Urban Japan (by Rizqi Abmar)

The urban trends that occurred in Japan during post-war reconstruction and industrialisation give us an insight into the practices that came into play and the values that Japanese citizens held in a rapidly changing urban landscape. The two examples looked at here are that of the reconstruction of Hiroshima, and the housing situation in Tokyo during its industrialisation. In the Hiroshima example we will see how the planning officials reacted to the catastrophe and how this lead to it being reshaped. The Tokyo example looks at suburban living in 1950s Japan and how the experience compared to the European experience of industrialisation.

The reconstruction of Hiroshima as well as the planning that went into it is an interesting case to look at in regards to post-war reconstruction. For starters the nuclear bomb destroyed a great proportion of the city which meant that it had to be rebuilt largely from scratch. The sudden nature of the losses also meant that reconstruction had to begin in earnest as there was a pressing need to provide housing for the victims that had been displaced. However, this did not stop considerations for the potential of reshaping Hiroshima with planning suggestions coming from both officials and citizens alike (Norioki 2003). The main hurdle in putting such ‘idealistic’ plans in motion was the lack of finances from the state as Hiroshima was not the only city in dire need of reconstruction. However, Hiroshima did have the means of acquiring more funding by being a city destroyed by a nuclear bomb. A plea for national aid to support it being ‘reconstructed as a peace memorial’ (Norioki 2003) and acquiring American aid using this reasoning allowed for a larger budget compared to other cities. This idea of being a symbol of remembrance persisted into the reconstruction plans for Hiroshima and would eventually lead to the preservation of structures such as what is now known the A-Bomb Dome. Green belts and riverside parks also came to be in the plans but this success was not without its own problems. In acquiring the land to be dedicated as parks, previous land owners, who at this point were often still in need of housing, occupied and built on this land as they had no other choice. The points to take from this example are how even though the events of the bombing were catastrophic to the city itself, its after-effects allowed for Hiroshima to not just be rebuilt more rapidly but reform and enact plans which would otherwise have not been conceived.

Housing in Tokyo presents a different case study in contrast of that of Hiroshima. This case study looks at a period slightly after post-war during the industrialisation of Tokyo. Here we see how the usual trends of poor housing conditions and slums forming as a result of an industrialised city did not happen in Tokyo to the extent they did in Europe (Dore 1958). According to Dore (1958) there were three reasons for this: the first was that employers at the time often had dorms where workers could stay in while they worked in the city; the second was the large amount of knowledge already available to draw upon to plan around this from Europe; and the final reason as well as the one he looks at primarily that there were hygienic habits already ingrained within the citizens as well as a different set of minimum standards for living.  He reports how the Japanese were much more used to living in smaller spaces and that it can assumed that while according to European standards it may have seemed there was overcrowding and low standards, in actual fact this was simply the way the citizens lived.  From Dore’s (1958) study, the sharing of houses in the suburb did lead to concerns about privacy but did lead to there being only a minuscule number of people being forced to temporary housing. The factor of interest here is the fact that even if the living conditions were cramped, the sharing of houses was essential to alleviate the housing needs that had occurred as a result of the industrialisation and urbanisation. Compare this case with a more contemporary look into what the urban situation is like in Japan. Ishii and Shigeta (2010) write about the City Planning Law (CPL) established in 1968 and how there is a need to review the law now that the urban landscape is changing. The main concerns being that the CPL is inadequate in dealing with the present issues of urban sprawl, lower economic growth, and population decline. Since the CPL was put in place during a time where there was much stronger population and economic growth due to the rapid industrialisation, it makes sense that there is a need to review it in the present-day. It is interesting to note that with the example of Tokyo above, there were only around 10 years between it and the CPL being implemented. The housing situation that was happening in those times was likely one of the many reasons that the CPL was passed.

In summary, both of these cases demonstrate how the planning process occurred during these greatly fluctuating times. From both we can infer how the immediacy in which the landscapes changed both affected and was affected by what priorities the people and the state had during those times. Moving forward, it will be very interesting to see what direction urban Japan takes and to compare it with how it was in these times.

 

References

Dore, RP 1958, ‘Houses and Apartment Blocks’, in City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 40-52.

Ishii, K & Shigeta, H 2010, ‘Comprehensive revision of the City Planning Law in Japan’, Journal of Town & City Management, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 211-220.

Norioki, I 2003, ‘Reconstructing Hiroshima and Preserving the Reconstructed City’, in C Hein & JM Diefendorf (eds), Rebuilding Urban Japan After 1945, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 87-107.