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Comment by NegatioN | Hacker News Reader

I remember this was one thing that really made an impact on me about Japan when I went there as an exchange student.

"Even their manholes are thoroughly done and look amazing! What is even going on!?"

They can still make me smile every now and again when I visit, and I really admire the "Japanese sense of" (I don't know if it's particular to Japan) putting lots of effort into something seemingly mundane; putting effort into something which yields no practical return on investment. I wish there was more of this artisanship in the everyday city-life around us, to keep remind us how lovely life can really be. It's easy to forget sometimes.

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I think you'll enjoy Junichiro Tanizaki's essay: "In Praise of Shadows"[1] on Japanese aesthetics - from toilet design to art of Kintsukuroi. If you haven't read it, it was written more than 50 years ago[2] and still stands true about the Japanese aesthetic culture - it is amazing.

[1][PDF] http://wwwedu.artcenter.edu/mertzel/spatial_scenography_1/Cl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Shadows

I read this book recently and... yeah. It’s filled with stuff like him bemoaning how “western” chemistry and the periodic table of elements are, and speculating about how “Japanese physics” would be.

Oh and that’s not getting into the whole BS about purity and skin color he gets into.

It’s nihonjinron at its finest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron

>I wish there was more of this artisanship in the everyday city-life around us, to keep remind us how lovely life can really be. It's easy to forget sometimes.

Modern cities and buildings are all about quick bucks and ROI.

Even our costly monumental works (museums and such) are built by inflated-ego architects for the bucks, and with no sense of public beauty -- just their modernist or post-modernist personal ideology.

That's one thing that gets me about people suggesting to others to "just move" to find a job, and that they don't have to have any ties to any place (e.g. their home state).

In the end, this means treating every place as a temporary residency, sort of like a hotel, and having no civic concern and pride in it. In other words, it ends with ugly cities and dystopias.

The inverse would be the pride with which people like old New Yorkers loved their city (and of course old Europeans cities like Vienna, Paris, and so on).

Yes, this is very true and I think hints at the reason why those manhole covers can exist in Japan, whereas they'd be unthinkable in North America. The notion would be laughed out of any city budget here.

>The notion would be laughed out of any city budget here.

An ironic thing is that, not caring about immediate ROI and budget justifications in the past (and investing in public parks, nice buildings, etc), is what makes some cities tons of money (from millions of tourists every year).

Will ever a new city (born under the "quick ROI is everything/who cares for beauty" mindset) be as nice as to attract visitors in the future? I seriously doubt so.

(Shanghai, which is largely built lately, was also an treasure of a city for many centuries, and spends a lot in the impressiveness -if not construction quality- of its modern buildings and skyline).

With cities I don't think it's 'ROI' so much utility and pressing budgetary needs.

There is always a war over budget. There are 10 projects that 'they'd like to do but can't'.

Every city wants more buses, has potholes, has sewage problems, needs infrastructure.

'Pretty manholes' might not make it to the top unless someone really, really cares. Or it's part of a secondary budget.

In NSW, Australia, there's many millions for stadium repair. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/29/glady...

For child abuse for poor people? Budget cuts. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-19/nsw-legal-aid-refuses...

Well see that's the thing. Any city councillor who says 'pretty manholes' will be superseded by someone who says 'children and the poor'.

While they’re not quite in the same league, Seattle has some pretty incredible manhole covers too, there are 115 different designs, it would take quite a while to hunt them all down

https://seattle.curbed.com/2014/7/11/10076250/seattle-manhol...

Doesn't necessarily take much of a budget to do these sorts if things. I've seen this for example in towns where the traffic light control boxes are colorfully painted by local artists.

> I've seen this for example in towns where the traffic light control boxes are colorfully painted by local artists.

Lol Graffiti Artists.

Not at all. Here in Brisbane (the AU one) the city council got local artists to do them as works showcasing our city's lifestyle. There's hundreds of different works of art around the place, and they run the gamut from a graffiti-style work to more traditional pieces. It really does help jazz up an otherwise pretty boring piece of infrastructure.

> The notion would be laughed out of any city budget here.

I could see it happening. Portland, Oregon has an art tax that goes towards things like large scale murals in public spaces. An extra 5-10% on the cost of a man hole cover would fit within this, easily.

5-10% isnt realistic. These are carved from aluminum and molds are custom made, and the colored ones are than partially filled with colored resin.

This adds substantial material costs, but more importantly adds a lot of skilled labor to a process which is usually just simple casting.

Never has "because I can" applied more to a single nation. And it's all the more refreshing where things in the West only happen if there's a hustle behind it.

I disagree. The US is "because I can". Japan is "because I should".

> ... putting effort into something which yields no practical return on investment

That can be applied to the Sydney Opera House, though on a slightly different scale.

I've started making the trip by ferry to Circular Quay to have a coffee at a cafe by the water. The Opera House an amazing building and I marvel at the political will required to get it started (and finished). It took 14 years to complete and went 14 times over budget. It had a lottery created to pay for it!

The nearby Harbour Bridge is another construction that went further than was necessary at the time. Both are spectacular.

This has real upsides, but it’s a large part of why poverty is such an issue in Japan. It’s GDP was higher in 1995 for many reasons, but forgoing efficiency has real costs.

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