Singing the 'towaman' blues

“What is this – North Korea?”

Hi-rise living: floor stacked on floor stacked on floor reaching up to heaven, 20 stories, 40, 50, 60, 64 – that’s as high above ground as you can live in Japan for now but not for long, taller buildings are under construction or on the drawing board, the sky’s the limit and soon even it won’t be.

“Tower mansion” is the name Japan has given these residential behemoths – “towaman” for short – 1515 nationwide at last count half a century after the first went up in 1971, Tokyo home to more than half of them but they’re everywhere – no, they’re not; nine relatively rural prefectures remain towaman-free, for better or worse.

They are the ultimate in luxury living, yet a report in the newsweekly Aera (June 23) invites the question: Were humans meant to live this way? Trouble dogs towamanland. 

Nothing serious, really, just minor day-to-day irritations – which accumulate day after day until you forget how minor they are. That’s when mountains get made of molehills. Minor is minor to the extent it’s regarded as such. When it ceases to be, it’s major.

The human nervous system is a gossamer web, easily rattled. The outside environment dances to rhythms of its own, mostly harsh ones. The two clash, inevitably. The environment won’t bend. The nervous system can’t win. It can, at best, escape. How? By soaring high – high above the fray, the smoke, the noise and clamor of life “down there.” In principle. Not always in fact. Maybe never in fact.

Noise, smoke. Let’s start with noise. Traffic noise, train noise, construction noise, sirens, warning bells, industrial noise, all the sounds that merge into the familiar urban (or not-so-urban) hum, murmur, roar (different sensitivities register it differently) – all that is far, far beneath you up in your aerie – but what’s that suddenly invading your silence? The neighbor’s vacuum cleaner, washing machine, music, children, dog – whatever it is it has nothing to do with you, what’s it doing penetrating your space?

Noise is the most persistent complaint Aera encounters. Soundproofing has its limits. It’s self-defeating in a way – the quieter your surroundings, the more alert the senses grow to sounds they’d hardly notice otherwise.

Smoke. The managing board at one Tokyo towaman tells Aera this story as a measure of how harassing its job of keeping everybody happy can be. The courtyard was littered with cigarette butts. Cleaners cleaned, the butts returned. A kind of silent war unfolded, the cleaners on one side, the litterer on the other, residents of course urging the cleaners on, ever more insistently, with rising irritation, but the litterer, unflaggingly persistent, seemed to be winning.

He was caught in the act at last. Who was he? An elderly gentleman, quiet, friendly, perfectly inoffensive but, as it seems, mildly senile. He was sorry, he meant no harm. Admonished, he promised to stop. But he didn’t. He wasn’t defiant, just forgetful. What to do, how sternly to take him to task? Sympathy prevailed. It doesn’t always but it did here. The cleaners would do their best. Residents would relax their standards. They’ll all live happily ever after. At least try to.

Every towaman has its management board on which residents serve – in rotation theoretically but the honor is more often shirked than sought. The boards tend to become, therefore, little coalitions of the willing composed of the same residents year after year, growing old in office and also, such are the vagaries of human nature, accustomed to if not addicted to the exercise of power, which sometimes results, Aera finds, in a plethora of rules that seem to have no other meaning than that of giving board members an excuse to be bullies.

“There are 54 surveillance cameras in and around our building, operating 24 hours a day,” says one resident of a Tokyo towaman. “You’re seen coming in, you’re seen going out.” Visitors, too, are seen coming in and going out, and such visitors as nursing caregivers, babysitters and delivery drivers are barred after 5 p.m. Is this possible? Is there nothing to be done, no action to be taken? It’s management gone haywire, drunk on its own power. “What is this, North Korea?”

What else? You’re restricted as to repairs and renovations you can make, restricted as to work equipment you can bring in if you work at home, restricted as to friends you can put up for the night, and if you move out the luggage you move out with must pass inspection. This is a scattered sampling drawn from what Aera hears about this building and that; more likely than not they are exceptional cases rather than a general overview; it’s more than possible that the majority of towaman residents are perfectly content with their arrangements – a supposition supported by the popularity of towaman life: figuring very roughly 100 units to a building, multiplied by 1515 buildings, that makes 1.5 million towaman households, a trend expanding ever upward.

Human beings are a peculiar blend of community spirit and self-will. We need each other but can’t live with each other. We like, love and respect each other but discord keeps harmony on its toes. Thus the need for laws, rules, custom, convention, and all the other devices of social organization. They smooth the rough edges but too often become rough edges themselves. We live too close to the wrong people – to people we’re not close to and with whom we have nothing in common except, in the case of tower mansions, the high income requisite for admission. It’s a strain.

A relatively minor one, as challenges to sanity go.

© Japan Today