MASTER PLAN FOR TSUKUBA NEWTOWN
w. wsa$M
m WMmim$l>l&
A new town dedicated to
science and education is
rapidly taking form 40 miles
from Tokyo.
by Henry Birnbaum
In the little more than a quarter century
since World War II, Japan has reestablished itself as an industrial
power. Unfortunately, this also means
that Japan has jumped headlong into
some of today's resultant crises: overpopulation, pollution, congestion, centralization, energy shortages, and all
those problems currently classed as ecological deterioration or national societal
stress. It has been an era during which
expansion has outstripped planned
growth, and change has challenged most
of its institutions. The result: The chaos
of success.
Like other nations facing similar problems, Japan has only recently awakened
to its desperate plight. Now, these issues
have become so predominant in the public consciousness that Japan's Premier,
Kakuei Tanaka, rode into office partially
on his domestic plank of redoing the
islands in order to spread the economy
while breaking up ugly industrial concentrations. In fact, Mr. Tanaka's book,
On Remodeling the Japanese Archipelago, written just before his election,
has become a veritable bestseller with
its promise of national redesign. Mr.
Tanaka's position matches a popular sentiment that has been gathering strength
for more than a' decade. It was just
about ten years ago that private and
public groups started to clamor for decentralization and national land planning. Mr. Tanaka promises to react to
that public outcry by taking executive
action.
The natural focus of such problems
has been Tokyo, Japan's capital and
maelstrom metropolis. That city, unhappily, seems to have captured the environmental difficulties of New York, Chicago,
and Los Angeles in one unendurable
package. Early in the 1960's, a National
Henry Birnbaum is NSF's Science Liaison
representative in Tokyo.
Capital Region Development Commission began to explore the means "to
control the inflow of industry and population" and to seek ways of "dispersing" those activities that could do as
well or better outside of Tokyo. At that
time the idea of satellite communities
was first broached. No wide-scale
action resulted from such early considerations. However, one proposal—to
construct a satellite academic city—took
hold, after a fragile endorsement by the
Cabinet. Today, after years of planning
and reprogramming and two years of
limited construction, the Japanese Diet
has fully accepted the proposition and
provided the budget for initiating fullscale construction of Tsukuba Newtown
for Research and Education.
Tsukuba
Newtown is one of Japan's
major commitments to the future.
It is a national project of significant
dimension. In scale it will more than
double the size of the U.S.S.R. science
city just outside of Novosibirsk, which it
remotely resembles. Like the Russian
city, Tsukuba will concentrate almost
entirely on academic and research facilities and will exclude large Industry and
manufacture. At this stage some 44
organizations, principally government
research institutes from nine Japanese
Ministries, are slated to be transferred
from Tokyo's environs to a rural setting.
The general area around Tsukuba Newtown, now housing 80,000 people, will
swell to a population of 200,000 in the
next four years.
The total basic cost to the National
Government for the creation of Tsukuba
Newtown is estimated at $1.3 billion.
The amount to be invested by private
organizations is hard to estimate at this
time, but a conservative guess would
make the share of the private sector at
least equal to that of the public, since
MOSAIC Spring 1973
25
private investment is expected to account
for more than 70 percent of the housing
and almost 100 percent of the local business and services. This would bring the
overall total to $2.6 billion, which still
seems meager for an enterprise of this
magnitude. From 1962 through 1972,
about $140 million was expended by the
Government. This year $240 million will
be spent, with an additional $960 million
expected for 1974 and 1975.
Tsukuba Newtown will be located
on a plain 40 miles northeast of
Tokyo at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba.
It is an agricultural setting out of which
a 10,000-acre, diamond-shaped area running about 11 miles north-south and five
miles east-west is being developed. The
area presently includes six small rural
communities. Two-thirds of this area,
about 6,800 acres, is now under active
planning-development. The remaining
third has been reserved for later controlled expansion. The site is presently
an hour train and a two- to three-hour
car ride from Tokyo, but these times will
be reduced when express travel is introduced, especially after the proposed autoexpressway is finished.
Principal development is to be along
the main north-south diagonal of the
site. At the center of the site, the population core of the city will be housed.
About 50,000 people will find themselves
living in mid- and high-rise apartment
buildings, surrounded by parks, shopping and service facilities, as well as
entertainment-recreation areas. This is
to be the heart of the city, the downtown, a high-density development. The
land occupied will be slightly less than
ten percent of the total site under development (630 acres). Also proposed for
the downtown area are a civic hall, a
library, a museum, and centers for cultural and youth activities. Schools and
playgrounds, proportional to population
concentrations, are planned throughout
the site. The cultural center is supposed
to be adequate for major orchestral and
theatrical performances and could, on
occasion, serve as a conference center.
