Capital crimes

IF BEIJING’S hosting of the 2008 Olympics was a sporting success, it was a cultural disaster. It provided the excuse for a years-long orgy of greed, vanity and opaque decision-making that tore into the fabric of an extraordinary city and threw up in its place bombastic creations by star architects lacking in context or human scale. Surely Tokyo, capital of a peaceable democracy and the most civil city on earth, could not commit such crimes?

Perhaps it could. Think back to Tokyo’s last Olympics, in 1964. Then, Nihonbashi, the bridge once at the heart of the city’s merchant and cultural life, had an eight-lane expressway thrown over it, while the area’s many canals were all filled in.