic games area (nobody seemed to have included enough public toilets in the original building plans), and in the hope of stopping a practice that might offend foreign guests, posters are going up in the subways, pleading: "Let's refrain from urinating in public." The $19.4 million Shiba Prince Hotel and the $38 million Otani Hotel are racing to join the already finished Tokyo Hilton and Okura.

Lure of Wheels. But at least 90% of the halls, arenas and playing fields are ready for the athletes and the crowds. Last gaps in the new $55 million monorail from refurbished Haneda air port to downtown Tokyo Station are being closed. Partially completed elevated highways have cut the road time from airport to city to 40 minutes or so. The high-speed railway that will carry passengers the 300 miles from Tokyo to Osaka in three hours is ready to run--but company officials must figure out how to curb suicide-minded Nipponese who want to be among the first to fling themselves under the fascinating wheels.

So clear has the rebuilding goal become that a new song, Fresh Tokyo. has been recorded by Pop Singer Sayuri Yoshinaga:

Fresh morning comes.

Oh, fresh morning!

Why is Tokyo so appealing and attractive?

Why does it make one dream?

Because, with all its flowery streets,

Tokyo marks a fresh start as

A new Tokyo this year.

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