The periphery of the downtown area
will also be devoted to "living" and
housing. An additional 50,000 people
are expected to occupy one- and twostory domiciles, with some small apartment buildings as appropriate. Again,
appropriate supporting and recreational
facilities will be incorporated into such
26
MOSAIC Spring 1973
areas. The population of downtown and
its periphery is expected to be 100,000,
or half of Newtown's total. Additional
housing concentrations, for about 30,000
people, will be built in the university
complex, the agricultural-forestry science
complex, and the construction-science
complex.
Just south of the heart of the city, but
almost within the downtown area, will
be a section devoted to common-use
facilities. It has not been completely settled what these will be, but it will surely
include those facilities which can increase
scientific interchange or stimulate interdisciplinary or inter-institutional efforts.
More t h a n half of the t o - b e developed-by-1976 area, about
3,800 acres, will be devoted to
government research Institutes and to
Tsukuba University. This area will be
roughly divided Into integrated science
complexes. To the immediate north of
midtown will be the university complex,
including Tsukuba University, and the
National Junior College for Librarians.
An additional area has been reserved for
a branch of the National Science Museum. Newspapers have also mentioned
the possibility that the United Nations
will authorize an International University on the site. The major element of
this complex, however, will be the new
national university, Tsukuba University.
Adjoining the university-humanistic
science complex will be a housing center
and the partially completed National
Disaster Prevention Research Center.
The principal operating facility presently
at the Center in Tsukuba City Is the
world's largest research ''shaking table,"
an earthquake simulation table of 225
square meters on whose surface can be
placed very large structural models to be
tested under varying earthquake conditions. Now under active construction is
a vast hangerlike facility for research
on typhoon and snow damage, and
on weather modification. At present,
only seven of the 80 scientists have
moved to Tsukuba, but all are expected
to be in residence by 1976. Even now the
Center is probably one of the most important laboratories in the world devoted
to earthquake phenomena. Also nearby
but on an independent site will be a communications research center which includes the Telecommunications Technology Development Center of the Nippon
Telephone and Telegraph Corporation.
Along the northwest perimeter of
Tsukuba Newtown will be the research
facilities of the Ministry of Construction,
including the Public Works Research Institute, the Building Research Institute,
and the Geographical Survey. Only an
outdoor "weathering" research facility
now exists, but work on major buildings
will soon be under way.
At the northwest corner of Newtown
is the National High Energy Physics Research Institute of the Ministry of Education. It is now half completed. The
main feature of the Institute is its synchrotron, now under construction with
the active planning participation of some
63 scientists who will ultimately make
up about half of the permanent professional staff. The ring of the synchrotron, 110 meters in diameter, has just
been completed and the magnets are to
be installed during the next 12 months.
Testing is to be completed in 1975, and
operations are to begin in 1976. This
will be the only proton accelerator in
Japan, with a maximum energy of 12
billion electron volts. It will essentially
have the power of the Argonne accelerator, about the sixth largest in the world.
The Institute is to be operated as a
national facility open to academic scientists throughout the nation.
To the immediate south of midtown
will be part of the National Research
Institute for Metals of the Science and
Technology Agency, the National Pollution Research Institute of Japan's new
Environmental Protection Agency, and
a complex of research institutes of the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry, including the highly regarded
Electro-technical Laboratory Involved In
furthering Japan's computer capability
and the National Research Laboratory
of Metrology, which In some respects
carries out responsibilities similar to the
U.S. National Bureau of Standards. None
of these laboratories has begun construction, but all will have begun by
1974, and the latest occupancy date is
scheduled for 1977. Also in the area
south of midtown, the National Space
Development Agency has established a
Space Research Center. This Center is
to serve, somewhat as the Goddard Space
Center In Greenbelt, Maryland, as a
tracking-control point for space vehicles,
and as a research and development facility. At present, the computer building
has been completed, and parts of four
other testing-research buildings are In
operation with an initial staff of 30 people. Ultimately, there will be about 15
buildings with a staff of 450. This Center will be the heart of Japan's own
series of space experiments. Launching
and tracking facilities are located elsewhere on Honshu and on southern
Kyushu, but these are now linked to
Tsukuba. Additional space research,
however, will be undertaken In cooperation with U.S. space research facilities.
