Every night, 70-year-old Etsuko Goto takes her place on a small foldable chair in a central Tokyo road to protect a row of around 30 trees from being felled.
“When I heard they were going to be cut down, I knew I had to protect them,” Goto said, as she was setting up for another all-nighter. “They’re such beautiful trees, and it really soothes your soul to see this scenery.”
Goto is part of a larger group of residents who sit on Kanda Police Street through the night regularly in defiance of a decision by Chiyoda, one of Tokyo’s main wards, to cut down 32 ginkgo trees to widen the sidewalk and create a new bicycle path.
Although residents don’t oppose the construction itself, 11 of them sued the ward in 2022, arguing that the trees should be able to be preserved and that there was no opportunity for them to speak out before the plan was finalised. Since the lawsuit, more than half of the trees have been cut down.
Trees are increasingly becoming a flashpoint in Tokyo, as another scorching summer puts the issue of climate change and the role greenery plays in cooling cities on citizens’ minds — a paper by University of Tokyo researchers in July found that tree cover in the city fell from 9.2% in 2013 to 7.3% in 2022.
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Concern over greenery is also heightened due to the swathe of large-scale redevelopment projects and skyscraper construction that are taking place across the city, adding to public anger at the lack of consultation.
“We’re seeing more and more of these redevelopments with high towers,” said Jessica Ilunga, doctoral fellow at Keio University and lead researcher of a paper that discusses public engagement in Tokyo’s redevelopment projects. “The speed at which it’s happening is concerning if we’re not slowing down and thinking about the long-term implications of them.”
Among the most contentious of the flashpoints is Jingu Gaien, an area most famous for a row of ginkgo trees that are particularly beloved for their autumnal colors, where trees are being cut down to make way for a new baseball stadium and skyscrapers. The redevelopment plan recently revised slightly the amount of trees that would be cut down due to fierce opposition.
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Elsewhere in Tokyo, residents are fighting to preserve trees in Hibiya Park, near the Imperial Palace, from being relocated, and in Kasai Rinkai Park, Tokyo's second-largest public park in the city’s east side.
In Kanda, what sets the activists apart is their old age. Goto said that while her daughter helps out sometimes, the elderly are the only ones who have time to protect the trees through the night. She added that some of the protesters have even brought diapers to prepare them.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen this activism of sitting by the trees in Japan,” said Satoru Oshiro, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
Due to the Kanda protests, the last time that construction workers cut down trees was in April, Oshiro said. He and his team are working with Keio University associate professor Jorge Almazán, who co-wrote the paper with Ilunga, to suggest ways to widen the sidewalk without destroying greenery.
Chiyoda ward said in statements that in order to make the road safe for children, the elderly, people with disabilities and cyclists, it is not possible to complete the construction plans while retaining the existing trees, and that prior court judgments have dismissed claims that residents’ rights and interests were violated. A court had also granted a provisional injunction to stop some protesters from entering the construction work zone, it said.
In response to the argument by the plaintiffs that there wasn’t enough opportunity for the public to voice their concerns over the construction, the ward says that it has created a special council comprised of local residents and experts to discuss these matters since 2011.
The redevelopment projects are attempting to address the loss in greenery by replanting trees. Chiyoda says it plans to plant new cherry blossom trees that will have appropriate height and branch spreads for the space of the road due to strong requests from citizens and increase the number of trees from 32 to 39. In the Jingu Gaien and Kasai Rinkai projects, the developers also say that they will plant new trees.
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However, Christian Dimmer, associate professor for Urban Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, said that the solution is not sufficient.
“If you cut down 500 trees and plant 700, on the balance sheet, it may look great,” he said. But if trees that are 100 years old are cut down, new ones may not necessarily grow that old or well given weather patterns and the care they need, he added.
Tokyo’s tree canopy cover of 7.3% compares to 22% for New York City, and more than 40% for Singapore. The city government has said it plans to enhance greenery with an eye to the next 100 years, and has a Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 that promotes mitigating the heat island effect of Tokyo through green spaces. But Dimmer says that trees need to take up greater importance in planning.
“We don’t have these big discussions in times when we urgently need to think about more sustainable and resilient urban futures,” he said. “I think it’s absent at the moment in mainstream planning and policy discourse.”
Oral arguments in the lawsuit concluded in early November, and the verdict will be delivered on Feb 6, said Oshiro. He says a successful outcome would not only stop the construction on the street, but would also show that the ward had disregarded residents.
“If we can get a favourable verdict, it would be a major turning point for such issues and give citizens a voice,” said Oshiro. “I believe this case has that kind of symbolism.”
Photos: Bloomberg
