The Ministry of Construction, like many business and public institutions in Japan, has its own anthem. The lyrics of this Utopia Song, unchanged since 1948, include “asphalt blanketing the mountains and valleys...a splendid Utopia.”
Gone are the days when the Ministry of Construction of Japan simply poured wet concrete over hillsides. Today’s earthworks use concrete in countless inventive forms: slabs, steps, bars, bricks, tubes, spikes, blocks, protruding nipples, lattices, hexagons and wire nets.
After decades of building to no particular purpose and to support the construction industry, the legacy is visible everywhere, with hardly a single hillside standing free of giant slabs of cement built to prevent ‘landscape damage’, even though many of these are located miles away from any human habitation.
