Regional Rivals, Pacific Partners

Abstract

This article examines how urban rivalries in Japan’s capital region shaped public debates in 1930s Yokohama over its place in the Pacific and the wider world. Faced with a collapsing international system, Yokohama’s city leaders contended with neighboring co-nationals Tokyo and Kawasaki as both threats to and potential partners in their city’s future as an industrial and commercial hub at the vanguard of a coming “Age of the Pacific.” While invocations of “the nation” and Japan’s emergent role in the Pacific often colored these debates, local boosters advocated less for the “national weal” and more for what they saw as Yokohama’s “rightful” role at the forefront of Japan’s international trade and transport.