Japan's cities have been criticized for lacking the harmony and consistence felt in other countries, especially in Europe. But that's not a result of poor city planning; the disarray of structures in Tokyo and Osaka simply mirror the country's postwar obsession with material wealth, according to architect Tadao Ando.

"The cityscape embodies the value system of the country, and in the case of Japan, it's money," Ando, 60, said during a recent interview with The Japan Times.

"People often say the Japanese don't have individuality, but when it comes to buildings, they show a very strong individuality," he observed. The apparent paradox in this phenomena, he explained, is due to the absence of a shared sense of community.

"In Paris and London, buildings are not structurally harmonious, but a common sense of community creates an atmosphere of harmony," said Ando, who traveled Europe extensively during his youth. More recently, he has handled numerous projects on the continent, including the Fabrica Benetton Research Center in Italy.

Ando, recipient of several international awards including the 2002 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, is a self-made man who studied architecture on his own. He was critical of modern Japan, which he said measures a person's value solely by their alma mater or the company they work for.

He maintained that Japanese people stopped thinking about their personal happiness as the nation's economic growth took off after World War II.

Foremost in their minds were icons of the American lifestyle, such as Cadillacs and large refrigerators, but the ensuing worship of money put highest priority of all on sending children to "first-tier schools," which subsequently guaranteed positions at "first-tier corporations," Ando quipped.

The outspoken Osaka native argued that children have only been taught how to excel in exams and schools do not provide human education.

The consequences are a generation of "self-centered superficial elites," with no affection for other living things, he said.

He finds the paragon of this society at the University of Tokyo, where he has been teaching since 1997. "Forty out of 50 students are merely there because they did well in the entrance exams. They are superficial elites."

But sadly, these are the people who create the cityscape of Japan, he said. In Ando's view, the country is still too undeveloped to have true democracy, which is "the world of real grown-ups," since the democratic process is not merely that of participants drawing up a wish list.

Citizens participating in city planning, for instance, is an easy measure to suggest, but it takes more than dragging recalcitrant bureaucrats to the negotiating table with local residents, he said.

Last year, the architect worked on a 300-year-old Buddhist temple in Saijo, Ehime Prefecture. From the beginning, he was in dialogue with clients and the local supporters of the temple, who in the end pledged to shoulder the entire cost of the 600 million yen project.

Yet, the process was not about hearing their particular wishes. Rather, they worked to reach an agreement through the understanding of the concept the building was to embody, he said.

Ando said that in a democracy, people must understand that although their individual wishes are unlikely to be adopted, they should nonetheless participate in the process to share a common feeling toward a goal.

But given the state of affairs in present-day Japan, the architect says he can only be pessimistic about the nation's future.

Yet, if there is even a glimmer of hope for this country, Ando said he saw it within the perseverance and harmony shown by local residents in the aftermath of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.

"I saw a latent power within the people," he said. "Japan may still be able to revitalize itself once people realize that they cannot survive as long as superficial elites rule."