JAPAN: Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area

From the Encyclopædia Britannica

The people

The most striking fact about the population of Greater Tokyo is that it is so large. The four prefectures of the metropolitan area contain one-fourth of all the people in Japan. The population of the 23 wards of Tokyo is stabilized at roughly eight million, while that of outlying regions continues to grow rapidly. Two other cities within the complex, Yokohama and Kawasaki, have populations of more than a million.

The average age for Tokyoites is well under that for the rest of the nation. It is a city of young people, and they flood the streets. Though the very young are a little afraid of Shinjuku and its gangs, the streets on the whole are safe. So, Tokyo is filled with young people nudging past one another not in automobiles but on sidewalks; in this regard, not many cities can be its equal. It conveys a sense of irresistible vitality. It may be quiet and unpeopled in the hours before and after dawn, but at other hours none of the bustling centres is without its crowds. Ordinary neighbourhoods are quieter than they once were, because more people are indoors watching television—notably baseball (the national sport) during the season. Nonetheless, the pedestrian crowds continue to be far more widely diffused than in any American city.

The origins of the Tokyo populace are mostly in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Japan’s other great megalopolis, centred upon Ōsaka, draws from the south and west. It is reasonable to ask why masses of people continue to pour in who know full well how crowded it already is and how trying it can be, especially for the newcomer. It is dangerous to generalize about national traits, but one may hazard a simple answer: the Japanese love to be where everyone is, and there are nearly as many people in one conurbation or the other as everywhere else in Japan put together.

Although Yokohama has passed Ōsaka in population, the latter is still considered Japan’s “second” city. Ōsaka is the focal point of its conurbation, while Yokohama is largely a bedroom town for Tokyo. Yokohama retains its international flavour from the days when it was Japan’s chief entrepôt with the West, even though its foreign community is much smaller than it once was. Tokyo, in spite of a substantial foreign population and its world-class status, has considerably less of a cosmopolitan feel than a city such as New York.

The economy

Industry

Since the war Tokyo has taken over from Ōsaka the role of leading industrial centre in the country. The region has a highly diversified manufacturing base. Heavy industries—such as metals, chemicals, machinery, transportation equipment, and oil refining—are concentrated in Chiba, Kawasaki, and Yokohama. Tokyo proper is strongly inclined toward light industry. Most of Japan’s books and much of its electronic equipment, for instance, are produced there.

Commerce and finance

More noteworthy than the concentration of industry is the concentration of management and finance in and near Tokyo. Even companies with factories elsewhere maintain large offices in Tokyo, and the proper corporate location is Marunouchi. There is a good reason for keeping a Tokyo office—proximity to government offices—although a chumminess between managers and bureaucrats is thought by many to be not entirely healthy.

Finance has been more conservative geographically than has management, with Nihombashi, the commercial and financial centre of Edo, as its main seat. Located there are the Bank of Japan and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Japan’s two most important financial institutions. The latter is much busier than the Ōsaka Stock Exchange, but this may be somewhat misleading: a very large proportion of stocks are in intercompany holdings that do not go on the market. This arrangement is a defense against hostile takeovers and also a continuing assurance of cooperation among the members of the giant conglomerates; but it makes the stock market easily manipulatable and less than ideally subject to market forces.

During the 1980s, as Japan was emerging as an economic superpower, Tokyo suddenly found itself a global financial centre. This remarkable growth rate came to be called the “bubble economy.” The expression refers to speculation in general, but most particularly to land speculation and to Tokyo, where land prices have been the most outrageously exorbitant in the country. By the early 1990s, however, overinflated stock and land prices led to a “bursting” of the bubble, so curious a phenomenon that the Japanese grasp of the word “bubble” seems in doubt. The English word is most commonly used, and when it is put into Japanese (awa) the rendition is “foam” rather than “bubble.” What has happened does seem more like a subsidence of foam than a thorough burst of a bubble.

Transportation

The emergence of modern Tokyo came at the beginning of the transportation revolution of the late 19th century. The first railroad in Japan was put through from Tokyo to Yokohama in 1872. The city continues to be the most important transportation centre in the country. The busiest rail stations are those accommodating commuters to the western suburbs, but the traveler who wishes to go considerable distances by rail usually leaves from Tokyo station, in Marunouchi, or Ueno station, a couple of miles to the north. Only since 1991 has it been possible to take a Shinkansen express train to northern Japan from Tokyo station, as Ueno was the traditional terminus for northbound travel.

Most international travel is through the highly inconvenient airport at Narita, in Chiba prefecture, at least an hour by rail from central Tokyo. Opened in 1978, the facility has been at the centre of controversy since its inception, mainly because of opposition by landowners to the appropriation of their property. The older, smaller, and rather more convenient airport at Haneda, near the Tama River, accommodates domestic travel and a few international flights. Yokohama still is the most important port in the region, the other major ports being Chiba, Kawasaki, and Tokyo.

Tokyo’s streets are flooded not only with people but also with vehicles, and traffic can become almost gridlocked at busy times and in busy places. There is a good system of roads and express highways in the city and region, but it is woefully inadequate for the crush of traffic. A splendid network of subways and commuter rail lines provides an alternative to the automobile.

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