Creating a "soil" that embraces diversity: The role of cultural and creative facilities represented by the East Japan Railway Foundation for Cultural Innovations.
TokyoYard PROJECT, a part of JR-EAST's urban development project for Takanawa Gateway City (TBD) (hereafter, Takanawa Gateway City), which covers the area around Takanawa Gateway Station, provides the background and the philosophy behind the urban development.
In this issue, we interviewed Maholo Uchida, the Director of The Center for Cultural Innovations Project, about both The Center for Cultural Innovations to be completed in the 2nd district of Takanawa Gateway City, as well as the East Japan Railway Foundation for Cultural Innovations.
Maholo Uchida
The director of the Takanawa Gateway City (TBD) Center for Cultural Innovations Project, East Japan Railway Foundation for Cultural Innovations.
From 2002 to 2020, she worked at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan), where she was in charge of events and exhibitions connecting art, technology, and design with science. From 2005 to 2006, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, U.S., as an overseas trainee with the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and from 2020 she worked at East Japan Railway Company before assuming her current position.
A Cultural Hub Connecting the Past, Present, and Future
A new city emerges in Takanawa Gateway City, which will open at the end of 2024, consisting of four city blocks. Various concepts and functions are merged in the offices, hotels, residences, commercial facilities, and MICE facilities. Moreover, the "Center for Cultural Innovations", which will be in the second district, will be the place for cultural activities and experiments.
The Center for Cultural Innovations is a facility that encourages the concept of urban development in Takanawa Gateway City, which aims for an experimental playground where we create ways to lead a fulfilled life a century into the future.
Through this, it becomes a symbol of the city that brings new creations while accommodating various cultural formats such as exhibitions, live performances, performing arts, events, and places for education.
One of the most important themes for this project is to nurture our "culture" to bring richness to people. Cities such as New York and London, where various cultures emerge one after another, have excellent cultural facilities. In order to make a new city, which advocates "Global Gateway" as the gateway to the world, an internationally attractive place, we believe that it is necessary to have cultural facilities comparable to those places.
The Takanawa area is also home to many historical sites. It includes Tozenji Temple, where the British legation was located at the end of the Edo period, and Sengakuji Temple, where Ako Roshi, the model for the Chushingura story, is buried. “Takanawa Okido," a gateway on the Tokaido Highway established in the Edo period, served as the southern gateway to Edo and is also where Japan's first railroad opened in the Meiji period (1868-1912). The "TakanawaChikutei," a track over the sea connecting Honshiba (now Tamachi Station) to Shinagawa Stop (now Shinagawa Station), which was popularly called "a train running on the sea" at the time, was excavated during development work.This city continues to evolve as old and new culture merge into one, in order to build the future. The "Center for Cultural Innovations" attempts to fulfill its role to enrich the city even more.
The Challenge of a "Comprehensive" Cultural Complex
The main feature of the Takanawa Gateway City Center for Cultural Innovations is that it is a "comprehensive" cultural complex where "knowledge," "beauty," "skill," and "laughter" come together and new values are created through the fusion of various specialized fields.
In Tokyo, there are cultural facilities specializing in various fields of expertise, however, it is lacking in comprehensive cultural complexes. Although policies to support all forms of culture and art helped some facilities to emerge in the 1970’s, most public cultural facilities specialize in a single function or genre. This is due to each facility being under the jurisdiction of a different municipality or ministry, and limited budgets.
In the history of the arts, which has been based on the physical output of art, the necessary hardware functions of cultural facilities have also been divided according to their respective purposes. However, as the spread of digital technology removes the barriers between all forms of culture and art, cultural facilities need to be updated to become cultural vessels in line with this trend. We believe that the number of integrated cultural facilities will increase in the future, and the Center for Cultural Innovations at Takanawa Gateway City aims to be at the forefront of this trend.
The mission of the Foundation for Cultural Innovations, leveraging the strengths of independent management
When creating a cultural space where people, things, knowledge and technology can intermingle, it is important to build a facility (hardware) as well as choosing the right contents (software). To this end, JR-EAST established “The East Japan Railway Foundation for Cultural Innovations” on April 1st, 2022 to plan and operate the Center for Cultural Innovations.
The Foundation is a specialized organization that prepares for the planning and exhibition production of cultural facilities, which generally takes several years spanning from prior to the opening of the facility to after the facility opens. Taking advantage of the continuous self-management, the foundation will operate the facility while planning original content based on the following three missions.
