The aestheticisation of the city is one of the main concerns of a global city that attempts to attract tourists from all over the world. In the case of Tokyo, power poles is one alleged concern spoiling the beauty of the cityscape. Japanese cities can be described, literally, as 'wired cities', since there are myriad electric cables running overhead and countless poles lining the streets and lanes. However, in retrospect, power poles have had a historical role as an important mediating infrastructure in Japanese cities, having supported the rapid spread of new technologies, such as telephone, electricity, cable radio, cable TV, and optical fibre Internet. A distinctive characteristic of power poles in Japan can be pointed out as the 'perpetuation of the temporal'. They are temporal because, in terms of city planning, power poles were understood since the beginning of the Meiji era (1868–1912) as temporary ways to set up telegraph and electricity networks as rapidly as possible. They are perpetuated because strong poles made of concrete replaced the feeble wooden poles after WWII, aiming for long-term endurance. In this paper, the historical relationships between power poles and the cityscape in Japan are investigated in order to propose a new way to understand the multiple dimensions of the urban aesthetics.
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