Louise Young. Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan.

Abstract

In Beyond the Metropolis, Louise Young explores how urbanization beyond Tokyo unfolded in four “second cities” during the interwar period. Per Young's carefully nuanced analysis, this unfolding did not develop in straight-line fashion, nor was it uniform in Okayama, Kanazawa, Niigata, or Sapporo. She instead concludes that diversity was second-city urbanization's common attribute, and, despite Tokyo's undeniable influence, second-city urbanites relied on local agency to shape local modernity. The point—and why it is important in a framework beyond the Japanese experience—is nicely summed up in the study's final sentence: “a second-city frame of reference helps us to rethink the understanding of terms such as modernity—and to locate agency in the wide world beyond the metropolis” (p. 257). Young focuses her study on the transformation of four pre-Meiji cities into modern urban “chronotopes.” She uses the term to mean the interplay of time and place, the connectedness of both, in creating the regional cities. Preliminary to comparing and contrasting the emergence of her sites, and discussing their ties with the Tokyo metropolis, she devotes a first contextualizing chapter to “World War One and the City Idea.” She explains the importance of the wartime period as a genuine turning point. It was at this “moment” that economic development shifted from the nation to the cities. The sea change created new built environments using novel materials and processes (e.g., concrete, steel, electricity), a new if small middle class, and tensions between new social groups (workers versus managers, residents of the countryside versus people in first cities, and the regional chronotope versus surrounding hinterland).