In a dirty little public square just a cigarette-butt toss from Yurakucho Station in Tokyo, workmen are putting the finishing touches to their restoration of a long-neglected feature of the Ginza landscape.
For decades, Taro Okamoto's public art piece "Young Clock Tower," donated to the city in the 1960s by a local chapter of the International Rotary Club, stood its ground against the sun, the rain and the air pollution of central Tokyo. But time eventually took its toll on the work.
Even during the halcyon days of the bubble economy, when parvenus sipped coffee from solid-gold cups in the area's overpriced cafes, no funds were allocated for maintenance of the playful white sculpture with its colorful clock face. It seemed that, like most of their counterparts across Japan, Tokyo officials did not know how to deal with the idea -- or reality -- of public art.