Dispute centered around redevelopment of historic Tokyo park, iconic stadiums

TOKYO (AP) — About 1,500 trees were cut down to build the $1.4 billion National Stadium for the Tokyo Olympics.

Almost two years after the Games ended, the graceful stadium sits largely unused, has no major tenant, and could cost taxpayers a reported $15 million annually in upkeep. In the interim, the Tokyo Games have been sullied by a string of bribery scandals and insider deals.

Building new sports facilities is again at the heart of a redevelopment plan for one of Tokyo’s most beloved green areas. And Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike is as the center, as she was in promoting the Olympics.

This time it’s a famous baseball stadium and an adjacent rugby ground in a historic park area known as Jingu Gaien. The stadiums are to be razed and rebuilt, making way for a pair of nearly 200-meter (650-foot) skyscrapers and a commercial makeover.

The project highlights the ties among the main actors: the governor, the realty developer Mitsui Fudosan, and Meiji Jingu, a religious organization that owns much of the land to be redeveloped.

Koike, as other governors have been, is a member of the Meiji Jingu board of trustees. Hiromichi Iwasa, the former chairman of Mitsui Fudosan, joined Meiji Jingu's board of trustees after he took over the company in 2011. He remains a director of Mitsui Fudosan.

“The apparent conflict of interest between businesses and policymakers rarely ever raises eyebrows here,” Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Tokyo's Sophia University, said in an email to The Associated Press.

The conflict is sparsely covered by Japan’s mainstream newspapers, and an email about it to Koike’s staff went unacknowledged.

Nakano termed as “very cozy” the relationship between Mitsui Fudosan, Meiji Jingu, and politicians like Koike and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

Mori...