MOSAIC Spring 1973
27
Already substantially completed and
in operation is the National Institute for Research in Inorganic
Materials. About two-thirds of the staff,
103, have been transferred to Tsukuba,
with an additional 40 expected by next
year. The laboratories are developed
around particular kinds of equipment,
but personnel are organized into research
groups focusing on special materials.
Each of these groups is expected to spend
three to four years on problems of synthesis and analyses, after which they are
reorganized for studies of other materials
of special interest. This Institute is the
farthest along towards regular operation.
The Ministry of Transportation has
plans to install in this area three meteorological organizations: the Japan
Meteorological Research Institute, an
Aerological Observatory, and a Meteorological Instruments Manufacturing Plant.
No construction has yet begun.
At the southern end of the city's
diagonal axis will be some 11 separate
laboratories of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, all to be transferred
from Tokyo's environs. Although none
has begun construction, almost all are
slated for completion by 1975. Since
many of these do not require complex
facilities, the short construction schedule
can be met. This complex is expected to
have a separate housing facility.
The final set of planned laboratory
transfers lies in the southeast quadrant
of the city. There, institutes in the biological and life sciences, as well as those
in medical research, will be gathered. No
construction has yet been undertaken,
but even now a major new National Life
Sciences Institute is being considered as
an addition to the complex. Programs in
the life sciences are beginning to receive
special attention and accompanying support from the Japanese Government.
Although decentralization and modernization were the initial motivating
forces for the plan, it is now recognized
that greatest impact of the new city will
not be on Tokyo itself, but on the nation's research and educational processes.
Certainly the mere transfer of 120,000
people from a metropolis more than 100
times that size will not be quantitatively
felt. But the concentration within one
small community of major intellectual
forces and the continuous proximity of a
large contingent of research and educational talent may result in new patterns
of inquiry. As the planning brochure
28
MOSAIC Spring 1973
states the hope: "The 'new town' construction program will no doubt contribute to meeting the urgent need for
improving the entire research institute
system of Japan and for a rapid expansion of higher educational facilities."
What will have been achieved is a sort
of community "interdisciplinary critical
mass" which may change Japanese patterns of interaction in the sciences.
Tsukuba University started out simply as a relocation and replacement
project for the aging Tokyo University of Education whose plant in
north-central Tokyo is in a state of
virtual dilapidation. The idea was to
create a modern set of buildings outside
the smog belt. While that objective is
still very much a part of the plan, a drive
for a changed "new-concept" university
has taken hold and seems to be as important as the original replacement plan.
The search for freedom from some of
Japan's rigid educational patterns has
TSUKUBA
NEWTOWN
resulted in a number of changes, including basic amendments to the National
Education Law which have now been
proposed specifically for Tsukuba University and optionally for other existing
national universities. They are being
considered by the Diet. Japanese newspapers report that there is less than
enthusiasm for such change among the
educators from Japan's traditional universities.
Although no buildings are under way,
a full set of plans for Tsukuba University does exist. The campus will compare
favorably in size with most in the United
States. It will dwarf any other university
in Japan. The main feature of the campus is a core of buildings at its center
roughly divided into north and south
components. The northern component
will harbor three general "colleges," each
focusing on broad fields of academic inquiry. The term "college" is a liberal
translation of the Japanese gakugun
which means "cluster of academic interest." The first "college" will concentrate
on the basic sciences and the humanities,
including some of the social sciences,
history, philosophy, and linguistics. The
second "college" will feature cultural
studies and the life sciences, as well as
psychology and pedagogy. The third will
emphasize management studies and the
engineering sciences, including information and systems engineering. The southern component, which is to be completed
first, will have two additional "colleges"
with narrower courses of study, one for
physical education, and one for fine arts.
Also within the core campus will be two
buildings for studies leading to a Masters Degree, one for the social sciences,
and the other for management and for
engineering.
One additional "college," the medical
school with its attached hospital, will be
built outside the core at an end of the
campus. Also on the end will be the
sports complex and other cultural facilities. Both the medical and sports complexes have been deliberately placed
closest to the downtown section of the
city so that the citizenry can also avail
themselves of the facilities. The other
end of the campus has been designated
as the Agricultural and Forestry Center.
In addition to laboratory-instruction
buildings, two large experimental farms
are planned.
