Kameido Ekimae Koen park, which is located beside the rotary at the north exit of JR Kameido Station in Koto Ward, Tokyo, is popularly called "Hanekame (turtles with wings) Koen."
It looks like one of those parks you'd find just about anywhere. Turning your eyes toward its fountain, however, you will see a statue depicting three generations of winged turtles that look as if they are about to take flight.
Why on earth do these turtles have wings? And where did they come from?
The park opened on Oct. 6, 1964, just four days before the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games. At the center of the park, a round spray pond was built, but there was no statue back then.
I visited the ward's waterfront and greenery office. Tomihiro Nakagawa, 53, the chief of the office, told me, "It has something to do with Tokyo's scheme of the suburban center encompassing the Kinshicho-Kameido districts," a fact that I did not expect to hear.
During the nation's rapid economic growth period from the 1950s to the 1970s, distortions induced by a unipolar concentration of everything in Tokyo, such as the skyrocketing land prices and ever-aggravating traffic congestion, gushed out.
The Tokyo metropolitan government, which had promoted the scheme of creating "suburban centers" to distribute functions of central Tokyo to the three districts of Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ikebukuro, decided in 1982 to add the districts of Kinshicho-Kameido, Ueno-Asakusa and Osaki to the list of suburban centers.
The Kinshicho-Kameido district was considered a "town to grow as a key base of industry, culture and entertainment," while expectations among the local communities grew strong for the redevelopment of their areas.
But while urban landscapes of other subcenters have undergone spectacular changes, with the new buildings of the Tokyo metropolitan government built in Shinjuku Ward for instance, there was no prominent, large-scale redevelopment project planned in Kameido.
The project of building a pedestrian overpass linking the south and north exits of the JR station was canceled in the planning stages.
Meanwhile, Ekimae Koen in front of the station, which had been considered an iconic spot for development of the station-front area, was left neglected.
As time passed, local residents began saying things like, "There has been no progress made at all in what they call the 'redevelopment' project." Finally in 1992, the ward government embarked on renovating the park.
Notes left behind by the late Kiyomi Sakaguchi, a Koto Ward employee involved in the renovation of the park, are revealing.
"Being in Kameido [literally meaning turtle's well], we should add some fanciful aspects with a statue of turtles [to the park], something topical by combining three generations of turtles -- parent, child and grandchild," Sakaguchi wrote.
Sakaguchi, who hit upon the idea of installing a turtle-shaped object at the new park, asked Testuya Matsumoto, 84, a molding artist and acquaintance of his, to create something.
Initially, Matsumoto reckoned that the idea of "a turtle-shaped object in Kameido" was nothing exciting.
But as he imagined turtles with wings about to fly into the sky, he became excited by the interesting aspect of unpredictability and willingly accepted the request.
He worked out a conceptual design of a winged turtle on the back of his parent and a grandchild turtle on top of them.
Jiro Matsumoto, 50, Matsumoto's second son who was then an art school student, was also involved in producing a prototype of the object. Jiro said he often received requests from his father, in particular as to the angle of the wings of the grandchild turtle, "so as to express a sense of energy of a turtle that is about to rise into the air."
The completed object was called "Hanekame '92" and placed in the middle of the park's spray pond, which was reshaped into that of a turtle, while the five-letter words of "Promotion of the suburban center" were engraved on the ground in the direction that the turtles are facing.
"In the three turtles, the local community's wishes for their area's development and progress have been spoken," said Jiro, speaking on behalf of his father, who is undergoing medical treatment at present.
With the passage of time, Hanekame gradually spread into the minds of the local community of Kameido. Likening it to the black turtle-snake, a fabulous animal that is believed to defend the northern direction in an ancient Chinese tradition, Hanekame has been called the deity of the northern district of the ward, and a local festival has been renamed as the Hanekame Matsuri.
About five years ago, a local hero created to represent a particular region and perform in special martial arts shows came on to the scene. The superhero, called Kameider and clad in turtle-shell shaped armor, will under instructions from Kameido's deity Hanekame wield his powerful punches and kicks to defeat evil organizations,
Today, there is even a fan club created for Kameider, who is greatly sought after for events organized by a group of local stores. He is wildly popular among local children, who cheer him on, saying "Go for it, Kameider."
The person who created Kameider is Kaoru Matsuda, president of Artist Crew, an entertainment production company based in Kameido. Matsuda was raised in Kameido and said she got the idea for Kameider from the winged-turtles statue.
"Hanekame is Kameido's deity. When the spread of the new coronavirus is brought under control, I hope people to come here to see Hanekame and Kameider," she said with a smile.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
