Comments on: Secret Cities

Secret Cities

Snyder — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 09:56:32 -0800

Hints of a secret city beneath Tokyo Japanese foreign correspondent Shun Akiba says that after examining various maps of Tokyo, and finding large inconsistences, he has found evidence of a huge network of tunnels beneath the city of Tokyo. A large underground city beneath an aboveground one is not unheard of, as Beijing has this one, but the odd part is, (assuming this story is true,) is that Shun says there has been a coverup and a "...conspiracy to silence [me]," with officials being "...defensive and noncooperative..."

By: sacre_bleu

sacre_bleu — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:08:13 -0800

What an interesting story, whether he's mistaken or not. I want to steal it and turn it into a thinly veiled novel. Talk about your metaphors on metaphors. What does a community do if it discovers that its picture of itself - its maps - have been grafted and edited for reasons no one can talk about? What happens to the man who tries to travel the spaces erased from public memory?

By: Stan Chin

Stan Chin — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:13:12 -0800

You're all going to be thankful when Mechagodzilla rises from these secret tunnels when Tokyo is attacked by Mothra and the Robotic Kim Jong Il.

By: jonson

jonson — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:18:59 -0800

Another city with an older city beneath it: Seattle

By: PenDevil

PenDevil — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:30:42 -0800

Morlocks!

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:31:27 -0800

Damn you Stan Chin. too late!..my line....MY LINE *softly weeps*

By: y0mbo

y0mbo — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:35:42 -0800

Moscow is also a good one for the secret underground

By: daver

daver — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:38:40 -0800

You can read all about the city under Tokyo in this book. Well, city might be a bit strong of a term, but it's a good read none the less. Interesting tie-in.

By: chandy72

chandy72 — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:38:42 -0800

Has anyone read Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase" or even the SuperFrog short story in "Quake"? Reading this story totally made me think of those tales -- a secret organization that mysteriously, covertly controls pretty much all levels of existence and threatens to erase from existence a man who publishes a photo of a sheep that shouldn't exist and a subterranean battle for the survival of tokyo, respectively. OK, so sumamries don't do it jsutice, but there's resonance. Really. I'm not paranoid. am I? Is Murakami?

By: bradth27

bradth27 — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:43:41 -0800

"Why am I ignored? Can I be on to something, and there is a conspiracy to silence me? I believe so." Shun sounds like he might need a bit of therapy. Perhaps he needs to take the tinfoil hat off of his head and go outside for a while.

By: lsd4all

lsd4all — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:54:46 -0800

I posted this on plastic a while back about the newly built Denver airport and all it's above ground and underground conspircal bizarreness

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:56:49 -0800

chandy72 - there is no secret society, even though it often seems as if there might be one. But you're not paranoid, really. The strings are all pulled "from above", by the gnostic Demiurge bwahahahahaha!

By: Slithy_Tove

Slithy_Tove — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:59:01 -0800

The postwar General Headquarters (No. 5) was a most mysterious place. Eidan's records of the construction of the Hibiya Line (No. 6) are hazy to say the least. As for the "new" O-Edo Line (No. 7), "that existed already." Which begs the question, where did all the money go allocated for the tunneling?

FROM: DR. MOROBOSHI ATARU SATELLITE TEL: 874-762-918-985. SATELLITE FAX: 874-762-918-986. ATTN:PRESIDENT/C.E.O. STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL & URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSAL. RE: TRANSFER OF USD $21,500.000 (TWENTY - ONE MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS ONLY). I AM A MEMBER OF THE NIPPON GENERAL AND TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING CO. LTD. SOMETIME AGO, A CONTRACT WAS AWARDED TO MY FIRM IN THE MATTER OF IN THE HIBIYA AND O-EDO SUBWAY LINES BY THE JAPANESE MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION. THIS CONTRACT WAS OVER INVOICED TO THE TUNE OF US$ 21.5MILLION DOLLARS. THIS WAS DONE DELIBRATELY. THE OVER - INVOICING WAS A DEAL BY MY COMPANY TO BENEFIT FROM THE PROJECT. WE NOW WANT TO TRANSFER THIS MONEY, WHICH IS IN A SUSPENSE ACCOUNT WITH THE TOKYO SOWA BANK, INTO ANY OVERSEA ACCOUNT, WHICH WE EXPECT YOU TO PROVIDE FOR US...

By: jazon

jazon — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 10:59:14 -0800

chandy - I read "Wild Sheep Chase" last summer and I can see the secret organization connection. The underground world remindes me more of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:13:57 -0800

FROM: DR. MOROBOSHI ATARU Hee! Hen to hen o atsamete motto hen ni shimashoo!

By: myopicman

myopicman — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:40:00 -0800

maybe it's a microscopic dark city, changing one city block at a time and no one remembers how the past version looked at all. saw this off william gibson's blog today (one day, he'll learn how to A HREF...*sniff*); thanks for bringing it here to discuss, Snyder. the link made me start searching through the maps of tokyo's subway system, but i became distracted by the architecture (as always).

