Urbanization and Population Pressure in Japan

Abstract

BY THE END OF June i956, in accordance with earlier predictions, the population of Japan had passed the go million mark and had thus nearly trebled since the modern period began in i870. After a long period of stability, Japan's population growth since i870 followed a pattern similar to that of the major Western nations after the industrial revolution. Once the industrial cycle was entered, the growth curve, affected mainly by falling death rates, climbed rapidly. By i89i Japan's population had reached 40 million, and thereafter, until the figure of 8o million was attained in I948, approximately io million persons were added about every eleven years. Since i948, the total has been swelled by another io million, many of them repatriates from former Japanese-held territory in Asia and the Pacific and it is predicted that it will be well over ioo million by i970. Japan's demographic trends showed other parallels with Western experience, one of the most notable being the growth of urban-industrial communities. Cities were of course by no means new to Japan at the time of the Meiji Restoration; most of the modern cities of importance had in fact been established in the late i6th and early i7th centuries, as a vital part of the Tokugawa administrative policy. Nearly all the modern prefectural capitals, for example, are former Tokugawa castle towns (jokamachi).' But with industrialization after i870, cities began to fulfill new needs and there were changes accordingly. A few, not geographically suited to the new routes and modes of travel, declined while the majority underwent further growth and quickly began to play a key role in the expansion of the new nation. In general, an urban core developed from Nagasaki in the west, through northwestern Kyushu, the Inland Sea district and the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area, and along the old Tokaido road to Tokyo in the northeast. Cities along the Pacific littoral became dominant, for here was the most equable climate, the broadest areas of alluvial soil to provide food and space for industry and