Making one of the world's biggest cities beautiful is a task beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. is unlikely to relish.
Tepco, which is facing $144 billion in cleanup costs in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, has been assigned the task of removing hundreds of thousands of utility poles across Tokyo so that visitors to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics can enjoy the urban landscape without the unsightly items sticking up everywhere.
While this adds to the burden of the embattled company, which is paying compensation to victims after the triple meltdown left it on the verge of default and in need of a government bailout, Yuriko Koike may not have sympathy. The Tokyo governor, co-author of the book "No Power Pole Revolution," wants to accelerate plans to remove the poles from the metropolis — a project that could cost over ¥760 billion.