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:45:49 -0800

I think Canada has it right, they at least admit they have underground cities, and encourage people to go and spend their dollars there. (Or, in a less sinister fashion, it's a great idea in such a cold climate, since the underground city features miles of tunnels between places in Montreal) There's an underground city (not a secret one) of sorts on London's Docklands. You have access to residential properties, the financial district buildings, a shopping mall, and the monorailesque Docklands Light Railway without ever going outside. There are even large underground works in Croydon, a large conurbation fifteen miles south of London. Locally speculation is high as to what's down there (one of the stronger rumors is that it's a site of a governmental nuclear bunker to where the leaders can flee in times of trouble). Some 'urban explorers' managed to get into a bit of it and posted their exploits on the Web. Underground cities, like Montréal's, fascinate me because they have some sort of 'space station' ideal. The whole idea of arcologies and having people live and work in an unexposed unnatural environment is quite fascinating. Personally, I'd live inside all the time if I could.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:49:21 -0800

And if you're not familiar with the works of sci-fi author J.G.Ballard, he has a short story set in the future where everyone lives 'inside', and has absolutely no concept of 'outside' at all, since the Earth is one giant city. The story revolves around a guy who has 'crazy thoughts' of finding the 'edge' of the city, and ends up getting on an express train which takes him to 700,000th St. (or similar) but then changes straight back to 1. He then realises that the 'city' is a spherical floating ball.. i.e. Earth. Another similar story, in a similar environment, shows how humans have no concept of wildlife or 'flying' in general, since everything is indoors. I'm so far off-topic now.. but what would it be like to grow up with no concept of 'outside', I wonder? Perhaps the Japanese are doing tests with warped humans down in the depths? :-)

By: Grimgrin

Grimgrin — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:50:56 -0800

Speaking of Murakami, his novel "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" also features an underground city beneath Tokyo. Instead of being populated by a conspiracy it's inhabited by a group of amphibious flesh eating little moorlocks called INKlings. They grab subway workers and the odd hapless bum, and the government looks the other way because some of the tunnels have exits right under the Diet (the Japanese parliament). So maybe they're trying to keep him out for his own good.

By: roel

roel — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:06:46 -0800

Rome has some nice underground parts, too. And then you also have Paris' catacombs. It almost seems like life underground is way more interesting than the usual day-to-day living under the sun...

By: Jos Bleau

Jos Bleau — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:08:50 -0800

May I just mention Asimov's Caves of Steel on the subject of underground cities? And Kathy Ireland's imortal "Alien From LA" which is very much 'Mad Max' meets 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'? She ends up in an underground world, where no one believes in a 'surface world'. Except for the secret police, who think she and her father are spies...

By: carter

carter — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:53:14 -0800

For the Brits, there's the Subterranea Britannica site. I love this stuff ... ar

By: aaronscool

aaronscool — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 13:49:29 -0800

Speaking of secret cities just saw a documentary on the congressional bunker underneath the 5 star resort at Greenbrier. Interestingly enough they now offer tours like this.

By: MemeTransport

MemeTransport — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 14:10:20 -0800

Moscow seems to have some amazing crawl spaces as well: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1997/mj97/mj97ilnitsky.html I was in Osaka a few years ago during the very humid Summer season. I wandered around town and wondered where all the people were. After a few days I realized they were there -- I just couldn't see them. There were about a zillion people underneath the city. One can walk for *kilometers* without ever having to see daylight.

By: SenshiNeko

SenshiNeko — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 14:58:02 -0800

A secret city beneath Tokyo? Sounds like someone's discovered the GeoFront from Neon Genesis Evangelion...

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 17:41:37 -0800

There are sixth-century underground "cities" beneath Cappadoccia in central Turkey -- built by the Christians to hunker down and hide from the various hordes that swept across Asia Minor every now and then. They can go down 300+ feet, and they're completely fascinating to visit, with wineries, stables, ventilation shafts, and even tunnels to other underground cities miles away.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 17:50:14 -0800

Slithy_Tove: Thank you, thank you, thank you...brilliant comment. Hey, so I'm easily amused...sue me.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 19:05:59 -0800

Conspiracy theory: There is an underground city, and it is kept secret by the government and a consortium of real estate barons in order to keep housing prices up on the surface.

By: Pseudoephedrine

Pseudoephedrine — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 19:21:57 -0800

E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops(1909). Eerily prescient.

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Wed, 05 Mar 2003 04:41:29 -0800

they're alive, they're awake while the rest of the world is asleep below the mine shaft roads it will all unfold there's a world going on Underground... I grew up in Missouri, and spent much of my youth exploring the inky blackness of the thousands of miles of caves that criss-cross the state. Oh, the things that I saw... Subterranean tunnelling goes back further than man, you see. I learned even more when I studied geology and xenobiology at Miskatonic, my alma mater...

By: timecube

timecube — Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:03:27 -0800

Well, DUH, they gotta keep the giant robots SOMEWHERE...