Rules, Resilience, Reverie: A Subtle, Sadish, Symphony

Some 37 million people make for the veritable crush of commuters moving towards their destinations, grim-faced, from 7 am in the Greater Tokyo Area (14 million in the metropolitan area).

- ADITI ROY GHATAK

They weave their way through the labyrinthine stations or cascade down the city pavements, especially in downtown Tokyo, almost in pin-drop silence. Not a dropped scrap of paper or a speck of dirt anywhere in sight. One cannot help being impressed.

Just as one is delightfully impressed by the autumnal transformation of the monotonous Tokyo skyline with its grey and brown, tin boxlike structures, densely packed into limited space, climbing astronomical heights-courtesy Nature's overwhelming vivacity. The trees don a fascinating array of colours; gold and yellow, dark green and lemon green, scarlet and orange, with the ginkgo and maple lining the streets, like gorgeously bedecked Indian ladies welcoming the 'baraati' to a wedding, even the pathways laden with the colours of the fall.

Minimalism and modernism, with clean lines and neutral materials, might make sense to the frugal architect concerned with economy of resource use but such a consistently visually subdued landscape does not impress an Indian, accustomed to homes and even offices driven by artistic expressiveness and visual richness. What much of Japan lacks by way of variation in architecture is more than compensated for by these vibrant tunnels of colour.