1. Creating the Future
The Center for Cultural Innovations will promote cultural creation with the mission of "transporting culture for the next hundred years." We will always work with young partners who play important roles in the future, discuss the issues that may arise in their time, and do experiments to present the future.
2. Producing Culture
What will the world be like in one hundred years? Technology will certainly allow us to transcend the barriers of distance and language, not to mention race, gender, and disability. We will produce culture with the individuals who are not bound by today's concepts.
3. Handing over Traditions
The future is the continuum of the past. History and traditions are important factors for the future as well. We will appreciate traditional Japanese culture, and its coexistence with nature. We will also combine it with the most appropriate technologies and creative aspects of our era, thereby fusing it with the future.
More than Just Cultural Facilities
These missions are important guidelines to ensure that the projects in The Center for Cultural Innovations are not "completed within the facility”. We do not want to end an event once it has been held at the facility. We must ask ourselves what kind of cultural content will contribute to the future. It is crucial to conduct planning and management while asking what JR-EAST can do to achieve this.
What can JR-EAST do best to support the cultivation of a better culture? The most important thing that they can do to support the fostering of a better culture is to utilize the railroads and the various networks that originate from them. The physical railroad network that has developed throughout Japan, the various facilities in each local city and town such as stations, commercial facilities, hotels, and offices, advertising media, and the vast number of Group companies that cover a wide range of businesses. These are wonderful cultural assets where many different cultures interact.
Many employees of JR-EAST, which protects the safety of the railroads and provides transportation services daily, are not aware of the appeal of these as cultural assets. Our role as a foundation is to reconnect these assets from a cultural perspective and create a culture that only JR-EAST's community development can offer. There are many things that we cannot disclose publicly at this time, but they include projects that question new ways of utilizing public spaces, mobility, Suica and other technologies from a cultural perspective, and projects that incorporate the various regions into the process of creating content.
In addition, since the new town advocates a "Global Gateway," it is necessary for the content to connect Takanawa as a regional unit to Minato City, Tokyo, Japan, and the world, and to foster exchange. We believe that our mission is to create projects that will help culture lead to a rich future by intersecting traditional Japanese culture with the present across time.
The Role is not to Create Culture from Scratch
We have talked about "cultural richness" (as stated in the mission of the foundation). However, what does "enriched culture" mean?
Although, “culture" is very difficult to define, it is "something that is continuously taking place in communities of all sizes”. Eating a meal together happily or eating alone in silence is a part of "culture," and it already exists everywhere and at all times. Whether it is happier or richer depends on various factors such as people, region, and sense of values. A state in which these "differences" exist in a variety of ways. This is the state of cultural richness.
Culture is nurtured continuously, yet it is also unguided. It is the result of "what is there," so it is not possible to intentionally create culture from scratch. The role of cultural institutions is to create a state that can accommodate and support all kinds of differences from a long-term perspective. A culturally nutritious soil where differences can be accepted will lead to new attempts, which brings the “possibility” of sprouting the next culture. This "possibility" is very important when considering culture.
When a private company builds a cultural facility, it is inevitable that the evaluation axis will be based on short-term profit, such as attracting visitors or creating a buzz, because a for-profit company must recover its investment. The difficult thing about culture is that it cannot be measured by a single value standard of economic efficiency, and even if a cultural value is priced and generates a profit, it does not necessarily mean that the same thing will happen next time. Companies basically cannot invest in something that is uncertain and cannot be evaluated, which makes it difficult to make long-term commitments to culture.
That said, public works projects have annual budgets that are funded by taxpayers. In addition, the existence of many rules and regulations makes it difficult to try new approaches, making it difficult to seek economic benefits from public works projects.
Given these challenges, how can we accept the "possibilities" and support a long-term swing in cultural values? JR-EAST's approach this time was in the form of a foundation that plays a semi-public role, capable of carrying out private economic activities while having a public mission.
Culture should be connected, not instantaneous. Cultural institutions should never be allowed to "stop if the business is not good enough," and we must be prepared to "keep going”. At the same time, we cannot create a rich cultural environment by ourselves.
We will invite partner companies, residents, visitors, creators, and other people involved in culture to participate in pre-events and the pre-opening process, in order to connect with each other. We would like to create a mechanism that allows people to feel that they play a leading role in the culture of the city.
Interview and Edit by Takuya Wada
Photograph by Yutaro Yamaguchi
Translation by Yuka Suzuki
Content Direction by blkswn publishers Inc.
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