SNA (Tokyo) — Japan construction companies have a long tradition of exploiting government budgets for public works in order to construct structures which citizens do not want and cannot afford. This tradition has found new expression in tunnels for underground highways being excavated in the Tokyo region with little public knowledge or input, and in spite of demonstrable safety concerns.

A new generation of tunnel boring machines have been unleashed around the world, most notably in France where they have been put to work on the twin rail tunnels being constructed beneath the Alps for the Turin–Lyon high-speed railway.

In Japan, plans for the maglev Chuo Shinkansen project–a high-speed train line between Tokyo and Osaka–also envisions heavy employment of tunnel boring machines.

But the underground construction of major automobile expressways in Tokyo has so far received little media scrutiny.

The stakes became clear on October 18, 2020, when a five-meter-wide sinkhole appeared in a residential neighborhood in Chofu city, Tokyo. While no one was hurt, the sinkhole runs right up to the wall of a private home.

Five months earlier, more than a dozen local residents had filed a court motion demanding that underground construction be halted, complaining of tremors and arguing that the ground might become unstable. The sinkhole’s appearance was a dramatic confirmation of the legitimacy of their fears.

The construction which is thought to have caused the sinkhole is East Nippon Expressway Company’s excavation of a tunnel which will stretch from the Tomei Junction in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward to the area near Musashino city. It is part of the Tokyo Outer Ring Road project.

“The construction of the Mitaka interchange continues,” explains Keiko Izawa, a member of the Mitaka City Council affiliated with the opposition party Reiwa Shinsengumi. “No one is able to step forward and say that the Chofu collapse is grounds to end the project. Citizens are simply told by the local government, without any explanation of what is planned, that construction will continue.”

A major point of contention is that, according to the Special Measures Concerning Public Use of Deep Underground Areas, a law enacted in 2000 to facilitate such underground construction projects, local governments and private landowners have no jurisdiction and no ownership rights from forty meters below the surface of their land.

While in most cases the public has no idea what is going on at such depths, the Chofu sinkhole incident proves that it is nevertheless a matter of public interest, with even the lives of those on the surface potentially at risk in the case of a major accident.

For now, the primary overseer of such projects is the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, with some input from national politicians with links to the construction industry.

Izawa argues that the 2000 law needs to be revised or reversed in order to reflect the reality that the general public also has a stake.

Speaking of the broader issues, she continues: “We need to think about how construction companies gathered so much power. We can trace it back to the concept of ‘progress’ promoted in the postwar period in which the construction of tall buildings and highways was promoted in the media as a sign of Japan becoming modern.”

The time has now come, she believes, to address the power imbalance, and to bring light even to the activities of the construction state which are deep underground.

For our full news coverage, become a Shingetsu News supporter on Patreon and receive our daily “Japan and the World” newsletter.