Looking back on how Tokyo has changed as I begin my ninth decade

TOKYO — I just celebrated my 80th birthday this year along with my 60th anniversary since first arriving in Tokyo as a 19-year-old member of the USAF. How things have changed since that time.

In 1962 only 25% of the residential houses in the city had flush toilets. The rest relied on kumitoriya vacuum trucks to suck out the waste and dump it in Tokyo Bay or transport it to the rice paddies outside the city for use as fertilizer. Also rats were everywhere, infant mortality rates were high, and it was advised not to drink tap water. There were no ambulances and average life expectancy was only 62, 22 years fewer than in 2021. 

What I remember most was the construction, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Endless noise with piercing construction lights on all night. You needed ear plugs and a blindfold to get a good night’s sleep.

The city was getting ready to host the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and, as someone once described it, it was the biggest construction site in the world.

The result was the greatest urban transformation in history. In a few short years, Tokyo went from being a third world city to a hi-tech megalopolis, and filming location of the new 007 movie You Only Live Twice.

The 1964 Olympics came and went — a roaring success — but construction never stopped. It was endless. The 36-story Kasumigaseki Building — tallest in all of Asia at the time — went up, followed by the Shinjuku Hi-Rises, Tocho, the Odaiba complex, the Rainbow Bridge, the Sky Tree, the Yurikamome Train that traverses Tokyo Bay and the new Toyosu fish market. Forty-five new skyscrapers have gone up in the preceding five years.

Coming next is the reconstruction of Odaiba. The popular Ferris Wheel there has been torn down, along with Palette Town. A multi-purpose arena and a new commercial facility are expected to be built on the site.

Following that is a plan to tear down Meiji Jingu Kyujo, move and rebuilt it, along with cutting down several hundred trees in the area. (Unless suspected corruption derails the project.)

Tokyo may be the most transitory city in the world.

The yen-dollar rate is another thing that is subject to frequent change.

When I first came to Tokyo the yen was 360 to one U.S. dollar. It fell to 300 in 1972 and then 240 yen in 1973 after U.S. President Richard Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard. It hit 190 yen to the dollar in 1978.

I remember reading stories in the U.S. media about how State Department officers at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo were suffering from the weak US dollar and had to cut back on daily expenses to survive. How terrible it was, was the general message.

Then there was the gigantic shift after the Plaza Accord of 1985 when the G-5 Finance Ministers got together to engineer a dramatic revaluation of the yen to curb the flood of Japanese exports — cars, cameras, TV sets — that was inundating the world. In the span of 18 months, the yen went from ¥240 to one US dollar to ¥120, thereby doubling its value. The stock and real estate markets exploded. Overnight Japan became rich. By the end of the decade,  the top 10 banks were all Japanese and half the cash in the world was in Japanese hands. People were flying to Hawaii for the weekend, jetting to Sapporo for lunch. Ordinary Japanese could not afford to buy a home so expensive had the housing market become. Many people took out 100-year, multi-generational loans. The yen hit an all-time high of 79 yen in 1995. Many Americans could not afford to live in Tokyo and simply moved back home

The air eventually went out of the so-called asset price Bubble economy — the stock market fell from a high if 39,000 all the way down to ¥7,500 — and Japan was faced with a massive bad loan problem.

It took Japan until 2008 to dig its way out of the problem, just in time for the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman brothers, which triggered a global recession.

The latest yen-dollar crisis was triggered by interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve designed to tamp down post-pandemic spending inflation. It has seen the yen weaken to ¥150 yen and all of Japan seems up in arms about it. It’s now way more expensive to travel overseas. Oil costs more. In the past there would have been an export boom to balance things out, but now it is not likely.

For starters, more Japanese cars and other products are made in the markets where they are sold. This undercuts the export boost from a weak yen. 

On the other hand, however, the stage is set for a tourist boom.

All in all, Japan is in pretty good shape after all these years and so is Tokyo, which, according to so many metrics, is the greatest city in the world. Highest GDP, largest population, safest, cleanest, most extensive, most efficient train and subway system in the world, longest life expectancy, highest literacy rate, most Michelin-starred restaurants, politest citizens, fashion capital, etc. etc. etc.

It is also off-season home to the greatest baseball player in MLB history, Shohei Ohtani, who lives in Tokyo.

When I first came to Tokyo, Yomiuri Giants owner Matsutaro Shoriki was pushing MLB baseball for a real World Series between the MLB champions and the Japan champions. MLB commissioner Ford Frick politely told him Japanese baseball wasn’t good enough. He suggested the Japanese champions play a ‘junior World Series’ with the U.S. AAA champions.

How times have changed. Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, the WBC, and Mr. Ohtani have all helped to change perceptions of the Japanese game.

What will the next 60 years bring?