Tokyo’s Black Markets as an Alternative Urban Space: Occupation, Violence, and Disaster Reconstruction

Abstract

Black markets emerged at every corner in cities across Japan immediately after World War II. They spread rapidly due to the collapse in the distribution and rationing system. The government’s weakened control resulted in tolerance of the markets and occasionally covert government collaboration with black marketeers. In addition, existence of easily accessible open spaces in cities, such as areas that had been cleared of buildings by forced evacuation prior to air raids or that had been left in ruins by the raids, provided the space for black marketeers to build their street stalls. The black markets supported postwar reconstruction. They also had decisive influence on the emergence of new urban structures in postwar Japan. This essay examines the persistence of earlier characteristics of urban space along with the new elements in postwar Japan’s black markets. The new international character of the postwar black markets was evident in the prominence of repatriates from Japan’s former colonies, along with Chinese and Korean residents in Japan. The black market was thus a symbolic point of convergence between the prewar Empire of Japan and the new postwar Japan.