Skip to main content

BLDGBLOG: Tokyo Secret City

(...) there are “seven riddles” about this underground world, a secret Subtokyo of tunnels; the parallel subways were only mystery number one: “The second reveals a secret underground complex between Kokkai-gijidomae and the prime minister's residence. A prewar map (riddle No. 3) shows the Diet in a huge empty space surrounded by paddy fields: “What was the military covering up?” New maps (No. 4) are full of inconsistencies: “People are still trying to hide things.” The postwar General Headquarters (No. 5) was a most mysterious place. Eidan’s records of the construction of the Hibiya Line (No. 6) are hazy to say the least. As for the “new” O-Edo Line (No. 7), “that existed already.” Which begs the question, where did all the money go allocated for the tunneling?”

Shun even claims to have uncovered a secret code that links a complex network of tunnels unknown to the general public. “Every city with a historic subterranean transport system has secrets,” he says. “In London, for example, some lines are near the surface and others very deep, for no obvious reason.”
—BLDGBLOG: Tokyo Secret City

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tony diTerlizzi and classic D&D monsters

The sixth entry of his series on drawings of classic D&D monsters is up. He's one of my favorite fantasy artists. His work tends toward the charming and cozy, rather than others' focus on machismo or melodrama.

Dollhouse Trailer

Edit: Already deleted from YouTube; sorry if you missed it. This was a trailer for Joss Whedon's new series, "Dollhouse," about operatives who can have their memories altered to become new people.

on sheeps and androids

The movie Blade Runner is very dear to my heart. It is a treatise on the nature of existence expanding on, and perhaps exceeding the reach of the Phillip K. Dick work which inspired it, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Perhaps I have missed out on some greater subtlety of PKD's work, but the point of DADoES pursues the definition of fake, while Blade Runner instead focuses on what is real. Where the replicants in the novel are sociopathic monsters who emulate emotions solely to gain traction against humans who may hunt them, the humans there rely on machines to dictate their own emotions for them. They dial for "energetic determination" or "six-hour self-accusatory depression." As much as the replicants are machines incapable of real emotion, humans are similarly reliant on a machine to simulate emotion for them. In contrast, the movie's central them is spelled out for us in Deckard's apartment, when Rachel is playing the piano. She professe...