Tokyo

Japan's capital comprises cities of packed streets, neon logos and the ancient tucked away alongside the modern.
Photo © by Sonny Santos, used by permission.

Tokyo (東京 Tookyoo), Japan's capital, is often thought of as a single city, lying at the heart of the world's most heavily populated region. However, Tokyo is really a metropolitan region, a network of many cities and communities, sprawling outwards across the Kanto region of Honshu island. The population was 12,659,000 in 2006, with millions more within the Greater Tokyo Area.

Literally meaning 'East Capital', Tokyo has been Japan's de facto capital only since 1868, at a time when the country was ending hundreds of years of self-imposed isolation. Its original name was Edo (江戸), meaning 'estuary'; the city grew in power and prestige over the centuries, eventually becoming the capital on the move of the Emperer Meiji (明治天皇 Meiji-tennoo) from Kyoto.

Parks

Urban parks became an increasingly common feature of European and American cities in the 19th century and elicited the interest of visiting Japanese leaders. The concept of the urban public park was introduced to Japan by the country's new Meiji oligarchs within the context of the radical reshaping of Tokyo. Representative are two sites. The first is a hill in the north of the city with long-standing associations with the Tokugawa shogunate; the second is a parade ground next to the site of the castle-palace. The hill became a park in name but in practice remained a site for public celebration, while the parade ground was transformed with considerable difficulty and over many years into a consciously fashioned recreational space. The two show the contrasts and hesitations that surrounded changing understandings of the role of the capital city and its shifting symbolic landscapes, as well as the gradual process of domestication of the concept of a public park.

Culture

The Horyuji Homotsukan [Hall of Horyuji Treasures] of the Tokyo National Museum displays items from the Horyuji temple in Nara Prefecture. Meiji officials sought to implement cultural policies modeled on those they had seen in action in Europe in the 1860's. Machida Hisanari (1839-97), "father" of the National Museum, served both these interests and used the collection to promote the restored monarchy.

History

World War II

As a major wartime metropolis. The experience of everyday life in Tokyo dramatically changed with munitions-based heavy industrialization and the loss of liberties and urban culture as the state mobilized for total war. The sensitive issue of how to defend the capital from air attack then became a pressing concern for urban planners, government officials, and even fiction writers. While the government assigned Tokyoites the responsibility of protecting the Imperial capital, devastating American fire bombing raids revealed in an instant the impossibility of carrying out such a task. After a long interval of silence, private memories of the catastrophic fire bombings became public when air raid survivors and others joined together to write a history of the raids and then attempt to build a museum from which to transmit the experience of war.

1945-1970

The destroyed metropolis became the base from which the United States under Douglas MacArthur administered Japan for several years. During this period there emerged two Tokyos. In one, the occupiers appropriated and transformed key sections of the city in ways that allowed them to partake in the spoils of war and live in luxury. In the other, Tokyoites struggled to stave off starvation and to secure housing and employment.

1970 to present

In early-21st-century Tokyo, the construction of luxury residential and commercial towers in neighborhoods along the Sumida River has accelerated dramatically, altering the social composition and cultural images associated with downtown Tokyo. The new buildings stand in contrast to the sinking economy and are markers of the growing gap between rich and poor. They also reflect the pattern of urban construction and destruction as well as the unobtainable desires promised by commodity capitalism.

The Japanese media have featured articles on the escalation of youth crime and discontent, as well as the many forms of corruption that teenagers are exposed to in transformed downtown Tokyo. The 2002 Naoki literary prize was awarded to a book that reacts to both urban development and the problems facing Tokyo adolescents - Ishida Ira's 4-Teen (2002). Ishida shows the effects of Tokyo's transformations on teenage social norms and uses descriptions of urban places to reveal contradictions embedded in these roles. This article examines the context of 4-Teen's publication and the awarding of the Naoki Prize and explores how stories that mix fiction and historical experience provide new ways of viewing the changes in Tokyo.

Bibliography

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Guides

• DK. Tokyo (2008) excerpt and text search
• Frommer's Tokyo(2008) excerpt and text search
• Yanagihara, Wendy. Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter (2007) excerpt and text search

Contemporary

• Waley, Paul. "Tokyo-as-world-city: Reassessing the Role of Capital and the State in Urban Restructuring." Urban Studies 2007 44(8): 1465-1490. Issn: 0042-0980 Fulltext: Ebsco

History

• Karacas, Cary Lee. "Tokyo from the Fire: War, Occupation, and the Remaking of a Metropolis." PhD dissertation U. of California, Berkeley 2006. 333 pp. DAI 2007 67(8): 3111-A. DA3228373 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Tajima, Kayo. "The Marketing of Urban Human Waste in the Edo/Tokyo Metropolitan Area: 1600-1935." PhD dissertation Tufts U. 2005. 189 pp. DAI 2005 66(3): 1123-A. DA3167536 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

See also

• Greater Tokyo Area
• Kanto
• Honshu
• Japan