‘Tokyo would lose its soul’: anger over plans to redevelop historic city park

Ginkgo trees at Jingu Gaien, one of Tokyo’s most popular park areas. Critics of the plan say it is ‘like building skyscrapers in the middle of Central Park’. Photograph: Picture Cells/Shutterstock

It is a leafy oasis in a city smothered in paved streets and concrete high-rises; a mecca for sports fans who flock to baseball and rugby matches at its two historic stadiums; and a place of tranquility where, while attending a ballgame in 1978, Haruki Murakami decided to become a novelist.

But if developers and the Tokyo metropolitan government get their way, Meiji Jingu Gaien, a popular park in the centre of Tokyo, will be bulldozed and turned into a commercial hub dominated by two skyscrapers, a hotel and new sports venues.