Each of the six colleges will seek to
provide a broad range of educational
experience, somewhat beyond that presently being offered in traditional Japanese universities, without sacrificing professional or "major" studies. To achieve
this the university's faculty will be organized into 26 gakkeis, literally translated
as "research groups." Each gakkei will
be associated with an ongoing university
research laboratory whose members on a
rotational basis may devote the whole of
one or two academic years to research
and/or teaching. The gakkei will provide
the "colleges" with their teaching faculty, and representatives of appropriate
gakkeis will have a substantial say in
student curricula development and course
content. A student, on the other hand,
will have a greater opportunity for study
outside of his major field and will be
encouraged to explore the offerings of a
gakkei distant from his immediate interests. Gakkeis are not to be thought of
as traditional departments nor are their
members to be considered as having narrow disciplinary interests. Interaction in
research and teaching is to be the key.
While certain courses will be available
on a continuing basis, new courses can
be introduced without too much difficulty. Unlike traditional universities,
each of these // colleges ,/ will have a
good deal of flexibility. The planners
of Tsukuba University say that the
organization of the University of California, San Diego, and some of Britain's
newer universities served as partial
models for their scheme.
Graduate students will be divided between those slated for a Masters Degree-—students who expect to teach at
the high school level or below or to
enter industry—-and those who will receive a Doctors Degree—students going
into advanced research or to college-level
teaching or above. Masters students will
take a separate course of instruction and
will be educated in the two campus
buildings established for them. Doctoral
students, on the other hand, will spend
most of their five years within the gakkei
appropriate to their studies.
Still another possible change from the
traditional is the talked-about international look of Tsukuba University. The
details are yet forthcoming since none of
the planning documents contains descriptions of this dimension, but at least
two of the key planners have spoken
about having both foreign students and
faculty on campus. There has been some
talk of having one or two chairs in each
gakkei—-amounting to a possible total
of 52 chairs—reserved for foreign visiting professors who will occupy them on
a short-term rotational basis. Some exploration has been undertaken on courses
of an intercultural nature and of language training. Present plans call for
an extensive modern language center using some of the newer tape listening
techniques.
The university is expected to get to
about a 9,000-student body, including
2,000 graduate students. This will almost
double the present enrollment of the
university being replaced. The faculty
will number about 1,500, three times that
of the old university. What is clear now
is that Tokyo University of Education is
really going out of existence and that
Tsukuba University will have a character
all of its own, and quite different from its
predecessor and from all other national
universities.
Now that the Tsukuba Newtown is
entering the active construction
phase, perhaps it would be useful to mention briefly some of the problems which the community faces. There
are the general questions of overcoming
inertia and achieving acceptability. This
is especially important in Japan where
tradition has a strong influence. New
concepts, such as those being introduced
at Tsukuba, must be made palatable. To
some degree this has not been achieved
and there exist segments of to-betransferred personnel who are unhappy
at the prospect of change. Families not
only do not like to be uprooted, they are
also concerned about being removed
from an established center of opportunity-—-Tokyo—which to many is the hub
of civilization. Students, for example, do
not relish the idea of a rural university
no matter how modern or attractive it is
made to sound. Professors do not believe
that culture can be transported no matter
how elaborate the cultural center promises to be. Still others are concerned
about the modularity of the new community and the implicit regulation
therein. If this is to be an intellectual
community, they ask, then where is the
built-in individuality in planning and in
housing? There are even some who are
concerned about the proposed "unnatural concentration" of talent. It will be
a warped community, they fear. Those
who have already been transferred have
their special problems. They feel like
pioneers. None of the projected community facilities are to be seen. At the
moment there exists one housing development, resembling the numerous
tenement-like danchis which surround
Tokyo, with the added burden of remoteness. There is one small food supermarket, country style, to service it. There
are no theaters, no restaurants, no parks,
and no bars. These new settlers can only
look forward to the promised community
or yearn for their old Tokyo neighborhoods.
These problems may require some new
type of social community engineering.
Perhaps this is still to come as construction reaches near completion and the
community begins to fill up. As one incentive to promote the move, the government has decided that transferred
scientists will be allowed to retain their
above-salary Tokyo living allowance,
even though they will be moving into
what are supposed to be subsidized
lower~cost-of-living areas. Many will
choose to continue to live in Tokyo,
however, and make the long commute
to Tsukuba Newtown. They'll "wait and
see." This may be especially true of
those professors who earn part of their
income "moonlighting" in the Tokyo
area. The relation of Tokyo to its special
satellite is something not yet understood
and will bear watching.
Whatever the problems, whatever the
obstacles, the planning phase is now
almost over and construction has begun
in earnest. The die is cast. It is a massive enterprise which Japan has undertaken. Its impact on Japan cannot at
this time be adequately estimated, but
it will surely cause change. •
MOSAIC Spring 1973
29