Cowboy architect sends a tremor through earthquake-prone country

Tokyo Letter: In Ireland, cowboy builders are the butt of endless jokes, but in a country struck by thousands of earthquakes a year, the ability to construct solid foundations is a deadly serious business. So when architect Hidetsugu Aneha admitted recently that he had faked reports on the structural soundness of dozens of his buildings, he was shown little mercy.

Aneha went into hiding following a roasting from media commentators who mocked his bad toupee, his unconvincing mea culpa and his apparent inability to read construction manuals. Before he disappeared, the 48-year-old apologised but said it "wasn't completely" his fault that at least 20 condominiums and one hotel will have to be pulled down because of his fraud.

The Tokyo metropolitan area, which sits on one of the planet's most unstable geological foundations, boasts notoriously tough building regulations - at least on paper. Aneha found in 2002 that he could build faster by simply ignoring the more expensive rules, such as the requirement that concrete be reinforced with thick steel bars and joints double-bolted.

"I felt pressure from the industry's overall trend to seek speed and low cost," Aneha said adding that he was "too busy" to feel guilt. "I started faking reports because I wanted to get more contracts. But as I started to receive more offers, I kept on [faking reports] to get the work done."

The damage from the Aneha scandal is only starting to sink in; government inspectors have been sent to check hundreds of buildings around the country, and Kyodo News has already uncovered at least 14 hotels and 21 apartment blocks unlikely to stand a strong earthquake. A new 14-storey Tokyo hotel, opened in August this year, has been ordered to close.

Factor in the billions of yen in damages, the hundreds of families that will have to find new homes and the suicides of at least two construction bosses linked to Aneha, and the whole business looks very messy indeed. Many are starting to fear, though, that this is only the tip of a very big iceberg.

Competition for construction contracts, which account for about 10 per cent of the Japanese economy, has intensified enormously in the last decade and with it the pressure to cut costs by skirting regulations. Aneha was very unlikely to have been the only bad apple in this shoddily built barrel.

Even more worryingly, a combination of dwindling open land and new construction technology has driven buildings skyward in the last two decades and Tokyo now boasts a fresh crop of gleaming skyscrapers. Nobody really knows how these buildings will stand up if the long-expected Big One strikes, but memories are strong of the 1995 Kobe quake with its nightmare vision of toppled bridges and cracked highways.

What has shocked many here most, though, is how easily the rules can be bent by resourceful men such as Aneha who, as a licensed architect, was responsible for submitting construction documents to local governments.

Once vetted, there is little follow-up and since 1999 private firms have been allowed to check building progress on behalf of these governments.

Cowboy builders and dodgy architects in a heavily self-regulated industry driven by fast money; all in a country where earthquakes regularly kill and injure people - it sounds like a recipe for disaster and it probably is. But perhaps the scariest development is that nobody can agree who to blame for the Aneha fiasco, meaning compensation will be a long time coming.

Aneha himself has already passed the buck. "I cannot shoulder the burden alone. And I am not the only one responsible," he told the press last week.

Tokyo's governor Shintaro Ishihara meanwhile points the finger at central government which "should have properly guided the private sector". Not so, says a Construction Ministry official because "this is an issue that occurred as a result of private economic activities".

This bureaucratic tug-of-war is, of course, no help to the tearful residents of Aneha-built condominiums who have been paraded across TV screens here night after night moving their belongings to temporary shelters.

"I regret the day I ever heard the name Aneha," one woman told state broadcaster NHK this week. "I feel sick when I hear it."